Saudat

🌟📣We are happy to announce another new publication on the obstetrical dilemma, co-authored by Barbara Fischer and Philipp Mitteroecker:

"Over the edge: Empirical evidence for the cliff-edge model of obstetric selection"

www.kli.ac.at/en/the_kli/n...

Congratulations to the authors! 👏👏👏

Inference and Visualization of Complex Genotype–Phenotype Maps Abstract. Understanding how biological sequences give rise to observable traits, that is, how genotype maps to phenotype, is a central goal in biology. Yet

Martí-Gómez et al. developed gpmap-tools, integrating models for inference, phenotypic imputation, and error estimation from multiplex assays of variant effect data or natural sequences in the presence of genetic interactions.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msag023

#evobio #molbio #compbio

Postdoc @eawag.bsky.social apply.refline.ch/673277/1341/...

📣 Our lab is seeking a postdoc to study mutation mechanisms in fungi using cutting-edge sequencing + computational biology. No active posting/grant right now, but we’re excited to host postdoc fellowship applicants in our comparative immunology team.
Interested? Reach out DM email. krasilevalab.org

Fig. 4. of Kraus 2026. Normal mammalian cardiogenesis and ambiogenic events hypothesized to be required for proper outflow tract development during placentation, along with associated developmental and phylogenetic phenotypes.

💐 Congratulations to our 2025 KLI fellow, Nina Kraus @ninakraus.bsky.social, on her new publication in the Journal of Experimental Biology on
"Environmentally dependent developmental induction as a potential driver of heart evolution"!
👏👏👏

📃 doi.org/10.1242/jeb....

Chill-tolerant Drosophila species maintain electrogenic muscle membrane potential to resist cold-induced depolarization Summary: Unlike chill-sensitive Drosophila that lose muscle membrane polarization in the cold, chill-tolerant species can maintain polarization via preservation of Na+/K+-ATPase-driven electrogenesis,...

Why are some Drosophila flies paralyzed at cold temperatures, and others aren't? 👇

A detailed characterization of the #Drosophila yolk-GAL4 transgene used for expression in the fat body shows that the Gal4 induces physiological defects in adult females.

Learn more in #GENETICS about new alternative fly lines that mitigate this effect: buff.ly/SxA6L1E

Seminars

Tanja Schwander is closing the #PopGen Seminar winter term by speaking tomorrow on "Origins and consequences of unorthodox reproductive modes: Insights from stick insects". Our #PhD students look forward! Full schedule and streaming details at popgen-vienna.at/news/seminars/ #evolution

Continent-wide differentiation of fitness traits and patterns of climate adaptation among European populations of Drosophila melanogaster
#Drosophila

Morphomechanics and Developmental Constraints in the Evolution of Ammonites Shell Form https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27921363/ #EvoDevo

Join our KLI Colloquium:
"On Experimental Models of Developmental Plasticity and Evolutionary Novelty"
Speaker: Patricia BELDADE (Lisbon University)
🕒 15 Jan 2026, 3:00 PM CET
🗺️ at KLI, join online via ZOOM (link & info: www.kli.ac.at/en/the_kli/n...)

Text: Society for the Study of Evolution, American Society of Naturalists, Society of Systematic Biologists, Undergraduate Community at Evolution Program. Applications due January 20, 2026.

Are you an undergrad interested in ecology, evolution or related fields? Apply by January 20 for our Undergraduate Community at Evolution program! This program provides funding, mentoring, and a presentation opportunity at #Evol2026. www.evolutionsociety.org/content/educ...

Why does life explore so few of the forms it could possibly take? Using fractal descriptors, this #scienceadvances paper shows that Earth’s biosphere clusters around simple shapes, reflecting deep evolutionary constraints. @artemyte.bsky.social @manlius.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

Multivariate trait evolution: models for the evolution of the quantitative genetic G-matrix on phylogenies Abstract. Genetic covariance matrices (G-matrices) are a key focus for research and predictions from quantitative genetic evolutionary models of multiple t

How do genetic variances and covariances evolve over deep time? This paper unifies quantitative genetics and macroevolution with analytical models for G-matrix evolution on phylogenies, enabling new tests of multivariate trait evolution.
academic.oup.com/evlett/artic...

Generative epigenetic landscapes map the topology and topography of cell fates | PNAS Epigenetic landscapes were proposed by Waddington as the central concept to describe cell fate dynamics in a locally low-dimensional space. In mode...

Very happy to share our 'Evoscape' paper, now published in PNAS ! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Hooray! It's finally out

Istanbul people, an Astronomer needs your help!

RegEvol: detection of directional selection in regulatory sequences through phenotypic predictions and phenotype-to-fitness functions Regulatory DNA controls when and where genes are expressed, making it a key driver of phenotypic evolution. Yet detecting selection in non-coding regions remains difficult, as most approaches rely on ...

I'm excited to present this new model to detect positive selection on regulatory sequences, which has been 3 years in the making!
Thanks to Alexandre Laverré and @phylogenetrips.bsky.social for their amazing work on this project. 😃
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Thread!

Excited to share that I’m starting a research group at MPI for Biology Tübingen — and we’re recruiting PhD students!

We are offering two fully funded PhD positions on sex determination and development in Hymenoptera 🐜🐝.

Please share with prospective students who might be interested.

***Super cool-project alert***⚠️ Come work with @dirkmetzler.bsky.social and me in trying to understand how transcriptional noise evolves in a phylogenetic context 🧬 Deadline 15th Dec 2025 (Project funded by @dfg.de @gevol.bsky.social)

Are you an early-stage graduate student (2nd or 3rd year) or early-stage postdoc based in the US or Canada, working primarily in Drosophila? Would you like to help improve the experience of all trainees working in Drosophila research? If so, read on.

(Please repost to reach a broad audience.)

Each dyad (a, b) moves through four discrete states over time, represented by coloured circles. The dyad remains in a given state for a certain duration, or "holding time", before transitioning to a new state according to state-specific transition probabilities, indicated by arrows showing all possible (non-zero) transitions. Paintings by Sofia M. Pereira & Judith von Nordheim.

New paper!

We propose a framework to empirically study animal social relationships by modelling social network (SN) data as time-series—that is, without the need to aggregate them over time.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

How Inventors Find Inspiration in Evolution (Gift Article) Soft batteries and water-walking robots are among the many creations made possible by studying animals and plants.

There's a word for learning from evolution's inventions: bioinspiration. Here's my interactive story on the way animals and plants fuel technological creativity. Gift link: nyti.ms/4otNQyl

Let's get Dustin some nice pet photos.

Sorry! Machu and Semmel send furry greetings from Austria

Conference title: Dialectical Biology Today: Legacies of Richard Lewontin, and image of Lewontin in Black and White with intense expression in front of a chalkboard holding up a fist, When and Where Friday, October 10, 2025 11:30 am to Sunday, October 12, 2025 2:00 pm Music Room (218) Goldring Student Centre 150 Charles St W, Toronto, ON M5S 1K5 | and online via Zoom

I'm excited to share with you all a conference I'm planning Oct. 10-12: Dialectical Biology Today: Legacies of Richard Lewontin.

It will be hybrid in Toronto and on zoom, so please join us however you can! Register for zoom link here: ihpst.utoronto.ca/events/diale...

Hybridization and introgression are major evolutionary processes. Since the 1940s, the prevailing view has been that they shape plants far more than animals. In our new study (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
), we find the opposite: animals exchange genes more, and for longer, than plants

‘Almost unimaginable’: these ants are different species but share a mother Ant queens of one species clone ants of another to create hybrid workers that do their bidding.

woah this is genuinely, utterly WILD

Ant queens of one species produce males of another species, so she can then mate with them and produce hybrid workers!

This is so gloriously weird I can't quite compute it 🤯🧪🐜
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

MEME alumni (www.evobio.eu) at #ESEB2025! We span so many generations now, from the first cohort (graduated in 2012) to those who are still studying, with master students, PhD students, postdocs, and PIs among us! So happy to get together in every ESEB 🤩

Music to my ears. This is brilliant. Either 90% of us can claim to be better musicians than Beethoven or… maybe just maybe polygenic scores aren’t perfect?