Evolutionary Ecology Group, Cambridge

Huge congratulations to Zhe and everyone involved! 😊

This has been a wonderful effort by many lab members, and the credits for the fantastic leopard picture go to Ondra Pelanek 📷

Lastly, we saw that Europe also followed this pattern: during warm interglacial periods it was occupied by leopards but population sizes dropped during glacial periods, suggesting that the effect of climate could have been strong enough to catalyse their extinction.

We also found that climate stability over glacial cycles can explain the different levels of differentiation on continents. Africa remained stable over time, whilst Asian demography fluctuated more through glacial cycles, hence creating the isolation for needed for differentiation.

This simulated demography provided explanations to many patterns we observe. For example, African leopards show strong isolation from almost all Asian ones, and we found it is due to the shallow corridor between North Africa, the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula after the initial expansion.

We found that a simple Out of Africa model can capture the genetic diversity of leopards in Asia and Africa. Among all the demographic parameters, the ones associated with climate showed strongest signal, indicating climate was largely responsible for contemporary leopard demography.

Why is there only one subspecies in Africa whilst in Asia there are 8? And why did leopards disappear in Europe? In our study, we combine genetics, climate and archaeological data to build a Climate Informed Spatial Genetic Model and try to answer these questions.

#newpreprint: "Climate Shaped the Global Population Structure of Leopards and their Extinction in Europe": www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...! Leopards are charming big cats but there are many mysteries around them. Thread 🧵

Birds all over the world use the same sound to warn of threats The findings of a new study about communication between birds also offer key insights into the origins of language.

#newpaper out in @natecoevo.nature.com on Learned use of an innate sound-meaning association in birds, co-led by @jameskennerley.bsky.social when he was a PhD student at @eegcam.bsky.social . Nice summary on the @uk.theconversation.com theconversation.com/birds-all-ov...

YouTube video by New Scientist Our common Neanderthal ancestor could be a million years old, says Chris Stringer

youtube.com/watch?v=MA1c...

The phylogenetic position of the Yunxian cranium elucidates the origin of Homo longi and the Denisovans Diverse forms of Homo coexisted during the Middle Pleistocene. Whether these fossil humans represent different species or clades is debated. The ~1-million-year-old Yunxian 2 fossil from China is impo...

The phylogenetic position of the Yunxian cranium elucidates the origin of Homo longi and the Denisovans | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I couldn’t be more excited about being given the chance to present some of the work we do at @eegcam.bsky.social this November & to listen to the talks by such an incredible line up of speakers! 🤩

Malaria shaped human spatial organisation for the last 74 thousand years - preLights The distribution of early human settlements in Sub-Saharan Africa might have been influenced by avoidance of mosquitoes that spread malaria

The distribution of early human settlements in Sub-Saharan Africa might have been influenced by avoidance of mosquitoes that spread malaria

A new #prelight of Alejandra Leffer's group talks about the preprint by @margheritac17.bsky.social , and the team.

Thank you @prelights.bsky.social & Alejandra Leffer's group for choosing our preprint on @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social and for this chance to talk about human- #malaria coevolution!🦟
@eegcam.bsky.social @elliescerri.bsky.social @MPI_GEA

3 exciting job opportunities at the new "HUMAN ORIGINS" Cluster of Excellence at Tübingen, for which I am an external PI. We are looking for early career researchers ready to launch their independent group and ask some exciting questions!

GitHub - EvolEcolGroup/tidygenclust: R package providing a tidy interface to clustering in population genetics, building on top of `tidypopgen` R package providing a tidy interface to clustering in population genetics, building on top of `tidypopgen` - EvolEcolGroup/tidygenclust

Check the package website for more information, example workflows, benchmarking and ideas on how to use tidygenclust: github.com/EvolEcolGrou...

tidygenclust: Clustering for Population Genetics in R Background Population structure analysis is crucial for evolutionary research and medical genomics. Clustering methods, broadly categorized as model-based (e.g. ADMIXTURE) or non-model-based (e.g. SCO...

🚨🧬New #preprint and R package from the lab out in @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social🧬🚨: 'tidygenclust' combines the functionality of ADMIXTURE, fastmixture and Clumppling into R - allowing for reproducible clustering analyses and plotting all in one place!

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

Hominins on Sulawesi during the Early Pleistocene - Nature Early Pleistocene artefacts at Calio suggest that Sulawesi was populated by hominins at around the same time as Flores, if not earlier.

Stone tools from Sulawesi at least a million years old may be even more ancient than those found on Flores, suggesting an even earlier presence of hominins on Wallacea www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The radiation and geographic expansion of primates through diverse climates | PNAS One of the most influential hypotheses about primate evolution postulates that their origin, radiation, and major dispersals were associated with e...

What a fantastic new paper out today in @pnas.org: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... - and what a great resource, summarising the climatic niche of primates and tackling the hypothesis on whether primates evolved in warm tropical forests 😍

Depth affects the population dynamics on a soft coral-dominated reef on the Great White Wall, Fiji - Coral Reefs Soft corals (order Alcyonacea) are an important component of tropical coral reefs, and often form locally abundance dense carpets. Some soft coral species are prone to bleaching and heat stress like s...

#newpaper showing how depth mediates the population dynamics of soft corals in Fiji, led by @nis38.bsky.social (with @huwiceandstuff.bsky.social‬, @rowanwhittlebas.bsky.social‬, and @egmitchell.bsky.social‬)
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

A multi-model approach to the spatial and temporal characterization of the African Humid Period During the last c. 20,000 years, African climates experienced temperature shifts related to the last period of global deglaciation and moisture availa…

#Newpaper: the African Humid period through the lenses of pollen-based and mechanistic-based #palaeoclimate reconstructions!

Thanks @ecologypast.bsky.social, @markuslfischer.bsky.social, @paleoclimategirl.bsky.social and all coauthors!

A multi-model approach to the spatial and temporal characterization of the African Humid Period During the last c. 20,000 years, African climates experienced temperature shifts related to the last period of global deglaciation and moisture availa…

New paper with a pollen and mechanistic model perspective on the African Humid Period – www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Pollen-based reconstructions and a mechanistic climate model tell a similar story on the Africa Humid Period; @mikleonardi.bsky.social‬ and Andrea contributed to a proxy-model comparison paper led by @ecologypast.bsky.social‬ in Quatern. Int.: authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

TODAY!!

We always try to be scientifically accurate, clear and inclusive in the way we present our research, but mistakes happen. This is why we are particularly grateful for constructive feedback such as yours! 2/2

We fully agree with this, and our group members are quite involved in discussing these topics with a wider public (see for example @ceciliapad.bsky.social and her work with @sapiens.org or @mikleonardi.bsky.social who created a free board game about evolution and climate change). 1/2

I see your point! As it was a sentence quoted from Andrea Manica (who is non-African) we thought it would work, but as you mention it may indeed lead to some misunderstanding!

Thanks for spotting this! You are right, it should read "we all non-Africans derive from a group of people that came out of Africa about 50,000 years ago".

Ancient proteins rewrite the rhino family tree — are dinosaurs next? Molecules from 20-million-year-old teeth are among the oldest ever sequenced.

Molecules from 20-million-year-old rhino's teeth are among the oldest ever sequenced. New @nature.com paper by Professor Andrea Manica and @mikleonardi.bsky.social @eegcam.bsky.social out now: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Read more here: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Phylogenetically informative proteins from an Early Miocene rhinocerotid - Nature Protein sequences from fossil tooth enamel of a rhinocerotid from Canada’s High Arctic are used to develop phylogenetic frameworks from a specimen too old to preserve ancient DNA.

Andrea and @mikleonardi.bsky.social contributed to a @nature.com paper recovering phylogenetically informative proteins from a ~21M year rhino: www.nature.com/articles/s41...