Peter Mulhair

Insect biodiversity monitoring must be expanded: A good start would be to extend funding for the amazing STRI Arthropod Inititiative striresearch.si.edu/yves-basset-...

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

YSF2025 Registration Form Welcome to the YSF2025 Registration and Abstract Submission form. This year the conference will be held online on Friday, November 14th 2025. We look forward to seeing old and new faces from across t...

Students (and recent graduates) working on anything phylogenetics, systematics or taxonomy-related, the abstract submission deadline for this year's (FREE ONLINE) Young Systematists' Forum approaches!

Send us your abstracts by Saturday, OCTOBER 25 11:59PM GMT+1

tinyurl.com/2w5n3e8

Students, if you join us for the lecture, we will be hosting a Student Committee-sponsored reception and you'll be entitled to a FREE drink 🍻

The receptions will be held jointly, so you'll have the opportunity to meet other students and members of the Association.

Join us! tinyurl.com/28u2u2z8

Half of Ireland’s rivers, lakes and estuaries in unhealthy state as standards slide again Agriculture, sewage, chemicals and physical damage all threatening nature’s waterways

48% of Ireland's waterbodies are so polluted, contaminated with chemicals, choked with algae, deprived of oxygen, lacking in species variety or physically altered and damaged that they fail to meet minimally acceptable standards.

And it's getting worse.
share.google/UVKmPRvgmnDA...

Poster with event details and registration QR code for The Systematics Association's Founders' Lecture.

Don't forget to register for our in-person Founders' Lecture, next Friday OCT 24 6PM at Burlington House, London.

Prof @emmateeling.bsky.social, UCD, will be talking to us on all things bat 🦇

This is a free event but it will help us gauge interest if you register. tinyurl.com/28u2u2z8

Saturday night nails on a Monday morning 💅💅💅

This sponge crab is dressed to party! Another fantastic video from @paulnaylormarinephoto

Flaunting bright pink pincers that help us with species recognition, subtle camouflage, and maybe even a little warning to predators.

The Mexican Jerusalem cricket (Stenopelmatus talpa) calls to mates by beating its chunky abdomen against the ground, producing a drumming sound. Each species of Stenopelmatus has a different drumming song. #EverydayEnsifera

📸: Jalil Rodríguez M

"Why sequence the #genome of every species? A view from evolutionary biology" Did you catch this amazing new review in our journal by @peterhox.bsky.social? REad it for FREE here now: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... @thembauk.bsky.social #dnasequencing #chromosome #mutation #evolution

📢📢📢 Correction!

Friday, OCT 24!

📢📢📢

Evolution of the olfactory system during the radiation of Heliconiini butterflies Abstract. Sensory system evolution plays a crucial role in shaping species’ interactions with their environment, yet the extent to which olfactory system d

New paper out! A nice collaboration.
We explore how olfactory brain structures and receptors evolved across this remarkable group, Heliconiini butterflies.

A side profile of a katydid resembling a brown, crunchy leaf. The wings of the katydid even have veins! Source: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/68304626

There are ~18,000 species of katydids, crickets, & allies worldwide - over 32,000 if you include questionable names. I thought it'd be fun to showcase some weird, beautiful, or unusual species daily. First up is Orophus tessellatus, a katydid from Central America! #EverydayEnsifera

📸: Karl Kroeker

Independent genomic trajectories shape adaptation to life on land across animal lineages How animals repeatedly adapted to life on land is a central question in evolutionary biology. While terrestrialisation occurred independently across animal phyla, it remains unclear whether shared gen...

How did animals repeatedly conquer land? 🌊➡️⛰️ We analysed ~1,000 gene repertoires (24M genes!) from all animal phyla to uncover how this happened. Work led by @gemmaeling.bsky.social & Klara Eleftheriadi, both first coauthors of this titanic effort!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

"AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations"

Project Psyche is featured in a new article out now on @spectrum.ieee.org! Check it out to get an insight into the efforts of @ebpgenome.bsky.social and the milestones achieved during the fieldtrip of #ProjectPsyche and @10klepgenomes.bsky.social to the Italian Alps 🦋

Retrocopy formation and domestication shape genome evolution in sloths and other xenarthrans Xenarthrans, comprising sloths, anteaters, and armadillos, represent one of the most morphologically and physiologically specialised mammalian clades, yet the genomic basis of their adaptations remain...

Preprint Alert! 🦥
We produced complete genomes for 2 Xenarthra and placed them in a mammalian comparative framework. We found that Xenarthra harbour the largest number of retrocopies in mammals! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Best of luck!
Are you in Barcelona now? I’ll be visiting the university for a couple of weeks in November, would be great to catch up

Founders' Lecture details and registration QR code.

We are delighted to announce that this year's Founders' Lecture will be delivered by Prof. @emmateeling.bsky.social, University College Dublin!

TITLE: Bats: Genomes, phylogenies, fossils and cures?

WHEN: Friday, October 24th at 6PM

WHERE: Burlington House, London

JOIN US: tinyurl.com/28u2u2z8

Young Systematists’ Forum Young Systematists’ Forum An exciting setting for postgraduate students and early postdoctoral researchers to present their work to a scientific audience interested in taxonomy and systematic…

Join us Nov 14th for #YSF2025, a completely free, online conference where postgraduate students (and other early career researchers) present their work on systematics, taxonomy and/or phylogenetics.

Abstract submission closes Oct 25th!

REGISTER: tinyurl.com/2fvmmthc

systass.org/young-system...

Nature’s little builders 🌿 In August, some of our monitors found as many as 1000 cased caddis in their sample!
Caddis larvae make protective cases from twigs, sand, and stones. Each one is unique!
#FreshwaterFriday #Caddisfly #FreshwaterInvertebrates

OK, here it is. Come work with me at the University of Liverpool making ALL THE AI models from ALL THE prokaryote pangenome data. Heck, we will make models from ALL the pangenomes, even eukaryotes!!! (link below👇) 1/4

PhyKIT is one of my favourite bioinf tools when carrying out molecular evolution analyses. And now it’s gotten even faster!

🌍🦋 Across 6 continents, 21 sites & 15,000 paper moths, we joined a worldwide experiment led by @wlallen.bsky.social & Iliana Medina, showing how ecological context shapes the evolution of animal colouration.

Proud to be part of this global team effort: doi.org/10.1126/scie...

This looks super cool! Congrats to all involved

PostDoc job in Cornwall with @blongdon.bsky.social : Many moths, metagenomics, and mixed models. Plus some UK fieldwork in summer 2026 jobs.exeter.ac.uk/hrpr_webrecr...

No Evidence of Sexually Antagonistic Coevolution in Drosophila Reproductive Tract Transcriptomes Abstract. Drosophila seminal fluid proteins (SFPs) are often cited as an example of interlocus sexual conflict, wherein the proteins increase male fitness

Pleased to share our latest pub! Dave’s lab found specific fly populations with evidence of pronounced, recent, asymmetric evolution in male seminal fluid protein gene expression. We figured this was a great system to test ideas in the literature... 🧵🧪 1/n
🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf210

Happy to share the Biodiversity Cell Atlas white paper, out today in @nature.com. We look at the possibilities, challenges, and potential impacts of molecularly mapping cells across the tree of life.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Join us at #Biodiversity25 !

Interested in Lepidoptera? There will be the session on @projectpsyche.bsky.social with project updates, the highly anticipated re-launch of Lepbase and discussions on the analysis of the first 1,000 lep genomes. Plus there's a keynote by @lepphylo.bsky.social!🦋

Wood tiger moth on leaf. Photo: Juhani Maamela.

Funded PhD position available 🎉 Come and work with me in Helsinki to uncover the pathways producing colourful tiger moth wings. Lots of options for genomics, CRISPR, fieldwork, behaviour experiments… Email with questions! jobs.helsinki.fi/job/Helsinki...

Last chance to join us next month for the #Biodiversity25 conference.

A fantastic set of speakers, mix of talks & focused workshops, and the chance to meet others in the field of biodiversity genomics 🧬

In-person registration closes next Monday 29th September!

Registration 🔗: bit.ly/4j3vAZ9

New out in Molecular Ecology! In which we show that small males try harder when it comes to seminal fluid proteins. w/ @ju-morimoto.bsky.social @iremsepil.bsky.social @becks-seascience.bsky.social
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...