Shen Tian 田申

Thanks Luca!

Amazing peppered moth story from Saccheri lab - same locus, but different structural variants, underly parallel evolution of industrial melanism in the UK and across continental Europe.

A mini review on the seasonal plasticity of butterfly eyespots. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Very excited to share that my first first-author pre-print is out today! Many thanks go out to all of our collaborators, especially those who helped with the fieldwork in Peru - it really wouldn't have been possible without you! 🦋

Evolution rarely invents from scratch.

Our recent study reveals that butterfly eyespots evolved by co-opting an ancient wing vein gene network. New trait, old genes. The study is now published in Communications Biology (featured: Jan26) www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Our eLetter github.com/caseywdunn/s... responding to a recent Science paper was just posted. The paper found more genes with consistent support for sponge-sister than ctenophore-sister. We found several technical issues that, when corrected, reverse the conclusions and recover ctenophore-sister.

Congrats @jeffgroh.bsky.social et al. Some avocado trees open female-phase flowers in the morning & then male in afternoon. Others show complementary pattern (m->f), to synchronize pollination of two types. Jeff show this to be a >45Mya polymorphism at a transcription factor across 100s of species.

Causal modelling of gene effects from regulators to programs to traits - Nature Approaches combining genetic association and Perturb-seq data that link genetic variants to functional programs to traits are described.

GWAS has been an incredible discovery tool for human genetics: it regularly identifies *causal* links from 1000s of SNPs to any given trait. But mechanistic interpretation is usually difficult.

Our latest work on causal models for this is out yesterday:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A short🧵:

🦣🧬🦣🤯💥We are pleased to share our new paper about ancient RNA expression profiles from the Woolly Mammoth, now published in Cell @cellpress.bsky.social

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

If you want to know more, read the 🧵 below:

NEW pub in @science.org 🥳

Is it sponges (panels A & B) or comb jellies (C & D) that root the animal tree of life?

For over 15 years, #phylogenomic studies have been divided.

We provide new evidence suggesting that...

🔗: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Hi, I'm setting up a peer support platform for ECRs in ecology & evolution in China, aiming to address a huge problem --- academic burnout driven by hyper-competition and a system that often prioritizes elite background/title over actual research.

#ECR #AcademicSupport #科研互助 #ecology #evolution

a statue of a man 's head with a bunch of paper coming out of it ALT: a statue of a man 's head with a bunch of paper coming out of it

🔥🔥🔥🔥New paper out; a opinion piece in @narjournal.bsky.social with Michael Hackenberg, @panosbino.bsky.social, Kevin K Peterson and @marcfriedlander.bsky.social 🔥🔥🔥🔥

„Knowing is not enough, we must apply“

academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

Project overview

About the lab

Entry requirements

Funding & eligibility

PhD position for Chinese nationals! London-based, funded by China Scholarship Council & @qmul.bsky.social

"Ecology & genomics of climate adaptation: mapping functional genetic variation in wild insect populations"

shorturl.at/Vfi8W

DM for more info!
#conservation #genomics #ecology #biodiversity

Genomic architecture of egg mimicry and its consequences for speciation in parasitic cuckoos Host-parasite arms races facilitate rapid evolution and can fuel speciation. Cuculus cuckoos are deceptive egg mimics that exhibit a broad diversity of counterfeit egg phenotypes, representing host-ad...

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Wound-induced eyespots on butterfly wings at the intersection of immune response and pigmentation development - BMC Biology Background Butterfly eyespots are striking examples of evolutionary novelty arising through the repurposing of ancestral genetic pathways, including pathways involved in wound healing. Given the activ...

A personal favorite, long time in the making. Adelina and David (@dduneau.bsky.social) were instrumental in getting this done.

doi.org/10.1186/s129...

For those interested in GRN evolution, please join us!

Hi Aaron, sure, will pm you

NUS study: A simple DNA switch helps tropical butterflies change wing patterns with the seasons Singapore, 24 October 2025 — Scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have discovered a simple DNA “switch” that helps tropical butterflies adjust the size of their wing eyespots in ...

news.nus.edu.sg/dna-switch-b...

A news article about the paper by Jennifer Brisson:

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This study @science.org finds what appears to be the long-lost RNA subunit of C. elegans telomerase. The TERC RNA is encoded within an intron of a germline-upregulated gene, nmy-2🪱🔬🧬Nematode telomerase RNA hitchhikes on introns of germline–up-regulated genes | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This is the final piece of my PhD thesis. A big thanks to Bonnie, @tirthabanerjee.bsky.social, Suriya, and @monteirolab.bsky.social for their support! 9/9

Cr. to William Piel

We found a novel promoter of a Hox gene promoting adaptive temperature sensitivities across a large clade of butterflies. This highlights the essential roles of novel cis-regulatory elements in fueling adaptations on a macroevolutionary scale. 8/9

In B. anynana, disrupting this novel promoter reduced the butterfly’s ability to adjust eyespot size with temperature, showing that this genetic element contributed to the evolution of temperature-mediated eyespot size plasticity in satyrid butterflies. 7/9

How is Antp activated in eyespots of a specific clade of butterflies? We found a genetic switch, a promoter, that evolved specifically in satyrid butterflies, and it activates Antp expression specifically in eyespot central cells. 6/9

Disrupting Antp in two satyrid butterflies reduced eyespot size, especially when the insects were raised at warmer temperatures, confirming Antp’s role in boosting the levels of eyespot size plasticity. 5/9

From the tissue-specific transcriptomic data, we pinpointed a Hox gene Antennapedia (Antp), showing higher eyespot expression levels at warmer temperatures. Notbly, among all butterflies with eyespots, Antp is only activated in the eyespots of satyrid butterflies. 4/9

How did satyrid butterflies evolve such temperature sensativities? In a model satyrid Bicyclus anynana, we profiled gene expression from both eyespot and non-eyespot developing wing tissues across two temperatures, using laser-microdissection. 3/9

Many tropical satyrid butterflies look strikingly different in different seasons. In the hot wet season, these butterflies develop large eyespots on their wings. In the cold dry season, these eyespots are small. This change enhances their survival in each season. 2/9

Cr. to Shen Tian

My main PhD work @monteirolab.bsky.social is now in @natecoevo.nature.com! We found a Hox gene promoter that helps butterflies🦋adjust their wing eyespots in response to seasonal temperatures🍃🍂, shedding light on the evolutionary origin of phenotypic plasticity. 1/9 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1/3 Excited that my final PhD MS is online! Big thanks to Ullasa (PI) (vanasiri.in) & collaborators Freerk and Urszula. Turns out humidity, not just temperature, plays a major role in butterfly eyespot plasticity. doi.org/10.1101/2025...