Yuki Haba

Recurrent connectivity supports carbon dioxide sensitivity in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes The mosquito Aedes aegypti′s human host-seeking behavior depends on the integration of multiple sensory cues. One of these cues, carbon dioxide (CO2), gates odorant and heat pathways and activates hos...

New preprint from @darbly.bsky.social‬ @briandepasquale.bsky.social‬ and my labs! If you love (or hate) mosquitoes, have a look:

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

We used TEM to describe the circuitry used for CO2 detection by mosquitoes. As usual with mosquitoes, nothing is as expected! 🌬️🦟

I spoke to Renaud Pourpe (of @lonelypipette.bsky.social fame with @epigenetique.bsky.social) about the unique challenges faced by postdocs and early-career PIs worldwide on the transition from postdoc to PI.

Lots of useful advice shared (by others):

www.alba.network/diversity-po...

Check it out.

I'm thrilled that my lab at NYU is now supported by an NIH MIRA grant! I'm looking to hire 1-2 senior lab members (outstanding postdoc candidates or experienced staff scientists) with expertise in computational or statistical methods in human genetics or genomics. Please share!

Computational Urban Ecology of New York City Rats Urban rats are highly adaptable, thriving in the dynamic and often inhospitable conditions of modern cities. Despite substantial mitigation efforts, they remain an enduring presence in urban environme...

New preprint!



tl;dr — We ran around late at night to record wild rats in NYC and figured out how to quantify their behavior and environment. 🧵

w/ Dima Batenkov, @zamakany.bsky.social, Emily Mackevicius

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

Abdus-Saboor & @vabraira.bsky.social lab joint tenure celebration party. We opened our labs together in 2018 and got tenure together this July. Published papers together and writing up more as we speak.

Congratulations Felix and the team 🎉

Such an exciting and comprehensive study on the neuronal basis of adaptive behavioral evolution!

If you're attending #SMBE2025 check out graduate student @tododge.bsky.social 's talk at 11:30 am tomorrow (8:30 pacific time tonight if you're watching remotely). It's a wild ride with lots of complex structural variation, balancing selection, and introgression!

Love this!

Tooting my own horn here, but if you’re interested in some of the practical considerations mentioned at the end of the article, you can check out this perspective from earlier in my postdoc: www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

Vaccination to mitigate climate-driven disruptions to malaria control in Madagascar Extreme weather is common in high malaria burden areas and is likely to increase in severity owing to climate change–related severe weather events. Yet, data on infection rates after these events and ...

Out today in Science: Our work on tropical cyclones and malaria in Madagascar. Work inspired by many and done in collaboration with many www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Gene regulatory networks and essential transcription factors for de novo-originated genes Nature Ecology & Evolution - A combination of computational methods applied to single-cell RNA sequencing data and genetic experiments shows that a small number of transcription factors are...

Our latest paper is out: rdcu.be/ev6Ym — one of my favorite projects. It began about 8 years ago when Nobel laureate Torsten Wiesel asked me: what transcription factors regulate new genes? I had no idea then. Now we have some answers.

Some personal news…

I am happy to share that I’ve been awarded tenure here at Columbia University. Alhamdulillah. I thank my wife, parents, mentors, colleagues, friends, and family. I thank my lab members, present and past, for entrusting their careers in my hands and making this a thrilling journey.

The deadline for this amazing program is coming up -- please share with undergrads/masters students interested in PhD programs! Feel free to DM with any questions

bsky.app/profile/stan...

Corey Allard et al asks how “solar-powered” slugs maintain stolen chloroplasts from their diet for photosynthesis and starvation resistance. @cellpress.bsky.social, @harvardmcb.bsky.social, @harvardmed.bsky.social
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Microbiomes shape our biology from gut-brain, skin, immunology, and more. Here, Rebecka Sepela et al explores octopus “taste by touch” sensation to ask how environmental microbiomes drive animal behavior. @cellpress.bsky.social, @mblscience.bsky.social
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Please share this widely and encourage students to apply! Many of our current graduate students were recruited through this program -- happy to answer any questions and connect with students
bsky.app/profile/stan...

A little behind-the-scenes story from our wild mouse study below

tldr: We DIY'd a cheap ultrasonic speaker for an experiment. A rude polecat ruined the experiment. We hope the speaker might still be useful for others!

Parts and protocol here: bit.ly/3TDl8ND

#bioacoustics #neuroskyence

1/11

I won't be at Evolution this year, but check out awesome talks & posters from four lab members:

Gabe Preising will present on the genetic basis of body size polymorphism in swordtails (6/21 at 4:30 PM in Sexual Selection III)

Graphical abstract for "Vocal communication is seasonal in social groups of wild, free-living house mice." The abstract has, from top to bottom, a title, four middle image panels, and two bottom text panels. Image title: "Vocal communication in social groups of wild-free living house mice" Middle image panels from left to right: (1) An aerial snap shot of the region where the study site is located, an agricultural landscape in rural Switzerland. (2) An image of the study site, a small barn in the forest inhabited by mice. (3) An image of a radio frequency identification (RFID) box used to track mouse social interactions. A mouse is entering the box from the left while another sits outside. (4) A spectrogram showing example vocalizations - one low frequency squeak and one ultrasonic call - recorded from an RFID box. Bottom panels: Left: Data Collection  - 10 years of RFID-based tracking data (from 6,946 mice) - 15 months of acoustic monitoring (totaling 6,594 hours) - Machine learning for vocal detection and labeling (CNN) Right: Key Findings - Vocalization is seasonal (most in spring and summer) - Vocalization is associated with the presence of pups - Vocalization is correlated with social group dynamics

Very happy to share the latest from my postdoc‬!

10 yrs of mouse social networks + 1.25 yrs of acoustic data ➡️ insight into vocalization & sociality in a wild population of your favorite lab model 🐁

paper: bit.ly/4n93yyD
data: bit.ly/4lfFBEk
code: bit.ly/4kNnMwx

#bioacoustics #neuroskyence

1/8

How do brain circuits evolve? We started looking for some answers by using synapse-resolution cross-species comparative connectomics on an entire olfactory circuit 👇

bit.ly/44aVm9E

My latest Aronov lab paper is now published @Nature!

When a chickadee looks at a distant location, the same place cells activate as if it were actually there 👁️

The hippocampus encodes where the bird is looking, AND what it expects to see next -- enabling spatial reasoning from afar

bit.ly/3HvWSum

Mushizuka at Kan'ei-ji Temple A Buddhist temple to honor insects that died for science.

Only today I learned about the shrine in Tokyo to insects killed for science.

(Longish thread. Apologies)

I have met many inspiring colleagues over the past few months, many of whom are in academic institutions targeted by the current administration, and many others who are about to be (the analogy to the ‘eye of Sauron’ has been invoked many times; gallows humor). 1/

I’ve been studying gene regulation in primates for over 20 years, and using RNA-seq since 2008 to compare expression across species. We thought we were being careful. We used curated orthologous exons to minimize alignment bias and focused on biologically meaningful comparisons.

We were wrong.

🦟 Join us at the #VosshallLab @RockefellerUniv
and @HHMI as a postdoctoral scientist! We're seeking a creative individual who is enthusiastic about our research in mosquito neurogenetics.
Apply: hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern...

Some of our 2025 cool science>

Simons Graduate Fellowships in Ecology and Evolution The purpose of these awards is to provide support for students entering U.S.-based Ph.D. programs with a plan to perform research in ecology and evolution. While we will consider all projects in ecolo...

Get the word out far and wide. New opportunity from the Simons Foundation in the Eco-Evo space.

2026 Simons Graduate Fellowship in Ecology and Evolution Awards, due July 31, 2025, only for incoming PhD students who plan to start their PhDs in Fall 2026.

www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/simons...

Simons Graduate Fellowships in Ecology and Evolution The purpose of these awards is to provide support for students entering U.S.-based Ph.D. programs with a plan to perform research in ecology and evolution. While we will consider all projects in ecolo...

Check out this brand new fellowship from the Simon’s Foundation in Ecology and Evolution. Incoming grad students this year are eligible to apply. No citizenship restrictions. www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/simons...

Super excited to release a huge evolution project on the works for many years:

Evolution experiments synchronized across climates to understand rapid adaptation

Preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2025...
All data available: www.grene-net.org/data

#MOILAB
@ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social
@hhmi.org

🧵👇

Text: Society for the Study of Evolution Graduate Research Excellence Grants, R. C. Lewontin Early Award 2025 Recipients: Savanna Brown, Meridia Jane Bryant, Sivaraj Gangothri, Daniela Garcia Cobos, Miranda Gibson, Dheeraj Halali, Isabela Hernandez Rodriguez, Joaquin Lopez Jr., Kailey McCain, Austin Nguyen, Nemo Robles, Adam Rosso, Logan Scott, Julia Soares Parreiras, Walker Stanton, Pei-Wei Sun, Ravi Timsina, Juan D. Vásquez-Restrepo, Zachary Vegso, and Olivia Weaver.

Congratulations to this year’s R. C. Lewontin Early Award recipients!
www.evolutionsociety.org/news/display...

1/n 🧵 Excited to share our new paper! We developed a framework to reveal hidden simplicity in how organisms adapt to different environments, particularly focusing on antibiotic resistance evolution. #EvolutionaryBiology #MachineLearning