Anna Hewett

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

A tiny meerkat pup aged just a few weeks, emerging from the birth burrow in the Kalahari Desert.

🚨 New paper 🚨

(1/8) In meerkats, pregnancy isn’t one-size-fits-all. Some mothers gain weight steadily, others delay all growth until the final weeks 📈

What drives this striking variation, and how does it affect the (adorable) pups?

OA PAPER: doi.org/10.1111/1365...
Details (+cute pics!) below👇

dplyr 1.2.0 dplyr 1.2.0 fills in some important gaps in dplyr's API: we've added a new complement to `filter()` focused on dropping rows, and we've expanded the `case_when()` family with three new recoding and re...

dplyr 1.2.0 is out now and we are SO excited!

- `filter_out()` for dropping rows

- `recode_values()`, `replace_values()`, and `replace_when()` that join `case_when()` as a complete family of recoding/replacing tools

These are huge quality of life wins for #rstats!

tidyverse.org/blog/2026/02...

🚨 PhD offer (please share)
Fascinated by bird migration and movement ecology? 🦜🌍 Join us at @vogelwarte.bsky.social to study annual cycle energetics with multi-sensor loggers in multiple species

Deadline: 20 Feb 2026
Starting: June 2026
Supervision: Martins Briedis & me

Info: tinyurl.com/2dbv9nzh

Interested in how life history may shape the gut microbiome of a wild mammal? Keen on getting to work with an iconic long-term study system in Scotland?

Check out this PhD opportunity with me, Josephine Pemberton and @gfalbery.bsky.social

Reach out to chat more!

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

An amazing online resource 🙏 I'll be following along!

Just over a month left to apply for scholarships on this project. We will run internal pre-selection interviews end of November, so if you consider applying, please reach out now. I can guarantee amazing scientific and intellectual environment at the Institute for Eco Evo @edinburghup.bsky.social

A collage featuring some laboratory analyses, a schematic of the structure of DNA, a pocket watch in an elderly person's hand, and a family of wild meerkats.

🚨Fully-funded PhD opportunity in my group🚨

🧬How does parental ageing shape the next generation?🐾

Find out by studying meerkats!

🧪Epigenetic clocks
✨Bioinformatics
📊Long-term data
🌍Kalahari fieldwork
💡Big evolutionary questions

Get in touch or APPLY NOW
Please share!
www.uea.ac.uk/course/phd-d...

Exciting new pre-print from the group! Why and how are our owls getting redder over time? 🦉

Check it out on BioRxiv 👇👇

A couple of really cool conferences happening next summer on my birthday 🥲

I know many people have a conference birthday but I just can't bring myself to do it ... me and my partner usually go on holiday and yes I'm turning 30 next year 😬

From policy to practice: progress towards data- and code-sharing in ecology and evolution | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Data and code are essential for ensuring the credibility of scientific results and facilitating reproducibility, areas in which journal sharing policies play a crucial role. However, in ecology and evolution, we still do not know how widespread data- and ...

Our latest #SORTEE-led paper is out now in #ProcB!

We reviewed data/code-sharing policy clarity, strictness & timing across 275 EcoEvo journals

We also worked with #ProcB & #EcologyLetters to assess initial compliance with sharing mandates. Huge team effort! 👉 doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

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

High Imputation Accuracy Can Be Achieved Using a Small Reference Panel in a Natural Population With Low Genetic Diversity Genotype imputation, the inference of missing genotypes using a reference set of population haplotypes, is a cost-effective tool for improving the quality and quantity of genetic datasets. Imputation...

Genomic imputation can boost dataset quality and benefit research on wild populations. In hihi, we found high #imputation accuracies despite a small reference panel of high-fecundity individuals. Imputation improves downstream #ConservationGenomics analyses. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Growth effects and the underlying genetic architecture of inbreeding depression in a wild raptor https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.17.670740v1

Pre-print now out on bioRxiv! If you saw my talk at #eseb and want more info, here it is:

With #eseb2025 coming to a close, it is time to start making plans for 2026. Interested in the interface of evolution 🧬 and ecology 🌳? Come to our #ExE conference hosted by @uniexecec.bsky.social in beautiful #Cornwall. Leave your email address at tinyurl.com/EvolxEcol to join our mailing list!

I'll be presenting at #ESEB25 tomorrow! Pop along to room 114 @3:30 if you want to hear about inbreeding depression, hierarchical models and barn owls of course 🦉
S42.02 - looks like it's going to be a great session! 😊

George RR Martin is an author on the dire wolf paper. Presumably to make sure there’s plenty of incest, cos these wolves will have no one else to fuck except each other.

The Idiot's Guide to Effective Population Size This is a reference manual for the elegant, yet hideously complex concept of effective population size (Ne), inspired by a classic, self-published manual of automotive repair ‘for the compleat idiot’...

Wow. This is sooo good. Echoing @urbanevol.bsky.social this user’s manual for Ne should be required reading for popgen and conservation genetics folks. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

The joint evolution of separate sexes and sexual dimorphism Abstract. Dioecious plants are frequently sexually dimorphic. Such dimorphism, which reflects responses to selection acting in opposite directions for male

1/7 Very happy to share our latest paper on the joint evolution of separate sexes and sexual dimorphism in @jevbio.bsky.social, led by @thomaslesaffre.bsky.social and in collaboration with John Pannell at @dee-unil.bsky.social

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/jeb/voae136

The maintenance of genetic polymorphism underlying sexually antagonistic traits Abstract. Selection often favors different trait values in males and females, leading to genetic conflicts between the sexes when traits have a shared gene

1/7 Sexual antagonism arises when males and females face different selection pressures for a trait influenced by shared genes. This is thought to drive balancing selection and maintain genetic polymorphism. We challenge this view in our recent paper :

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/evlett/qrae059

A photograph of two red deer standing on a rock. Both deer are looking at the camera, and the individual on the left is wearing a radio transmitting collar.

Inbreeding depression is more severe in harsher environmental conditions, as shown in a wild population
doi.org/10.1093/evle...

Now in @evolletters.bsky.social by @annamhew.bsky.social et al.

📷: Anna Hewett

Thanks to my amazing supervisors: Josephine Pemberton and @susanjohnston.bsky.social , and my lovely co-authors too Greg Albery and @seanofrum.bsky.social and Ali Morris at @rumdeerresearch.bsky.social

Slightly surreal that the PhD is now 'officially' finished ... but who knows 😉

💪 BUT ... there's always lessons to be learnt about power, and turns out you need a lot of variation in environmental conditions as well as inbreeding (hence why it's rarely been found in the wild), which we discuss too

📈 We show that inbreeding depression is worse in the harsh northern regions of the study area where survival is lower, indicating that the severity of inbreeding depression changes across fine-scale environments (i.e. ID × E)

Only a few studies have shown evidence for this interaction in the wild!

Fine-scale spatial variation in fitness, inbreeding, and inbreeding depression in a wild ungulate Abstract. Environmental stress can exacerbate inbreeding depression by amplifying differences between inbred and outbred individuals. In wild populations,

📣 The final chapter of my PhD is now out in @evolletters.bsky.social !! 📣

🦌 Using genomic and fitness data from a long-term study of red deer we investigated the interaction between inbreeding depression and the environment (ID × E)

doi.org/10.1093/evle...