Samridhi Chaturvedi

We’re excited to announce @tarnopol.bsky.social as the recipient of the 2026 Larry Sandler Award! 🎉 She’ll present the Larry Sandler Memorial Lecture during the #Dros26 opening session on March 4—she'll share how her research explores how protein toxins evolve to shape host–parasite interactions.

Recent work using hybrid zones in Juniper species show diverse ancestry and increased chemical diversity. Hybrids also occupy intermediate environments and produce unique phytochemicals. This genetic and chemical variation impacts ecology and adaptation.
Photo: Kevin Stanchfield
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Happy Mardi Gras from this beautiful float of butterflies and metamorphosis! it’s truly a work of art. #mardigras2026

Assessing Ancient DNA Sampling Strategies for Natural Selection Inference in Humans Using Allele Frequency Time Series Data Abstract. The increased availability of genomic data from ancient humans allows estimating the strength of natural selection at a given locus using time se

Interested in using aDNA time-series datasets to estimate selection?

Our study "Assessing Ancient DNA Sampling Strategies for Natural Selection Inference in Humans Using Allele Frequency Time Series Data" is now out in GBE! doi.org/10.1093/gbe/... @genomebiolevol.bsky.social @cegamorim.bsky.social

Ancient human genomes from Ladakh reveal Tibetan, South Asian, and Central Asian admixture over the last three millennia https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.26.701789v1

So cool!!

That day is tomorrow for me - chapatis and tomato potato gravy!!

The American Naturalist classic cover

Special Feature: Can we predict the future of evolution? In this review, Jackson et al. dig into genomic analyses of change over time to determine if and when evolution can be forecast using genomic methods.

Read now ahead of print!
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

The green lacewing venom system and the complex mechanisms underlying its evolution Abstract. Venom has independently evolved across many lineages, yet relatively few have been studied in detail, particularly among insects. Of these, Neuro

@mariusmaur.bsky.social et al. investigate the venom system in Neuroptera by integrating genomics, transcriptomics and functional assays, showing that their toxin arsenal is the result of a multitude of genomic and evolutionary mechanisms.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf326

#evobio #molbio

A north-south hemispheric migratory divide in the butterfly Vanessa cardui - Nature Communications Here authors find a latitudinal migratory divide in a butterfly across Earth’s hemispheres, highlighting how hemisphere-specific seasonality and navigational cues shape migratory strategies. They find...

Super cool new study from Talavera lab on migratory divide between painted lady (Vanessa cardui) populations north of the equator and south of the equator! They find a candidate gene that might be associated with the differenc ein behaviour.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Pangenomes: new tools for ecological and evolutionary genomics Genomic structural variation is an important component of genetic variation in natural populations. By assembling and analyzing multiple high-quality genomes within a species or clade, pangenomes capt...

www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

An image of a recruitment advertisement for a MS position at New Mexico Tech

I am recruiting a MS student in Biology at New Mexico Tech with an anticipated start date of Fall 2026 to work on the applied evolutionary genetics of wild populations with conservation or management concerns (butterflies, bighorn sheep). Please see the attached advertisement for more info.

Screenshot of Fig 2A from the linked paper, plotting mean ±SE of residual bill length by tarsus length for UCLA juncos by their hatch year in comparison to the same measure for nearby natural-area juncos; before and after the COVID anthropause the UCLA juncos have bills much shorter than the natural-areas juncos, but during 2020 and 2021 the UCLA junco bill lengths spike upwards to be comparable to the natural-areas juncos

Dark-eyed juncos living in urbanized Los Angeles have shorter bills than juncos in nearby natural areas— but while UCLA was closed for COVID-19 safety, campus juncos evolved longer bills again 🪶🌿

buff.ly/BOOinne

Book cover for Reproducible Code guide. The cover has a red background with a large yellow-bodied black-headed stag beetle.

Excited to launch the new improved Reproducible Code guide from @britishecologicalsociety.org @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social FREE online here! www.britishecologicalsociety.org//wp-content/... Amazing work by some very talented ECRs. We hope it’s useful!

So cool!

Butterfly populations across the U.S. are in alarming decline, a Science study finds, with total abundance falling by 22% in just 20 years.

Such widespread losses emphasize the urgent need for conservation action. https://scim.ag/4ombGv3 #WildlifeConservationDay

a person is leaning over a scanner of some kind under bright lights around her to put something tiny on the glass in a room lined with shelves full of shallow wooden drawers

two tiny butterfly specimens, one blue and one white with spots, are mounted above a ruler and several cards with species names and collection location

Alia Donly, a Utah State University student, traveled here to the McGuire Center to image and DNA sample all of our specimens of the Sand Mountain Blue butterfly (Euphilotes pallescens arenamontana) that lives on a single dune system in Nevada.

Read more:
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/mcguire/news...

Super happy to share the *first* lab publication. Out today in Molecular Ecology - a review of methods used to identify repeated adaptation using genomic data (1)

Molecular Ecology | Molecular Genetics Journal | Wiley Online Library onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Project Psyche: reference genomes for all Lepidoptera in Europe Project Psyche is a transnational initiative to generate and study chromosome-level reference genomes of all ~11 000 species of Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) found in Europe. Here, we describe t...

(1/5)Thrilled to announce our paper on #ProjectPsyche is out! 🦋We describe how we’ve generated 1000+ high-quality genomes for European Lepidoptera, providing an unprecedented resource for biodiversity, conservation, and evolutionary research.
#Genomics #Biodiversity
www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

India’s agroecology programme, ‘Zero Budget Natural Farming’, delivers biodiversity and economic benefits without lowering yields - Nature Ecology & Evolution Analysis of crop yields, farmer income and bird species abundances identifies multiple positive outcomes of a large-scale Indian government-incentivized agroecology initiative.

Analysis of crop yields, farmer income and bird species abundances identifies multiple positive outcomes of a large-scale Indian government-incentivized agroecology initiative. 🧪

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

This was a massive effort, and I'm glad to have two rising Indian women researchers leading the charge with me - my grad students @vineesha.bsky.social and Garima (not on the sky). Please give it a read and let us know your thoughts! Fin.

We identify potential issues with genomic data and statistical methods that can bias gene reuse identification and propose solutions to fix these issues. We also provide a simple framework for designing studies and testing hypotheses related to repeated adaptation (2).

Super happy to share the *first* lab publication. Out today in Molecular Ecology - a review of methods used to identify repeated adaptation using genomic data (1)

Molecular Ecology | Molecular Genetics Journal | Wiley Online Library onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Variant Calling in the Goldilocks Zone: How Reference Genome Choice and Read Mapping Stringency Impact Heterozygosity Estimates and Phylogenetic Analyses The increasing numbers of published reference genomes and affordability of whole genome resequencing have enabled multispecies population genomic and phylogenomic studies on non-model organisms, but ...

This just out from @mortonarboretum.bsky.social Rebekah Mohn: reference genome and read mapping method both affect phylogenetic inference & heterozygosity estimates across species.

Punchline? Use a closely related but not conspecific reference.

Open-access!

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Hello bluesky community!

I'm hiring a postdoc to do machine learning in population genetics.
Starting to build up a lab at Indiana University Bloomington where I just started a faculty position.
Apply with the below link: indiana.peopleadmin.com/postings/30325

Figure 1 from the linked preprint, showing PCA of phenotypic change in the plants and butterflies. Caption: Phenotypic divergence of plants (A) and butterflies (B) after 6 generations of selection under different temperature and biotic/pollination environments. Blue = ambient temperature, red = hot temperature, H = hand pollination (circles in A), Control = Pieris-control (circles in B), Coevo = coevolution Pieris-only (squares), CoB = coevolution Pieris + bumblebees (triangles). Linear discriminant analyses included all plant phenotypic traits (n=19) and all butterfly phenotypic traits. For plants, double centroids per treatment combination represents replicates A and B. For butterflies, only one replicate was used due to replicate extinctions except for ambient Co, for which replicates were grouped to keep treatments comparable. P-values are based on permutational multivariate analysis of variance. Each temperature-biotic environment combination consisted of 68-144 plants and 36-100 butterflies. Characters with high loadings for LD1 and LD2 are shown along each axis.

Nifty preprint with an experiment coevolving Brassica rapa with pollinating, herbivorous butterflies. With bumblebee co-pollinators or heat stress added, the plants evolved stronger anti-herbivore defense; with both bees and heat, they evolved... to attract butterflies? 🌿

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Available now in @asn-amnat.bsky.social ! Taking on some big-scale natural history: processed >40k @inaturalist.bsky.social images of Monarda fistulosa using computer vision to query for flower presence and phenotype flower color: doi.org/10.1086/739413

A century of theories of balancing selection Traits that affect organismal fitness are often highly genetically variable. This genetic variation is vital for populations to adapt to their environments, but it is also surprising given that natur...

Modestly, we decided to review a century's worth of theories of balancing selection :) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Congratulations to the *first* Chaturvedi Lab PhD candidate Vineesha, on passing her prospectus with flying colors today!!!! Here are both of us after all the exam (and a long discussion on statistics). Way to go Vineesha!!! #ProudPI

The sensory ecology of caterpillars - Journal of Comparative Physiology A Caterpillars (larval Lepidoptera) are one of the most ecologically and evolutionarily significant taxa on Earth. As both feeders and food, they shape the dynamics of enumerate ecosystems on land. Key ...

Not any news to love these days, but I do love this paper on caterpillar sensory ecology. I can't wait to use figures from this for teaching. link.springer.com/article/10.1...