Leeban Yusuf

Multispecies analysis of social effects on same-sex sexual behavior challenges mistaken identity hypotheses in insects | PNAS Same-sex sexual behavior (SSB) in insects has historically been considered a byproduct of sex recognition failure, or “mistaken identity,” and cons...

Booty bumping is officially a scientific term!!!!

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

🌡️How might an increase in extreme thermal events with climate change impact the reproductive success of ectotherms?

🪲 @jakobwiil.bsky.social and @nataliepilakouta.bsky.social show that beetle larvae exposed to a heatwave suffered a reduction in survival to adulthood.

📖 doi.org/10.1016/j.jt...

UK ban on Palestine Action unlawful, high court judges rule Protest group’s co-founder wins legal challenge against decision to proscribe it under anti-terrorism laws

Quelle surprise, as these say in the Old Bailey!

UK ban on Palestine Action unlawful, high court rules. Protest group’s co-founder wins legal challenge against decision to proscribe it under anti-terrorism laws

Sir Keir Stormfront’s censorship of protest is struck down. Protest is a human right.

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This project was a lot of fun to think about. Huge thanks to Dom, Mike, and Konrad. Any thoughts & comments are welcome. Thanks for reading. 🙂

We also found little difference in rates of long-term gene flow, divergence times or ancestral population sizes between allopatric and sympatric pairs. In short: present-day geographic ranges tell us surprisingly little about Drosophila speciation histories. [5/6]

Coyne & Orr’s work also supported reinforcement: strengthening of reproductive barriers following secondary contact. When we fit a secondary-contact model, only 8 (all sympatric) pairs were best explained by this model, suggesting reinforcement may be less important than assumed. [4/6]

We analysed whole-genome data from 93 Drosophila species pairs, a subset of those studied in Coyne & Orr (1989, 1997), using a range of demographic models. Only 12 fit strict allopatry. The remaining 81, including many currently allopatric pairs, showed considerable support for gene flow. [3/6]

Allopatric speciation has long been thought to be common, because reproductive isolation can evolve unimpeded by gene flow. But genomic studies increasingly show that gene flow is widespread. So, which is actually more common: strict allopatry, or speciation with gene flow? [2/6]

Genomic analyses in Drosophila do not support the classic allopatric model of speciation Abstract. The allopatric model of speciation has dominated our understanding of speciation biology and biogeography since the Modern Synthesis. It is uncon

New paper out: “allopatric” Drosophila species aren’t so allopatric after all. We show that most currently allopatric species pairs probably overlapped in the past and exchanged genes at levels similar to sympatric pairs. @evolletters.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1093/evle... [1/6]

Different transcriptional responses to developmental versus short-term acclimation temperatures in Pieris rapae https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.11.686846v1

Hi everyone! Please re-post: I want to highlight the amazing work of @queendroso.bsky.social and a newly formed NGO called the "Blossom STEM Education Initiative (BloSTEMEI)", which aims to support #STEM #Education, #Mentorship, innovation, and research-driven #ScienceOutreach across Africa ..

Very happy to see our opinion article out in @cp-trendsecolevo.bsky.social today. 🥳 We ask whether sexual signals can influence the evolutionary trajectory of naturally selected adaptations, such as protective colouration, for better or for worse 🧐 1/n
doi.org/10.1016/j.tr...

Happy to share that our paper ‘a formal theory of group-level adaptation for obligate eusociality’ (with @andygardner.bsky.social) is now out in @jevbio.bsky.social advances.

doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

#OpenAccess #Eusociality #GroupAdaptation #FormalDarwinism

Functional and evolutionary synergy of trait components can explain the existence of leaf masquerade in katydids The evolution of complex adaptations often involves synergistic changes in multiple traits that lack standalone function. This study shows that leaf masquerade in katydids evolved through concurrent m...

Leaf? 🍃 Or katydid? 🦗
Our new
@plosbiology.org paper sheds light on how these incredible mimics evolved their disguises, and what this reveals about how complex adaptations arise. We find that coordinated evolution between traits might be the answer… plos.io/4oUE741 1/n

Constraints on chromosome evolution revealed by the 229 chromosome pairs of the Atlas blue butterfly The genome of the Atlas blue butterfly contains ten times more chromosomes than most butterflies, and more than any other known diploid animal. Wright et al. show that this extraordinary karyotype is ...

www.cell.com/current-biol...

Genomic signatures of local adaptation across parasitised cricket populations Host-parasite interactions are predicted to exhibit geographic heterogeneity, creating the opportunity for local adaptation. This is difficult to detect because it requires knowledge of selection pres...

We have a preprint out for our study testing conditions/signatures of repeated adaptation in multiple wild cricket populations. Feedback welcome!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Genomic signatures of local adaptation across parasitised cricket populations https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.30.673289v1

BBC International Editor Jeremy Bowen has confirmed that the entire Al Jazeera team in Gaza City has been killed.

Genomics of Neotropical biodiversity indicators: Two butterfly radiations with rampant chromosomal rearrangements and hybridization | PNAS A central question in evolutionary biology is what drives the diversification of lineages. Rapid, recent radiations are ideal systems for this ques...

Fantastic paper from an amazing team:

Genomics of Neotropical biodiversity indicators: Two butterfly radiations with rampant chromosomal rearrangements and hybridization
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Really happy to share this article I'm grateful to have been a part of: 'Impediments to countering racist pseudoscience' coauthored with @kevinlala.bsky.social, @gillianrbrown1.bsky.social and Marcus Feldman. Check out a preprint here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
#ScientificRacism #Antiracism

So very excited for the magnum opus of my #PhD to finally be out in @pnas.org. 🎉🎉 We demosntrate that mutualistic co-mimicking tropical butterflies not only converge in light microhabitat but, as a consequence, have also converged in visual system morphology! 1/n😀
www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Now all typeset and pretty! A little summary:

Excited to see our most recent MS finally out in the world. We used F1 female hybrids (of two behaviourally-isolated cricket species) to show that broad gene expression divergence in the brain underpins context-dependent divergence of female response to male sexual signals.

Testing for age- and sex- specific mitonuclear epistasis in Drosophila Abstract. The need for efficient ATP production is predicted to result in the evolution of cooperation between the mitochondrial and nuclear encoded compon

Just out in @journal-evo.bsky.social: "Testing for age- and sex- specific mitonuclear epistasis in Drosophila"

academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

The clonality window: relatedness and the group covariance effect in the evolution of division of labour Abstract. Cellular division of labour is closely associated with the emergence of organismality in the evolution of obligate multicellularity. Michod has s

Very excited to share that our paper, ‘The clonality window: relatedness and the group covariance effect in the evolution of division of labour’, is out now in @journal-evo.bsky.social advances. With @andygardner.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1093/evol...

#OpenAccess #Evolution #Multicellularity

This was such a fun start to my @royalcom1851.bsky.social fellowship and involved plenty of stimulating discussions with Nathan Bailey and Graeme Ruxton. Also huge thanks to summer intern Lotte Rolfe for her militarian target checking efforts. Looking forward to the reviewer comments. 9/n

Together, these results show how synergy between trait components (ie colour and shape) can facilitate the evolution of complex adaptations such as masquerade, adding to existing mechanisms of composite trait evolution in other systems. 8/n

But most interestingly of all, we not only found an evolutionary association between colour and shape, but phylogenetic pathway analyses also indicate that these traits were acquired simultaneously during the evolution of leaf masquerade. 7/n

For these analyses, I managed to reach the pinnacle of scientific endeavour... I designed an online survey. Interestingly, when controlling for phylogeny, interactions between colouration and shape also seem to influence human perceptions of "leafiness" (see ms for details). 6/n

So, how did leaf masquerade and its component traits evolve? To explore this, we conduted morphological comparative analyses of 51 katydid species from BCI, Panama where multiple elaboratons and reductions in "leafiness" have taken place across the tree (this is crying out for a pun...). 5/n