Margherita Colucci

Discover how ancient DNA and modern genomics can trace pathogen evolution 🦠 join us and @lucyvandorp.bsky.social tomorrow (online): www.gea.mpg.de/179333/uncov...

We are happy to share the programme of speakers for our global symposium on lithic technology 🪨🔎

There are just a few spaces left for in-person participation! DM for more information.

You can join us online via this Zoom registration link: eu02web.zoom-x.de/webinar/regi...

#newpreprint: "Climate Shaped the Global Population Structure of Leopards and their Extinction in Europe": www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...! Leopards are charming big cats but there are many mysteries around them. Thread 🧵

Happening today! Join us at 2pm (CET) on Zoom ‼️

The seminar series is back! Don't miss the FIRST talk of the 2025/26 Human Palaeosystems in focus - the perfect way to get inspired for the new academic year ahead ➡️
www.gea.mpg.de/177655/the-e...

Our paper Genomic diversity of the African malaria vector Anopheles funestus was published in Science today! It features inversions, selection in action, museum specimens and putative new ecotypes. doi.org/10.1126/scie...

History of Molecular Biology Collection This unparalleled collection includes Rosalind Franklin's historic 'Photo 51,' which revealed the double-helix structure of DNA.

News in the history of molecular biology. The Science History Institute in Philadelphia has acquired a huge archive of correspondence and other scientific material from the pioneers of molecular biology (Franklin, Klug, Perutz, Delbrück etc, with items from Crick and Watson, too). 1/n

Today! Don’t miss it 😊

Thank you @prelights.bsky.social & Alejandra Leffer's group for choosing our preprint on @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social and for this chance to talk about human- #malaria coevolution!🦟
@eegcam.bsky.social @elliescerri.bsky.social @MPI_GEA

More is not always better: delta-downscaling climate model outputs from 30 to 5 min resolution has minimal impact on coherence with Late Quaternary proxies Abstract. Both proxies and models provide key resources to explore how palaeoenvironmental changes may have impacted diverse biotic communities and cultural processes. While proxies are thought to pro...

Very pleased to see our paper published online at Climate of the Past: cp.copernicus.org/articles/21/...

We present model-data comparisons of Late Quaternary climate across the Northern Hemisphere, showing that increasing model resolution has little net effect on coherence with pollen proxies 😊

New paper in collaboration with @lucytimbrell96.bsky.social and @jblinkhorn.bsky.social, with several of us involved (@mikleonardi.bsky.social @margheritac17.bsky.social @andreavpozzi.bsky.social) shows that downscaling palaeoclimate models doesn't necessarily improve coherence with proxy data.

Humanity's road to dominance began earlier than expected Getting sapient about sapiens...

Last week, Andrea sat down with Dr Chris Smith of Naked Scientists to talk about our paper on the expansion of the human niche 70k year ago: www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/int...

Tidy Population Genetics We provide a tidy grammar of population genetics, facilitating the manipulation and analysis of data on biallelic single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). `tidypopgen` scales to very large genetic data...

We are excited to announce that tidypopgen – a new package for rapid population genetic workflows in R – is now available at evolecolgroup.github.io/tidypopgen/ 🧬💻 Read more in the preprint describing its features here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #popgen #Rpackage #genetics 1/2

Major expansion in the human niche preceded out of Africa dispersal - Nature Analysis of species distribution models in a pan-African database comprising chronometrically dated archaeological sites over the past 120,000 years shows major expansion in the human niche from 70 ka...

#newpaper now out in @nature.com!
A huge expansion of the human niche in Africa ~70 kya likely equipped later #outofAfrica dispersals with a unique ecological flexibility.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
led by Emily Hallett, @mikleonardi.bsky.social, Andrea Manica, @elliescerri.bsky.social 1/4

An elephant standing beneath large trees with text overlay that reads: 'How did humans become the most adaptable species on Earth?' Photo credit: Ondrej Pelanek and Martin Pelanek

Around 70,000 years ago, our ancestors in Africa began exploiting different habitats.

Flexibility to survive in deserts to rainforests enabled their successful spread ‘Out of Africa’.

Find out more about the study co-led by Andrea Manica @eegcam.bsky.social 👇
bit.ly/4e6i9H7

Major expansion in the human niche preceded out of Africa dispersal - Nature Analysis of species distribution models in a pan-African database comprising chronometrically dated archaeological sites over the past 120,000 years shows major expansion in the human niche from 70 ka...

after 6 years, finally out in @nature.com!
‪Huge expansion of the human #niche in Africa ~70kya likely equipped later #outofAfrica dispersals with unique ecological flexibility

co-led with Emily Hallett @eegcam.bsky.social & @elliescerri.bsky.social
#prehistory #humanevolution #paleoecology #SDM

Major expansion in the human niche preceded out of Africa dispersal - Nature Analysis of species distribution models in a pan-African database comprising chronometrically dated archaeological sites over the past 120,000 years shows major expansion in the human niche from 70 ka...

1/5 Why do all non-Africans descended from a group that left Africa 50k ago? In @nature.com we model 120k years of human niche dynamics. From 70ka, a big expansion of the human niche in Africa likely equipped later OOA dispersals with a unique ecological flexibilty.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Gift article about our work that also mentions our recently published paper in @nature.com on rainforests as well! Thank you @carlzimmer.com!

Massive congrats to the team on this amazing paper!
So happy for everyone involved!!👏

When Humans Learned to Live Everywhere

"When Humans Learned to Live Everywhere" www.nytimes.com/2025/06/18/s...

#HumanEvolution #Malaria #coevolution #pastdiseases #tidysdm 🦟

This is the result of incredible collaborations and hard work, thank you to all the people involved!

Malaria shaped human spatial organisation for the last 74 thousand years The mechanisms driving the spatial organisation of early human societies in Africa are typically addressed through climate variables [1][1]-[3][2]. However, genetic and archaeological studies have als...

🚨 NEW preprint🚨 Our latest study @HPS MPI-GEA @elliescerri.bsky.social & @eegcam.bsky.social models #malaria risk over the past 74,000 years revealing its powerful role in shaping human habitat choice and dispersal since the late Pleistocene in sub-Saharan Africa 🦟🌍 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Excited to announce our paper on ancient Borrelia genomes is finally out! 🦠💀We document the evolutionary history of louse-borne relapsing fever, published today in @science.org‬ with @lucyvandorp.bsky.social and @pontus-skoglund.bsky.social #aDNA 🏺🧪🧬
Main findings and paper below: 🧵⬇️

Ancient Borrelia genomes document the evolutionary history of louse-borne relapsing fever Several bacterial pathogens have transitioned from tick-borne to louse-borne transmission, which often involves genome reduction and increasing virulence. However, the timing of such transitions remai...

Our @ucl.ac.uk @crick.ac.uk work, out this week in @science.org, traces a genetic time series of bacterial infections to reveal when and how Borrelia recurrentis jumped from ticks to humans—via our body lice.

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

Pan-African metapopulation model explains Homo sapiens genetic and morphological evolution Emerging evidence has challenged the traditional view of a single-region origin for Homo sapiens, suggesting instead that our species arose and diversified across multiple geographically distinct popu...

🚨NEW PAPER from the @eegcam.bsky.social!🚨I have never been as proud of something as of the work that finally we can share today: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... - we show how a climatically driven Pan African meta population model explains our species genetic and morphological diversity 🧬💀

Here is the latest news from @eegcam.bsky.social...

Among other VIPs (=very important publications), it includes our recent paper on Luca Cavalli-Sforza's legacy on #humanevolution 💀🧬

With @margheritac17.bsky.social Jason Hogdson, @chrisbstringer.bsky.social and @elliescerri.bsky.social

🧬💀 News from our lab: "New light on human evolution: recent papers and a podcast"💀🧬

www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/news/new-lig...

(1/17) We are thrilled to see our new paper ‘Hunter-gatherer sea voyages extended to remotest Mediterranean islands’ published in Nature. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A blog post from me about our discovery pushing back Maltese prehistory to the Mesolithic, and discovering that hunter-gatherers were making epic 100 km sea journeys!
communities.springernature.com/posts/discov...

Join the Human Palaeosystems Group tomorrow (9th April 2pm CET) for a seminar by Dr Will Gosling on “Drivers of vegetation change in tropical Africa”

www.gea.mpg.de/129765/drive...