Julien Devilliers

Divergent sensory transcriptomic profiles in positive and negative learning in Bicyclus Anynana butterflies - Journal of Comparative Physiology A Journal of Comparative Physiology A - Mate preference learning, where individuals learn to prefer or avoid specific phenotypes during mate selection, is pervasive across animal taxa and influences...

🚨 New paper out in #JCP-A @springernature.com "Divergent sensory transcriptomic profiles in positive and negative learning in Bicyclus Anynana butterflies" by Yi Teng Ter & Erica Westerman #Neurogenomics #VisualLearning #Lepidoptera 🧪🧠🦋
↘️ link.springer.com/article/10.1... ↙️

Revised evolutionary relationships within Brachycera and the early origin of bicoid in flies Mulhair et al. uncover a functional bicoid in non-cyclorrhaphan flies, pushing the gene's origin back by ∼20 million years. Reassessing the Diptera phylogeny using the largest dataset to date permits ...

Latest work out today in @currentbiology.bsky.social

We find the fly development gene bicoid is much older than previously thought (~20 million yrs older!) 🪰🧬

To pinpoint its origins we tackled the Diptera phylogeny, providing some resolution (many open questions remain).

🔗 tinyurl.com/2vyuevpy

🚨 PhD position available!

Study the implications of vision on sleep using drosophila as a model.

Apply by end of November

Interested in joining my lab to study the evolution and development of monoaminergic neurons?
You can now apply for the Giuseppe Levi Post-Doc Fellowship (2 years, Neurobiology, EU citizens).
Deadline: 10 Nov 2025 – 18:00
For more info selezionionline.lincei.it and email me!

From Trees to Traits: A Review of Advances in PhyloG2P Methods and Future Directions Abstract. Mapping genotypes to phenotypes is a fundamental goal in biology. Phylogenetic Genotype to Phenotype mapping methods are a relatively new set of

📢 New publication 'From Trees to Traits: A Review of Advances in PhyloG2P Methods and Future Directions' by Arlie Macdonald, Maddie James, Jonathan Mitchell and Barbara Holland in Genome Biology and Evolution 🧪

doi.org/10.1093/gbe/...

#Phylogenomics

Protocol for multiplex whole-mount RNA fluorescence in situ hybridization combined with immunohistochemistry in the mosquito brain Advances in sequencing technologies have enabled transcriptional profiling of previously understudied yet critical species, such as mosquitoes. Here, we present a protocol for multiplex whole-mount RNA fluorescence in situ hybridization combined with immunohistochemistry in the Anopheles gambiae brain. We describe steps for dissection, fixation, probe hybridization, hybridization chain reaction (HCR) probe detection, and primary antibody application. We then detail procedures for tissue preparat...

Protocol for multiplex whole-mount RNA fluorescence in situ hybridization combined with immunohistochemistry in the mosquito brain #protocol #starprotocols #cellpress

A white-fronted bee-eater (Merops bullockoides) decides whether to consume a warningly colored white-barred acraea butterfly (Telchinia encedon). Photo (c) Mike Rowe

📢🦋 Our paper ‘Global selection on insect antipredator coloration’ is out and featured on the cover of @science.org

We ran a huge experiment to find out how ecological context favours camouflage and warning colouration as antipredator strategies. 1/6

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

OrthoSNAP: A tree splitting and pruning algorithm for retrieving single-copy orthologs from gene family trees Molecular evolution studies often rely on single-copy orthologs. This study presents OrthoSNAP, an algorithm that identifies and extracts additional single-copy orthologs nested within larger gene fam...

Original publication here: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Many thanks to @roliroberts.bsky.social for their professional handling of the manuscript

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 ev...

Ivimey-Cook @eivimeycook.bsky.social et al. From policy to practice: progress towards data- and code-sharing in ecology and evolution royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.... #OpenScience #OpenData

The buff-tip moth (Phalera bucephala) has mastered a very particular kind of camouflage.

When they close their wings up, they resemble a broken twig.

Native to large parts of Europe, there's regional pattern variation that reflects the local tree species. This one best resembles birch twigs?

Rapid Divergence of Visual Systems and Signaling Traits to Contrasting Light Regimes During Early Speciation of African Crater Lake Cichlid Fish Abstract. Sensory adaptation is widely hypothesized to drive ecological speciation, yet empirical evidence from natural populations undergoing early stage

Carruthers @mgenner.bsky.social et al integrate retinal transcriptomics, phenotypic analyses and visual modeling to uncover rapid sensory divergence associated with an ecological transition between habitats with different light conditions.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf204

#evobio #molbio #cichlids

Bees use the sun's position in the sky for navigation – even on cloudy days. An international team involving researchers from #UniKonstanz has discovered how a particular part of bees' eyes helps them do this: https://t1p.de/ybjmj

Our findings on bees' photoreceptors are now officially published in Biology Letters of the Royal Society Publishing!! Thanks again for a productive collaboration @jjfosterlab.bsky.social and @gregoeur.bsky.social !!
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Genomic constraints shape the evolution of alternative routes to drug resistance in prokaryotes Background Variation within the prokaryotic pangenome is not random, and natural selection that favours particular combinations of genes appears to dominate over random drift. What is less clear is wh...

New preprint reveals bacteria can't just collect all resistance genes like Pokemon cards.
We found mutually exclusive evolutionary pathways to multidrug resistance in E. coli & P. aeruginosa - some resistance mechanisms actively prevent others from coexisting www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

An Optimized SPLiT-Seq Protocol for Insects Single-cell RNA-sequencing revolutionized our approach of transcriptomic studies, enabling to analyze gene expression across cell type in a tissue. Here we introduce an optimized cell dissociation and...

New in the field and interested in doing scRNA-seq for cheap? Here an in-house protocol for SPLiT-seq from cell dissociation to bioinformatic analysis! I personally used it on mosquito heads during my PhD.

link.springer.com/protocol/10....

ecoevojobs.net 2025-26

The 2025-26 Eco-Evo job list is out. Good luck to those applying!

docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Transcriptional Interference Gates Monogenic Odorant Receptor Expression in Ants Communication is crucial to social life, and in ants, it is mediated primarily through olfaction. Ants have more odorant receptor (OR) genes than any other group of insects, generated through tandem d...

If you’re interested in ants, olfaction, gene regulation, or all of the above, here’s a new preprint from the lab for you. It describes an unorthodox mechanism of transcriptional interference by which ant olfactory sensory neurons produce a single functional receptor.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Convergent Molecular Evolution Associated With Repeated Transitions to Gregarious Larval Behavior in Heliconiini Abstract. Collective behavior forms the basis for many antipredator strategies. Within Lepidoptera, larval gregariousness has evolved convergently across m

Gregarious behaviour in butterfly larvae has evolved multiple times - Cicconardi, @ebablab.bsky.social et al. use genome data of 60 Heliconiini species, identifying signatures of convergent molecular evolution, on both coding and noncoding loci.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf179

#evobio #molbio

Cellular innovations and diversity in the lepidopteran compound eye - Journal of Comparative Physiology A Lepidoptera, having co-diversified with flowering plants and adapted to various diel niches, present a remarkable system for studying compound eye cell type diversity. Here we synthesize the latest re...

Among insects, lepidoptera 🦋 show one of the most diverse photoreceptor types 👁, explaining diverse spectral sensitivities including a convergent evolution of red vision.

Lu & Kronforst review the lepidopteran eye evolution.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

With @megyounger.bsky.social's lab, et al., we present the first connectomics work in the disease-vector mosquito Aedes aegypti, revealing how its brain is wired to detect host cues.

Preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

#Neuroscience #Connectomics #vEM #VectorBiology 🧪

You link #phenotype 🦜 to #genotype 🧬 with #comparative #genomics 💻?

This #review is for you 📜: authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

We review new #methods, remaining #challenges and #future directions and highlight recent key studies.

Thanks @hillermich.bsky.social!

Please share! 🙂

Figure 1. Photograph of Airamanna columbia depicting the five false head traits characterized in this study. Photo by Mark Eising (https://www.markeisingbirding.com/): reproduced here with permission.

Via Lee Dugatkin, some very cool evolutionary biology.

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Adaline Bisese, recipient of a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship, represented the lab and @vtbiochemistry.bsky.social at the 2025 Undergraduate Research Symposium yesterday. Stay tuned for exciting results on how mosquitoes choose where to land on our bodies!

[Prix Recherche SFE²] Lauréate 2025 - Violaine Llaurens - sfecologie.org Toutes nos félicitations à Violaine Llaurens (DR CNRS, CIRB & ISYEB, Paris & Université des Antilles), lauréate du Prix Recherche SFE² 2025.

Congrats to Violaine for this well deserved prize!! Champagne!
sfecologie.org/2025/07/16/p...

OrthoFinder: scalable phylogenetic orthology inference for comparative genomics https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.15.664860v1

A photo of a female yellow fever mosquito. Photo credit: Adam J. Blake.

We all have our favourite colours, but Adam Blake & Jeff Riffell have discovered that mosquitos can change their favourite colour, preferring to land on green when they smell flowers or dirty pond water, but love every colour when they smell dirty socks

journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

Check out the @cp-starprotocols.bsky.social‬ special issue: #Protocols in #Entomology Research. @cellpress.bsky.social‬

star-protocols.cell.com?categories=P...

doi.org/10.5802/crbi...
A synthesis of our recent work on Morpho butterflies evolution

@bluethread.bsky.social
1/15
Larval competition... profoundly alters adult body size, survival, reproductive output, host-seeking behavior, olfactory neurophysiology, and vector competence."
In our new study, we trace how early-life environment reshapes adult disease risk in Aedes aegypti. #Preprint