Gaurav Athreya

I am excited to announce that the position of a senior postdoc (3 +3 years) in the field of theoretical biology is available in my group.

The position provides the opportunity to closely interact with experimentalists and develop own research projects.

Please RT.

Details 👇:
shorturl.at/iiiOv

The first author @tarunyumnam.bsky.social is here on bluesky!

Homeword Bound With apologies to Rhymin’ Simon

Homeward Bound! Yes, the #LTEE is homeward bound. After a few thousand generations in Texas, the lines are coming back to #MSU, along with Jeff Barrick, and his team. telliamedrevisited.wordpress.com/2025/07/28/h...

Thanks again to coauthors, @mpi-evolbio.bsky.social where I did most of this work, and I have to say also @asn-amnat.bsky.social for an incredibly thorough review process!

My own (I think uncontroversial) take is that we understand conceptually much less about between-species ETIs than within-species ones like multicellularity & eusociality. So I would love (i) to hear any thoughts / feedback, and (ii) for someone to test these ideas in a real endosymbiosis!

Lastly, we show that under our assumptions, H-S mutual dependence evolves faster than reproductive cohesion. This is to me the most interesting result, and could explain why we (anecdotally) see lots of mutual dependence between hosts and symbionts, but not a lot of H-S synchronised reproduction.

Another interesting question is why there are differences in H&S evolutionary outcomes (why is it always the endosymbiont with the small genome?). We show that many asymmetries can be produced purely by differences in population growth parameters, usually (not always!) favouring host sovereignty.

First, we find novel reasons why an evolutionary transition in individuality (ETI) might *not* take place (e.g. no dependence from both H & S, or one-sided obligate dependence). This could help explain why ETIs are so rare, & why there is a lot of diversity in dependence & cohesion traits.

We think of individuality as composed of 2 collective-level properties, mutual dependence (survival alone vs.together) & reproductive cohesion (stay & reproduce together vs. split). Both depend on individual-level H(ost) & S(ymbiont) traits; we use adaptive dynamics to study these traits’ evolution.

figure 1 from https://doi.org/10.1086/737588 describing (a) our conceptualisation of an evolutionary transition in individuality, (b) an interpretation of the traits that we consider in our mathematical model, and (c) a graphical representation of the population dynamics in the model.

Interested in host-symbiont interdependence, eukaryogenesis, and evolutionary transitions in individuality? my first paper just came out! With @gokhalecs.bsky.social and Pete Czuppon, we study when & how individuality emerges in a host-endosymbiont collective doi.org/10.1086/737588 a short thread🧵:

1/27 We have a new paper out! Turns out that snowflake yeast have been hiding a secret from us - they've evolved a (very!) crude circulatory system. Not with blood vessels or a heart, but through spontaneous fluid flows powered by their metabolism. 🧪🔬

www.science.org/doi/full/10....

i made a new framework for modelling stochastic eco-evolutionary dynamics of multivariate traits !!

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

If bottom-up approaches still needed evidence they work, #EMPSEB30 gave it. A warm atmosphere, sustainability prize, engaging DEI session, emotional workshops, alternative presentations, so many out-of-the-box things. Altogether with a really high scientific quality. Thank you @empseb30.bsky.social!

And that’s a wrap! #EMPSEB30 comes to an end in the same friendly way in which it started🙌🏽 A huge thank you to the organisers for a flawless conference and for the phenomenal final show! 🕺🏻💃🏻@empseb30.bsky.social

Packed room to kick off the Evolutionary Ecology session at #EMPSEB30 with a talk by @theobrown.bsky.social, who wonders whether it pays off to be lazy… if you are a butterfly, that is! 🦋🐥@empseb30.bsky.social

it’s time, EMPSEB begins tomorrow! Follow our conference account to get updates on all the cool science and community-finding that will happen at this cozy, almost*-all-PhD-student conference 😊 (*except for our wonderful invited speakers, of course)

The poster for the symposium titled: "Ageing outside of the box: insights from unusual and non-model species" within the ESEB 2025 conference. The symposium is organised by Margaux Bieuville from the University of Mainz and Yagmur Erten from the University of Groningen. The invited speakers are Thorsten Reusch from GEOMAR and Robert Laird from the University of Lethbridge. The conference takes place on 17-22 August 2025 in Barcelona, Spain. The abstract submission deadline is 5 May 2025.

My knees tell me I’m aging—but do you also wonder what we can learn about aging by looking beyond humans? If you study aging in corals, duckweed, or other "unusual" systems, join us at @eseb2025.bsky.social to talk about aging outside the box! Abstract deadline: 5 May. eseb2025.com/call-for-abs...

Recently learnt from @ccrowther.bsky.social that bearded dragons have partially temperature-dependent sex determination: it’s purely chromosomal at low temp (ZZ male, ZW female), but ZZ eggs develop into females when incubated at high temp! can’t seem to find an illustrative picture though :(

Title slide from my talk today, which reads "Using pedigrees to understand eco-evolutionary processes in the wild", with a cartoon pedigree of two parent guppy fish and their four offspring.

Fun to give an introductory talk at JGU Mainz today - which is a good time to announce here that I am delighted to have joined the @kokkonut.bsky.social Theoretical Evolutionary Ecology lab as a post-doc! Looking forwards to developing my modelling skills with this excellent group!

A panel showing two stolons from an Annelid - these are segmented organic things that look a lot like worms. The image shows a female stolon (left), and male one (right). Both are yellowish on a grey to blue background, with red eyes, and segmental structures poking off.

Ever since @harrysavage.bsky.social mentioned it, stolonization has been haunting my waking hours. Now it can haunt yours too: some annelid worms develop a gamete-filled structure (stolon), which detaches and swims to find a mate. Some stolons have eyes, antennae, and nervous system 🤯

🧪🦀🦑 #evosky

Legitmately thrilled to share our latest work, in which @fernpizza.bsky.social solved an experimental challenge in plasmid biology as old as the field: measuring how plasmids compete and evolve within individual cells!

Ernst-Strüngmann-Institut: Die Milliardäre, der Hirnforscher und die Macht Ein Hirnforschungsinstitut macht wegen Vorwürfen sexueller Übergriffe Schlagzeilen. Es ist mit der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft assoziiert, zwei Milliardäre haben es gestiftet. Von zwei Direktoren hat es s...

Grauenhafte Zustände am Frankfurter Ernst-Strüngmann-Institut, das mit @maxplanck.de assoziiert ist.

Artikel von @hfeldwisch.bsky.social

www.faz.net/aktuell/wiss...

Obligate cross-feeding of metabolites is common in soil microbial communities Many microorganisms are refractory to laboratory cultivation. One possible explanation, known as the great plate count anomaly, is metabolic dependencies among community members. However, systematic s...

New paper from my group and the group of
@kiranrpatil.bsky.social:

Obligate cross-feeding of metabolites is common in soil microbial communities

By Ghada Yousif @metagenomez.bsky.social with @swagatika.bsky.social @isamirgiri.bsky.social Sharvari Harshe et al.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🧵👇

only a few days left, until 30.01, to submit abstracts for EMPSEB! there will be much to learn, networking to do, and many great talks by plenary speakers & PhD students from all over (including you? 😊)

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

a penguin sitting on top of an igloo holding a flag that says welc3 ALT: a penguin sitting on top of an igloo holding a flag that says welc3

@empseb30.bsky.social wishes you all a fantastic, exciting and prosperous New Year 2025! 🎇🍀🥂

📣Great news! The deadline for submitting abstracts for #EMPSEB30 has been extended by 25 days! The new deadline is the 30th of January at 11.59 p.m. – so make sure you get your abstract in on time!

Thanks for making this! I’d love to be added too:)

At EMPSEB, you'll get to know the plenaries better than at other meetings – they'll be at all parts of the conference, including the talks, workshops and social events. We're thrilled that @bruzos.bsky.social, Filip Kolář, Eric Libby and @biobiiana.bsky.social will be joining us next year!

not sure yet if I can somehow comment directly on the starter pack so sorry if spam, but @venkramaswamy.bsky.social could you please add me? Thanks for making this list, it’s great!!

If you’re a PhD student (or you know one) working on questions of an evolutionary flavour, then check out EMPSEB, an amazing student-organised meeting taking place June 2025 in the Czech Republic! empseb30.mpipz.mpg.de