Lindy McBride

I'm looking to recruit a post-doc to help push forward our growing interests in insect ecotoxicology.
Apply here by Nov 30th!
(thanks for reposting)

career5.successfactors.eu/sfcareer/job...

🧠🌟🐭 Excited to share some of my postdoc work on the evolution of dexterity!

We compared deer mice evolved in forest vs prairie habitats. We found that forest mice have:
(1) more corticospinal neurons (CSNs)
(2) better hand dexterity
(3) more dexterous climbing, which is linked to CSN number🧵

a group of Drosophila erecta fruit flies on a small food patch. flies on white background

Excited to share our new #biorxivpreprint

We discovered that the fruit fly #drosophila erecta requires food odor to mate and arousal is further enhanced by social group motion.

Cross-species analysis of brain activity reveals a novel gate evolved from within a conserved circuit

shorturl.at/gGYm7

🚨Very happy that my PhD work is now out in @nature.com!

We discovered that evolution, by acting in the midbrain, shifted the threshold to escape in Peromyscus mice, to fine-tune defensive strategies in different environments

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

This was a truly collaborative effort! 🧵⬇️

Ancient origin of an urban underground mosquito Understanding how life is adapting to urban environments represents an important challenge in evolutionary biology. In this work, we investigate a widely cited example of urban adaptation, Culex pipie...

How does life evolve to adapt to modern cities?

Out now in Science, my PhD work with @lindymcbr.bsky.social uncovers the ancient origin of the “London Underground mosquito” – one of the most iconic examples of urban adaptation.

🧵(1/n)
@science.org
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ady4515

The abiotic breakdown of human skin oils produces some of the most abundant and distinctive compounds in our odor.

If there’s one message we would like people to take away from this piece, it's that SWEAT AND THE SKIN MICROBIOME ARE NOT THE ONLY SOURCE OF HUMAN ODOR—nor are they even necessarily the most important source!

Check out this review, which makes many new and interesting connections between human odor, skin biology, and evolution. 💯% of the insight provided comes from the independent literature sleuthing of first author @jlzung.bsky.social. I came along for the ride and learned some chemistry on the way!

BIG NEWS! The Mosquito Cell Atlas preprint is live! 🦟🧬 My first senior author paper! Massive and accessible snRNA-seq dataset and a lot of cool mosquito biology. A true collaborative achievement! #MCA
biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
See @oliviagoldman.net thread here

✨🦟✨HOW DO MOSQUITOES HAVE SEX? ✨🦟✨

Join us for a wild journey into hidden female control, rapidly evolving stimulation devices, fierce species competition, and DEADLY MOSQUITOES!

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

Here is @yukihaba.bsky.social and I underneath London collecting mosquitoes - very happy little researchers

So fresh natural and the historic material in the @nhm-london.bsky.social collections were sampled (along with a lot more..)

1. Today the NIH director issued a new directive slashing overhead rates to 15%.

I want to provide some context on what that means and why it matters.

grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

Ancient origin of an urban underground mosquito Understanding how life is adapting to urban environments represents an important challenge in evolutionary biology. Here we investigate a widely cited example of urban adaptation, Culex pipiens form m...

Great new study on evolutionary origins of a human pest, the Culex pipiens mosquito and its molestus form (famous as a mammal-feeding pest of the NYC, London and other subway systems) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I'm thrilled to be opening my own lab this Fall at the @maxplanck.de MPI for Brain Research in Frankfurt. The lab is going to investigate the neuronal and genetic underpinnings of behavioral evolution. We are hiring on all levels. Don't hesitate to share widely and reach out if interested.

Important new paper just out on the origins & #evolbiol of the London Underground Mosquito Culex p. molestus by @yukihaba.bsky.social @lindymcbr.bsky.social. Spoiler alert: Molestus originated 1000s of years ago in the Middle East www.biorxiv.org/content/bior... #evolviol #urbanevolution

Multilayer regulation underlies the functional precision and evolvability of the olfactory system Sensory neurons must be reproducibly specified to permit accurate neural representation of external signals but also able to change during evolution. We studied this paradox in the Drosophila olfactor...

New pre-print #2: Jérôme Mermet profiles living and dying lineages in the olfactory system to begin to explain how these sensory pathways are robustly specified but also evolvable: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

An integrated anatomical, functional and evolutionary view of the Drosophila olfactory system The Drosophila melanogaster olfactory system is one of the most intensively studied parts of the nervous system in any animal. Composed of ~60 independent olfactory neuron classes, with several associ...

New pre-print: an one-stop shop for everything you wanted to know about the fly olfactory system: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Assistant/Associate Professor of Public Health Entomology APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS: CURRENT PENN STATE EMPLOYEE (faculty, staff, technical service, or student), please login to Workday to complete the internal application process. Please do not apply here, a...

Come be my colleague! Public Health Entomology faculty position at Penn State (Assistant/Associate). 70% research, 30% extension.

(I am not on the search committee but happy to answer any questions that I can)

psu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/PSU_Ac...

Fly neuro people: has anyone tried the Ting lab’s scFLARE (or variants) for labelling active neurons in Drosophila? Thanks.

Cross-modal sensory compensation increases mosquito attraction to humans Mosquitoes enhance sensitivity to human body heat by a sensory compensation mechanism when their sense of smell is disrupted.

AT LAST OUR PEER-REVIEWED PRE-PRINT IS PUBLISHED
We finally vanquished Reviewer #3 - with great support from the academic editors @ScienceAdvances
Cross-modal sensory compensation increases mosquito attraction to humans | Science Advances
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Science magazine front cover. Picture of a walnut in its opened shell. The text reads "All about timing. Mating type evolution in walnuts and pecans"

graphical abstract: "In Juglans (top left) and Carya, two morphs show complementary temporal separation between male and female flowering (heterodichogamy). Mating types are controlled by two nonhomologous single-locus mechanisms that arose in the common ancestor of each genus, respectively. (Bottom left) Simplified schematic of a putative functional regulatory element at the Juglans locus. (Bottom right) Strong genotypic correlations across the Carya locus indicate a lack of recombination between two colinear haplotypes with similar gene content."

Congrats to @jeffgroh.bsky.social et al on publication of "Ancient structural variants control sex-specific flowering time morphs in walnuts and hickories"

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

Our open rank professor position in vector biology at FIU is now live! Those interested in arthropod molecular genetics, biochemistry, population genetics/genomics, neurobiology, or physiology are encouraged. Please apply to Job Opening ID 534013 at careers.fiu.edu by Jan 5th.