Greg Walter

Photo of a Senecio daisy in front of a stone hut

Happy to share out latest work in Ecology Letters!

We show how how genetic differences in plasticity determine fitness at different environmental scales from native to novel elevations.
@jonbridle.bsky.social @jameswclark.bsky.social

Many thanks to the reviewers!

doi.org/10.1111/ele....

Phenotypic plasticity is broadly adaptive across an elevation gradient in the Cutleaf Monkeyflower Phenotypic plasticity is a key mechanism by which organisms can cope with environmental heterogeneity, but its evolutionary consequences depend on how plastic responses align with the broader adaptive...

Preprint up now! With @ferrisifolius.bsky.social, we found positive selection on leaf shape plasticity across the altitudinal range of the cutleaf monkeyflower. This experiment was a HUGE personal undertaking. If you give it a read, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Alignment across taxonomic levels in strategies rather than in traits along elevational gradients Abstract. Trait variation along environmental gradients can indicate the different strategies that organisms have evolved in response to environmental hete

A bit late, but really happy to see my first PhD paper out!
We studied trait-elevation relationships in multiple traits spanning growth, size (both above and belowground) and leaf economics to understand whether these align at within- and among-species scales.

academic.oup.com/evlett/advan...

Age- and sex-dependent associations between the number of older siblings and early-life survival in pre-industrial humans | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Siblings are an important part of an individual’s early-life environment and may therefore play an important role in shaping an individual’s survival. The quantification of sibling effects on survival is challenging, however, especially in long-lived ...

1. My first ever paper is out! With
@euantheyoung.bsky.social
@lummaalab.bsky.social
@erikpostma.bsky.social
@hannahdugdale.bsky.social
How do older siblings, and their sex and age, affect the survival of younger siblings? Find out by checking below.

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

‘Almost unimaginable’: these ants are different species but share a mother Ant queens of one species clone ants of another to create hybrid workers that do their bidding.

woah this is genuinely, utterly WILD

Ant queens of one species produce males of another species, so she can then mate with them and produce hybrid workers!

This is so gloriously weird I can't quite compute it 🤯🧪🐜
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Variation in temperature but not diet determines the stability of latitudinal clines in tolerance traits and their plasticity | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Latitudinal clines are routinely used as evidence of adaptation across broad climatic gradients. However, if environmental variation influences the strength of latitudinal clines, then clinal patterns...

First post here 😬 .. hi everyone!

Our new paper is the first from my short foray into a non-plant system! [don't worry, back to plants!]

We show how clinal patterns in climate tolerance and plasticity are environment-dependent! doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

Thanks to ProcB and the reviewers!

I'm looking to recruit a PhD student to study patterns of local adaptation and introgression across the spruce hybrid zone in the Rockies near Calgary. Projects can include field work, bioinformatics, pop gen theory, or comparison to plant/ conifer species
yeamanlab.weebly.com/uploads/5/7/...

and, @stuartmcdaniel.bsky.social !

My favorite part of this paper: the collaboration started after I sent Meng a biorxiv preprint from Stuart's lab.. She contacted him with questions about that work, and the collaboration grew from there.

Evaluating the roles of drift and selection in trait loss along an elevational gradient The evolutionary mechanisms underlying loss or retention of traits that have lost function are poorly understood. Short stamens in Arabidopsis thaliana pro

Sophie Buysse's paper on short stamen loss in Arabipsis is published in this month's Evolution issue!! academic.oup.com/evolut/artic... @journal-evo.bsky.social

John Maynard Smith on adaptationist cleaning up their act following the spandrels paper.

From Dinosaur Dilemmas, NYRB
April 25, 1991.

SO excited for #Evol2025 @sse-evolution.bsky.social!!!!!!! The Coughlan lab has a stellar line up of folks giving talks (on lab projects and beyond!)- please check them out! We welcome all feedback and would love to hear from you!!!

I'm so excited to be at #evol2025!! Lab talks: "Adaptive and maladaptive plasticity in leaf number among populations of A. thaliana" from Sophie Buysse at 9:30 in Sunday in Adaptation V

Leaf venation: structure, function, development, evolution, ecology and applications in the past, present and future The design and function of leaf venation are important to plant performance, with key implications for the distribution and productivity of ecosystems, and applications in paleobiology, agriculture a....

Shout out to this excellent & thorough paper:

Leaf venation: structure, function, development, evolution, ecology and applications in the past, present and future

A compendium, really, especially if you include the supplemental info. #PlantScience 🧪

nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

How many times have buzz pollinated flowers evolved? Read the latest version of our preprint here www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... @draverbee.bsky.social @roszenil.bsky.social

Please pass along - postdoc position! with our working group on #FunctionalTraits and rarity. This is part of the FREE (Functional Rarity in Ecology and Evolution) working group led by Cyrille Violle in Montpellier France 🧪🌐🌾 emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/U...

k-mer-based diversity scales with population size proxies more than nucleotide diversity in a meta-analysis of 98 plant species Abstract. A key prediction of neutral theory is that the level of genetic diversity in a population should scale with population size. However, as was note

Hey, Miles' @milesroberts.bsky.social beautiful paper showing that sequence diversity missed by standard methods contributes to Lewontin's paradox is officially published in @evolletters.bsky.social. academic.oup.com/evlett/advan...

Super excited to release a huge evolution project on the works for many years:

Evolution experiments synchronized across climates to understand rapid adaptation

Preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2025...
All data available: www.grene-net.org/data

#MOILAB
@ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social
@hhmi.org

🧵👇

Evolution of plasticity and character displacement in a fluctuating environment

Our paper on evolution of plasticity and character displacement in a fluctuating environment is now published as early view in Evolution. Check it out if you're interested in eco-evolutionary dynamics, coevolution... and plasticity of course!
academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

Multi‐response phylogenetic mixed models: concepts and application The scale and resolution of trait databases and molecular phylogenies is increasing rapidly. These resources permit many open questions in comparative biology to be addressed with the right statistic...

📢 New publication 'Multi-response #phylogenetic mixed #models: concepts and application' by Ben Halliwell, Barbara Holland and Luke Yates in Biological Reviews 🧪

doi.org/10.1111/brv....

Repeatability of evolution and genomic predictions of temperature adaptation in seed beetles - Nature Ecology & Evolution The authors compare genomic and phenotypic changes between genetic backgrounds of seed beetles evolved at hot or cold temperatures. Despite phenotypic changes being more rapid and predictable at hot t...

Finally out: Predicting adaptation to climate warming www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We find that there are many genomic routes to heat-adaptation, but this can also make genomic data of limited value for prediction. A tour de force by @denovorego.bsky.social , with @stelkens.bsky.social.

Very happy and humbled to have received this award. A huge thanks to all my wonderful colleagues @scienceanu.bsky.social and abroad who made this possible!

Currently developing a workshop for postdocs on mentoring and managing in EEB! What are some topics/pieces of advice you'd have wanted to learn about as a postdoc?

A plot the date of the first great tit egg on Vlieland against year showing 2025 is the third-earliest year since 1955.

Last year I posted too early and had to retract my post 🫣, but now that all @niooknaw.bsky.social @animalecol-nioo.bsky.social nest boxes on #Vlieland have been checked, we know for sure that it is - yet again - a very early start of the breeding season! @uniexecec.bsky.social @sevans.bsky.social

👋

Interested in working on the evolution of genetic architecture 🧬 of complex traits using linked-read sequencing of thousands of common lizards 🦎 from a wild population and common garden experiment?

#evolution #genetics

Well, I have a PhD offer for you 👇
devillemereuil.legtux.org/erc-funded-p...

Interested in other approaches to measuring selection on gene expression?

The incomparable John Kelly and I have written a perspective piece describing why one might want to measure selection on gene expression, and exploring a few ways one might use to do it.

CONVERGENT EVOLUTION is the independent development of similar traits or features in distantly related or unrelated organisms, often occurring when they occupy similar ecological niches or face similar environmental pressures 🦉 🍏

Photo of Primula parryi, a robust alpine plant with magenta flowers, with mountains, clouds, and sky visible in the background

Photo of Polemonium chartaceum, a small alpine plant with purple flowers, with mountains, snow, and blue sky visible in the background

A photo of two plant ecologists standing on the top of White Mountain peak and holding a sign that says "White Mountain Pk. 14,252'". The top of the mountain is rocky and there are many clouds in the sky.

Excited for @kalebgoff.bsky.social's 1st dissertation chapter to be out w co-authors M Oldfather, J Nachlinger, B Smithers, @mikoontz.bsky.social, J & C Bishop & M Burke. Limited Directional Change in Mountaintop Plant Communities over 19 years in Western North America
doi.org/10.1002/ecs2...

Ragweed plants (Ambrosia artemisiifolia) growing in the greenhouse

A greenhouse full of one’s first true love always raises the spirits!!!

#ragweed #iamabotanist #botany #plantbiology

@isabeaulewis.bsky.social 🌾🧪

Very excited to introduce the newest genus of wild sunflowers, a tiny desert annual covered in dense wool and heads with just two small ray florets.

Ovicula biradiata, a new Composite from Big Bend National Park in Trans-Pecos Texas doi.org/10.3897/phyt... via @phytokeys.pensoft.net