Matthias H. Weissensteiner

Exciting news!
The next #PopGroup meeting will take place in Lille 🍟, France, 7–9 January 2026 – just 1 hour by train from London, Brussels, and Paris.

This year, PopGroup will also host ALPHY, the annual meeting of Evolutionary Genomics.

More info: populationgeneticsgroup.org.uk

See you there !

Looks like a useful reference piece.

When we hypothesised female terns to have lower mercury levels than males due to egg laying, @matteobeccardi.bsky.social et al designed an elegant experiment to prove the effectiveness of this pathway. That proof just got published & the open access paper can be found here: doi.org/10.1016/j.en...

Yay! Congratulations Dave! And what a nice tradition! Did not know the book - will check it out!

Heads up: ignore samtools dot org, similarly minimap2 dot com and likely others. It's owned by a known phishing site and while the binaries they offer look valid currently (but note they may be serving us different binaries to others), that could change.

Ie: it's not us (Samtools team)! Be warned

One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants - Nature In a case of obligate cross-species cloning, female ants of Messor ibericus need to clone males of Messor structor to obtain sperm for producing the worker caste, resulting in males from the same moth...

Beyond fascinating!
(for people wanting to read the paper, here it is: www.nature.com/articles/s41...)

Congratulations Anna! What a fantastic PhD with tremendous amounts of work and exciting results! All the best for your future trajectory!

Oh well. I am making my claim and every author should.

#EOU2025 #ornithology folks and friends liking #birds and #mammals, this is the position I just highlighted. Join us! Cool collection and very active continuous preparation of new specimens. Deadline soon...

Happy to chat with anyone curious today!

📌 I really enjoyed @pablosalmon.bsky.social’s talk at #EOU2025! 🐦
Exploring how #mitochondria may shape avian #migration — lessons from Eurasian #blackbirds with different strategies.
Great insights into the energetic basis of life-history strategies!

Bioinformatician - Uppsala University Bioinformatician, Department of Organismal Biology, Uppsala University

The @scilifelab.se ancient DNA unit is looking for an bioinformatician placed at Uppsala University. This is a great way to be part of diverse #aDNA research projects as a staff scientist with permanent (!!) employment:

www.uu.se/en/about-uu/...

Rant of the day: why are people still submitting manuscripts for review without line numbers? We all review papers, we all know that referring to line numbers makes easier to write the review. So, why do people keep doing this!?

Andrea wearing her PhD hat after successfully defending her thesis.

Congratulations, Dr. Andrea. What a very special day. Happy, proud and honoured to see you fledge 🐦‍⬛🧬🏝️🧪 - fly on @mpi-evolbio.bsky.social

Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning Drowning is not the violent, splashing call for help that most people expect.

Thanks for the reminder @janemunday.bsky.social. Every summer, I repost this article DROWNING DOES NOT LOOK LIKE DROWNING. To date, I know of FOUR kids who were saved after someone who'd clicked on the link learnt how to spot actual drowning. Take time to read and pass on.

slate.com/technology/2...

Accumulation of a biparentally-inherited Neptune transposable element in natural Killifish hybrids (Fundulus diaphanus X F. heteroclitus) Transposable elements (TEs) are abundant selfish genetic elements that can mobilize in their host genome, causing DNA damage, mutations and chromosome rearrangements. TE silencing is thus critical, an...

New preprint from the lab led by former masters student AJ Roussel in collaboration with Alexander Suh and @fjruizruano.bsky.social. We found a ~4-fold accumulation of a Neptune #transposon in asexually reproducing "F1" fish hybrids. An unexpected and fascinating finding! #TEsky

🚨 Wanted: PhD student excited about population genomics, Natural History Collections and birds!
📍 Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, Germany
🕒 3 Years, fully funded by the Leibniz Junior Researchgroup program

Details and Application portal 👇

jobs.museumfuernaturkunde.berlin/jobposting/8...

Home - NaviSense NaviSense - International Cluster of Excellence Proposal for the Sensory Basis, Mechanisms, and Impacts of Animal Navigation.

over the moon happy and grateful! on my way to @lundvision.bsky.social I followd the announcement of #ClustersOfExcellence by the @dfg.de on the floor of a crowded train. #NaviSense 🦋🧭🧬🧪🧠🐝🪲🔬 in all its beauty flew high! such a fantastic team, amazing spirit and wonderful vision - ready for take off!

GitHub - NBISweden/GenErode at 0.6.3 GitHub repository for GenErode, a Snakemake pipeline for the analysis of whole-genome sequencing data from historical and modern samples to study patterns of genome erosion. - GitHub - NBISweden/Ge...

The next GenErode version is available (0.6.3)! 🎉 github.com/NBISweden/Ge...

Interested in a PhD connecting sensory ecology and evolutionary genetics? Applications are now open for a project on the Speciation Genomics of Eye Size Variation in Heliconius Butterflies in our lab at LMU Munich: www.evol.bio.lmu.de/research/mer... Please repost!

Really excited that our DFG grant on the Speciation Genomics of Eye Size variation in *Heliconius* has been funded :) In the next weeks, I will post an advert for a PhD, but if you know of good students, please suggest they get in touch. Please repost.

I'm very happy to announce our new pubblication out now in @animalecology.bsky.social🥳
Many thanks to @oscarvedder.bsky.social and @ifv-whv.bsky.social.

Read the full text if you want to know more about this work👇
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Poor developmental conditions decrease adult body size and egg size, but not egg laying rate and survival throughout adulthood: A long‐term experiment in a precocial bird This research experimentally manipulated the quality of early-life conditions in Japanese quail, and monitored individual performance over the complete adult lifespan under standardized conditions. I...

New publication in @animalecology.bsky.social by @oscarvedder.bsky.social & @matteobeccardi.bsky.social 'Poor developmental conditions decrease adult body size and egg size, but not egg laying rate and survival throughout adulthood: A long-term experiment in a precocial bird'
doi.org/10.1111/1365...

Two more weeks to apply for a PhD position in our yeast genomics and evolution lab at Stockholm University! Please share widely. 🧪🧬🌳🍄

It’s always “We launched these tardigrades into space!” “We froze them to absolute zero!” “We threw them into an erupting volcano!”

Never “We took these tardigrades on a holiday. They’re getting tiny massages and sipping little umbrella drinks on the beach.”

🐦 Do some birds have #PrettyPrivilege?
💫 New paper: doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2024.2846
We show that ~half the variation in research effort on 293 bird species in US+Canada is explained by just 3 factors: 1)visual appeal, 2)range size, & 3)# of universities w/in ranges. What we did & why it matters:🧵

I remember excluding those in our crow analysis (2020 NatComm paper) because they seemed to be rather enriched in tandem repeats, so very difficult to distinguish from artefacts.

‘They have no one to follow’: how migrating birds use quantum mechanics to navigate Evidence is mounting to explain how birds use the Earth’s magnetic field to help fly thousands of miles with unerring accuracy – a discovery that may help advance quantum technology

Great article on the work of @genmig.bsky.social and others:
www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

Lungfish xkcd.com/3064

Analysis of ticks (Acari: Ixodida) and associated microorganisms collected on the North Sea Island of Heligoland - Parasitology Research Heligoland is an island located in the North Sea, where vegetation was almost destroyed as a result of heavy bombardment during and after the Second World War. However, over the past 70 years, the veg...

I am very excited to announce our new paper describing the tick communities on Helgoland. We highlighted a potentially stable population of a tick species which has not been described in Germany since the 1970s! Feel free to reach out if you have questions 😄

doi.org/10.1007/s004...

🇺🇦 Three years ago, Russia started a total war against #Ukraine, trying to invade and control the country. They did no succeed, and will not succeed.

I'm looking forward to go back to the free, democratic and sovereign #Ukraine that I knew before the war.

Слава Україні! Героям слава!