Leon Hilgers

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 !

Sleep Evolution Group A highly-customizable Hugo research group theme powered by Wowchemy website builder.

This is just the first effort of our foray into cichlid behaviour and genetics! If you are interested in working on the evolution, genomics, and neurobiology of sleep and chronobiology @uoftcellsysbiol.bsky.social in beautiful Toronto, please reach out! shafer-lab.netlify.app

Please share broadly: I am looking for a postdoctoral fellow to work on a collaborative project on the temporal population genomics of invasive Capeweed (using contemporary and herbarium genomics), with ‪‪@shaky-dingo.bsky.social‬ and colleagues

I will present my freshly published paper on bat diet reconstruction and phyllostomid ancestral omnivory at ESEB @eseb2025.bsky.social, on Tuesday August 19th, poster session 2 P02.375. Looking forward to it!🦇

🧬 Explore the latest from Bioinformatics Advances: “Exonize: a tool for finding and classifying exon duplications in annotated genomes”

Full article available: https://doi.org/10.1093/bioadv/vbaf177

Authors include: @chriswheat.bsky.social

Thanks a lot🙂!!

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! 🙂

1/5 ✨Proud✨ to see our review with Katie Peichel as featured content in Trends_Ecol_Evo, with my beloved alpine lineages of Arabidopsis arenosa on the cover. Hope that you find it interesting! doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2023.11.007

Photo of guppy males from lab population, each showing a unique combination of black and orange ornaments. Photo by Wouter van der Bijl.

🚨 Super exited to see our paper on the inheritance and genetic basis of guppy color variation come out in @natecoevo.nature.com‬ rdcu.be/eugWV

Guppy males have enormous variation in color patterns, with many combinations of ornamental spots and stripes. But where does all this variation come from?

Ecology/Evolution/Marine Biology labs recruiting for Fall 2026 Please complete this form if you are a PI recruiting graduate students for a Fall 2026 start. If you are NOT recruiting, feel free to share the response sheet with prospective students looking for lab...

Its that time again - the list of Ecology/Evolution/Marine Bio Labs recruiting grad students for Fall 2026 is live!
PIs enter your position info here: forms.gle/2XTHBP6CZGEn...
Prospective students (and PIs not recruiting) share the composite list: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
Please share! 🧪

Herring spawned poleward following fishery-induced collective memory loss - Nature A critically low abundance of older herring due to age-selective fisheries resulted in an approximately 800-km poleward shift in main spawning.

Nature research paper: Herring spawned poleward following fishery-induced collective memory loss

https://go.nature.com/4jLJ2C4

Transcriptomics in the era of long-read sequencing - Nature Reviews Genetics Advances in long-read sequencing are driving the implementation of these technologies for transcriptome profiling. The authors provide a comprehensive guide to long-read RNA sequencing, including expe...

Transcriptomics in the era of long-read sequencing go.nature.com/421ZTJm #Review by @carolinamonzo.bsky.social, Tianyuan Liu & @anaconesa.bsky.social @conesalab.bsky.social @i2sysbio.bsky.social

We are recruiting PhD student to work on genomics of seasonal camouflage in ptarmigan! There is still a week to apply!

#Genomics #PopGen #Evolution #Camouflage #Birds #PhDPosition #PhDStudent

Why is sex so common if it's so costly?
Super excited to share our new preprint “Sex decreases the pleiotropic costs of local adaptation”, where we bring a new angle to this age-old evolutionary question. Co-led by Parris Humphrey, in Michael Desai's lab. Short thread here: (1/n)

New paper in @nature.com led by @patricepottier.bsky.social! We demonstrated global vulnerability of amphibians to warming, threatening 10% of >5,000 species examined. How did we do it? See thread🧵

Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

World map showing origin of the data

Our study ‘The global human impact on biodiversity’ is out in Nature!

Through an unprecedented synthesis (2133 studies!) we show that humans are not only shrinking species numbers—but reshaping entire communities across the planet. 🌍🌐🐟🌿🪲

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

Drosophila follicle showing retrotransposons (pink & yellow) expressed in somatic cells infecting the oocyte

1/ Transposable elements are often called "jumping genes" because they mobilize within genomes. 🧬
But did you know they can also jump 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘯 cells? 🤯
Our new study reveals how retrotransposons invade the germline directly from somatic cells.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
A short thread 🧵👇

3-y postdoc position in (meta)Genomics of Population Declines elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid.... If you have experience with low-coverage genomic data, care about biodiversity loss, want to understand host-microbiomes interactions, this post is for you! #museomics #ancientDNA #mammals

Long-read sequencing and genome assembly of natural history collection samples and challenging specimens - Genome Biology Museum collections harbor millions of samples, largely unutilized for long-read sequencing. Here, we use ethanol-preserved samples containing kilobase-sized DNA to show that amplification-free protoco...

Thrilled to share our work on unlocking challenging specimens for @pacbio.bsky.social #HiFi sequencing, now out in Genome Biology!

genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

We show that specimens that have been stored in ethanol for decades can still be amenable for long-read sequencing:🧵

Origin and stepwise evolution of vertebrate lungs Nature Ecology & Evolution - An analysis of single-cell RNA sequencing data from adult and developing lungs across vertebrate species reveals genetic components in the common ancestor of jawed...

Origin and stepwise evolution of vertebrate lungs rdcu.be/eawc5

Single-cell RNA sequencing data from lungs across vertebrate species reveals genetic components in the common ancestor of jawed vertebrates, and new lung-specific enhancers that contribute to the evolution of vertebrate lungs

With @katiejenike.bsky.social and a bunch more of our fellow k-mer enthusiasts, we put together a manuscript on k-mers in biodiversity genomics. A guide if you will, that covers k-mers from basics to some really funky stuff...

genome.cshlp.org/content/35/2...

#CellPlasticity—the ability of cells to change their identity—is vital for tissue growth and repair. But when it goes unchecked, it can fuel #cancer. Our latest study examines how to block #LiverCancer by actively suppressing plasticity. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #CancerBiology

We've reached 1.5°C global warming.
With current policies, we're heading for a catastrophic 2.7°C warming.
A new review paper in Science shows: this would change the Arctic 'beyond recognition', with knock-on effects (like rising seas) around the world. 🌊
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Glad to see our preprint out! We reconstructed diet evolution in bats and support ancestral omnivory of the ecologically diverse bat family Phyllostomidae.

Thanks to a fantastic team: Shenglin Liu
@hillermich.bsky.social @kguschan.bsky.social Tom Brown @axeljensen.bsky.social Regev Schweiger and @trevorcousins.bsky.social🙂 !!!

So: Beware of the turtle peaks in PSMC! 😉

Splitting the first time window also removes peaks for #published #primate data. Alternatively, the tool beta-PSMC seems to do a better job in most, but NOT all cases (see two turtles with * in O).

-p 4+... provides a single Ne for a large first window. Ne changes during this time cannot be adequately captured. Low Ne estimates for the first window, become overcompensated in the second time window causing erroneous peaks.

Set -p to 2+2... or even 1+1+1+1... to solve this!

Strikingly, the true answer seems to be:

‼️False parameter settings‼️

Changing parameter settings from -p 4+(...) used as default to -p 2+2+(...) removes the peaks in all of our turtle data 🤯

So if it is not population size...

What causes these peaks?🤔

Increases in population structure before a collapse CAN cause similar patterns... however, it is unlikely that this is so common and always occurs in the second time window (Supplement).