Lilian Caesar

A new preprint with Matthew Schmitt, @kiseokmicro.bsky.social and Vincenzo Vitelli makes a huge step forward in learning functional groups of components in complex biological systems. It's dimension reduction that speaks to biological function. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Long-term efficacy and safety of the single-dose tetravalent Butantan dengue vaccine
www.nature.com/articles/s41... @naturemedicine.bsky.social

Evolution 2026 meeting logo. Clilp art of a globe and laptop showing a virtual presentation. Text: Society for the Study of Evolution Global Meeting Participation.

SSE is pleased to offer free virtual #Evol2026 registration to all SSE members residing in 152 countries and territories around the world including India, Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. Request your free registration code today! www.evolutionsociety.org/index.php?mo...

Limited thermal tolerance in tropical insects and its genomic signature - Nature A survey of tropical insect populations and thermal tolerance limits indicates that species from lowland areas have low capacity to survive increased temperatures, and that thermal tolerance is limited by fundamental properties of protein architecture.

Nature research paper: Limited thermal tolerance in tropical insects and its genomic signature

go.nature.com/4ua5R82

Protein–protein interactions (PPIs) are key to discovering and interpreting new biological functions.

We’re excited to introduce 𝑭𝒍𝒂𝒔𝒉𝑷𝑷𝑰: a new application of gLM2 that uses genomic language modeling to predict proteome-wide PPIs in microbial genomes in minutes.

Bee and flower

Stay tuned for the release of this new documentary at the end of the month! I think our buzz pollination clip might have just made the cut!

I love a good bee documentary! Honeyland is still my favorite so far, but it’s so exciting that this one is coming out! Can’t wait to see it, and hopefully catch your clip in there too.

The MicrobeAtlas database: Global trends and insights into Earth’s microbial ecosystems MicrobeAtlas (www.microbeatlas.org) is an integrated, reference-based resource for truly planet-wide microbiomics, analyzing hundreds of thousands of microbial lineages across diverse environments, co...

MicrobeAtlas is now published in Cell. 🌐🌎🦠

Explore the paper and resource to see what large-scale microbiome data reveal about global ecological patterns:
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

For a concrete application, see our recent work on “Community conservatism”:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In case you missed it: our review titled "Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities" is out! 🚨

Let me hit you with some highlights on why spatial structure matters. (and why you should care!)

Sharing is appreciated 🙏 🧵👇

doi.org/10.1093/fems...

Estimating global bee species richness and taxonomic gaps - Nature Communications Bees are crucial for the maintenance of healthy ecosystems, yet rigorous estimates of their species’ richness are lacking. This study estimates taxonomic gaps for bees around the world and provides a ...

New paper alert! "Estimating global bee species richness and taxonomic gaps" suggests that we have thousands of bee species left to describe and decades of taxonomic work ahead of us. We also provide the methods needed to apply more broadly :)
doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Symbiotic entrenchment through ecological Catch-22 A symbiotic rove beetle develops a stealth phenotype by silencing production of its hydrocarbon pheromones, enabling it to infiltrate ant colonies, steal ant pheromones, and achieve social acceptance as a parasitic impostor. Evolution of this strategy is irreversible, locking the beetle’s lineage into obligate dependence on host ant societies.

Now online! Symbiotic entrenchment through ecological Catch-22

Last year, we proposed a model of plasmid evolution via fusion and fragmentation (via mge mediated recombination) generating mosaics, by studying historical isolates. Excited to see a MASSIVE paper from @jrpenades.bsky.social , @epcrocha.bsky.social expanding on this
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Deadline approaching - 23rd of Feb!

This Friday, February 13th, we'll have our first ☕️ Coffee Hours ☕️ event of the year at 12-1 PM (EST)! Check your emails for the Zoom link. If you're not yet signed up for our newsletter, you can do so at prideinmicrobiology.github.io! 🏳️‍🌈

#PrideInSTEM #Microbiology #PrideinMicrobiology

Please share!

PhD position at the University of Copenhagen. Start date: 1st of June!
 
The project integrates field work, RNAseq, MALDI-MSI & FISH to explore composition, regulation, and resilience of termite host-gut symbiont metabolism.
 
👉 employment.ku.dk/phd?show=156...
 
⏳ Deadline 23/2/26

Meet the Dracula ant Myopopone castanea, the only extant species in its genus. Like other ants in the subfamily Amblyoponinae, the workers pierce the larvae with their mandibles and drink the oozing hemolymph. Hence the name “Dracula ant”. Danum Valley, Sabah.

Spatial structure: Shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities Abstract. Most microbes grow in spatially structured communities, and this profoundly shapes their ecology and evolution. At the microscale, short interact

Spatial structure: Shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities

@femsjournals.bsky.social Microbiology Review by @marcelbaecker.bsky.social et al
from @bedutilh.bsky.social @bramvandijk.bsky.social

academic.oup.com/femsre/advan...

The hidden energy cost of cellular dormancy Many organisms survive harsh environments by switching into special survival modes. Some bacteria do this by forming spores—dormant, highly resilient cells that can persist for years or even centuries...

www.growkudos.com/publications...

New work with @ckarakoc.bsky.social and @shoestrapped.bsky.social in @pnas.org

Diagram illustrating early genome erosion during the transition from a free-living Sodalis bacterium to two host-associated endosymbionts inside the long-tailed mealybug. Circular genomes show intact genes in blue and pseudogenes in red, highlighting increased pseudogene accumulation in symbiotic forms. Caption asks: “What are the downstream molecular consequences of early genome erosion?”

Happy to share a preprint—the last chapter of my dissertation with @mcsymbiont.bsky.social and Co—on what happens when bacterial endosymbionts accumulate huge numbers of pseudogenes during early genome reduction.

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

NEW: Registration is now FREE for graduate students and postdocs for the 14th Annual Yosemite Symbiosis workshop. THANKS to the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation! Space is limited. Learn more and REGISTER here: snri.ucmerced.edu/form/symbios...

Applications close for this 4-year postdoc on Feb 9th (2 days!). The associated post for a technician should be online next week 👀

Review in #ProcB - Flower constancy in #pollinators: a bouquet of agendas shapes interactions among mutualistic partners #OpenAccess @chrisleduck.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Accurate plasmid reconstruction from metagenomics data using assembly–alignment graphs and contrastive learning - Nature Biotechnology PlasMAAG uses cross-sample information to improve plasmid reconstruction from metagenomic samples.

Accurate plasmid reconstruction from metagenomics data using assembly–alignment graphs and contrastive learning www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs

Microbial Diversity | Marine Biological Laboratory The goal of the course is to teach professors, postdocs and advanced graduate students how to discover, cultivate, and isolate diverse microorganisms catalyzing a breadth of chemical transformations, ...

Want to ride the front of the wave of all-things-microbiology; field work, cultivation, microscopy, molecular, bioinformatics and AI tools? Me too!
Please join us @mblscience.bsky.social for the 2026 Summer Microbial Diversity Course!
Applications due soon.
www.mbl.edu/education/ad...

Happy to share my solo-authored Perspective "An Interpretation, Survey, and Outlook of Microbial Macroecology"! Making time these last few months to take stock of the patterns us microbial ecologists examine + models we invoke has been invaluable. Feedback welcome!

ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

Join our first Social Transfer Network General Assembly on Wednesday, February 4th!
15h UK / UTC+0; 16h Europe / UTC+1; 7h US West coast / UTC-8
This is your chance to connect, catch up, and have your voice heard as we reflect on the past year and look ahead to what's next for our community.

Calling all OrthoFinder users!

We’ve just released GLADE, a tool to infer gene gains, losses, duplications, and ancestral genomes across a phylogeny.

GLADE runs directly on OrthoFinder results.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
github.com/lauriebelch/...

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Registration is open for the inaugural GRC conference in the Function of Evolving Systems. Aug 9-14, 2026, Waterville Valley. Truly stellar speaker lineup. Student/postdoc fellowships are available! Please come join us! www.grc.org/function-of-... @joybergelson.bsky.social

How and when can internal conflicts tear an individual organism apart?

That’s the question at the heart of this new paper.

Great thread by lead author @martijnschenkel.bsky.social below.

The ideas of physiological and evolutionary units sound really interesting. Super excited to read this in full, also very timely for my research/discussions on the eco-evo of bee colony-level microbiomes. Congrats on a great paper!