German Lagunas-Robles

Led by Jessica Purcell. The team included @giuliascarparo.bsky.social , Madison Sankovitz, Mari West, Zul Alam, and Alan Brelsford.

There were ~10% of colonies showing mismatches between supergene genotype and phenotype, but we only observed this at one site. This raised the possibility that environment may override supergene control of colony queen number.

Colonies with single queens were more common in the north, but the queen number polymorphism was present throughout the gradient. The supergene haplotype frequency reflected this as the frequency also varied with latitude.

We sampled Formica podzolica colonies across a latitudinal gradient between Alaska and New Mexico. Surprisingly, Formica podzolica has SIX(!) common supergene variants that are differentiated by three distinct cassettes.

Variation in social organization and supergene control along a latitudinal gradient Widespread species often experience vastly different environmental conditions across their range. In species with polymorphic traits under strong genetic control, we can investigate how environmental ...

Excited to share some of the latest work coming from the Formica ant supergene system 🐜🧬! This project represents many collection trips and years of work!
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Very pleased to see this officially out - Genome Architecture and Speciation in Plants and Animals. With @siluwang.bsky.social, @dortizba.bsky.social and Loren Rieseberg. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Unexpected absence of a multiple-queen supergene haplotype from supercolonial populations of Formica ants Abstract. Ants exhibit many complex social organization strategies. One particularly elaborate strategy is supercoloniality, in which a colony consists of

The #EditorsChoice for this month from EIC @maxreuter.bsky.social is

"Unexpected absence of a multiple-queen supergene haplotype from supercolonial populations of Formica ants" by

@g-lagunasrobles.bsky.social et al

academic.oup.com/jeb/article/...

Thanks to Zul Alam and Alan Brelsford for their work on this! (4/n)

Taken together, these results suggest that supercoloniality isn't as simple as having the multi-queen supergene haplotype. (3/n)

We find that the multi-queen haplotype is missing from a supercolonial population. Additionally, we find a similar pattern with the multi-queen haplotype being absent in one supercolonial species, but present in another. (2/n)

Is supercoloniality a simple extension of polygyny?Supercolonies, networks of interconnected nests with many queens, have been proposed as a natural extension of multi-queen nests. In many Formica ants, a supergene determines whether a colony has a single queen or many queens. (1/n)

Thanks to Zul Alam and Alan Brelsford for their work on this! (4/n)

Taken together, these results suggest that supercoloniality isn't as simple as having the multi-queen supergene haplotype. (3/n)

We find that the multi-queen haplotype is missing from a supercolonial population. Additionally, we find a similar pattern with the multi-queen haplotype being absent in one supercolonial species, but present in another. (2/n)

A novel supergene controls queen size and colony social organization in the ant Myrmica ruginodis https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.24.644106v1

Top: Topology weightings across chr15 showing how the karamu haplotype is related to the klugii and orientis haplotypes. Upper panel shows three possible rooted genealogical topologies. Second panel shows weights for each topology along the chromosome, smoothed with a 20 kb span. Arrows above the plot indicate the locations of inversions. Third panel shows unsmoothed topology weightings across a 1.5 Mb region corresponding to Inversion 2. Bottom: Ancestry painting across a 100 kb region within Inversion 2, showing ancestry tracts for two homozygous karamu individuals compared to two representative individuals homozygous for the orientis and klugii haplotypes. Coding regions are indicated below the plot, with the candidate gene for background colouration yellow indicated. Green triangles represent the top 10 SNPs for background colour in our GWAS. There is evidence for recombination throughout the supergene region, and specifically in the vicinity of yellow, consistent with the hypothesis that orientis ancestry at this locus (i.e., the B allele) is associated with darker colouration in karamu individuals.

Dynamics of a supergene. A study of the BC supergene in wing color morphs of the African monarch #butterfly by @rishidekayne.bsky.social &co reveals dynamic evolution of #supergene haplotypes, fueled by incomplete recombination suppression 🧪 @plosbiology.org plos.io/3DiFhnL

Centromere evolution isn't a sudden switch!

Our study shows centromere transitions are a step-by-step process driven by a combination of drift and selection. Discover how the kinetochore interface shapes this gradual change in our new preprint 🥳 doi.org/10.1101/2025.01.16.633479 🧵(1/8)

🦉🧪 Questions about high latitude myrtle warblers have been "up in the air" (pun intended) since 1899! @stephszarmach.bsky.social used fancy new geolocators that track light AND barometric pressure to add an unexpected chapter to this tale ......

Thanks to Zul Alam and Alan Brelsford who contributed to this work! (and are not on Bluesky)

Our preprint on the unexpected absence of a multiple-queen supergene haplotype in supercolonial populations is up on bioRxiv! We found that the P haplotype is not necessary for supercoloniality in the Formica rufa group, despite its longstanding association with non-supercolonial polygyny.

Happy to release Stacks v2.67 today. This release updates process_radtags to make it easier to use SRA data and to filter poly-G (error) runs coming from Nextseq/Novaseq machines + bugfixes. We also added a genotype depth filter to populations #RADseq
catchenlab.life.illinois.edu/stacks/

New article: 'The role of conflict in the formation and maintenance of variant sex chromosome systems in mammals'
🔬 From fusions to Y chromosome loss, sex chromosome karyotypes vary widely in mammalian genomes.
1/3

With a link that works 😊

Quantifying the role of genome size and repeat content in adaptive variation and the architecture of... Author summary The remarkable and seemingly inconsequential variation in genome size across species has long been an enigma in evolutionary biology. Calling this viewpoint into question, correlations ...

Hey ya'll. Our paper on the phenotypic consequences of intraspecific variation in repeat content and genome size was published over the holidays. Check it out when you get back to work :)

journals.plos.org/plosgenetics...

Phylogenomics resolves key relationships in Rumex and uncovers a dynamic history of independently ev... bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution

Excited to share the first paper from my postdoc, using phylogenomics to uncover dynamic genome evolution in Rumex! Featuring @joannarifkin.bsky.social, @bmsacchi.bsky.social, @stepheniwright.bsky.social, and others not on the app!

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

Posting for my colleague Giulia Scarparo and collaborators. Check out their new paper on a supergene that controls for queen miniaturization! Giulia's post attached below.

Paper here: www.cell.com/current-biol...

Guest Post: Tracking the Migrations of Alaskan Myrtle Warblers Standing in a clearing surrounded by black spruce and birch, I raise my binoculars after spotting a quick flash of movement high up in the foliage.

Steph Szarmach discusses her geolocator work on Alaskan Myrtle warblers! *Spoiler alert*: there are no spoilers!
wilsonsociety.org/2023/11/07/g...

Super happy to be awarded a project grant for our Linum supergene and mating system work from the Swedish Research Council, AND a Formas grant on unlocking genetic variation for drought tolerance using landscape genomics in crop wild relatives!

Mitonuclear sex determination? Empirical evidence from bivalves Abstract. Genetic elements encoded in nuclear DNA determine the sex of an individual in many animals. In certain bivalve lineages that possess doubly uniparenta

Mitonuclear sex determination? Empirical evidence from bivalves. academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-...

New from @snaildit.bsky.social and me. We find that popular methods for detecting introgression between sister species (fastsimcoal2, dadi, BPP) all have high false positive rates in biologically realistic settings.

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