Ayush Valecha

graphical abstract of the article the extended mobility of plasmids

Here's our new broad review on the extended mobility of plasmids, about all mechanisms driving and limiting their transfer. From conjugation to conduction, phage-plasmids to hitchers, molecular to evolutionary dynamics, ecology to biotech. The state of affairs. 1/9 academic.oup.com/nar/article/...

Plasmids promote bacterial evolution through a copy number-driven increase in mutation rate Plasmids are autonomously replicating DNA molecules that stably coexist with chromosomes in bacterial cells. These genetic elements drive horizontal gene transfer and play a fundamental role in bacter...

New paper alert! 🚨

Plasmids promote bacterial evolution through a copy number-driven increase in mutation rate.

We combine theory, simulations, experimental evolution, and bioinformatics to demonstrate that mutation rates scale with plasmid copy number.

Let's dive in! 🧵👇

Simons Graduate Fellowships in Ecology and Evolution The purpose of these awards is to provide support for students entering U.S.-based Ph.D. programs with a plan to perform research in ecology and evolution. While we will consider all projects in ecolo...

Check out this brand new fellowship from the Simon’s Foundation in Ecology and Evolution. Incoming grad students this year are eligible to apply. No citizenship restrictions. www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/simons...

Emergent coexistence and the limits of reductionism in ecological communities Understanding if pairwise interactions explain the species composition of communities is a central goal in ecology. This question has been challenged by the observation of emergent coexistence, where ...

Emergent coexistence and the limits of reductionism in ecological communities

bioRxiv by @guimaguade.bsky.social and Sonia Kefi

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

Delighted to see this paper from danderson123.bsky.social 's PhD out. We have been building tools for AMR gene detection for over a decade now, but multicopy genes remain challenging. Dan shows that with a gene-space de Bruijn graph and long reads, you can do well
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Diversity Between but Not Within Microbial Communities Increases With the Diversity of Supplied Nutrients https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.10.653264v1

📣Next Tuesday our seminar will be Troy Day (Queen's), presenting:

⭐Modelling the distribution of fitness effects of new mutations⭐

Zoom link: iite.info/seminar/
Global times: www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/f...

As ever, free for all get involved, just join the call.
See you there!

🐭 Wild house mice have love strategies:
Some fight for territory and guard females.
Others roam, flirting on the go.
Most switch it up—based on age, strength & social vibes.
🧬 It’s not just instinct. It’s personality.
www.evolbio.mpg.de/3816673/news...
#evolution #animalbehavior #science

🚨 Part 1 of our 2-Part Career Webinar Series is TOMORROW! 🚨

Join us to hear from experts in government, industry, non-profits, & publishing.

💬 Get your questions ready for the live Q&A!
We can't wait to see you there!

Message us for the Zoom Link.
#CareerWebinar #Networking #LiveEvent #EEB

OPEN CALL for PhD positions in our lab through the semm_it program:

1️⃣ Microbiome signatures of early on-set colorectal cancer
2️⃣ High-resolution computational metagenomics for the study of human microbiome transmission

More info: www.semm.it/education/op...

Apply by June 9!

Hi #evosky,
I'm currently looking for examples in theoretical biology where very different thought processes ended up being complementary ways to formalise the same problem. Does anyone have examples of these? Let me provide concrete examples of the kind of things I have in mind

🌍🧬 #hpbio #biology

📢ISAC webinar announcement

Darwin meets the antibiotic crisis: how to use evolutionary principles to optimise #antibiotic therapy

Organised by the Early Career Working Group

📆2 May 🕰 12.00
Register⬇️
tinyurl.com/yc6df5w7
@jinxin-zhao.bsky.social @souhakanj.bsky.social @heiman-wertheim.bsky.social

Join the ESEB 2025 symposium on bacteria-phage ecology and evolution (S43) with Frédérique Le Roux and Michael Brockhurst as invited speakers. Submit abstracts by April 25, 2025 (eseb2025.com/call-for-abs...). See you in Barcelona, August 17-22, 2025! #phagesky

Applications now open for UNIL Summer School on Modelling for Evo Bio (1–6 Sept 2025, Lausanne)!
Aimed at PhD students interested in formal approaches to evolutionary ecology questions like sexual selection, social & life-history evolution. Scholarships available.
Pls share! www.shorturl.at/znk5g

Picture of male Oecanthus henryi

Picture of male Oecanthus henryi

Since we've moved platforms, I thought I'd make a new explainer thread for our (Aamir Sadiq, @vishuguttal.bsky.social, Rohini Balakrishnan, and I) recent paper on tree crickets.

Meet Oecanthus henryi. Like in many cricket species, O. henryi males call to attract mates.

#science #evobio 🌍 🧬

The hunt for the next CRISPR: how warring microbes are inspiring new technology Gene editing and many other useful biotechnology tools came from studies of bacteria fighting off viral invaders. But scientists have only begun to unlock the secrets of this ancient arms race.

The field of bacterial immunity is incredibly vibrant with many novel discoveries and fantastic new biology.
Here is a nice summary of some of the work done recently!

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

🎉 Thrilled to announce the second instalment of the Evolution of Ageing workshop, taking place 30th Sept – 2nd Oct in Ingelheim, Germany!

"The Evolution of Ageing: Traversing the Interdisciplinary Divide", hosted by the Gutenberg Workshops.

Excited to share the first preprint from my PhD at @binfutrecht.bsky.social ! 1.5 years ago, @bramvandijk.bsky.social hired me to investigate: why do prophages preferentially carry virulence genes? Using mathematical models, we propose that spatial structure plays a key role. Here's a summary:

1/15

Mutualism breakdown underpins evolutionary rescue in an obligate cross-feeding bacterial consortium - Nature Communications Rapid genetic adaptation to environmental change, or evolutionary rescue, can be constrained by a less adaptable mutualistic partner. Here, the authors explore evolutionary rescue in an obligate mutua...

1/ In our new paper, we explored whether obligate mutualisms can survive abrupt stress via evolutionary rescue.

We found that evolutionary rescue is possible—but it comes at the cost of mutualism. @jfriedman.bsky.social

#microsky #evosky #mevosky

🧬 Rethinking Cooperation in Biology?

New study suggests that natural growth differences – not just strategy – matter big time for cooperation in nature.
Turns out, yeast don't need to be strategic.

www.evolbio.mpg.de/3815028/news...
#evolution #ecology #cooperation #science

Filamentous cheater phages drive bacterial and phage populations to lower fitness Many bacteria carry phage genome(s) in their chromosome (i.e., prophage), and this intertwines the fitness of the bacterium and the phage. Most Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains carry filamentous phages ...

Preprint out! Bacteria w/ hyper-replicative filamentous phage lead to overnight emergence of cheater phages. Bacteria w/ both phages can outcompete wildtype, then rapidly lose phage via a phage Tragedy of the Commons
@shellyscrib.bsky.social @vscooper.micropopbio.org www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Filamentous cheater phages drive bacterial and phage populations to lower fitness Many bacteria carry phage genome(s) in their chromosome (i.e., prophage), and this intertwines the fitness of the bacterium and the phage. Most Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains carry filamentous phages ...

Our new preprint by @nanamikubota.bsky.social shows that P. aeruginosa, and likely many other bacteria carrying filamentous prophages (like V. parahaemolyticus), risk being exploited by these phages in a runaway process that reduces fitness of both host and virus. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵

A very nice study from our institute @mpi-evolbio.bsky.social @avezyrakis.bsky.social

Note the press release: "It’s a charming lesson from the humble house mouse: sometimes it’s not the loudest or boldest who breaks through — it’s the one who keeps coming back."

Does this also apply in science?

So this is it!

Guess I can now call myself Doctor 😎

Resilience and robustness: from sub-organismal responses to communities Coping with challenges is essential to life on earth. Determining the processes that generate resilience and robustness to disturbance across levels of biological organization is increasingly important as the pace of global change accelerates; however, to date, multiscale models have primarily focused on population to ecosystem scales. In this opinion article we combine conceptual models from different fields to develop a unified a framework of resilience and robustness that explicitly links sub-organismal responses with higher-level outcomes. This framework predicts that interactions among sub-organismal response components – including their temporal dynamics and the plasticity of homeostatic regulatory networks – are key drivers of current and future resilience.

Online now: Resilience and robustness: from sub-organismal responses to communities

PhD position in Molecular Biology We are looking for a PhD student in Molecular Biology and a special interest in microbial evolution and ecology. The position at the Department of Molecular Biology at Umeå University is temporary fo

We have a salaried 4-year PhD student position available in the Lind Lab at Umeå University, Sweden! Exploring the eco-evolutionary dynamics of salt-induced cell clustering in bacteria. Reposts appreciated. umu.varbi.com/en/?jobtoken...

Another place where I hope we can apply our models is in the field of evolutionary microbiology to study bacteria-phage dynamics. I wonder 🤔 if an analogous question could be studying the strength of plasmid protection to bacteria against phages and the interactions between these MGEs?

In particular, we would collaborate with experimental groups working with Daphnia, its symbionts as well as parasites as part of the DynaSym research unit (www.dynasym.uni-konstanz.de). Do check out these super cool projects involving several amazing labs across Germany!

The topic of my PhD would be modeling how the amount of protection offered by defensive symbionts to their hosts changes with the fluctuation in parasite density during an epidemic. We plan to calibrate our general models to experimental data.

I am very happy to announce that I’ll be starting a PhD in June in Dr. Hildegard Uecker’s group (web.evolbio.mpg.de/stochdyn/) at MPI for evolutionary biology, Plön!!