Connie Whiting

Gene loss associated with plasticity-first evolution in Heliconius butterflies Phenotypic plasticity occurs when a genotype can produce more than one phenotype under different environmental conditions. Genetic accommodation allows plastic phenotypes to be tuned to new environmen...

Very excited about this paper led by Erika Castro. She has shown that Heliconius were ancestrally plastic in how they acquired their cyanogens, but some species have lost the ability to biosynthesise toxins, and have lost genes involved www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

30.06.2025 09:30 — 👍 43    🔁 20    💬 1    📌 0

A circular phylogeny of Malawi cichlids with inversion frequencies indicated for different taxa as rings around the tree.

Check out our new paper about chromosomal inversions in Malawi cichlids! 🐟🧬

Available here without a paywall: hdl.handle.net/10067/214834... (click on the ‘Full text (open access)’ link).

19.06.2025 12:23 — 👍 15    🔁 10    💬 2    📌 1

need one of this cushions!!!

22.05.2025 16:24 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Solidarity with trans women after today’s Supreme Court ruling.

The rollback of LGBT rights — especially trans rights — is global, bankrolled by billionaires and the far-right.

Trans rights are human rights. We must defend the Equality Act and its protections for trans people.

16.04.2025 13:01 — 👍 3024    🔁 845    💬 92    📌 32

This is how Israeli settlers and soldiers – supported by the entire Republican party & much of the Democratic party – is responding to a movie about peace:

24.03.2025 19:05 — 👍 636    🔁 274    💬 7    📌 7

Four composite images showing larval marine fishes that appear to be mimicking noxious or unpalatable invertebrates.

A fascinating paper investigating circumstantial evidence that suggests that one of the ways that some pelagic marine fish larvae avoid predation is by Batesian mimicry of noxious, unpalatable, and/or low- caloric-value invertebrates primarily cnidarians & ctenophores.🐟🧪

zenodo.org/records/1488...

24.02.2025 14:22 — 👍 57    🔁 17    💬 3    📌 0

Dynamic co-evolution of transposable elements and the piRNA pathway in African cichlid fishes - Genome Biology Background East African cichlid fishes have diversified in an explosive fashion, but the (epi)genetic basis of the phenotypic diversity of these fishes remains largely unknown. Although transposable e...

Our first deep dive into TEs and piRNAs in African cichlids is finally published!

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

rdcu.be/d69S5

Our main findings below 🧵

#TEsky

29.01.2025 14:36 — 👍 53    🔁 30    💬 4    📌 2