Jitka Polechová

Ilustration of evolution in ecological communities, feuturing Drosophila

PhD-position vacancy in Jan Hrcek's lab lab.hrcek.net, Czech Academy of Sciences: Exploring how rapid evolution in communities allows maintenance of genetic variation and species diversity. @erc.europa.eu 🪰 🧬 🌏 🧪Application deadline: January 7th 2026

With #eseb2025 coming to a close, it is time to start making plans for 2026. Interested in the interface of evolution 🧬 and ecology 🌳? Come to our #ExE conference hosted by @uniexecec.bsky.social in beautiful #Cornwall. Leave your email address at tinyurl.com/EvolxEcol to join our mailing list!

Population Biology Modeling & Theory (PBMT) is a peer-reviewed journal reporting advances in modeling and theory within population biology. Its scope spans demography, ecology, epidemiology, evolutionary biology, population genetics, and phylogenetics. PBMT will be online soon.

Big news: ARIA's Engineering Ecosystem Resilience (EER) opportunity space has begun funding, we're hiring, and we're sharing our (tentative) roadmap.

Thanks!! :)

Hi! (evolutionary) theoretical ecologists here, particularly concerned with evolution of species' ranges - if you still have space.

Interested in a PhD connecting sensory ecology and evolutionary genetics? Applications are now open for a project on the Speciation Genomics of Eye Size Variation in Heliconius Butterflies in our lab at LMU Munich: www.evol.bio.lmu.de/research/mer... Please repost!

Macrogenetic atlas of prokaryotes Macrogenetics investigates the patterns and predictors of intraspecific genetic variation across diverse taxa, offering a framework to address longstanding evolutionary hypotheses. Here, we present a ...

Delighted to present our Macrogenetics atlas of prokaryotes. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... This is a herculean effort from Chao Yang, which has a previous existence as a preprint first posted in 2018 "why panmictic bacteria are rare?" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

It is worth paying close attention to the new bill "Dangerous Viral Gain of Function Research Moratorium Act" introduced by Senator Roger Marshall.

If enacted, it will effectively stop all of virological research, including for vaccines.

www.marshall.senate.gov/wp-content/u...

🧵👇

You are right! Incidentally, I am just trying to put together a sentence to at least refer to some of the ENM works which I came across (www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....). I take that ENM work comes from ecology, whereas this comes from evolution: coupling evolutionary genetics with population dynamics.

Thanks! Looking forward to questions/comments. Submitting at some point next week..

Preprint finally out! I show that eco-evo feedback can drive a tipping point where genetic drift overwhelms adaptation. This can result in a contraction of a species' range border or range fragmentation. Fragmentation is abrupt and arises readily under rapid temporal change. doi.org/10.1101/2025...

doi.org/10.1101/2025... - comments welcome!

Niche breadth specialization impacts ecological and evolutionary adaptation following environmental change Abstract. Ecological theory predicts that organismal distribution and abundance depend on the ability to adapt to environmental change. It also predicts th

Excited to share our new study in @ismepublications.bsky.social showing that microbial niche breadth specialisation (being a generalist or a specialist) impacts ecological and evolutionary adaptation following environmental change doi.org/10.1093/isme...

Opportunity! We are looking for new editors - application deadline is Monday 20th January. Positions available:

Associate Editors
Handling Editor
Commissioning Editor

Details here: jevbio.net/call-for-edi...

Regulatory networks may evolve to favor adaptive foresight Pleiotropy (a single mutation altering many traits) has long been seen as hindering adaptation. A new study in PLOS Biology offers a striking counterexample, suggesting that regulatory networks may ev...

A really lovely perspective on our paper led by @grantkinsler.bsky.social and Yuping Li in Plos Biology! journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

If you have space, I am interested in species cohesion as much as in speciation; particularly in spatially structured environments.

I made a starter pack of speciation researchers. Please let me know if you or someone you know would like to be added. I am particularly sad that so far there are not many speciation researchers from the Global South represented.
go.bsky.app/J7qDY56

Thanks!! :)

thanks! Also: @isimova.bsky.social @pavelpayne.bsky.social

I work on models of joint evolutionary (population genetic) and ecological (population) dynamics in spatially and temporally variable environments. If it fits, I'd love to be added too.

The above paper is a classic, well worth a read. Recently, Nick Barton (2024) wrote a detailed overview of the theory of limits to adaptation, focusing on feedback between evolutionary (population genetic) and demographic dynamics, as well as insights from information theory: doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

The Nature of Limits to Natural Selection on JSTOR Janis Antonovics, The Nature of Limits to Natural Selection, Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, Vol. 63, No. 2 (1976), pp. 224-247

One near-tautology well articulated by Janis Antonovics in The nature of limits to natural selection (1976): "Insufficient genetic variability and the swamping effects of gene flow are inadequate [later: "almost tautological"] explanations of limits to natural selection." doi.org/10.2307/2395...

I'm building a Starter Pack of Early Career Evolutionary Biologists. It's hard to gather usernames using the search tool. Please add your name to this thread if you want to be added!

Exciting opportunity! 🌱Join our Lab of Quantitative Ecology at Charles University, Prague! 🇨🇿
Fully funded PhD in Functional Vegetation Paleoecology.

📅Start October 2025 - Apply by January 15

Details: bit.ly/PhD_Function...

Aww thanks. A nice hike two weeks ago in the Austrian Alps. The pic that you posted is beautiful!

Probably don't have the reach on here yet - BUT:
I have a fully-funded four year PhD studentship available - the deadline is soon - November 25th - so please share if you can.
And let's connect if you are interested in #genedrive #pestcontrol #evobio
biodtp.norwichresearchpark.ac.uk/projects/new...

If you see this, please repost with a favourite photo of the sky that you’ve taken recently.

Ecological modelling: bsky.app/starter-pack...

Ecological forecasting: bsky.app/starter-pack...