Joanna Masel

APSPM 2026: Structural Phylogenetics Meeting A pivotal SMBE regional meeting in Brisbane on the interface of protein structure, function, and evolution.

Meet the plenary speakers for #APSPM2026.

Joanna Masel @joannamasel.bsky.social
Nicholas Matzke @nicholasmatzke.bsky.social

Join us to discuss how protein structure is changing evolutionary theory, phylogenetics and molecular evolution.

biosig.lab.uq.edu.au/strphy26/spe...

Phylogenetic reconciliation supports a methanogenic ancestor of the Archaea and a derived origin for host-associated lineages The phylogeny of the Archaea continues to be revisited and revised as new groups are discovered and phylogenetic methods improve, but key questions about their early evolution remain. It has been sugg...

#Archaea, #DPANN, #phylogenetic_reconciliation
New preprint online!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Abstract submission deadline for #AbSciCon2026 is Jan 14. I'll be co-organizing a session on "The Last Universal Common Ancestor and the Origins of Translation" with @lorendw.bsky.social and @seekingluca.bsky.social, with lots of other cool related topics at agu.confex.com/agu/abscicon.... Join us!

An empirical approach to evaluating the prevalence of long-lived balancing selection in humans--and important limitations. Work by @hannahmm.bsky.social

🧪

Hard to believe that this is still something we have to argue for in 2025. The science is settled.

APSPM 2026: Structural Phylogenetics Meeting A pivotal SMBE regional meeting in Brisbane on the interface of protein structure, function, and evolution.

We are excited to announce APSPM 2026 - the SMBE Australasian Protein Structural Phylogenetics Meeting!

🗓️ 15-18 Feb. 2026
🌏 Brisbane, Australia

🔗 biosig.lab.uq.edu.au/strphy26/

📄 Abstract submission: 28.11.2025
✈️ Travel grant application: 28.11.2025
✏️ Registration: 15.01.2026

#StrPhy26

The new #NSF #GRFP application now excludes 1000’s of students, including those who were told they could apply this year, or who planned to apply next year.

We have a new specific petition urging #NSFGRFP undo this harmful action. If you are impacted sign here: laurenkuehne.github.io/grfpChanges/

Trump administration tries to tamp down panic for high-skill visa holders after last-minute overhaul The president announced Friday that H-1B visas will now come with a $100,000 annual fee, but a U.S. official said it will only apply to new visa applicants.

It is insanity that this hugely consequential news — whether Trump’s EO vomit tirade about H1Bs applies to current visa holders — is sourced *anonymously*! No one will go on record to clarify the new rules!? www.politico.com/news/2025/09...

Within-family heritability estimates for behavioural and disease phenotypes from 500,000 sibling pairs of diverse ancestries Quantification of the direct effect of genetic variation on human behavioural traits is important for understanding between-individual variation in socio-economic and health outcomes but estimates of ...

Massive sibling regression study finds that human traits are largely environmentally driven (average heritability = 0.3)

Universal adaptive strategy theory - Wikipedia

Tilman posited that apparently low-density environments (where Grime let ruderals succeed) had larger territories, with resources still exploited down to the lowest tolerated level. We support Grime’s view, by highlighting that resource levels need not be so low en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Univers... 9/9

In previous work, we tackled different ways of competing over territories, i.e. durable resources doi.org/10.1016/j.tp.... Our current work addresses consumable resources. Both can be seen as formalizations of Grime’s ruderals vs competitors vs colonizers. 8/9

Series of phase diagrams showing when coexistence vs one type winning occurs, and via which mechanism. Each phase diagram has the hawkishness of the two types as its axes, based on the rate at which they give up during contests. Different panels vary in their search and/or handing rates, changing both exploitation and interference.

The same difference in exploitative ability yields more coexistence when created by search speed differences than via handling times. 7/9

Faster search yields more opportunities to interfere, and faster handling yields fewer opportunities to be interfered with. This mechanistic connection between exploitative and interference abilities is core to our results, and how they differ from past work. 6/9

Table showing the conditions for six different outcomes: the R* rule, Hawk victory, Dove victory, Hawk-Dove coexistence, the Dominance-discovery trade-off, or the Dove-discovery trade-off. Terms for the strength of Exploitative differences vs Interference differences enable us to distinguish among the scenarios.

Other parameters yield the “dominance-discovery” trade-off described in ants, where the Dove loses at contests but is better at finding new resources. We also find a new “Dove-discovery” trade-off, where Hawks search better, but the opportunity costs from contests is too high. 5/9

Some parameter choices yield something like the Hawk-Dove game, with a trade-off between the benefits of interfering with the other type and the costs of interfering with one’s own type. The Hawk’s cost need not be direct – an opportunity cost from time spent fighting is enough. 4/9

Ball and stick diagram showing mass action kinetics by which Searchers find Resources and coming Handlers, Searchers find Handlers to begin a Contest, Contests end when one side dies or gives up, Handling ends with consumption, or Handlers or Searchers die.

We develop a mechanistic model in which consuming a resource takes time, and Handlers can be interrupted by Searchers who find them rather than free Resource. This initiates a Contest, distracting the consumers, thus allowing the resource to grow to higher levels. 3/9

R* theory assumes no direct interactions at the same trophic level, and that resources are consumed down to the level at which only one species can persist. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R*_rule... 2/9

A Mechanistically Integrated Model of Exploitative and Interference Competition over a Single Resource Produces Widespread Coexistence | The American Naturalist Abstract Many ecological models treat exploitative competition in isolation from interference competition. Corresponding theory centers around the R* rule, according to which consumers that share a si...

Our new paper @asn-amnat.bsky.social develops a Grand Unified Theory including both exploitative and interference competition doi.org/10.1086/737628. The R* rule of ecology (that 2 species cannot coexist on a single resource), is widely broken, including via a new trade-off we describe. 1/9

The House discretionary budget bill is now out for FY26, including a proposed *slight boost* in NIH funding & many other components that will take time to unpack.

Bill text:
appropriations.house.gov/sites/evo-su...

A few key points including IDC analysis in a provisional 🧵

Trump Deals A New Immigration Blow To International Students Trump officials have proposed a new rule limiting international students to fixed periods of entry, making a U.S. education more precarious.

Trump admin planning to change student visas from lasting for duration of academic program to fixed 4-yr term, and then much harder to renew
Could destroy US ability to attract global talent, particularly those seeking advanced degrees in STEM. The median time to complete a PhD is 5.7 yrs per NSF.

Exclusive: Harvard University lays off fly database team The layoffs jeopardize this resource, which has served more than 4,000 labs for about three decades.

Very sad to see.
www.thetransmitter.org/community/ha...

Viruses are a dominant driver of protein adaptation in mammals Viruses drive adaptation at the scale of the whole proteome and not only in antiviral proteins in mammalian hosts.

I think the strongest evidence for pervasive adaptive substitutions comes from @denard.bsky.social eg elifesciences.org/articles/12469 and subsequent work. The reason is pathogens, although other arms races might contribute.

I think there is a drift barrier in all cases. But allele frequencies trajectories are different, affecting the site frequency spectrum. We found that the Ne reduction stems from interactions between beneficial and deleterious alleles: bsky.app/profile/joan...

Whoops, I just realized what you were pointing to. I was quoting @nicolasgaltier.bsky.social that time. It's really about the effects of sites that the focal allele is in LD with: either fewer of them and linked, or potentially weakly the whole genome.

Also, I think what I wrote about linked selection in that thread was a direct quote from the authors.

You are asking why in a thread I wrote 2 years ago, I wasn't yet aware of all the results that came from our 1-year-old paper!!! I think you can guess the reason...

The quality of genetic background has temporal autocorrelation. Neutral theory cannot capture the resulting colored noise. www.cell.com/current-biol...

The theory of background selection from linked sites is very different to that from unlinked sites. Charlesworth actually started with the latter, although most current work is the former.

The paper finds var(#del mut per individual) < mean. This implies non-independent evolution. Think of selection as taking out the worst quadrant given two arbitrary axes - you'll get a negative correlation after, ie LD among unlinked sites.

I did a thread on the paper at ecoevo.social/deck/@Joanna..., but I can also say more here (thread).