The Tree of Life web project is back! A phylogenetic view of biodiversity way ahead of its time (ca. 1995!), conceived and led by David Maddison, collaborative & human-curated, widely used in teaching. Defunct technology had doomed it until Travis, Danny, and Andrew revived it. 🥳🎉 🧪 #evolbiol
The Tree of Life Web Project is back online!
tolweb.org
Thanks to Travis Wheeler (@wheelerlab.org), Danny Mandel, and Andrew Lenards, the original programmers for ToLWeb, for retooling the code to work on a modern OS! It is hard for me to believe it lives again.
tolweb.org
Thanks to Travis Wheeler (@wheelerlab.org), Danny Mandel, and Andrew Lenards, the original programmers for ToLWeb, for retooling the code to work on a modern OS! It is hard for me to believe it lives again.
Tree
of Life Web Project
tolweb.org
September 9, 2026 at 3:32 PM
The Tree of Life web project is back! A phylogenetic view of biodiversity way ahead of its time (ca. 1995!), conceived and led by David Maddison, collaborative & human-curated, widely used in teaching. Defunct technology had doomed it until Travis, Danny, and Andrew revived it. 🥳🎉 🧪 #evolbiol
Great frigate bird juvenile. #birds #evolbiol
September 30, 2023 at 1:27 AM
Great frigate bird juvenile. #birds #evolbiol
A new preprint from the lab. Might be of interest to people who use barcode lineage tracking to catch de novo adaptive mutations. #popgen #evolbiol
A Bayesian filtering method for estimating the fitness effects of nascent adaptive mutations https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.29.646120v1
April 5, 2025 at 4:24 AM
Popgen folks, Jiseon, Nate, and Andy, along with Yuxin Ning and Franz Baumdicker, just released a really cool new method for simulation based inference (think ABC) using normalizing flows. It seems to work really well! full joint posteriors ftw!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Neural posterior estimation for population genetics
Simulation-based inference methods are increasingly being used in population genetics due to their flexibility and ability to be applied in settings where likelihood-based methods are intractable. Per...
www.biorxiv.org
December 3, 2025 at 8:28 PM
This is so cool, and makes me thing of Lynn Margulis claims that cell fusion, symbiosis are at the heart of speciation. #wildlife #evodevo #evolbiol
www.popsci.com/environment/...
www.popsci.com/environment/...
Two comb jellies can fuse together into one–and keep both butts
They heal. They poop. They live on.
www.popsci.com
April 22, 2025 at 1:31 AM
This is so cool, and makes me thing of Lynn Margulis claims that cell fusion, symbiosis are at the heart of speciation. #wildlife #evodevo #evolbiol
www.popsci.com/environment/...
www.popsci.com/environment/...
Important new paper just out on the origins & #evolbiol of the London Underground Mosquito Culex p. molestus by @yukihaba.bsky.social @lindymcbr.bsky.social. Spoiler alert: Molestus originated 1000s of years ago in the Middle East www.biorxiv.org/content/bior... #evolviol #urbanevolution
January 31, 2025 at 1:25 PM
Important new paper just out on the origins & #evolbiol of the London Underground Mosquito Culex p. molestus by @yukihaba.bsky.social @lindymcbr.bsky.social. Spoiler alert: Molestus originated 1000s of years ago in the Middle East www.biorxiv.org/content/bior... #evolviol #urbanevolution
🪱 Platynereis dumerilii is a marine worm that offers important insights about evolution.
Scientists from EMBL Heidelberg's Arendt Group follow this species across time and space, to construct the first atlas with cellular resolution for the whole animal.
🧪 #evolbiol www.embl.org/news/science...
Scientists from EMBL Heidelberg's Arendt Group follow this species across time and space, to construct the first atlas with cellular resolution for the whole animal.
🧪 #evolbiol www.embl.org/news/science...
January 10, 2025 at 12:18 PM
🪱 Platynereis dumerilii is a marine worm that offers important insights about evolution.
Scientists from EMBL Heidelberg's Arendt Group follow this species across time and space, to construct the first atlas with cellular resolution for the whole animal.
🧪 #evolbiol www.embl.org/news/science...
Scientists from EMBL Heidelberg's Arendt Group follow this species across time and space, to construct the first atlas with cellular resolution for the whole animal.
🧪 #evolbiol www.embl.org/news/science...
How about a Lava heron and sally lightfoot crab from the Galapagos for a bedtime photo (i.e. bedtime on the east coast of the US). #birds #evolbiol
#ecoevo
#ecoevo
October 4, 2023 at 12:41 AM
How about a Lava heron and sally lightfoot crab from the Galapagos for a bedtime photo (i.e. bedtime on the east coast of the US). #birds #evolbiol
#ecoevo
#ecoevo
Change in daylength is a powerful signal on our planet and is used by many organisms to make sure they are prepared for the coming season.
¡New discovery! Despite only living for a few hours, cyanobacteria can anticipate seasons by responding to changes in daylength 🧪
#chronobiology #EvolBiol
¡New discovery! Despite only living for a few hours, cyanobacteria can anticipate seasons by responding to changes in daylength 🧪
#chronobiology #EvolBiol
Incredibly proud to share this work, almost 6 years in the making, out this month in Science!!! 🎇
We've known for over a century that eukaryotes of all kinds anticipate the seasons (think: hibernation, flowering, reproduction!), but what about bacteria?🦠
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
We've known for over a century that eukaryotes of all kinds anticipate the seasons (think: hibernation, flowering, reproduction!), but what about bacteria?🦠
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Bacteria can anticipate the seasons: Photoperiodism in cyanobacteria
Photoperiodic time measurement is the ability of plants and animals to measure differences in day versus night length (photoperiod) and use that information to anticipate critical seasonal transformat...
www.science.org
December 6, 2024 at 12:19 AM
Change in daylength is a powerful signal on our planet and is used by many organisms to make sure they are prepared for the coming season.
¡New discovery! Despite only living for a few hours, cyanobacteria can anticipate seasons by responding to changes in daylength 🧪
#chronobiology #EvolBiol
¡New discovery! Despite only living for a few hours, cyanobacteria can anticipate seasons by responding to changes in daylength 🧪
#chronobiology #EvolBiol
A new method for trimming alignments in #phylogenomics — PhyIN. It identifies and trims regions with high phylogenetic discord. Able to trim well even on single loci — an advantage for gene tree/species tree studies. #evolbiol #phylogeny 🧪http://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.18504 Some backstory... 🧵
PhyIN: trimming alignments by phylogenetic incompatibilities among neighbouring sites
In phylogenomics, regions of low alignment reliability and high noise are typically trimmed from multiple sequence alignments before they are used in phylogenetic inference. I introduce a new trimming...
doi.org
December 6, 2024 at 12:56 AM
A new method for trimming alignments in #phylogenomics — PhyIN. It identifies and trims regions with high phylogenetic discord. Able to trim well even on single loci — an advantage for gene tree/species tree studies. #evolbiol #phylogeny 🧪http://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.18504 Some backstory... 🧵
#CoolScience: Fascinating and important new paper "Allometric scaling of somatic mutation and epimutation rates ..." by Frank Johannes in @journal-evo.bsky.social. He shows that annual somatic (epi)mutation rates are inversely related to lifespan #Genetics #EvolBiol academic.oup.com/evolut/artic...
January 8, 2025 at 5:17 PM
#CoolScience: Fascinating and important new paper "Allometric scaling of somatic mutation and epimutation rates ..." by Frank Johannes in @journal-evo.bsky.social. He shows that annual somatic (epi)mutation rates are inversely related to lifespan #Genetics #EvolBiol academic.oup.com/evolut/artic...
January 21, 2025 at 2:09 AM
🧬 & 🖥️, 🧪, #evolbiol
We're hiring! The Department of Integrative Biology at MSU is looking for a functional genomicist. Please help spread the word! careers.msu.edu/en-us/job/52...
MSU Careers Details - Assistant Professor-Tenure System - Functional Genomics
careers.msu.edu
November 11, 2024 at 8:53 PM
🧬 & 🖥️, 🧪, #evolbiol
The original paper is open access for those who want to look in greater depth www.nature.com/articles/s41... #science #queerinstem #LGBTQSTEM #evolbiol
Today I wrote about a new study on same-sex sexual behavior in mammals. It's evolved often, and looks like an adaptation to social living. Here's the story [gift link] tinyurl.com/ysj5wbzk
October 3, 2023 at 3:17 PM
The original paper is open access for those who want to look in greater depth www.nature.com/articles/s41... #science #queerinstem #LGBTQSTEM #evolbiol
Tonight's bird is a great frigate bird male hoping to attract a female. Taken on North Seymour Island, Galápagos'. Distinguishing feature (to tell it apart from the Magnificent FB) is the green iridescence. #birds #evolbiol
September 29, 2023 at 1:22 AM
Tonight's bird is a great frigate bird male hoping to attract a female. Taken on North Seymour Island, Galápagos'. Distinguishing feature (to tell it apart from the Magnificent FB) is the green iridescence. #birds #evolbiol
In the fun facts department: ants have fungi farms. The asteroid that killed all the dinosaurs may have also created conditions for fungal evolution and the ants may have taken advantage.
#science #wildlife #evolbiol
www.science.org/content/arti...
#science #wildlife #evolbiol
www.science.org/content/arti...
Asteroid impact may have turned ants into fungus farmers 66 million years ago
Cataclysm that killed dinosaurs and shook up life on Earth likely paved the way for this mutually beneficial relationship
www.science.org
November 24, 2024 at 10:39 PM
In the fun facts department: ants have fungi farms. The asteroid that killed all the dinosaurs may have also created conditions for fungal evolution and the ants may have taken advantage.
#science #wildlife #evolbiol
www.science.org/content/arti...
#science #wildlife #evolbiol
www.science.org/content/arti...
A female great frigate bird. Red eye ring is the defining marker. North Seymour island, Galapagos. #birds #evolbiol
September 27, 2023 at 12:08 AM
A female great frigate bird. Red eye ring is the defining marker. North Seymour island, Galapagos. #birds #evolbiol
I'm excited to share memes that my students made this year in my undergraduate #Evolution class #popgen #consgen #evolbiol . "When a batesian mimicry species comes to the party: hello fellow harmful species" "I found on all-encompassing way to define species"
December 19, 2025 at 1:00 PM
I'm excited to share memes that my students made this year in my undergraduate #Evolution class #popgen #consgen #evolbiol . "When a batesian mimicry species comes to the party: hello fellow harmful species" "I found on all-encompassing way to define species"
Our paper with @lmchev.bsky.social on the partitioning of variance of reaction norm for plastic traits has now been published in @peercomjournal.bsky.social.
#evolbiol #phenplas #quantgen 🧪
peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10....
#evolbiol #phenplas #quantgen 🧪
peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10....
Partitioning the phenotypic and genetic variances of reaction norms
peercommunityjournal.org
January 28, 2025 at 8:42 AM
Our paper with @lmchev.bsky.social on the partitioning of variance of reaction norm for plastic traits has now been published in @peercomjournal.bsky.social.
#evolbiol #phenplas #quantgen 🧪
peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10....
#evolbiol #phenplas #quantgen 🧪
peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10....
💙📚 #EvolBiol
Our book, "Nature Beats" is finally out. It talks all about how we can study rhythm across species and what that can tell us about the evolution of music.
link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
July 28, 2026 at 12:25 PM
💙📚 #EvolBiol
Registrations and submissions for #CSEE2025 are now OPEN! Don’t miss your chance, submit your abstract and register before March 15th. Registration: event.fourwaves.com/scee2025/pages. Accommodation: event.fourwaves.com/scee2025/pag...
#phdsky #evolbiol #ecology 🌎
#phdsky #evolbiol #ecology 🌎
February 12, 2025 at 4:56 PM
Registrations and submissions for #CSEE2025 are now OPEN! Don’t miss your chance, submit your abstract and register before March 15th. Registration: event.fourwaves.com/scee2025/pages. Accommodation: event.fourwaves.com/scee2025/pag...
#phdsky #evolbiol #ecology 🌎
#phdsky #evolbiol #ecology 🌎