Jesper Boman
jesperboman.bsky.social
Jesper Boman
@jesperboman.bsky.social
Evolutionary biologist
Pinned
I feel honored that our work: "On the origin of an insular hybrid butterfly lineage" was picked as "Editor's choice" and that my picture of a mating couple (🧡🤎) covers the latest issue of Evolution @journal-evo.bsky.social. Link to paper: academic.oup.com/evolut/artic... (1/8)
Reposted by Jesper Boman
(1/5)Thrilled to announce our paper on #ProjectPsyche is out! 🦋We describe how we’ve generated 1000+ high-quality genomes for European Lepidoptera, providing an unprecedented resource for biodiversity, conservation, and evolutionary research.
#Genomics #Biodiversity
www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...
Project Psyche: reference genomes for all Lepidoptera in Europe
Project Psyche is a transnational initiative to generate and study chromosome-level reference genomes of all ~11 000 species of Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) found in Europe. Here, we describe t...
www.cell.com
November 27, 2025 at 1:22 PM
Investigating the evolution of large meiotic rings of multiple X and Y sex chromosomes in two Leptodactylus frog species (Anura, Leptodactylidae) www.nature.com/articles/s42...
November 22, 2025 at 8:31 PM
Reposted by Jesper Boman
Out today, our take on 6-methyladenine #6mA evolution in Eukaryotes @natgenet.nature.com. We asked a simple question, is really DNA 6mA common across the eukaryotes? The answer is "yes" if you're a unicellular eukaryote 🦠, not so if you're multicellular 🐝🌱🍄. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/9
Adenine DNA methylation associated with transcriptionally permissive chromatin is widespread across eukaryotes - Nature Genetics
Long-read sequencing in 18 unicellular eukaryotes reveals that 6mA is widespread across eukaryotes and is enriched at transcriptionally permissive regions, which are also marked by H3K4me3.
www.nature.com
November 18, 2025 at 12:00 PM
Reposted by Jesper Boman
With 29 sponge genomes included in this integrative phylogenomic study, sponges are once more shown to be sister-species to the rest of the animals...
NEW pub in @science.org 🥳

Is it sponges (panels A & B) or comb jellies (C & D) that root the animal tree of life?

For over 15 years, #phylogenomic studies have been divided.

We provide new evidence suggesting that...

🔗: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
November 15, 2025 at 7:36 PM
Reposted by Jesper Boman
Available now in @asn-amnat.bsky.social ! Taking on some big-scale natural history: processed >40k @inaturalist.bsky.social images of Monarda fistulosa using computer vision to query for flower presence and phenotype flower color: doi.org/10.1086/739413
November 14, 2025 at 6:29 PM
Reposted by Jesper Boman
One more day to go!

10am Eastern Thursday November 13.
internalconflictsstn.wordpress.com/seminars/
Speciation special with @jenncoughlan.bsky.social and @ecmoore.bsky.social!

Thursday November 13.
November 12, 2025 at 12:54 PM
Reposted by Jesper Boman
B. Charlesworth & D. Charlesworth publish a new Review in GBE examining how suppressed recombination on emerging sex chromosomes can lead to genetic degeneration and how organisms evolve compensation mechanisms, following on HJ Muller's classic work.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/...

#genome #evolution
November 11, 2025 at 10:52 AM
Reposted by Jesper Boman
My first paper as a first author is officially out 🎉 @elife.bsky.social

We show that the iridescent colour of Morphos 🦋 tends to converge in sympatry while their chemical signals diverge, illustrating the constrasting effect natural and sexual selection on trait evolution.

doi.org/10.7554/eLif...
Convergent iridescence and divergent chemical signals in sympatric sister-species of Amazonian butterflies
Ecological interactions exert contrasting evolutionary pressures on sympatric Morpho butterflies, promoting convergence in iridescence but divergence in chemical cues, illustrating how ecological inte...
doi.org
November 6, 2025 at 8:55 AM
Reposted by Jesper Boman
What a remarkable discovery! In SW Turkey a new species of Lycaenid was discovered, Rapala suleymani sp.n., of a genus that was only known from the eastern palearctic & indomalayan realms, it's closest relative flies 7000km away! doi.org/10.31184/M00...
Rapala suleymani sp. n., (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae) a new thecline...: Ingenta Connect
doi.org
November 5, 2025 at 2:07 PM
Reposted by Jesper Boman
Check out our new insect decline paper. By analysing 36 yrs of German ground beetle distribution data, we show:
- ~80% of species have declined, with significant declines for >50%.
- The decline was similar across species traits and threatened status.
doi.org/10.1111/ddi.... @consbiog.bsky.social
November 3, 2025 at 1:38 AM
Reposted by Jesper Boman
This paper blew me out of the water!
October 24, 2025 at 2:08 AM
Reposted by Jesper Boman
Despite decades of effort, scientists have still not discovered a foolproof way to evaluate colleagues’ work that doesn’t involve reading the paper
But what if there are two co-first authors and the first-first author is actually also co-corresponding author with the last author but the second-first author isn’t?
October 27, 2025 at 2:21 PM
Reposted by Jesper Boman
One species of vampire moth, Calyptra thalictri has been regularly found in southern Finland, and even north of Stockholm... 😅
Vampire moths might sound more horror film than natural world, but they’re 100% real! 😱

See why some moths pick human blood over fruit juice in this week’s Surprising Science. 🩸🦇
October 26, 2025 at 12:56 PM
Reposted by Jesper Boman
super cool - I am constantly wondering about the effects of recent TE invasions? lethal mutations seems to be one striking effect
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Transposable elements drive much of naturally occurring genetic lethality in Drosophila melanogaster
Recessive lethal mutations are widespread across studied species, with estimates suggesting that each individual carries at least one. Numerous lethal alleles persist in wild populations at higher fre...
www.biorxiv.org
October 22, 2025 at 3:14 PM
Reposted by Jesper Boman
Transposable elements drive much of naturally occurring genetic lethality in Drosophila melanogaster https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.16.682755v1
October 16, 2025 at 7:32 PM
Reposted by Jesper Boman
Next level ant mimicry: a moth walking backwards reveals how its colour pattern and movements combine to produce a fairly good ant impression
#Borneo #insects #rainforest
October 19, 2025 at 12:09 AM
Reposted by Jesper Boman
Very cool paper from @rogervilalab.bsky.social on the Canary islands Hipparchia butterflies just came out! Each island has its own species, seems like no gene flow between the islands!
academic.oup.com/isd/article/...
Colonization, diversification and speciation of the genus Hipparchia (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) in the Canary Islands
Abstract. The Canary Islands harbor numerous endemic species, showcasing a wide array of colonization and diversification patterns. Butterflies belonging t
academic.oup.com
October 17, 2025 at 6:42 AM
Reposted by Jesper Boman
1/3 Excited that my final PhD MS is online! Big thanks to Ullasa (PI) (vanasiri.in) & collaborators Freerk and Urszula. Turns out humidity, not just temperature, plays a major role in butterfly eyespot plasticity. doi.org/10.1101/2025...
October 16, 2025 at 7:26 AM
Reposted by Jesper Boman
New review out! With students in my lab, we explore how population size shapes speciation—from drift in small populations to selection in large ones. Do small or large populations speciate faster? The answer is more nuanced than you might think.
esj-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Speciation Through the Lens of Population Dynamics: A Theoretical Primer on How Small and Large Populations Diverge
Population size and dynamics fundamentally shape speciation by influencing genetic drift, founder events, and adaptive potential. Small populations may speciate rapidly due to stronger drift, whereas...
esj-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
October 14, 2025 at 11:25 PM
Reposted by Jesper Boman
Now available in Systematic Biology, a new paper (and R package) in which we outline an approach to account for non-independence in comparative analyses of lineage-pair traits academic.oup.com/sysbio/advan...
The Comparative Analysis of Lineage-Pair Traits
Abstract. For many questions in ecology and evolution, the most relevant data to consider are attributes of lineage pairs. Comparative tests for causal rel
academic.oup.com
October 13, 2025 at 6:46 PM
Reposted by Jesper Boman
Tip rate estimates can predict future diversification, but are unreliable and context dependent https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.06.680809v1
October 7, 2025 at 10:33 PM
"An appealing metaphor is that the smaller population is on a drunkard’s walk, and the larger population, sober though tethered to the drunkard, must counterstep to keep the pair on target; in doing so, however, the sober member of the pair also looks drunk." www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Quantitative system drift
We consider a biological system composed of multiple genetically variable components, the combined result of which is a quantitative trait under stabilizing selection for an optimal value. We show mat...
www.biorxiv.org
October 4, 2025 at 9:00 PM
Reposted by Jesper Boman
Preprint Alert! 🦥
We produced complete genomes for 2 Xenarthra and placed them in a mammalian comparative framework. We found that Xenarthra harbour the largest number of retrocopies in mammals! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Retrocopy formation and domestication shape genome evolution in sloths and other xenarthrans
Xenarthrans, comprising sloths, anteaters, and armadillos, represent one of the most morphologically and physiologically specialised mammalian clades, yet the genomic basis of their adaptations remain...
www.biorxiv.org
October 2, 2025 at 9:16 PM