Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Samridhi Chaturvedi

Daniel Bolnick @danielbolnick.bsky.social · 3d

This:
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Absolutely yes. And I'm proud that @asn-amnat.bsky.social has led the way on this with requiring code and data editors checking code for about five years now!

Stop treating code like an afterthought: record, share and value it

Scientists, research institutions, funders, libraries and publishers must all improve software practices.

www.nature.com

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Samridhi Chaturvedi @samridhi.bsky.social · 4d

Yay!! 💕

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Diana Tataru @dianatataru.bsky.social · 4d

I’m excited to announce that I am starting a postdoc position in the Gompert Lab at USU.

It brings me comfort and joy to study processes of change and adaptation- how boundaries between groups can break down and result in more variable and resilient populations. Catch me learning about 🦋 hybrids!!

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bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 4d

The impact of climate and habitat on body shape and size evolution in whip spiders (Amblypygi) https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.06.680801v1

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Katie Solari @kasolari.bsky.social · 4d

Very excited to share that our work assessing the genomic diversity of snow leopards has come out today in PNAS! Spoiler alert - they have the lowest genetic diversity of all big cats!
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
news.stanford.edu/stories/2025...
@petrovadmitri.bsky.social @elliecat.bsky.social

Exceedingly low genetic diversity in snow leopards due to persistently small population size | PNAS

Snow leopards (Panthera uncia) serve as an umbrella species whose conservation benefits their high-elevation Asian habitat. Their numbers are belie...

www.pnas.org

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Yonah Freemark @yonahfreemark.com · 7d

About 1% of US railway mileage is electrified, with only tiny steps taken to electrify more in recent years (Caltrain) www.fastcompany.com/91178844/ind...

Patrick Reynolds for a greater Auckland @patrickreynolds.bsky.social · 7d

Not nearly enough is made of the incredibly impressive feat Indian Railways has made to electrify almost 100% of its 135,000km of track, while also growing renewable sourcing. Huge:

timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/ind...

Indian Railways to achieve net zero targets in 2025 itself - 5 years ahead of 2030 goal - Times of India

India Business News: Indian Railways is set to achieve net-zero targets by year-end, surpassing its 2030 goal through extensive electrification. Aiming for 95% electric tr

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

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Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 11d

Jane Goodall, Eminent Primatologist Who Chronicled the Lives of Chimps, Dies at 91. Gift link: nyti.ms/48FOuUn

nyti.ms

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Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 14d

My friend @jbyoder.org has a new paper about coevolution that I think is very good and smart. However, we're still in a fight about whether the clownfish-anemone symbiosis is coevolution. So, share and read his paper, or do not. I will let you know if he apologizes academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

Don’t ask “when is it coevolution?” — ask “how?”

Abstract. Coevolution has come to be widely understood as specific, simultaneous, reciprocal adaptation by pairs of interacting species. This strict-sense

academic.oup.com

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Matt Rockman @wormsrock.bsky.social · 17d

C. elegans is a real animal and we set out to understand how it comes to have its distinctive biogeography. Its ancestral center of diversity is in the higher elevation forests of Hawaii. Its closest relatives are spread across east Asia. Did they travel from Asia? [Preprint 🧵]

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Kau))) @carbon8.bsky.social · 20d

🚨New work🚨 led by Ph.D. student Dipesh Chuphal (IIT Gandhinagar), shows that the recent drying of the Ganga River basin is unprecedented in 1,300 years—more severe than historical famines. This ~multidecadal drying appears forced, but many models do not capture it. ☔️ 🌧️

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Time series of standardized streamflow anomaly for the Ganga River from year 700 to 2020 (derived from a hydrological model and from the Monsoon Asia Drought Atlas built from tree rings). The plot shows mostly balanced wet (blue/green bars) and dry (brown bars) years until the 20th century, when the black moving-average line dips sharply after 1990. The 1991–2020 mean (blue horizontal line) is well below the range of previous 1,300 years. Orange dots mark major documented historical droughts, but the recent drying is clearly the most severe.

Observed changes in precipitation and temperature between 1951 and 2020. Spatial distribution of change in (A) annual precipitation (%) and (B) annual mean temperature (°C) between 1951 and 2020 based on the Sen’s slope calculation. Grids with statistically significant trends (P <= 0.05), based on the Mann–Kendall test, are highlighted with stippling. The Inset panels in (A) and (B) represent the interannual variability in precipitation anomaly (%) and temperature (°C) averaged
for the Ganga River Basin (blue boundary). The total change in average precipitation and temperature over the GRB during 1951−2020, estimated using the Sen’s slope, is statistically significant (P-value <= 0.05) based on the Mann–Kendall test.

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Marianna Karageorgi @mkarag.bsky.social · 27d

How do populations maintain an evolutionary memory? I am happy to share that our work with Dmitri Petrov @petrovadmitri.bsky.social, Paul Schmidt, and colleagues on dominance reversal and stabilization of insecticide resistance in changing environments over time is now published at Nature EE.

Beneficial reversal of dominance maintains a large-effect resistance polymorphism under fluctuating insecticide selection - Nature Ecology & Evolution

Measuring selection and dominance in fitness of the insecticide-resistant Ace alleles in Drosophila melanogaster, the authors show evidence for beneficial reversal of dominance, a mechanism that can s...

www.nature.com

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Samridhi Chaturvedi @samridhi.bsky.social · 29d

“Two Z and two W sex chromosomes are also identified. The largest Z chromosome comprises the ancestral Z fused with an autosome while the other is a neo-Z that is a fusion of two autosomes. The two W chromosomes are derived from copies of the Z-linked sequences.” 🤯

Charlotte Wright @charlottewright.bsky.social · Sep 11

How many chromosomes can an animal have?

In our paper out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social we show that the Atlas blue butterfly has 229 chromosome pairs- the highest in diploid Metazoa! These arose by rapid autosome fragmentation while sex chromosomes stayed intact.
www.cell.com/current-biol...

Constraints on chromosome evolution revealed by the 229 chromosome pairs of the Atlas blue butterfly

The genome of the Atlas blue butterfly contains ten times more chromosomes than most butterflies, and more than any other known diploid animal. Wright et al. show that this extraordinary karyotype is ...

tinyurl.com

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Scott P. Egan @scottpegan.bsky.social · Sep 12

The Dept. of BioSciences at #RiceUniversity, in Houston, Texas, invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professor position in Evolutionary Biology, with a preferred focus on organismal responses to environmental change. Please RT!

Apply: apply.interfolio.com/173889

Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio

apply.interfolio.com

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Camille Roux @crouxevo.bsky.social · Sep 12

Hybridization and introgression are major evolutionary processes. Since the 1940s, the prevailing view has been that they shape plants far more than animals. In our new study (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
), we find the opposite: animals exchange genes more, and for longer, than plants

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Alex Gunderson @agunderson.bsky.social · Sep 11

New paper! PhD student Julie Rej found that invasive brown anoles are more aggressive than native green anoles across a wide range of temperatures. The difference is greatest when it's hottest, ie, heat amplifies the aggression of an invasive species!

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

High temperatures amplify aggressiveness of an invasive lizard toward a native congener

Invasive species cause major disturbances to endemic wildlife and often displace native species. Behavioral aggression can contribute to invasive spec…

www.sciencedirect.com

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Simon Baeckens @simonbaeckens.bsky.social · Sep 8

Extreme climate events can catalyze rapid evolutionary change! in our new Current Biology (@currentbiology.bsky.social) piece, Colin and I argue it’s time to study their evolutionary consequences systematically — beyond opportunistic observations. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Evolutionary consequences of extreme climate events

Simon Baeckens and Colin Donihue review case studies of rapid evolutionary change in response to extreme climate events and sketch a framework for future studies in the rapidly changing climate of the...

www.cell.com

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Peter Stronach @macstronach.bsky.social · Sep 8

Spent hours being spellbound by Convolvulus Hawk Moths last night as they nectared on Nicotiana plants in my highland garden!. Up to 3 feeding at a time, their entire abdomens glowing red hot in the thermal from flight muscle use!! #teammoth @migrantmothuk.bsky.social @savebutterflies.bsky.social

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Jasmin Schreiber @schreibersnaturarium.de · Sep 3

Als Maria Reva ihr neues Buch ENDLING angekündigt hatte, gab es so viele Ähnlichkeiten zu meinem ENDLING, dass Leute sie der Kopie bezichtigt haben. Dabei wurden wir einfach unabhängig voneinander von einem Artikel von @edyong209.bsky.social inspiriert. Sie, Ed Yong & ich haben darüber gesprochen:

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Nature @nature.com · Sep 3

A common type of ant in Europe breaks a fundamental rule in biology: its queens can produce male offspring that are a whole different species

go.nature.com/4mOb5T9

‘Almost unimaginable’: these ants are different species but share a mother

Ant queens of one species clone ants of another to create hybrid workers that do their bidding.

go.nature.com

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Samuel Church @shchurch.bsky.social · Aug 28

The Church Evolution Laboratory (CEL@NYU) will be official as of Sep 1st: shchurch.github.io. We are recruiting at all levels, including a postdoc to work on evolutionary patterns and processes via comparative genomics in Hawaiian Drosophila. Please share widely!

Church Evolution Laboratory

Department of Biology, New York City

shchurch.github.io

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Alex Gunderson @agunderson.bsky.social · Aug 26

The work of @basicbiologist23.bsky.social on lizards and lead in Nat Geo!
www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...

These lizards can survive (and thrive) on a lethal dose of lead

Small lizards in New Orleans have an “unprecedented” tolerance for the toxic heavy metal. How are they even alive?

www.nationalgeographic.com

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Jonathan Losos @jblosos.bsky.social · Aug 24

New Orleans' Brown Anoles Can Tolerate Extraordinary Amounts of Lead in Their Blood www.anoleannals.org/2025/08/23/n...

New Orleans’ Brown Anoles Can Tolerate Extraordinary Amounts of Lead in Their Blood

Tulane University reports: Lead-resistant lizards in New Orleans could hold clues to combating lead poisoning August 20, 2025 9:00 AM Stacey Plaisance [email protected] Tulane researchers found…

www.anoleannals.org

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jim mallet @wtf-r-species.bsky.social · Aug 21

How many convergent switches in Müllerian mimicry can be explained by parallel evolution at ivory and optix genes? Amazing work by Ben Chehida, Dasmahapatra, Meier et al.! doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Extraordinary convergence in Muellerian mimicry due to re-use of the same genes again and again!

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Joaquin Nunez @jcbnunez.bsky.social · Aug 19

doi.org/10.1093/molb...
Thrilled to share our new paper in MBE! 🎉 Presenting DEST 2.0: 530 pooled Drosophila populations spanning 12 years across 6 continents. We map genomic footprints of adaptation, from pesticide resistance to seasonal changes. #PopulationGenetics #Drosophila #Genomics #Evolution

Footprints of Worldwide Adaptation in Structured Populations of Drosophila melanogaster Through the Expanded DEST 2.0 Genomic Resource

Abstract. Large-scale genomic resources can place genetic variation into an ecologically informed context. To advance our understanding of the population g

doi.org

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Maridel 🐜🍄🌱🦠🏳️‍🌈 @delfreddy.bsky.social · Aug 12

💡Can we use network structure 🏁 to infer underlying genetics 🧬 of host – parasite coevolution?

🔎Find out in our new paper 🥳, published in the latest issue of @journal-evo.bsky.social 👇
academic.oup.com/evolut/artic...
#Parasite #EvolutionaryBiology #MicrobialEvolution

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Mixed network structure in a coevolving host–parasite system

Abstract. Genetic interactions between parasites and hosts determine how these antagonists coevolve. Networks depicting infection outcomes between host and

academic.oup.com

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