Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Frederic Delsuc

Marcela Uliano-Silva @marcelauliano.bsky.social · 6d

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

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Andy Foote @andrewfoote.bsky.social · 7d

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Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · 7d

Another record month for bioRxiv - and further evidence the pandemic spike+dip was just that and growth continues. Thanks to all involved and that includes 🫵

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Stefan Ruhl 🦷💧🦠 @spit-lab.bsky.social · 12d

What have 🦷🦷 #TEETH 🦷🦷, 🥛 #MILK 🥛, and💧💧 #SALIVA 💧💧to do with each other? Ask PetarPajic, Luane Landau, and Omer Gokcumen @gokcumenlab.bsky.social ❗️

academic.oup.com/gbe/article-...

Saliva Protein Genes in Humans were Shaped During Primate Evolution

Abstract. Genes within the secretory calcium-binding phosphoprotein locus diversified along with the formation of a calcified skeleton in vertebrates, the

academic.oup.com

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Reposted by Frederic Delsuc

Arnaud Martin @evolvwing.bsky.social · Apr 14

Awesome new paper by @lucalivraghi.bsky.social et al.
doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...
in @currentbiology.bsky.social
on the evo-devo of a butterfly color variation

enjoy the show!

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Reposted by Frederic Delsuc

phy_papers @phypapers.bsky.social · 17d

Targeted ortholog search in unannotated genome assemblies with fDOG-Assembly https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.19.677253v1

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Reposted by Frederic Delsuc

Nicolas Bierne @couplingdmi.bsky.social · 22d

Sujet de stage M2 sur la "dock mussel", cet écotype de moules hybrides qui habite dans les ports. L'objectif est de tester si la dock mussel s’est adaptée grâce à sa variance génétique d’admixture ou si l’admixture n’est que le corolaire du contact secondaire entre les deux espèces parentales.

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Alexandra Delbot @alexandradelbot.bsky.social · 23d

🐜 Une nouvelle étude révèle un phénomène inédit dans le règne animal : certaines reines donnent naissance à des mâles d’une autre espèce. Ce mécanisme appelé « xénoparité » permet à leurs colonies de survivre.

Explications avec des GIF de fourmis ⬇️

Chez les fourmis moissoneuses, des reines enfantent des mâles d’une autre espèce

Une nouvelle étude révèle un phénomène inédit dans le règne animal : certaines reines donnent naissance à des mâles d’une autre espèce. Ce mécanisme appelé « xénoparité » permet à leurs colonies de su...

www.radiofrance.fr

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Reposted by Frederic Delsuc

Science Magazine @science.org · 23d

A new Science study of ants in Fiji—involving genomic sequencing of over 4000 ant specimens from museum collections—shows that most native species have been in decline since humans first arrived in the archipelago 3000 years ago. https://scim.ag/489mI2o

Genomic signatures indicate biodiversity loss in an endemic island ant fauna

Insect populations have declined worldwide, but the extent and drivers of these declines are debated. Most studies rely on field surveys performed in the past century, leaving gaps in our understandin...

www.science.org

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Reposted by Frederic Delsuc

Jonathan Romiguier @selfishmeme.bsky.social · 23d

If you’ve heard about our study on ants producing two different species but are still confused about how it works (and don’t have time to read the paper), this 10-minute video made by @bengthomas.bsky.social is very informative:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-O4...

Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The Ants That Broke Biology

YouTube video by 7 Days of Science

www.youtube.com

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Reposted by Frederic Delsuc

Marcela Uliano-Silva @marcelauliano.bsky.social · Sep 8

PhD opportunity in Bodø! You’ll sequence genomes from invasive and non-invasive slug (A. vulgaris) populations to uncover the molecular basis of invasion dynamics. Supervised by Prof. Les Noble & co-supervisor by me. Fully funded, cutting-edge science, great team. Apply by Sept 21: shorturl.at/zJT06

shorturl.at

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Reposted by Frederic Delsuc

Charlotte Wright @charlottewright.bsky.social · 27d

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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Camille Roux @crouxevo.bsky.social · 27d

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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Reposted by Frederic Delsuc

Allan Barte @allanbarte.bsky.social · 29d

Nomination de Sébastien Lecornu à Matignon : un message politique très fort envoyé à tous les Français !

Pour soutenir la lutte dessinée, engagée et indépendante :
▶️ ko-fi.com/allanbarte
▶️ fr.tipeee.com/allan-barte

Illustration d’Allan Barte

Titre : Sébastien Lecornu nommé à Matignon : le message de Macron à tous les Français

Dessin représentant une main faisant un doigt d’honneur. Le majeur est prolongé par la petite silhouette de Sébastien Lecornu en costume, bras croisés et mine sévère.

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Mick Westbury @mick2474.bsky.social · Sep 9

🦣🍖🧬 Fully funded 3-yr PhD in palaeogenomics & bioinformatics! Help me push non-model palaeogenomes beyond their limits @DTU in Denmark.

Start: Feb 2026 (flexible)
Application deadline: 24 Oct 2025

For details click here: tinyurl.com/BioExtPhD

Reposts appreciated 😁

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Reposted by Frederic Delsuc

Jim Shaw @jimshaw.bsky.social · Sep 7

Preprint out for myloasm, our new nanopore / HiFi metagenome assembler!

Nanopore's getting accurate, but

1. Can this lead to better metagenome assemblies?
2. How, algorithmically, to leverage them?

with co-author Max Marin @mgmarin.bsky.social, supervised by Heng Li @lh3lh3.bsky.social

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bioRxiv Bioinfo @biorxiv-bioinfo.bsky.social · Sep 7

High-resolution metagenome assembly for modern long reads with myloasm https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.05.674543v1

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Mick Westbury @mick2474.bsky.social · Sep 5

Excited to share that I’ve started as Associate Professor at the Technical University of Denmark! 🧑‍🎓

I also received an a NNF Emerging Investigator grant to use genomics + machine learning to study extinction.

👉 PhD & Postdoc positions coming soon — follow for updates!
Reposts appreciated 🙏

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Reposted by Frederic Delsuc

Rafaela Missagia @rmissagia.bsky.social · Sep 4

Our paper on rodent thumbnails is out! Big team effort, powered by museum collections. Turns out, nails can reveal a lot about rodent evolution. Shoutout to Dr. Gordon Shepherd for the wild idea to study rodents thumbs!

Science Magazine @science.org · Sep 4

New findings in Science suggest that rodents owe much of their evolutionary success to their thumb-nail (the first digit, D1), an adaptation that gave them dexterous hands for cracking seeds and nuts.

Learn more in this week's issue: https://scim.ag/46caVho

This red squirrel’s hands display tiny nail-bearing thumbs, alongside large claw-bearing digits.

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Reposted by Frederic Delsuc

Rob Noble @robjohnnoble.bsky.social · Sep 3

Mindblowing research out of the wonderful @isemevol.bsky.social (where I'm delighed to be based for the next three months).

Opening line: "Living organisms are assumed to produce same-species offspring [1,2]. Here, we report a shift from this norm".

1. Darwin (1859)
2. Mayr (1942).

Arne Elofsson @bioinfo.se · Sep 3

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

‘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.

www.nature.com

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Nature @nature.com · Sep 3

How is this possible?

This ant can lay eggs of two different species, birthed by the same mother

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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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Reposted by Frederic Delsuc

Flo Débarre @flodebarre.bsky.social · Aug 27

Congratulations, @arambaut.bsky.social !!!

royalsociety.org/news/2025/08...

Darwin Medal
Professor Andrew Rambaut FRS, University of Edinburgh, for the development of the state-of-the-art methodologies for tracking the epidemiology and evolution of viruses, and their application to the west African Ebola outbreak, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Katerina Guschanski @kguschan.bsky.social · Aug 26

Fantastic dental calculus and where to find it

Johnny Richards and team (@markella-morait.bsky.social + curators from 5 museums) survey >140 mammalian species with >1,600 specimens to understand what factors determine dental calculus formation. #aDNA #museomics
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Examples of dental calculus in different mammalian species ranked by amount from 0 (no calculus) to 3 (full incrustation)

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Reposted by Frederic Delsuc

Dr. K. Lotterhos @drk-lo.bsky.social · Aug 25

Today 14 scientific societies in #ecology #evolution and #marineScience are publishing the results of a survey that finds negative impacts of federal policies on food security, flood mitigation, infectious disease preparedness, and wildlife conservation: 🧪👩‍🔬 www.firsthandaccounts.org/impacts/2025...

This infographic describes the main results from a survey of members of 14 scientific societies. There is a pie chart showing that both academic (58%) and non-academic (42%) responded to the survey. It lists statistics: 85% of respondents reported uncertainty about the future; 71% reported federal training programs were "very" or "extremely important"; 83% reported negative impacts or irreparable harm on their field of science. There is a word cloud summarizing open-ended responses with the largest words "student research fund federal grant". Eight major themes in the responses are listed: disruption of research with societal important; concerns of closure of the USGS Bird Banding Lab; Early Career Bottleneck; Restricted Freedoms including travel and speech; Decline in Government Efficiency and Expertise; Concerns about Biased/Removed Data and Data Gaps; Concerns about the Ability to Meet Legal Mandates; and From Positive Impact to Irreparable Harm. There are icons for each participating society and a QR code for website and data availability.

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Andrew Roger @andrewjroger.bsky.social · Aug 25

I gave a symposium talk at the European Society for Evolutionary Biology 2025 (#eseb2025) meeting last week and this was my title slide showcasing how I was speaking as an independent scientist because @dalhousieu.bsky.social @dalhousie.bsky.social has locked us out.

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