Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Kyle T David

Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 7d

Jane Goodall, ethologist and conservationist, has died. She was 91

1.3K 7.7K 29K

Reposted by Kyle T David

Linda Horianopoulos @linder-surprise.bsky.social · Sep 5

We often talk about THE whole genome duplication in yeasts, but we find new evidence of additional whole genome duplications in other yeast species!

Check out this preprint led by @kylethedavid.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Discovery of additional ancient genome duplications in yeasts

Whole genome duplication (WGD) has had profound macroevolutionary impacts on diverse lineages, preceding adaptive radiations in vertebrates, teleost fish, and angiosperms. In contrast to the many know...

www.biorxiv.org

2 15 32

Reposted by Kyle T David

Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · Aug 24

New York Times story with profiles of researchers whose grants were terminated.

[Gift Link]

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/24/o...

Opinion | America First? Not When It Comes to Your Health.

www.nytimes.com

6 320 480

Reposted by Kyle T David

Carlos Moffat @carlosmoffat.com · Aug 22

An excellent article in the NYTimes about the impending demise of the last U.S. Antarctic research vessel, the N.B. Palmer, featuring US and overseas colleagues (including @polarrobs.bsky.social). Gift link:

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/22/c...

Trump’s Cuts May Spell the End for America’s Only Antarctic Research Ship

www.nytimes.com

1 24 43

Kyle T David @kylethedavid.bsky.social · Aug 22

I said what I said

3

Reposted by Kyle T David

Annie Hatmaker, Ph.D. @annemakerofhats.bsky.social · Aug 18

Thrilled to share that the final chapter of my PhD with @rokaslab.bsky.social is now out in @natcomms.nature.com 🎉
Read it to find out how population structure impacts pathogenicity in Aspergillus flavus, a fungus that infects humans 🧪
rdcu.be/eAToj

Population structure in a fungal human pathogen is potentially linked to pathogenicity

Nature Communications - Genetic diversity between clinical and environmental fungal isolates of Aspergillus flavus is poorly studied. Here, the authors analysed genomic data from a global set of...

rdcu.be

2 20 51

Kyle T David @kylethedavid.bsky.social · Jul 21

a peek under the hood

4

Kyle T David @kylethedavid.bsky.social · Jul 21

This weekend me and @evolutionvu.bsky.social collaborated with some local girl scouts to run an advanced evolution simulator, saw some cool convergence as well as a plesiomorphy that hung around way longer than I thought it would

1 6

Kyle T David @kylethedavid.bsky.social · Jul 21

When the final sentence of the abstract begins with "Taken together,"

a close up of a man 's face with a slight smirk on his face

Alt: Patrick Bateman "oooh" reaction gif

media.tenor.com

1

Kyle T David @kylethedavid.bsky.social · Jul 16

the study in question for those interested
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: a fairytale for endocrinologists

‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’, a fairytale that is widely known across the Western world, was originally written by the Brothers Grimm, and published in 1812 as ‘Snow White’. Though each dwarf was...

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

1 3

Kyle T David @kylethedavid.bsky.social · Jul 16

oh okay

Google's infamously terrible AI Overview feature cites the NIH to list the names of the seven dwarfs

1 3

Kyle T David @kylethedavid.bsky.social · Jul 16

over 500,000 animal species, can you imagine!?

The biology textbook John T. Scopes taught from, displaying a (woefully outdated) figure of animal diversity and relationships

2

Kyle T David @kylethedavid.bsky.social · Jul 16

Had a great time celebrating the centennial of the Scopes trial with a trip to Dayton, hallowed ground for an evolutionary biologist! Thanks to @evolutionvu.bsky.social for organizing!

Myself posing with my PI Antonis Rokas and a model chimpanzee

Myself posing with the statue of Clarence Darrow, defendant of John Scopes in the "monkey trial"

1 2 7

Kyle T David @kylethedavid.bsky.social · Jul 13

Plant grafting is so cool it makes me jealous. Like what do you mean you can just mash two species together

5

Reposted by Kyle T David

LaBella Lab @lablabella.bsky.social · Jun 24

Kyle David @kylethedavid.bsky.social discusses two new genome 🧬 duplications 🧬🧬 in the yeast subphylum

With three WGD clades, we can ask what are the causes and consequences of WGD in yeast

@evolutionvu.bsky.social @rokaslab.bsky.social

#Evol2025 #Evol24

5 10

Kyle T David @kylethedavid.bsky.social · Jun 21

Tag yourself im Dibbler

2

Kyle T David @kylethedavid.bsky.social · Jun 17

visual abstract from:
www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...

Neuropeptides specify and reprogram division of labor in the leafcutter ant Atta cephalotes

We identify specific neuropeptides mediating worker division of labor in the leafcutting ant A. cephalotes, finding two neuropeptides associated with characteristic behaviors of leafcutting and of bro...

www.cell.com

Kyle T David @kylethedavid.bsky.social · Jun 17

Nice argument. Unfortunately, I've already depicted you as the fungal cultivating minima caste and me as the neuroparsin-A upregulated soldier major caste

Visual abstract from "Neuropeptides specify and reprogram division of labor in the leafcutter ant Atta cephalotes": a cartoon depiction of several leafcutter ant castes, whose behaviors the paper demonstrates can be manipulated

1 1 4

Reposted by Kyle T David

Chentomology @chentomology.bsky.social · Jun 16

“Shrimps is bugs” is a funny meme, but there’s some truth in the reverse version, “Bugs is shrimps” 🐛🦐 Since insects are literally a group of terrestrial crustacean. And among all the insects, bristletails are probably the most shrimp-like in my opinion!

9 110 350

Kyle T David @kylethedavid.bsky.social · Jun 9

ty!

1

Kyle T David @kylethedavid.bsky.social · Jun 9

do you have a good citation for this?

1 1

Kyle T David @kylethedavid.bsky.social · Jun 4

Thanks! probably spent as much (or more) time moving parallelograms around as I did on the actual paper

1 3

Kyle T David @kylethedavid.bsky.social · Jun 4

If any of that sounds cool to you please check out the paper (and let me know if you need a copy!), and for those of you going to #Evol2025 I’ll be talking about this (and other cool stuff) at the Genomics and Macroevolution section on Tuesday!

1

Kyle T David @kylethedavid.bsky.social · Jun 4

So not only are convergent traits mostly the result of the same gene families, some of these families are contributing to multiple traits as well!

1 6

Kyle T David @kylethedavid.bsky.social · Jun 4

We also found a few gene families that were associated with as many as 23% of all traits. We believe these ‘keystone’ families play important roles across the evolution of diverse metabolic traits.

1 4