Wouter van der Bijl
@vdbijl.bsky.social
750 followers 260 following 33 posts
Evolutionary biologist @ UBC.
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vdbijl.bsky.social
🚨 Super exited to see our paper on the inheritance and genetic basis of guppy color variation come out in @natecoevo.nature.comrdcu.be/eugWV

Guppy males have enormous variation in color patterns, with many combinations of ornamental spots and stripes. But where does all this variation come from?
Photo of guppy males from lab population, each showing a unique combination of black and orange ornaments. Photo by Wouter van der Bijl.
vdbijl.bsky.social
Wanted to look at the review history of a JEB paper from a mere two years ago - but hosted on publons so gone forever?
vdbijl.bsky.social
While we all share our sequencing data freely, image datasets like these are still often kept private.

I am only aware of a single other study on guppy coloration (there are many!) where images are available, and it's also from our lab (Morris et al. 2020).

I hope this can improve in the future!
vdbijl.bsky.social
Our paper on the genetics of guppy color patterns has now been assigned an issue in NEE: doi.org/10.1038/s415...

With this paper, we also publish all 14,100 guppy photos used in the study, including before and after alignment and ornament extraction:
doi.org/10.20383/103...
Reposted by Wouter van der Bijl
maxshafer.bsky.social
Now published @natecoevo.nature.com with @annika-nichols.bsky.social, our latest on the evolution of 𝘴𝘭𝘦𝘦𝘱 across 𝟲𝟬 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗲𝘀 of cichlid fishes! doi.org/10.1038/s415...
with members of the @schierlab.bsky.social and Salzburger labs, as well as the burgeoning Shafer lab @uoftcellsysbiol.bsky.social
Reposted by Wouter van der Bijl
vdbijl.bsky.social
Yes I personally prefer to use “deep learning” over “AI”. Not much use for LLMs for now (but perhaps for eg meta-analyses in a couple of years?), but transformer architecture may still hold a lot of promise for sequence data.. Time will tell.
vdbijl.bsky.social
And yes, we used unets for segmentation.
Reposted by Wouter van der Bijl
tillysscott.bsky.social
ESEB Day 3! Molecular clocks & identifying ghost lineages; marrying micro & macro evolution; female polymorphism; balancing selection in round-nose grenadier; the genetics of guppy colour polymorphisms; modelling genetic interactions; antagonist selection in flying ants

#eseb2025 #eseb #sciart
Reposted by Wouter van der Bijl
judithmank.bsky.social
Just in time for her #eseb2025 poster on Thursday, @squarehare.bsky.social 's paper on the Poecilia bifurca sex chromosomes was published today academic.oup.com/g3journal/ad...
vdbijl.bsky.social
I hate conference apps with a passion.
vdbijl.bsky.social
This website seems odd, it assumes MEPs will vote along country blocks, not European or individual parties?
Reposted by Wouter van der Bijl
judithmank.bsky.social
I’m really sorry to be missing #eseb2025, but for those sorting out their conference plan there are several lab talks and posters about what we are up to. Spoiler, they aren't all talking about guppies, or even fish! 1/n
vdbijl.bsky.social
Thanks Will, hope you’re doing well!
Reposted by Wouter van der Bijl
peiferlabunc.bsky.social
This is amazing work and a great thread, revealing the hidden genetic complexity behind the equally complex pigmentation patterns. Check it out! 🧪
vdbijl.bsky.social
🚨 Super exited to see our paper on the inheritance and genetic basis of guppy color variation come out in @natecoevo.nature.comrdcu.be/eugWV

Guppy males have enormous variation in color patterns, with many combinations of ornamental spots and stripes. But where does all this variation come from?
Photo of guppy males from lab population, each showing a unique combination of black and orange ornaments. Photo by Wouter van der Bijl.
vdbijl.bsky.social
Thanks a lot Alex!! Guppies continue to be amazing.
vdbijl.bsky.social
Thanks Stephen!! And congrats to you on the new gig!
vdbijl.bsky.social
This paper is the result of years of hard work, and would not have been possible without all the help from my co-authors. Special thanks to @jacejostles.bsky.social for taking ~8k photos (+fig 1a), and to @judithmank.bsky.social for her unwavering support of this project.
vdbijl.bsky.social
Overall, the color patterns are made up of a patchwork of ornaments. The genetic architecture is much more complex than previously appreciated.

Duplications from the autosomes to the sex chromosomes play a large role in the evolution of the extreme variation in this species.