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Yuki Haba

@yukihaba.bsky.social

1.4K followers 4.8K following 20 posts

Studying why and how behavior evolves, from mosquitoes to mole-rats | Leon Levy Scholar @Columbia working with Ishmail Abdus-Saboor | PhD @Princeton with Lindy McBride | 麻布/東大 alum 🇯🇵 | yukihaba.github.io

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Yuki Haba @yukihaba.bsky.social · Apr 30

Thrilled to be named a Leon Levy Scholar
@nyasciences.bsky.social! With my inspiring mentor @ishmailsaboor.bsky.social, I’ll tackle genetic, neuronal, and evolutionary questions about fascinating social behaviors in naked mole-rats. Looking forward to joining the great community of neuroscientists!

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Ishmail Abdus-Saboor @ishmailsaboor.bsky.social · 2h

I’m extremely honored to be a recipient of the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award!

Columbia University's Zuckerman Institute @zuckermanbrain.bsky.social · 7h

Congratulations to @ishmailsaboor.bsky.social on receiving the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, celebrating “scientists with outstanding records of creativity.” His lab will explore how the sense of touch can help build relationships. 🫶🧠💡

See zuckermaninstitute.columbia.edu/zuckerman-in...

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eLife @elife.bsky.social · 12d

1/ Starting next year, @hhmi.org will require all authors to share their research as preprints under a CC BY 4.0 license as part of its new Immediate Access to Research policy.
buff.ly/NrHlEKD

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Matt Rockman @wormsrock.bsky.social · 14d

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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Tim O'Connell @tinosaurs.bsky.social · 16d

I still think this #SciComm deserves a #Pulitzer.

#InsectApocalypse
www.reuters.com/graphics/GLO...

Insect populations are declining at an unprecedented rate

The most diverse group of organisms on the planet are in trouble and the consequences could be dire.

www.reuters.com

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Daniel Kronauer @danielkronauer.bsky.social · 19d

The final version of our paper on how ants and possibly other insects use a crazy mechanism involving extensive transcriptional interference to regulate odorant receptor expression is now open access in my favorite journal, @currentbiology.bsky.social

authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

ScienceDirect.com | Science, health and medical journals, full text articles and books.

authors.elsevier.com

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Petra Korlević @petrathepostdoc.bsky.social · 19d

also really fun to share an issue and a commentary with a big paper on Aedes aegypti 🦟🥂🦟

congrats @mariloumercedes.bsky.social and Jacob E. Crawford

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

#SciArt doodle of two mosquitoes holding papers and drinks highfiving eachother, an anopheles on the left (orangey brown with dots on her wings) and an aedes on the right (dark brown with white stripes on body and legs).

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Ardem Patapoutian @ardemp.bskyverified.social · 20d

New preprint alert! The uterus expands ~500-fold in pregnancy, yet we know little about how pressures are sensed. Led by @yunxiao-dr.bsky.social, we show PIEZOs are required for contractions and birth in mice, with dual roles of PIEZO1 in muscle and PIEZO2 in neurons
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

PIEZO channels link mechanical forces to uterine contractions in parturition

Mechanical forces are extensively involved in pregnancy and parturition, but their precise roles and mechanisms remain poorly understood. Here, we identify mechanically activated ion channels PIEZO1 a...

www.biorxiv.org

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Niklaus Grunwald @grunwald.bsky.social · 20d

@jpodwyer.bsky.social led this elegant and novel approach using genomic demography to make ecological predictions. I am excited to have played a small part in this elegant work:

Genomic demography predicts community dynamics in a temperate montane forest | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Genomic demography predicts community dynamics in a temperate montane forest

Species population sizes fluctuate over time, and these temporal dynamics play a key role in governing the maintenance of biodiversity. Although modeling approaches have been developed to characterize...

www.science.org

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marilou boddé @mariloumercedes.bsky.social · 20d

Our paper Genomic diversity of the African malaria vector Anopheles funestus was published in Science today! It features inversions, selection in action, museum specimens and putative new ecotypes. doi.org/10.1126/scie...

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Yuki Haba @yukihaba.bsky.social · 22d

... also fun seeing your friend being an awesome new professor there @elliediamant.bsky.social

Yuki Haba @yukihaba.bsky.social · 22d

Had a wonderful time at @bardcollege.bsky.social giving an invited seminar in the Biology Seminar series! Really enjoyed conversations with the curious students and amazing faculty, plus a walk around the gorgeous campus. The Hudson Valley view en route was the cherry on top.

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Andres Bendesky @bendeskylab.com · Sep 8

New review on how changes in cell type composition in and outside the brain contribute to the evolution of behavior. 🧪

authors.elsevier.com/a/1lihM,LqAZ...

Changes in cell type composition, including cell expansions, cell losses, and novel cell gains, are associated with the evolution of specific behaviors.
Figure credit: Matteo Farinella.

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Tessa Montague @tessamontague.bsky.social · Sep 8

Excited to share our new paper!

✨Natural habitat and wild behaviors of the dwarf cuttlefish, Ascarosepion bandense✨

tinyurl.com/bdew5x3s

Our first cuttlefish expedition - diving in the dark to observe our cuttlefish in the wild...

Check out the paper & new expedition tool on Cuttlebase.org 🧠

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Nicholas Bellono @nbellono.bsky.social · Sep 4

Octopuses sense environmental microbiomes to drive predatory and parental behaviors. Artwork by Lily Soucy. #evolution #sensation #microbiome @cellpress.bsky.social

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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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Molly Przeworski @mollyprz.bsky.social · Sep 2

In these dark times, it comes as a rare pleasure to highlight @natanaels.bsky.social ‬ & @marcdemanuel.bsky.social's work on germline and somatic mutations in humans. 1/n
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

Collateral mutagenesis funnels multiple sources of DNA damage into a ubiquitous mutational signature

Mutations reflect the net effects of myriad types of damage, replication errors, and repair mechanisms, and thus are expected to differ across cell types with distinct exposures to mutagens, division ...

www.biorxiv.org

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Philipp Brand @pbrand.bsky.social · Aug 21

Exciting new Ruta lab preprint by @annaryba.bsky.social et al. on the neural underpinnings of intraspecific behavioral variation: Strain variation identifies a neural substrate for behavioral evolution Drosophila

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Strain variation identifies a neural substrate for behavioral evolution in Drosophila

Sexual selection acts on heritable differences within species, driving the parallel diversification of signal production in one sex and behavioral responses in the other. This coevolution implies that...

www.biorxiv.org

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Daniel Kronauer @danielkronauer.bsky.social · Aug 21

If you’re interested in ants, olfaction, gene regulation, or all of the above, here’s a new preprint from the lab for you. It describes an unorthodox mechanism of transcriptional interference by which ant olfactory sensory neurons produce a single functional receptor.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Transcriptional Interference Gates Monogenic Odorant Receptor Expression in Ants

Communication is crucial to social life, and in ants, it is mediated primarily through olfaction. Ants have more odorant receptor (OR) genes than any other group of insects, generated through tandem d...

www.biorxiv.org

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · Aug 21

Our paper on the evolution of MUC19 in humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans is finally out today in Science!

This has been a six-year effort by 13 authors to weave together 3 separate but related evolutionary stories around this one gene (more on thread 🧵).

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The MUC19 gene: An evolutionary history of recurrent introgression and natural selection

We study the gene MUC19, for which some modern humans carry a Denisovan-like haplotype. MUC19 is a mucin, a glycoprotein that forms gels with various biological functions. We find diagnostic variants ...

www.science.org

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Catherine Dulac @dulaclab.bsky.social · Aug 11

Very excited to announce our latest paper uncovering circuit, cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the formation and maintenance of social hierarchy, another terrific collaboration with @neurovenki.bsky.social, Vic Kapoor and Adam Nelson (not on bsky) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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Nicolas Galtier @nicolasgaltier.bsky.social · Jul 17

New preprint about open science in eco-evo!
We sampled 110 journals, 550 articles, and assessed whether data and code are accessible: (1/5)
ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

#ScientificPublishing #OpenScience #ecology #conservation #EvolutionaryBiology #paleobio #systematics #archeology

An overview of open science in eco-evo research and the publisher effect.

ecoevorxiv.org

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Meg Younger @megyounger.bsky.social · Jul 31

New preprint from @darbly.bsky.social‬ @briandepasquale.bsky.social‬ and my labs! If you love (or hate) mosquitoes, have a look:

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

We used TEM to describe the circuitry used for CO2 detection by mosquitoes. As usual with mosquitoes, nothing is as expected! 🌬️🦟

Recurrent connectivity supports carbon dioxide sensitivity in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes

The mosquito Aedes aegypti′s human host-seeking behavior depends on the integration of multiple sensory cues. One of these cues, carbon dioxide (CO2), gates odorant and heat pathways and activates hos...

doi.org

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Harmit Singh Malik @harmitmalik.bsky.social · Aug 2

I spoke to Renaud Pourpe (of @lonelypipette.bsky.social fame with @epigenetique.bsky.social) about the unique challenges faced by postdocs and early-career PIs worldwide on the transition from postdoc to PI.

Lots of useful advice shared (by others):

www.alba.network/diversity-po...

Check it out.

ALBA-IBRO Diversity Podcast - Season 2

Episode 4 is out. In season 2, we focus on the transition from postdoc to PI, highlighting the unique challenges faced by postdocs and early-career PIs worldwide. Hosted by the Lonely Pipette.

www.alba.network

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Hakhamanesh Mostafavi @hakha.bsky.social · Jul 25

I'm thrilled that my lab at NYU is now supported by an NIH MIRA grant! I'm looking to hire 1-2 senior lab members (outstanding postdoc candidates or experienced staff scientists) with expertise in computational or statistical methods in human genetics or genomics. Please share!

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Ralph Emilio Peterson @ralphpeterson.bsky.social · Jul 25

New preprint!  

tl;dr — We ran around late at night to record wild rats in NYC and figured out how to quantify their behavior and environment. 🧵

w/ Dima Batenkov, @zamakany.bsky.social, Emily Mackevicius

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Computational Urban Ecology of New York City Rats

Urban rats are highly adaptable, thriving in the dynamic and often inhospitable conditions of modern cities. Despite substantial mitigation efforts, they remain an enduring presence in urban environme...

www.biorxiv.org

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