iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Else Mikkelsen

David Toews @davetoews.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

I mean, the title says it all: Genetic confirmation of an “uncommon mourningthroat” (Geothlypis philadelphia × G. trichas): A rare but persistent hybrid warbler. Fun stuff with @kevinfpbennett.bsky.social and Kurt Gielow, OA in @wilsonornithsoc.bsky.social! 🦉 🧪 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

A five panel figure, with four showing photographs of a putative hybrid warbler between a mourning warbler and a common yellowthroat. The final panel shows an illustration of the bird by David Sibley

A three panel figure showing the genetic composition of the hybrid and the putative parental species. Two panels show points on a principal components analysis, with the hybrid falling intermediate. The final panel shows bars illustrating genome-wide admixture, with the hybrid having intermediate ancestry between the two.

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Reposted by Else Mikkelsen

Ethan Gyllenhaal @ethanofthegulls.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

Just out in Systematic Biology, we explore the role of gene flow in island phylogeography of the Solomons Black-and-white Monarch complex. doi.org/10.1093/sysb... Up first, strong genetic structure between islands groups and weak (but present!) structure between Pleistocene-connected islands (🧵)

Figure with a photo of a member of then Solomons Monarch complex, a map of the Solomon Islands (divided into four island groups, Makira being the most isolated), and a principal component analysis highlighting the distinct between-island-group structure, with moderate structure within the New Georgia Group and weaker structure within the Bukida group (highlighted in an inset).

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Else Mikkelsen @elsemikkelsen.bsky.social · 06/11/2025

Almost PhDone! I'll be giving my PhD exit seminar in the morning (Thursday), and defending on Friday.

A poster for Else's exit seminar titled "The Role of Hybridization in the Speciation of Birds". The poster shows illustrations of several bird species (skuas and manakins) above a background of a subarctic coastline and a tropical rainforest river.

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Reposted by Else Mikkelsen

Dr Sjúrður Hammer @sjurdur.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

Join this trans-hemospheric collaboration to get skuas elected as bird of the year in New Zealand #teamskua Loud, Proud #seabirds

badge showing displaying skua and a QR code

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Reposted by Else Mikkelsen

Hākoakoa/Skua BOTY @hakoakoa-boty.bsky.social · 14/09/2025

It's family values day here at Team Hākoakoa. You'll struggle to find a bird more devoted to its chicks than Skua. Just look at that fuzzy brown face. How could you not vote Skua for #birdoftheyear2025? #Skua @forestandbird.bsky.social

A photograph of a Hākoakoa parent with its fuzzy brown chick. The parent is displaying loudly while the chick is looking at you, already planning its next move. Text on the image says "More than a pretty (aggressive) vace, Skua are devoted parents who often form polyandrous family units. Chicks venture out to explore their world quickly." Photo credit Penny Pascoe via Australian Antarctic programme.

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Reposted by Else Mikkelsen

Camille Roux @crouxevo.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

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 Else Mikkelsen

Patrick McKenzie @patrickmckenzie.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

super excited to share this big project with @daeaton.bsky.social out now in Systematic Biology! We derived distributions for -- given an arbitrary species tree model -- how far you have to move along a genome before observing a change in the underlying genealogy: doi.org/10.1093/sysb...

doi.org

Estimating waiting distances between genealogy changes under a Multi-Species Extension of the Sequentially Markov Coalescent

Abstract. Genomes are composed of a mosaic of segments inherited from different ancestors, each separated by past recombination events. Consequently, genea

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Reposted by Else Mikkelsen

Sam England @samjakeengland.bsky.social · 24/07/2025

Why do treehoppers look so weird?! Our latest paper, out this week in @pnas.org, suggests a perhaps unexpected reason - static electricity ⚡ We show that treehoppers can detect the electrostatic cues of predators and that their crazy shapes may boost their electrosensitivity! doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

doi.org

Electroreception in treehoppers: How extreme morphologies can increase electrical sensitivity | PNAS

The link between form and function of an organism’s morphology is usually apparent or intuitive. However, some clades of organisms show remarkable ...

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Reposted by Else Mikkelsen

Darren Irwin (he / him) @darrenirwin.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

Hi y'all. In the midst of [gestures all around], I managed to write a thing. If you work with mitochondrial DNA sequences in groups such as birds, butterflies, or snakes, you might find it interesting. Feedback welcome. The "Driving W Hypothesis" for low mtDNA diversity: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

doi.org

The Driving W Hypothesis for Low Within-Population Mitochondrial DNA Diversity and Between-Population Mitochondrial Capture

The fields of evolutionary biology, molecular ecology, genetics, and taxonomy have been profoundly influenced by studies of variation in mitochondrial DNA. Here I propose a hypothesis that will likely...

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Reposted by Else Mikkelsen

Benjamin Freeman @benjaminfreeman.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

you might think N American species are getting common at their north range limit and rare at their south range limit as temps get warmer but you would be wrong new paper in GEB w/ @eliotmiller.bsky.social & Matt Strimas-Mackey, eBird Status & Trends ftw onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

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Darren Irwin (he / him) @darrenirwin.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

OK who's ready for some science? Do you like speciation? Genomics? Hybridization? Bioinformatics? Then this is for you: Published today: "The Distribution & Dispersal of Large Haploblocks in a Superspecies" Bonus interest if you like ring species and cute greenish birds: doi.org/10.1111/mec....

Four figure panels from the paper. At upper left, a map of Asia showing the breeding ranges of six subspecies of greenish warblers, five of which are in the main ring: viridanus in blue in west Siberia, ludlowi in green in the western Himalayas, trochiloides in yellow in the central and eastern Himalayas, obscuratus in orange in central China, plumbeitarsus in red in eastern Siberia. The western form nitidus in grey, is also shown. In the lower left panel is a plot of genomic PC1 vs. PC2, with each little diamond symbol representing a single bird. This shows viridanus and plumbeitarsus as very distinct, while being connected by gradual or stepwise change through the populations around the southern ring. This is also shown in the lower central panel, which plots location around the ring vs. PC1. In the right panel, genotypes at 12 different Large Haploblock Regions are shown for 257 individuals arranged in order around the ring. Distinct differences between viridanus (in blue) and plumbeitarsus (in red) are seen, with more gradual variation through the ring connecting them. A single backcross of an F1 and a plumbeitarsus is seen in the lower row of this panel.

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 15/02/2025

This excellent interactive tutorial on misleading data visualizations explores the idea of a "counter chart" — the graph you draw in response to refute a misleading claims flowingdata.com/projects/dis...

flowingdata.com

Defense Against Dishonest Charts

This is a guide to protect ourselves and to preserve what is good about turning data into visual things.

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Reposted by Else Mikkelsen

Greg Owens @gregowens.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

Excited to announce our work on kelp genomics is now out at Current Biology. Lead by Postdoc extraordinaire Jordan Bemmels, we sequence WGS for 600+ bull and giant kelp across BC and Washington. authors.elsevier.com/a/1kSP93QW8S...

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Reposted by Else Mikkelsen

Darren Irwin (he / him) @darrenirwin.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

OK folks this is my first announcement of a lab publication on Bluesky: Congrats to PhD Candidate Rashika Ranasinghe on today's publication of her paper "Cryptic Hybridization Dynamics in a Three-Way Hybrid Zone of Dinopium Flamebacks on a Tropical Island." Happy holidays! doi.org/10.1002/ece3...

doi.org

Cryptic Hybridization Dynamics in a Three‐Way Hybrid Zone of Dinopium Flamebacks on a Tropical Island

This study explores population divergence and hybridization dynamics across the golden-backed (Dinopium benghalense) and red-backed (D. psarodes) flameback woodpecker hybrid zone in Sri Lanka. The ge...

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Reposted by Else Mikkelsen

Arnaud Martin @evolvwing.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

New preprint by butterfly wizard @lucalivraghi.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... We mapped optix (again?!) as the switch gene of a natural polymorphism, this time controlling silver patches of a mountain butterfly. Gorgeous RNAi validation, evidence of selective sweeps, introgression

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Reposted by Else Mikkelsen

Michael Bertram @michaelgbertram.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

Earlier this year, I received news that fake peer reviews were allegedly being submitted impersonating me and approximately six others I shared my story with Science to, hopefully, reduce the chance of this kind of breach happening again www.science.org/content/arti...

science.org

‘It felt very icky’: This scientist’s name was used to write fake peer reviews

Elsevier retracts dozens of journal articles that were published based on “fictitious” reviews

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Reposted by Else Mikkelsen

Santiago Claramunt @sclaramunt.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

I'm recruiting a PhD student to join my lab at the University of New Orleans starting in Fall 2025. Research topics will focus on building and using phylogenies to study the diversification of birds, with an emphasis on Neotropical bird radiations. Contact me if interested.

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Will Ratcliff @wcratcliff.bsky.social · 26/10/2024

New preprint up! We sequenced hundreds of samples from across one of Earth's oldest living organisms - the Pando aspen clone - to understand how mutations accumulate and spread in long-lived clonal organisms. Our results were…surprising. 1/30

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Reposted by Else Mikkelsen

Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra @jrossibarra.bsky.social · 01/02/2024

Gonna write a paper on this. PLEASE DON'T USE VCFTOOLS TO CALCULATE π. It is a random number generator, as the software assumes all bp that aren't SNPs are invariant (i.e. ignores missing data). This is especially bad in plant genomes, with abundant TEs where you can't map reads.

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