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Greg Owens

@gregowens.bsky.social
1.8K followers 1.6K following 48 posts

Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Victoria. Plant genomics and plant genomics jokes

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Reposted by Greg Owens
Anna Tigano @annatigano.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
If you are interested in applied conservation and management genomics of marine critters and would like to apply for a Liber Ero fellowship this fall get in touch to discuss potential projects with me (Fisheries and Oceans) and Greg Owens (UVic). @gregowens.bsky.social
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Greg Owens @gregowens.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
It feels a bit anticlimactic in the end, but I'm happy to announce that I'm now an associate professor! I would say I'm updating my email signature, but I never got around to making one in the first place.
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Greg Owens @gregowens.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
I’m always impressed with the cool genomics stories coming out of Wes’ lab. This would be cool job for facilitating genomics on a scale beyond most academic labs
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New Phytologist @newphyt.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
Spatial inference of ancestor locations suggests northern refugia for canopy-forming #kelps in the Pacific Northwest Jordan B. Bemmels, et al. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @gregowens.bsky.social #PlantScience #phylogeography
Population genetic structure in the Pacific Northwest for Nereocystis and Macrocystis.
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Greg Owens @gregowens.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
UVic is hiring a Terrestrial Plant Ecologist Assistant Professor! Come join our department! We're nice and Victoria is awesome. www.uvic.ca/science/biol...
uvic.ca
Faculty Position in Terrestrial Plant Ecology - University of Victoria
Department: Biology                 &am...
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Greg Owens @gregowens.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
I'm looking to sponsor an applicant for a Canada Impact+ Postdoctoral fellowship in my lab. The project will explore how methylation patterns change during aging in rockfish with rapidly evolved lifespan differences. Check out tinyurl.com/impactpostdoc for a description. DM for more details.
tinyurl.com
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Greg Owens @gregowens.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
Me trying to get a handle on the Quercus phylogeny
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Reposted by Greg Owens
Moi Expósito-Alonso (MOILAB) @mexpositoalonso.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
Our new experimental evolution study across 30+ locations using the plant Arabidopsis thaliana —— we direct "see" adaptation and extinction to different climates at the genetic as it happens! Read it in Science dx.doi.org/10.1126/scie... @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social @hhmi-science.bsky.social
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Rachel Nuwer @rachelnuwer.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
With most psychedelic drugs, you never know what you're going to get. But this mysterious mushroom from China - without fail - causes users to hallucinate tiny people: crawling up walls, popping out from under furniture and marching under doors. www.bbc.com/future/artic...
bbc.com
'They saw them on their dishes when eating': The mushroom making people hallucinate dozens of tiny humans
Only recently described by science, the mysterious mushrooms are found in different parts of the world, but they give people the same exact visions.
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Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
I literally could not stop myself from inappropriately laughing out loud for real
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Greg Owens @gregowens.bsky.social · 06/11/2025
Does anyone know of a method for testing GO enrichment in the context of the genome structure? For example, I have a highly significant GO category because my significant windows hit a cluster of 8 copies of a gene family. I could do a permutation, but seems like there must be a better way.
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Reposted by Greg Owens
Justin Merondun @merondun.bsky.social · 30/10/2025
Our new @science.org paper is out! Cuckoos and hosts are locked in a coevolutionary arms race over egg mimicry. But how are these egg types inherited, and could this drive speciation? We sequenced hundreds of genomes to find out! doi.org/10.1126/scie... 🧵1/6
doi.org
Genomic architecture of egg mimicry and its consequences for speciation in parasitic cuckoos
Host-parasite arms races facilitate rapid evolution and can fuel speciation. Cuculus cuckoos are deceptive egg mimics that exhibit a broad diversity of counterfeit egg phenotypes, representing host-ad...
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Justin Merondun @merondun.bsky.social · 30/10/2025
This was the product of a decade of work, led by Jochen Wolf @jochenwolflab.bsky.social) and kick-started by @frodefossoy.bsky.social & Bård Stokke, made possible by field teams from dozens of countries! @rytikerttunen.bsky.social @biosulc.bsky.social @btobirds.bsky.social @gregowens.bsky.social
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Greg Owens @gregowens.bsky.social · 01/09/2025
I want to highlight the weirdest neighbourhood in Greater Victoria. In Langford, if you take exit #15 you enter a 6-lane road surrounded by a classic mix of strip malls and big box stores. Nestled of all of this, accessible only through a parking lot, is a small street of 16 single family homes.
Google maps of neighbourhood in langford
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Greg Owens @gregowens.bsky.social · 11/08/2025
distracted boyfriend meme. I'd rather check my snakemake script progress for the 100th time than start reviewing a paper
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Jenny Jandt (she/her) @thewasplady.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
Get your CVs updated. Zoology Department, University of Otago is hiring a Lecturer in Evolutionary Ecology! @zoologyotago.bsky.social otago.taleo.net/careersectio...
otago.taleo.net
Lecturer/Pūkenga - Evolutionary Ecology
Click the link provided to see the complete job description.
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Tyler Kent @tylervkent.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
Excited to see the final version of this paper with @samurscicop.bsky.social and Daniel Matute out in @genomebiolevol.bsky.social! We took a dive into the complicated demographic history of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and its impact on the distribution of genetic diversity doi.org/10.1093/gbe/...
doi.org
Demographic history, genetic load, and the efficacy of selection in the globally invasive mosquito Aedes aegypti
Abstract. Aedes aegypti is the main vector species of yellow fever, dengue, Zika and chikungunya. The species is originally from Africa but has experienced
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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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Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 17/03/2025
Lungfish xkcd.com/3064
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KamilSJaron.bsky.social @kamilsjaron.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
With @katiejenike.bsky.social and a bunch more of our fellow k-mer enthusiasts, we put together a manuscript on k-mers in biodiversity genomics. A guide if you will, that covers k-mers from basics to some really funky stuff... genome.cshlp.org/content/35/2...
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Greg Owens @gregowens.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
Does anyone have an insight into why overhead rates are so different between US and Canada? Canadian rates are generally around 25%. Is it that Canada just provides more government base funding so they can accept lower overhead rates?
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Chris Neufeld @cneufeld.bsky.social · 03/02/2025
Excited to see our work on the cover of Current Biology this month! Read about it in the thread below. 🧪🦑🌊
The cover of the scientific journal Current Biology, showing a photo by Fernando Lessa of a solitary giant kelp frond rises out of the depths in the foreground, with more kelp in the background.
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Greg Owens @gregowens.bsky.social · 19/01/2025
My population isn’t working for QTL mapping. RIL issue.
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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...
Visual abstract for Kelp paper
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Graham Coop @gcbias.bsky.social · 02/01/2025
Congrats to @jeffgroh.bsky.social et al on publication of "Ancient structural variants control sex-specific flowering time morphs in walnuts and hickories" www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Science magazine front cover. Picture of a walnut in its opened shell. The text reads "All about timing. Mating type evolution in walnuts and pecans" graphical abstract:
"In Juglans (top left) and Carya, two morphs show complementary temporal separation between male and female flowering (heterodichogamy). Mating types are controlled by two nonhomologous single-locus mechanisms that arose in the common ancestor of each genus, respectively. (Bottom left) Simplified schematic of a putative functional regulatory element at the Juglans locus. (Bottom right) Strong genotypic correlations across the Carya locus indicate a lack of recombination between two colinear haplotypes with similar gene content."
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Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 23/12/2024
An intriguing new evolutionary story has just dropped, from my friend and colleague Leif Andersson: a discrete population of large predatory herring in the Baltic Sea, apparently in the process of evolving into a new species. 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Evolution of fast-growing piscivorous herring in the young Baltic Sea - Nature Communications
The Atlantic herring is one of the world’s most abundant vertebrates and a typical plankton feeder of major ecological importance. This study shows that a piscivorous (fish-eating) ecotype of herring ...
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Reposted by Greg Owens
Stephen Turner @stephenturner.us · 24/12/2024
Genetic ancestry and population structure in the All of Us Research Program cohort www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202… 🧬🖥️🧪
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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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Jeff Spence @jeffspence.github.io · 17/12/2024
What do GWAS and rare variant burden tests discover, and why? Do these studies find the most IMPORTANT genes? If not, how DO they rank genes? Here we present a surprising result: these studies actually test for SPECIFICITY! A 🧵on what this means... (🧪🧬) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Specificity, length, and luck: How genes are prioritized by rare and common variant association studies
Standard genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and rare variant burden tests are essential tools for identifying trait-relevant genes. Although these methods are conceptually similar, we show by anal...
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Ostevik Lab @osteviklab.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
Excited to see this paper out! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Inversions contribute disproportionately to parallel genomic divergence in dune sunflowers - Nature Ecology & Evolution
Analysis of habitat data, quantitative trait locus mapping of seed size and selective sweeps show parallel selection acting on inversions in two independent dune ecotypes of the prairie sunflower, Hel...
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Greg Owens @gregowens.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
Our lab is reading Hoffman et al this week in lab meeting. They look at inbreeding depression after an extreme bottleneck in northern elephant seals. 1/
nature.com
Genomic and fitness consequences of a near-extinction event in the northern elephant seal - Nature Ecology & Evolution
Analysis of northern elephant seal populations shows no evidence of inbreeding depression, probably because a recent extreme bottleneck purged much of the genetic load.
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Greg Owens @gregowens.bsky.social · 28/11/2024
"Before running structure, we applied a HWE filter to our SNP set"
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Greg Owens @gregowens.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
Optimist: the cup is 1/2 full Pessimist: the cup is 1/2 empty Bioinformatician: I'll know how full the cup is as soon as I can figure out my conda environment.
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Greg Owens @gregowens.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
While the experiment suggested by Reviewer 2 would help validate a key finding in the paper, I refer the editor to supplemental figure 5 which shows the degree to which I'm done with this paper (very) and how significantly I want to never look at it again (p <0.05).
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Greg Owens @gregowens.bsky.social · 05/11/2024
Some cute bird time for a stressful day.
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Greg Owens @gregowens.bsky.social · 01/11/2024
UVic Biochemistry and Microbiology is looking to hire a teaching professor. It's a great place to life and work. Please share with colleagues who you think might fit.
uvic.ca
BIOC 270-150 - Faculty & staff - University of Victoria
Inspired by and honouring place, we are a community-minded, globally engaged university where we transform ideas into meaningful impact.
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Greg Owens @gregowens.bsky.social · 25/10/2024
Apropos of nothing, grenepipe is very good and solves my lab's SNP calling needs. While there is character building in writing your own shell script, its nice to just get a VCF sometimes. @mexpositoalonso.bsky.social github.com/moiexpositoa...
github.com
GitHub - moiexpositoalonsolab/grenepipe: A flexible, scalable, and reproducible pipeline to automate variant calling from raw sequence reads, with lots of bells and whistles.
A flexible, scalable, and reproducible pipeline to automate variant calling from raw sequence reads, with lots of bells and whistles. - moiexpositoalonsolab/grenepipe
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Greg Owens @gregowens.bsky.social · 03/10/2023
Housing in Victoria
Simpsons meme about expensive single family zoning.
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Reposted by Greg Owens
Julia Kreiner @jmkreiner.bsky.social · 27/09/2023
I too am recruiting graduate students, postdocs, and a lab technician for my group at UChicago, starting fall 2024! We will be doing exciting work to uncover the limits of plant adaptation in changing environments.
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Greg Owens @gregowens.bsky.social · 19/09/2023
Does anyone have a program for getting a species ID from raw reads? I could blast random reads, but it doesn't seem very robust (and always hits goldfish).
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Greg Owens @gregowens.bsky.social · 18/09/2023
Incredibly lucky start on this guess. 🦎 Animal #49 🐔 I figured it out in 3 guesses! 🟩🟩🟩 🔥 1 | Avg. Guesses: 7.2 metazooa.com #metazooa
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Greg Owens @gregowens.bsky.social · 12/09/2023
The worst disappointment is seeing an email invite to department donuts and realizing its at a university you haven't been at for 5 years.
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Greg Owens @gregowens.bsky.social · 09/09/2023
I've been exploring how to identify inversions in genome alignments. It's surprising to me how fast inversions break up visual synteny. Here's a simple simulation starting from perfect synteny and adding 5 random inversions
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Greg Owens @gregowens.bsky.social · 30/08/2023
When you publish a paper where different PIs at first and last author, who pays the publication fee?
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Greg Owens @gregowens.bsky.social · 25/08/2023
My first MSc student just graduated and left the lab. I'm so proud of her and sad to see her go. I didn't realize how tough it is as a PI to see your lab members move on.
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Jo Wolfe, PhD @jopabinia.bsky.social · 23/08/2023
Nbd just fishes that can see the color of their own skin from the inside 🧪🦑😱
nytimes.com
Hogfish ‘See’ With Their Skin, Even When They’re Dead
The camouflaging talents of this fish are driven by a mysterious new type of cell, setting it apart from other animals that know how to blend in.
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