iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Joe Hanly @hanliconius.bsky.social · 18h

sorry for like, being pesky about this but @adamrutherford.bsky.social what exactly is one supposed to do about stuff like this?!?

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Arnaud Martin @evolvwing.bsky.social · 20h

Cell Press giving a rather biased, pro-eugenics platform to self-proclaimed "Biotech Barbie", former a Thiel Fellow who briefly married He Jiankui, and fails to properly frame the debate on germline editing. Partly bonkers, partly important, check out this thread 🤯

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Joe Hanly @hanliconius.bsky.social · 20h

@cellpress.bsky.social has just released an.... interesting new 'short review' on pre-implantation gene editing, in which author Cathy Tie argues for the ethical imperative of pushing for this technology. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... There are, to put it mildly, a few issues here. 1/

Medicine has a responsibility to develop interventions that safely reduce human suffering. Therapeutic germline gene editing should be judged by the scientific evidence supporting it, not by the history of the field. If rigorous clinical evaluation demonstrates that it is safe and effective, continued prohibition would itself require ethical justification.

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Joe Hanly @hanliconius.bsky.social · 21h

Today's Genome Observatory tidbit: different countries have very different trends in what type of genomes they are focusing resources on. The UK output is overwhelmingly "first time species", whereas the US is mainly reference improvements. hanliconius.github.io/eukaryote-ge...

A chart of genomes submitted by UK institutions since 2005, showing a current 30 day rate of 20.5 a day, with 5472 total, 4811 of which are first time genomes.

A chart of genomes submitted by US institutions since 2005, showing a current 30 day rate of 1.2 a day, with 3139 total, 1160 of which are first time genomes.

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Joe Hanly @hanliconius.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The median eukaryote has 16 chromosomes. It’s perhaps surprisingly unimodal. All this and even more here: hanliconius.github.io/eukaryote-ge...

Histograms for genome size and chromosome number in all eukaryote genomes.

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Joe Hanly @hanliconius.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Having a blast with Genome Observatory: for example we have a recent genome for the novel fungus species Verweija noviomagensis, isolated from an infected fingernail and not yet phylogenetically resolved past the order level - yet we have a complete T-T genome! academic.oup.com/mmy/article/...

academic.oup.com

Verweija noviomagensis gen. sp. nov.—A novel member of the Onygenales incertae sedis isolated from a dystrophic nail

Abstract. The order Onygenales includes keratinophilic fungi, such as dermatophytes, that can cause onychomycosis. Although dermatophytes are the primary c

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Joe Hanly @hanliconius.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Genome Observatory now has a Genometrics section, where I've collated some stats about the 18k NCBI Chromosome-level genome records. Interestingly many genomes have no mitogenome, and most plant genomes have no plastid genome. Any and all suggestions for additions to Genometrics are welcomed!

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Joe Hanly @hanliconius.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I added some features to what is now called Genome Observatory. By request, you can now organise by taxon. Here we’re looking at the very well-sequenced order Lepidoptera 1/

A view of genome counts of Lepidoptera over time.

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Joe Hanly @hanliconius.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I made a live dashboard of chromosome-scale genome assemblies on NCBI. hanliconius.github.io/eukaryote-ge...

hanliconius.github.io

Eukaryote Genome Watch

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Joe Hanly @hanliconius.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Very pleased to share that we just released a new ref genome for Colias eurytheme and added the first genome for C philodice to NCBI. Both chrom-level, made with pacbio hi-fi and ci-fi (=pac bio chromatin reads). Both from MD. Please use and share widely, I’ll have a citable source preprinted soon.

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Joe Hanly @hanliconius.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I hate to do this with real data, but this is a persistent data vis issue in chromosome synteny riparian plots that we Need to get better at. Left, a synteny plot published today. Right, a rearranged version with exactly the same gross arrangement but with reordered chromosomes:

chromosome synteny riparian plot in which every chromosome has crossing lines

chromosome synteny plot in which no chromosomes have crossing lines. The underlying structure is identical.

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Joe Hanly @hanliconius.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Feelgood news: over the last day the UK has had several periods of powering the grid entirely without fossil fuels. (Still burning gas but exporting more than that to other countries).

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Are you a #NewPI in Ecology & Evolution? Would you like to meet with peers to chat about work, the future and life as a new PI? 🍪☕️ Then I have the form for you! 📋 Help us gauge interest in a new network/event by filling in this short survey: forms.cloud.microsoft/e/K4wUiuLuFn Please RT! 🙏

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Joe Hanly @hanliconius.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

By my count, as of today there are 10,380 eukaryotic chromosome-level genomes on NCBI. I wonder how long it will be to 20k? 100k?

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Richard Merrill @dickmerrill.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Very excited to see this multi-faceted* study, led by Shane Wright and representing years of work on visual evolution and perception in Heliconius as part of our ERC Starting Grant, released into the world! 🦋*pun very much intended www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.org

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Graham Coop @gcbias.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I’m looking to hire an NIH funded postdoc to join our lab here at Davis (please RT). Ongoing areas of interest include: 1) polygenic signals of selection from time series, ARGs, GWAS, etc 2) The interpretation of GWAS, polygenic scores, & sources of confounding

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Charlotte Wright @charlottewright.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Delighted this huge team effort is out! By surveying >20,000 people from >100 countries, we used to butterflies to show that aesthetic biases distort scientific research & environmental policy. Understanding this bias is a key step towards more balanced decision-making 🦋 www.doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...

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Max Farnworth @maxfarnworth.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

🚨 I AM HIRING a 3-year postdoc & 4-year PhD student 🚨 [PLEASE SHARE WIDELY] My Emmy Noether @dfg.de funded Neural Circuit & Systems Evolution lab (🌟) at the @unimainz.bsky.socialÍ wants to start existing. So..., what do we need? WELL... we need you! APPLY UNTIL 21 SEPTEMBER.

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ALT:

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Joe Hanly @hanliconius.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

I will never not find it funny that the DC metro named its undergrad discounted ticket system UPass.

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PLOS Biology @plosbiology.org · 27/08/2026

What are the genetic mechanisms for the #evolution of novel traits? This study by @brhopkins92.bsky.social &co links #Drosophila sex comb teeth to expression changes within ancestral cells, leading to diverged metabolic/developmental rates, and a novel structure. 🧪 #AcademicSky plos.io/4gQOnZK

Graphical abstract on the gain of a novel trait in Drosophila. The teeth of the recently evolved, male-specific Drosophila sex comb evolved from a more ancient organ, the mechanosensory bristle. We show that changes in the expression of genes that are shared between mechanosensory bristle and sex comb teeth cells lead to changes in a variety of fundamental cellular processes that together enable the morphological transformation.

The photo, phylogeny, general design are those of the corresponding author(s). They made the bristle schematics in biorender and the fly silhouette is their modified drawing of D. melanogaster from SciDraw (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3925939).

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Development @dev-journal.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Did you know that Development publishes Techniques and Resources papers? They cover new or improved techniques, as well as new, impactful resources for #devbio. Browse a selection of these free-to-read articles in our subject collection. journals.biologists.com/dev/collecti...

A screenshot of Development's 'Highlights from our Techniques and Resources section' subject collection.

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Alex Zalben @azalben.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Dolly Parton, among a thousand other amazing things she did in her life, gifted over 330 million books to kids through her Imagination Library program. Her passing is a tremendous loss to the world, but you can support the program today to keep it going imaginationlibrary.com

imaginationlibrary.com

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library | USA, UK, IE, CA, AU

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is a book gifting program that mails free books to children from birth until they begin school in participating areas.

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Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library gifted more than 332,000,000 books since it was first created 31 years ago.

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Joe Hanly @hanliconius.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Dolly Parton spent decades quietly giving millions a year to Imagination Library, a program to buy books for kids all across the world. Her father never learnt to read or write, and she wanted to make sure kids from poorer backgrounds had the chances her community didn't always get. What a legend.

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Rebekah Rogers @evolscientist.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

We will be hosting DC Area research talks on Evolutionary Genetics at GW starting this Fall. First Tuesday of the Month at 3pm, Science and Engineering Hall. Co-founded with Manus Patten at Georgetown University. Please help spread the word.

The Inaugural Meeting of DC Evolutionary Genetics
Tuesday Sept 1st, 3pm-4pm
The George Washington University
SEH 8750

Rapid Divergence across Short Geographic Distances in Fireflies
Rebekah Rogers
The George Washington University

&

How organisms cope with selfish genetic elements
Manus Patten
Georgetown University

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Anna Allen @akallen10.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

New NSF BIO solicitation is live.... this replaces the previous IOS, MCB, DEB solicitation www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

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Development @dev-journal.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

In preprints: the genetic basis of the development and evolution of melanic pigmentation on butterfly wings @pbeldade.bsky.social discusses @hanliconius.bsky.social's preprint, showing how natural variation in lncRNAs & miRNAs might contribute to phenotypic differences. doi.org/10.1242/dev....

doi.org

In preprints: the genetic basis of the development and evolution of melanic pigmentation on butterfly wings

A recent preprint by Joseph Hanly and colleagues (Hanly et al., 2026 preprint) investigates the role of a recently identified long non-coding RNA, ivory, and an associated microRNA, mir-193, on wing…

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Joe Hanly @hanliconius.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

big fan of the idea of wind turbines joining the Heliocnius red-black-yellow mimicry ring. (Does this qualify as Mullerian mimicry?)

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Joe Hanly @hanliconius.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Hey if your department is running a faculty search this year (that doesn't fit onto EcoEvoJobs) - this now exists! Let's spread the love.

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jim mallet @wtf-r-species.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

The Clouded Apollo (Parnassius mnemosyne) in the Alps is actually two species! See Lancho-Silva, J., et al. 2026. Second-chance speciation in the Clouded Apollo butterfly. Current Biology. doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...

The clouded apollo butterfly from the Alps of Europe. This species has semi-transparent wing tips, and otherwise white or black pigment on the wings. (c) from iNaturalist

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Joe Hanly @hanliconius.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

it's so humid in DC today that the glue holding my phone case together melted a little bit.

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Leonie Moyle @speciationlab.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Interested in genetics, diversification, and speciation? We're hiring a Research Associate to help with our projects, including the convergent evolution of fruit color. Come and work with us! Feel free to contact me with questions. (Reposts appreciated!) Link: indiana.peopleadmin.com/postings/33973

a matrix of 6 different Solanum (wild tomato) species with six different fruit colors, ranging from white to bright red.

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Rebekah Rogers @evolscientist.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Officially recruiting postdocs at GW. If you are interested in genetic novelty, structural variation, or evo genetics please get in touch! We have data sets on mulitple organisms with large population sizes (Drosophila, Megalonaias nervosa) and species in decline (fireflies, mussels, elephants).

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Joe Hanly @hanliconius.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

I'm a fan of the new(ish) Comparative Genome Viewer feature on NCBI: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/cgv which provides interactive whole-genome riparian plots, like this for Helicoverpa sp, which allows you to quickly and easily examine interesting features. Only a handful of genomes on there for now though!

a whole genome riparian plot from the NCBI Comparative Genome Viewer. Two parallel rows; top labelled for Helicoverpa zea, bottom for Helicoverpa armigera. Each row is divided into 31 Chromosomes. Each chromosome is connected by a lines, which correspond to homologous regions. The connecting lines are green to indicate same-orientation homology, and blue to indicate reverse-orientation homology.

A zoomed-in view of a small region of Chromosome 24 from the previous figure, with one inversion labelled centrally. Gene tracks are present on both chromosomes.

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Henry Arenas-Castro @henryarenas.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

"How two hybridizing monkeyflowers resist phenotypic homogenization" I'm very happy to share this. We would really appreciate your feedback!

Slide with the title and authors list of a manuscript along with illustrations of the monkeyflowers Mimulus guttatus (left) and Mimulus glaucescens (right). In the background, a Manhattan plot with outlier loci and QTL locations.
Title: Maintenance of phenotypic divergence in two sympatric monkeyflowers with weak reproductive isolation
Authors: Henry Arenas-Castro, Cage Cochran, Quinn Evans, Hongfei Chen, Jenn M. Coughlan
Manuscript: bioRxiv, 10.64898/2026.07.28.741377

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Dr Hannah M. Rowland @hannahmrowland.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

We just released a new open resource for studying evolution, ecology, colour, behaviour & biodiversity. OzButterflies 🦋 ✨ 4,000+ individuals 🌈 Visible + UV images 🧬 CO1 barcodes 📈 Spectral reflectance data 🏞️ 125 species doi.org/10.1093/data... @mherberstein.bsky.social @livuni-ives.bsky.social

examples of database images. (B) Disassembled RGB. (C) Disassembled UV. (D) Pinned dorsal RGB. (E) Pinned dorsal UV. (F) Pinned ventral RGB. (G) Pinned ventral UV.

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Jenn Coughlan @jenncoughlan.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Wow!!! Absolutely tremendous!!!!!!

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Joe Hanly @hanliconius.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

If anyone here happens to listen to No Such Thing As A Fish...... you might hear a familiar fact (and name) on Sunday's episode. (This may genuinely be my proudest moment, at 16:00)

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Arif M @arf-mln.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Very excited to see the first chapter of my PhD out on bioRxiv! It began as a rotation project and became a pivotal part of my PhD on beetles, adding a complementary macroevolutionary perspective to my second chapter on early-stage speciation in Indonesian herbivorous ladybird beetles.

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Joe Hanly @hanliconius.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

NCBI's Genome Viewer is now live for H. melpomene rosina, making it very fast and easy to go and look at your favourite locus and to directly view data tracks like RNAseq evidence. Below having a look at the ivory:mir-193 locus.

a screencap of the NCBI genome data viewer.

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Daniel Bolnick @danielbolnick.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

For the handful of people out there studying Schistocephalus solidus tapeworms (which infect copepods, stickleback, and birds): we just wrapped up a new & improved genome assembly using long read, Hi-C, and short read sequencing. Not published yet, but reach out if it would be helpful

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Joe Hanly @hanliconius.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

This series of events right here is a great example of why I think we should get behind society journals - and also why @dev-journal.bsky.social is the GOAT.

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Emília Santos @emiliapsantos.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

🎨 job alert 🐠 Come join us! We have two positions open! These are part of our @erc.europa.eu funded project on the mechanisms underpinning convergence of colour patterns in cichlid fishes! Closing date: 16th August. Postdoc: www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc... Technician: www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...

static.klipy.com

Callipterus Cichlid Collecting Shell

ALT: Callipterus Cichlid Collecting Shell

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Magnus Palmblad @magnuspalmblad.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Tired of AI-generated figures? I asked our talented scientific illustrator Manon Zuurmond to draw some of the instruments and lab equipment we missed in NIH's otherwise fantastic BioArt resource. First batch now available as CC BY. Free for everyone to use in publications: github.com/Center-for-P...

Drawings of various laboratory equipment (liquid chromatography system, mass spectrometers and a centrifuge).

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Joe Hanly @hanliconius.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

We are all Cape Verde right now.

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