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Jack Rayner

@jackrayner.bsky.social
104 followers 310 following 4 posts
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Reposted by Jack Rayner
Leeban Yusuf @leebanhy.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
How do coevolutionary interactions begin in nature, and what are the first steps of reciprocal adaptation? Our preprint investigates these questions in a natural experiment: an introduced cricket (T. oceanicus) and its acoustically hunting parasitoid (O. ochracea) in Hawaii. shorturl.at/7llsA 1/n
shorturl.at
Ecological genomics of a novel host-parasitoid arms-race in nature
Novel antagonistic interactions between species are expected to drive especially rapid coevolution. However, little is known about the genomic basis of such coevolution in nature because novel inter-s...
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Reposted by Jack Rayner
bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
Ecological genomics of a novel host-parasitoid arms-race in nature www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
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Reposted by Jack Rayner
bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
Interacting effects of sex and age on immune responses in a polygynous bat with male-biased mortality www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
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Reposted by Jack Rayner
Franca Eichenberger @francae.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
New paper on age-related reproductive tactics & success in humpback whales, published in Current Biology.🐳🧬 doi.org/10.1016/j.cu... #marmam @seamammalresearch.bsky.social @uniofstandrews.bsky.social @ellengarland.bsky.social @emma-carroll.bsky.social @clairenea.bsky.social @lrendell.bsky.social 1/7
Humpback whale breaching in front of the New Caledonian coastline.
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Reposted by Jack Rayner
Leeban Yusuf @leebanhy.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
New paper out: “allopatric” Drosophila species aren’t so allopatric after all. We show that most currently allopatric species pairs probably overlapped in the past and exchanged genes at levels similar to sympatric pairs. @evolletters.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/evle... [1/6]
doi.org
Genomic analyses in Drosophila do not support the classic allopatric model of speciation
Abstract. The allopatric model of speciation has dominated our understanding of speciation biology and biogeography since the Modern Synthesis. It is uncon
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Reposted by Jack Rayner
bioRxiv Ecology @biorxiv-ecology.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
Different transcriptional responses to developmental versus short-term acclimation temperatures in Pieris rapae www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
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Jack Rayner @jackrayner.bsky.social · 04/09/2025
These crickets are targeted by a parasitoid fly that is attracted to their song. We found fly attack rates vary across populations which influences allelic variation in the region underlying a protective male-silencing 'curly-wing' phenotype. Also, these crickets give birth to a new type of ant
Plots showing: A,B) fly attack rate varies across cricket populations; C,D) genomic regions underlying common male-silencing phenotypes, flatwing and curly-wing; E) evidence of fly attack rate influencing allelic variation at multiple sites in the genome, most notably in the genomic regions underlying the curly-wing phenotype.
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Jack Rayner @jackrayner.bsky.social · 04/09/2025
A finding we didn't anticipate is that these small, fragmented populations share many large/very large structural variants - presumably inversions, presumably influenced by balancing selection. We don't know what their phenotypic consequences are, but they have substantial effects on gene expression
Plots showing discrete genetic linkage and clustering of samples in PCA across several chromosomes of the cricket's genome, supporting the presence of several very large structural variants
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Jack Rayner @jackrayner.bsky.social · 04/09/2025
We have a preprint out for our study testing conditions/signatures of repeated adaptation in multiple wild cricket populations. Feedback welcome! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Genomic signatures of local adaptation across parasitised cricket populations
Host-parasite interactions are predicted to exhibit geographic heterogeneity, creating the opportunity for local adaptation. This is difficult to detect because it requires knowledge of selection pres...
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Jack Rayner @jackrayner.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
Don't have anything like that, sorry.
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Reposted by Jack Rayner
Tom Green (they/he) @animalsexpert.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
Today in: sentences that make me love reading old scientific papers
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Reposted by Jack Rayner
Thomas Hitchcock @imprintedgene.bsky.social · 22/11/2023
Our new paper on sexual antagonism in sequential hermaphrodites has now been published! royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....
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Reposted by Jack Rayner
bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 18/10/2023
Competing adaptations maintain non-adaptive variation in a wild cricket population www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
biorxiv.org
Competing adaptations maintain non-adaptive variation in a wild cricket population https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.10.14.562337v1
How emerging adaptive variants interact is an important factor in the evolution of wild populations.
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