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Tree of Sex

@treeofsex.bsky.social
410 followers 87 following 18 posts

A consortium on the quest of understanding the diversity and evolution of reproduction treeofsex.sanger.ac.uk

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Caitlin E. McDonough-Goldstein @ideaspermatheca.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Building connections across components of sex allows for more nuanced evolutionary research like comparing the specific influence of sex on genetic diversity, genome architecture and phenotypic variation or how traits like sexual systems and sex determination interact to influence each other
Text at top: Components of "sex" combine to influence reproductive trait evolution
Composite with multiple figures that make connections among many different traits
Citations for figures: Ross et al. 2022, Niklas and Cobb 2014, Gourevitch et al. 2026, Pla et al. 2022, Kruger-Hadfield 2024 and Billiard et al. 2012
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Caitlin E. McDonough-Goldstein @ideaspermatheca.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
“Isn’t it obvious what sex is? Not really." - Lehtonen and Kokko (2014) Sex can relate to reproduction, recombination, meiosis, syngamy, gametes, anisogamy, phenotypic variation and more And sex is used to describe systems that involve different combinations or variations of these traits
Background of a light grey labyrinth or maze. At the top is a black box with sex at the bottom is a white box with reproductive strategy. In between are layers of items with recombination in dark orange and meiosis in light orange, followed by syngamy in dark green, followed by gamete in light green, followed by mating type in grey and sex type in blue, followed by mating system in grey and sexual system in purple.
Terms in boxes are connected to each other by colored lines.
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Tree of Sex @treeofsex.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
New publication alert: Tree of Sex 2.0 members unpack the many, sometimes overlapping, sometimes conflicting uses of "sex" in biology. Lead author Caitlin McDonough-Goldstein @ideaspermatheca.bsky.social has an excellent explainer thread if you want a preview!
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Tree of Sex @treeofsex.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Okay once more for the #SMBE2026 crowd! If you haven't yet, please take our survey on definitions of sex and reproductive terms. Link here or in the QR: univie.questionpro.eu/a/TakeSurvey...
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Tree of Sex @treeofsex.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
As everyone's winding down on #evol2026 we want to share our survey link with you again. Whether you work in reproductive biology specifically or not, please take a minute to help us understand how the scientific community uses reproductive terms in research! And hope to see you at #SMBE!
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Andrew Mongue @ajmongue.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
For starters, there's not "one weird trick to ditch your X." There are multiple paths to sex determination turnover. To read more about it, including what genes were gained or lost and how the genome looks in X chromosome scales, check out our preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 6/n
biorxiv.org
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Aurora Ruiz-Herrera @aruizherrera.bsky.social · 17/12/2025
Excited to be part of the amazing team behind our upcoming symposium on Sex Evolution at #SMBE2026! 🔹 Daniel Jeffries 🔹 Paul Jay 🔹 @sphaeromeria.bsky.social 🔹 @astridboehne.bsky.social 🔹 @cbenvenuto.bsky.social Join us in Copenhagen for cutting-edge discussions on #sex #evolution
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Aurora Ruiz-Herrera @aruizherrera.bsky.social · 18/12/2025
🔬 Uncovering the mechanisms of sex chromosome dosage compensation in skinks! 🦎 🧬 Our latest collaborative study on how a lizard species with an extraordinary ability to change sexual phenotype maintains genomic balance. 👇 rdcu.be/eVjqW
rdcu.be
Sex chromosome dosage compensation in a sex reversing skink is not influenced by sexual phenotype
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Aurora Ruiz-Herrera @aruizherrera.bsky.social · 24/12/2025
🎯Excited to share our new collaborative paper in Mol Ecol - Beautifully lead by @marta-fb.bsky.social & @coreykirkland.bsky.social - Exploring the fascinating evolutionary story of the waterbuck, shaped by climate and unique chromosome changes onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Chromosome‐Level Genomics and Historical Museum Collections Reveal New Insights Into the Population Structure and Chromosome Evolution of Waterbuck
Advances in sequencing and chromosome-scale assembly have brought non-model animals into focus, deepening our understanding of genome and chromosome evolution. Here, we present the waterbuck (Kobus e...
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Tim Janicke @timjanicke.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
Just one week left to submit your abstract for our symposium on eco-evolutionary dynamics of #sexualselection and #sexualconflict at @ece2026tours.bsky.social ! Join us in beautiful Tours, France, 29 June – 3 July 2026!
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Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution @official-smbe.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
Organisers - @aruizherrera.bsky.social | @ibb-uab.bsky.social - Daniel Jeffries | University of Bern - Paul Jay | Universite Grenoble Alpes - @sphaeromeria.bsky.social | @ibb-botanic.bsky.social - @astridboehne.bsky.social | @leibnizlib.bsky.social - @cbenvenuto.bsky.social | @salforduni.bsky.social
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Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution @official-smbe.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
Invited Speaker - Nicole Valenzuela | @iastateresearch.bsky.social
SMBE2026 Symposium 9 | New frontiers in sex evolution: evolutionary patterns and innovations

Organisers
- Aurora Ruiz-Herrera — Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain (Female)
- Daniel Jeffries — University of Bern, Switzerland (Male)
- Paul Jay — University of Grenoble Alpes, France (Male)
- Sonia Garcia — Institut Botànic de Barcelona, Spain (Female)
- Böhne Astrid — Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change, Germany (Female)
- Chiara Benvenuto — University of Salford, UK (Female)

Invited Speaker
- Nicole Valenzuela — Iowa State University, USA (Female)
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Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution @official-smbe.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
SMBE2026 Symposium 9 | New frontiers in sex evolution: evolutionary patterns and innovations 📨 Abstract submission smbe2026.org/abstracts 📋 Programme details smbe2026.org/programme #SMBE2026
SMBE2026 Symposium 9 | New frontiers in sex evolution: evolutionary patterns and innovations
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Andrew Mongue @ajmongue.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
I've written about this reproductive system, the mix of males and hermaphrodites without pure females (called androdioecy) before, here: academic.oup.com/evolut/artic...
academic.oup.com
Sex, males, and hermaphrodites in the scale insect Icerya purchasi*
Abstract. Androdioecy (the coexistence of males and hermaphrodites) is a rare mating system for which the evolutionary dynamics are poorly understood. Here
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Chiara Benvenuto @cbenvenuto.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
What's in a name? 🐙🦑 @ideaspermatheca.bsky.social @treeofsex.bsky.social
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Matt Kustra @matt-kustra.bsky.social · 21/10/2025
My latest paper, Cryptic female choice can maintain reproductive isolation, with @servedio.bsky.social and Suzanne Alonzo is now out in the October issue of @journal-evo.bsky.social ! (1/3) academic.oup.com/evolut/artic...
academic.oup.com
Cryptic female choice can maintain reproductive isolation
Abstract. Sexual selection has long been considered an important mechanism of speciation. Despite growing empirical evidence that postmating sexual selecti
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Tim Janicke @timjanicke.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
Does #SexualSelection fuel #Speciation? Our new #meta-analysis of comparative studies finds support for a positive relationship, but the rather moderate global effect suggests it’s not necessarily a dominant force. doi.org/10.1093/evle...
doi.org
Sexual selection and speciation: a meta-analysis of comparative studies
Abstract. Understanding the drivers of biodiversity is a central goal in evolutionary biology. In particular, sexual selection has long been proposed as a
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KamilSJaron.bsky.social @kamilsjaron.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
This is a really interesting story. Microsporidia have genome architecture as no other creatures! Congrats @amjadkhalaf.bsky.social
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Physalia-courses@ONLINE @physaliacourses.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
Join our online course on Sex Chromosome Evolution (6–10 Oct) with @astridboehne.bsky.social & @idarolti.bsky.social to gain hands-on experience in genomic and transcriptomic analyses. www.physalia-courses.org/courses-work... #SexChromosomes #GenomeEvolution #Transcriptomics #ComparativeGenomics
physalia-courses.org
Sex chromosome evolution
Dates 6-10 October 2025 To foster international participation, this course will be held online
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Agnieszka (Aga) Lipinska @agalip.bsky.social · 29/08/2025
I'm very happy to share that our paper describing the evolution of sex chromosomes in brown algae is out!🎉 This project was a long journey, but it came together into a nice story 🧬 🌊 Grateful to everyone who helped along the way!
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Sònia Garcia @sphaeromeria.bsky.social · 24/08/2025
Family photo of the 2025 Workshop of the @treeofsex.bsky.social ! Thanks everyone for attending and see you soon!
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Tree of Sex @treeofsex.bsky.social · 14/09/2025
Great work by @aruizherrera.bsky.social's lab! Amazing paper and have you see the graphical abstract? Happy reading!
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Tree of Sex @treeofsex.bsky.social · 14/09/2025
This is insane! The Atlas blue butterfly has 227 pairs of autosomes and four sex chromosomes, the highest recorded chromosome number in non-polyploid Metazoa!!!! See below!🦋
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Tree of Sex @treeofsex.bsky.social · 14/09/2025
Hot from the press: XX/XY sex determination in Nautilus (unique among cephalopods)!!!! 🐙
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Tree of Sex @treeofsex.bsky.social · 24/08/2025
The day 2 of the #TreeOfSex annual workshop started with a great talk by @yannguiguen.bsky.social about B chromosomes and their role in sex determination in fish. Next up, Sònia Garcia is giving an update on the works of the Literature team.
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Tree of Sex @treeofsex.bsky.social · 23/08/2025
Tree of Sex annual workshop started today. It will be two days packed with reproductive biology.
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Tree of Sex @treeofsex.bsky.social · 22/06/2025
Good to see some of our US-based ToS members at #Evol2025! If you're at the meeting and interested or just curious about the project, say hi to @ajmongue.bsky.social @nicolevalenzuela.bsky.social @ideaspermatheca.bsky.social @emistasis.bsky.social, Mike White or Louise Heitzmann!
A non-random sample (spatially structured) of Tree of Sex 2.0 members at the SSE Evolution conference in Athens, Georgia.
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Tree of Sex @treeofsex.bsky.social · 12/05/2025
Officially (re-)annoucing the Tree of Sex! Read all about it in JEB below!
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Tree of Sex @treeofsex.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
As work ramps up, we've created a Starter pack to follow members of the consortium. go.bsky.app/QjiXdsc Please comment below to be added!
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Tree of Sex @treeofsex.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
Hi folks, this is the official Tree of Sex account. We are an open consortium of reproductive scientists with the aim to catalogue reproductive knowledge across Eukaryota. You can be part of it too: treeofsex.sanger.ac.uk
treeofsex.sanger.ac.uk
Tree of Sex
Web site created using create-react-app
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Chiara Benvenuto @cbenvenuto.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
The @treeofsex.bsky.social is working on this! 🤞🏽
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