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Reposted by Richard Merrill

Leonie Moyle @speciationlab.bsky.social · 18h

Great new postdoc fellowship for foundational plant research.
If you’re into genetics and genomics of plant reproductive evolution or adaptive convergence (incl in the cool and charismatic nightshades!) I’d be happy to talk about possible projects!
www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/simons...

Simons Postdoctoral Fellowships in Plant Biology

Simons Postdoctoral Fellowships in Plant Biology on Simons Foundation

www.simonsfoundation.org

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Leeban Yusuf @leebanhy.bsky.social · May 23

Excited to see our most recent MS finally out in the world. We used F1 female hybrids (of two behaviourally-isolated cricket species) to show that broad gene expression divergence in the brain underpins context-dependent divergence of female response to male sexual signals.

bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · May 23

Cis-regulatory divergence and mate recognition in behaviourally isolated cricket species. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.19.654830v1

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Richard Merrill @dickmerrill.bsky.social · 17h

On my (slow journey) back to Munich from an awesome visit to Stockholm uni. Thanks @rawwiberg.bsky.social and others for the invite!

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Ben Longdon @blongdon.bsky.social · 19d

2 job adverts on a NERC project w myself + @darrenobbard.bsky.social on “What determines the virome: ecology and the environment, evolution, or species history?” early 2026 in
@uniexecec.bsky.social
- Postdoc: jobs.exeter.ac.uk/hrpr_webrecr...
- RA: jobs.exeter.ac.uk/hrpr_webrecr...
Pls share!

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Melanie Brien @melbrien.bsky.social · 21d

Funded PhD position available 🎉 Come and work with me in Helsinki to uncover the pathways producing colourful tiger moth wings. Lots of options for genomics, CRISPR, fieldwork, behaviour experiments… Email with questions! jobs.helsinki.fi/job/Helsinki...

Wood tiger moth on leaf. Photo: Juhani Maamela.

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Richard Merrill @dickmerrill.bsky.social · 28d

first road trip in our van has been a mixed bag …

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Reposted by Richard Merrill

Kathy Darragh @kdarragh.bsky.social · Sep 11

I'm looking for PhD students to join the lab starting August 2026. We study the evolution of insect chemical signals so if you're interested in evolutionary biology, chemical ecology, molecular biology, behavior, or genetics, this could be a good fit for you! More info here: tinyurl.com/mrxchwfm

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International Society for Neuroethology @neuroethology.org · Sep 12

José Borrero from Richard Merrill's lab studies how the visual acuity changes with age in different species of Heliconius butterflies and how it is related to brain morphology and neurogenesis. #dzg2025
@borreroja.bsky.social
@dickmerrill.bsky.social

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Chris Jiggins @chrisjiggins.bsky.social · Sep 10

Looking for a PhD? I am advertising two industry sponsored PhD projects. One on black soldier fly genetics with #betabugs and another on searching insect biodiversity for novel enzymes #Syngenta. Get in touch if you are interested!! bbsrcdtp.lifesci.cam.ac.uk/available-ic...

Available iCASE projects | Cambridge Biosciences DTP PhD Programme

iCASE projects for academic year 2026-2027 line_divider.png Project: Understanding cellulose digestion by cryo-EM structure of cellulose microfibril-enzyme complexes Project reference: ICS-BIO-PD26 S...

bbsrcdtp.lifesci.cam.ac.uk

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Patrick Krapf @krapfpatrick.bsky.social · Sep 11

A little late, but I still want to share the good news 🎊: I recently started my #MSCA postdoctoral fellowship. I will assess the impact of climate change on wood ants🐜 & their hybrids 🧬. My project is based at the Uni #Amsterdam with Jonna Kulmuni & @dickmerrill.bsky.social @lmumuenchen.bsky.social

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Amanda Heidt @scattercushion.bsky.social · Aug 27

🧪 #source request: Are you a PhD student from Singapore, Japan, Korea, Australia, South Africa, Germany, or China who *recently graduated or will soon graduate?* If so, I'd like to hear about your next steps for a story in @nature.com. Send me a DM, email me, or find me on Signal (aheidt.16).

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Silu Wang (she/her)🇨🇦 @siluwang.bsky.social · Aug 30

Why do speciation rates vary across the tree of life?
Some of the best yet most underappreciated places for this investigation are natural hybrid zones.
This preprint takes you to the hybrid zones in the origin of species to find a clue. 👉 shorturl.at/N7FXE
#Speciation #Evolution #hybridization

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Melanie Brien @melbrien.bsky.social · Aug 18

Excited to soon start my new role as Academy of Finland Research Fellow 🦋🐛I’ll later be advertising a PhD position on tiger moth colour and genomics, and will be speaking at #ESEB2025 this week if you want an idea of what’s going on!

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Richard Merrill @dickmerrill.bsky.social · Aug 23

Congratulations Mel!

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Reposted by Richard Merrill

Pável Matos @pavelmatosm.bsky.social · Aug 19

New PhD position: Butterfly Conservation Genomics 🦋
The project focuses on threatened butterflies in Czech dry grasslands and steppes.
Deadline: September 12, 2025
More info: pavelmatos.wordpress.com/join-us/

Join us

Opportunities Below are the positions currently open in our lab. PhD position (full-time doctoral funding) We are seeking a highly motivated PhD student to join our team. The goal of the project is…

pavelmatos.wordpress.com

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Richard Merrill @dickmerrill.bsky.social · Aug 23

Though also having serious FOMO seeing posts from eseb

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Richard Merrill @dickmerrill.bsky.social · Aug 23

Very happy to have arrived in Uppsala for the MEME summer school after a very enjoyable (albeit very wet) week in Lapland

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Laura Busse @laurabusse.bsky.social · Jul 10

Seeing the world through the lens of oscillations - we are delighted to share our new paper where we demonstrate that anatomically resolved oscillatory bursts reveal dynamic motifs of thalamocortical activity during naturalistic stimulus viewing (doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...).

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Ana Catalán @anaevolcatalan.bsky.social · Jun 24

Female neoteny does have an impact on colonization patterns in the big European firefly, Lampyris noctiluca ✨

Molecular Biology and Evolution @molbioevol.bsky.social · Jun 24

@anaevolcatalan.bsky.social @hoehna.bsky.social @stusso.bsky.social @ulrikacandolin.bsky.social et al. analyse genomes of the European firefly, revealing a complex demographic history shaped by glaciation and sex-biased dispersal.

🔗 academic.oup.com/mbe/article/42/6/msaf123/8170119

#evobio #molbio

Sex-biased Migration and Demographic History of the Big European Firefly Lampyris noctiluca

Abstract. Differential dispersion between the sexes can impact the colonization process and demographic history of a species. Here, we explored the demogra

academic.oup.com

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · Jul 10

New from @gadusmo.bsky.social’s PhD thesis 👐🏼 with @dickmerrill.bsky.social, Jake Morris, Camilo Salazar and Carolina Pardo-Díaz

‘Repeated evolution of reduced visual investment at the onset of ecological speciation in high-altitude #Heliconius butterflies’ 1/n 🧪

academic.oup.com/evlett/advan...

Repeated evolution of reduced visual investment at the onset of ecological speciation in high-altitude Heliconius butterflies

Abstract. Colonization of new habitats is typically followed by divergent selection acting on traits that are immediately important for fitness. For exampl

academic.oup.com

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Chris Jiggins @chrisjiggins.bsky.social · Jun 30

Very excited about this paper led by Erika Castro. She has shown that Heliconius were ancestrally plastic in how they acquired their cyanogens, but some species have lost the ability to biosynthesise toxins, and have lost genes involved www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Gene loss associated with plasticity-first evolution in Heliconius butterflies

Phenotypic plasticity occurs when a genotype can produce more than one phenotype under different environmental conditions. Genetic accommodation allows plastic phenotypes to be tuned to new environmen...

www.biorxiv.org

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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · Jun 18

Some personal news, to be filed under “things I did not see coming”…. 1/n

Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge @camzoology.bsky.social · Jun 18

🎉We are delighted to announce that Professor Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social‬ will be the 3rd Prince Philip Professor of Ecology and Evolution.

We look forward to welcoming him next year!

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Johanna Mappes @jmappes.bsky.social · Dec 7

🧪Why does warning signal variability persist in #aposematic species? Our new @sse-evolution.bsky.social paper explores this using data from 64,741 🤯 A.plantaginis, raised over 25 generations. Spoiler: no evidence that life-history traits constrain warning colours! academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

Evolutionary potential and constraints in an aposematic species: Genetic correlations between warning coloration and fitness components in wood tiger moths

Abstract. Variability in warning signals is common but remains puzzling since deviations from the most common form should result in a higher number of pred

academic.oup.com

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Richard Merrill @dickmerrill.bsky.social · May 30

To be fair in Germany we’re still restricted to 17 pages.

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Richard Merrill @dickmerrill.bsky.social · May 23

Just over a week left to apply for this. Please get the word out there and tell your students :)

Richard Merrill @dickmerrill.bsky.social · May 6

Interested in a PhD connecting sensory ecology and evolutionary genetics? Applications are now open for a project on the Speciation Genomics of Eye Size Variation in Heliconius Butterflies in our lab at LMU Munich: www.evol.bio.lmu.de/research/mer... Please repost!

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