German Lagunas-Robles
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g-lagunasrobles.bsky.social
German Lagunas-Robles
@g-lagunasrobles.bsky.social
150 followers 240 following 22 posts
postdoc @ IU Bloomington (Bracewell Lab)
PhD from University of California, Riverside (Brelsford Lab)
genome evolution, ants, and beetles 🧬🐜🪲
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g-lagunasrobles.bsky.social
Check out our paper on the neo-sex chromosomes in mountain pine beetle! We assembled THREE neo-Ys that are quite distinct and their corresponding neo-Xs .
biorxiv-genomic.bsky.social bioRxiv Genomics @biorxiv-genomic.bsky.social · 9d
The tortured past of young polymorphic sex chromosomes revealed through multiple de novo genome assemblies of the mountain pine beetle https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.27.702068v1
February 2, 2026 at 2:51 PM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social
Lethal epistasis maintains strong linkage disequilibrium between unlinked supergenes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.08.698410v1
January 9, 2026 at 3:32 AM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
hugodarras.bsky.social
New work from @miyapan.bsky.social and our team, bringing ant, bee, and wasp labs together. @chuanxinyu.bsky.social shows that the ANTSR locus we discovered in ants has determined sex for 150+ My across bees and stinging wasps 🐜🐝, despite virtually no sequence conservation 😮 doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
January 6, 2026 at 3:01 AM
g-lagunasrobles.bsky.social
ANTSR seems to be the ancient master sex determining gene in Hymenoptera (as suggested by Pan et al. 2024)! So rad that a lncRNA is doing this!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Evidence for an ancient master sex determination gene in Hymenoptera
The vast majority of Hymenopterans determine sex by haplodiploidy, in which males and females develop from haploid unfertilized and diploid fertilized eggs, respectively. At the molecular level, the m...
www.biorxiv.org
December 26, 2025 at 5:41 PM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
isyeb.mnhn.fr
New in @currentbiology.bsky.social
"Genomic evidence of a complex supergene system linking dispersal to social polymorphism"
#Myrmecina_graminicola
Mona,S., Gay,E.J., Ducancel,J., Laso-Jadart,R., Chifflet-Belle, P., Doums,C. @isyeb.mnhn.fr @ephe-psl.bsky.social et al.
🐜 www.cell.com/current-biol...
Genomic evidence of a complex supergene system linking dispersal to social polymorphism
Mona et al. report a complex supergene system in the ant Myrmecina graminicola characterized by three alleles determining both the number of queens in a colony (monogyne vs. polygyne) and the presence...
www.cell.com
November 21, 2025 at 9:55 AM
g-lagunasrobles.bsky.social
🧬🧬 A human supergene 🧬🧬
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
A human supergene: BRCA1, CCDC200, and U2 snRNAs
BRCA1 occurs on one of two major haplotypes in populations of European and Asian ancestry that show signs of selection and functional differences. Near-maximal linkage disequilibrium associated with t...
www.biorxiv.org
November 18, 2025 at 9:21 PM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
plosbiology.org
#Haplodiploid inheritance is found in all species of #Hymenoptera. @mwbstr.bsky.social &co map the #sex determining #gene of the red mason #bee to the ANTSR gene region, suggesting a shared, ancient origin of #SexDetermination in bees & ants >150 Mya ago @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/47COEtH
Complementary sex determination (CSD) in bees and ants. Top left: Single-locus CSD is likely to be the predominant mode of sex determination in Hymenoptera. CSD loci have been identified in two species: the honeybee Apis mellifera and the invasive ant Linepithema humile. The tree shows evolutionary relationships between these species and Osmia bicornis, the main subject of this study. The origin of Hymenoptera is estimated as 386 million years ago and the common ancestor of Apoidea and Formicoidea is estimated as 153 million years ago. Top right: Under single-locus CSD, females are heterozygous at the CSD locus, whereas males are haploid and therefore hemizygous. A large number of CSD alleles are expected to segregate in outbred populations. A small proportion of homozygotes at the CSD locus are produced by chance, when parents share an allele, which results in the production of sterile diploid males. Middle: An O. bicornis nest consists of a row of cocoons in a tube. The mother lays fertilized diploid eggs deepest in the nest and unfertilized haploid eggs closer to the entrance. Eggs develop into adults inside cocoons. Diploid eggs typically develop into females whereas haploid eggs become male. A small proportion of diploids that are homozygous at the CSD locus develop into diploid males, which occur amongst females and are larger than haploid males. Bottom: A male and female red mason bee mating. Photo by Marie Louise Huskens.
November 4, 2025 at 1:58 PM
g-lagunasrobles.bsky.social
2 year postdoc position in evolutionary genomics at University of California, Riverside in the Purcell Lab! 🧬🐜
2 year postdoc position in evolutionary genomics available at the University of California, Riverside in the Purcell Lab
October 17, 2025 at 9:58 PM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
charlottewright.bsky.social
How many chromosomes can an animal have?

In our paper out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social we show that the Atlas blue butterfly has 229 chromosome pairs- the highest in diploid Metazoa! These arose by rapid autosome fragmentation while sex chromosomes stayed intact.
www.cell.com/current-biol...
Constraints on chromosome evolution revealed by the 229 chromosome pairs of the Atlas blue butterfly
The genome of the Atlas blue butterfly contains ten times more chromosomes than most butterflies, and more than any other known diploid animal. Wright et al. show that this extraordinary karyotype is ...
tinyurl.com
September 11, 2025 at 3:22 PM
g-lagunasrobles.bsky.social
ggplot2 ethusiasts, new update just dropped! 🔥🔥🔥
thomasp85.com Thomas Lin Pedersen @thomasp85.com · Sep 11
I am beyond excited to announce that ggplot2 4.0.0 has just landed on CRAN.

It's not every day we have a new major #ggplot2 release but it is a fitting 18 year birthday present for the package.

Get an overview of the release in this blog post and be on the lookout for more in-depth posts #rstats
ggplot2 4.0.0
A new major version of ggplot2 has been released on CRAN. Find out what is new here.
www.tidyverse.org
September 11, 2025 at 1:33 PM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
thomasp85.com
I am beyond excited to announce that ggplot2 4.0.0 has just landed on CRAN.

It's not every day we have a new major #ggplot2 release but it is a fitting 18 year birthday present for the package.

Get an overview of the release in this blog post and be on the lookout for more in-depth posts #rstats
ggplot2 4.0.0
A new major version of ggplot2 has been released on CRAN. Find out what is new here.
www.tidyverse.org
September 11, 2025 at 11:20 AM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
nature.com
A common type of ant in Europe breaks a fundamental rule in biology: its queens can produce male offspring that are a whole different species

go.nature.com/4mOb5T9
‘Almost unimaginable’: these ants are different species but share a mother
Ant queens of one species clone ants of another to create hybrid workers that do their bidding.
go.nature.com
September 3, 2025 at 3:34 PM
g-lagunasrobles.bsky.social
Check out our latest preprint in Formica ants! We investigate how the sex ratio supergene evolved. We find that a colony-level sex ratio supergene evolved twice! This likely occurred as a result of recombination between the the ancestral queen number supergenes present in Formica. 🧬🐜🧬🐜🧬🐜
biorxiv-genomic.bsky.social bioRxiv Genomics @biorxiv-genomic.bsky.social · Sep 1
Multiple origins of a sex ratio supergene in Formica ants https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.27.672632v1
September 2, 2025 at 2:32 PM
g-lagunasrobles.bsky.social
Excited to share some of the latest work coming from the Formica ant supergene system 🐜🧬! This project represents many collection trips and years of work!
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Variation in social organization and supergene control along a latitudinal gradient
Widespread species often experience vastly different environmental conditions across their range. In species with polymorphic traits under strong genetic control, we can investigate how environmental ...
doi.org
July 24, 2025 at 1:39 PM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
judithmank.bsky.social
Very pleased to see this officially out - Genome Architecture and Speciation in Plants and Animals. With @siluwang.bsky.social, @dortizba.bsky.social and Loren Rieseberg. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
June 27, 2025 at 1:22 PM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
jevbio.bsky.social
The #EditorsChoice for this month from EIC @maxreuter.bsky.social is

"Unexpected absence of a multiple-queen supergene haplotype from supercolonial populations of Formica ants" by

@g-lagunasrobles.bsky.social et al

academic.oup.com/jeb/article/...
Unexpected absence of a multiple-queen supergene haplotype from supercolonial populations of Formica ants
Abstract. Ants exhibit many complex social organization strategies. One particularly elaborate strategy is supercoloniality, in which a colony consists of
academic.oup.com
April 23, 2025 at 7:59 AM
g-lagunasrobles.bsky.social
Is supercoloniality a simple extension of polygyny?Supercolonies, networks of interconnected nests with many queens, have been proposed as a natural extension of multi-queen nests. In many Formica ants, a supergene determines whether a colony has a single queen or many queens. (1/n)
April 9, 2025 at 2:01 PM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social
A novel supergene controls queen size and colony social organization in the ant Myrmica ruginodis https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.24.644106v1
March 26, 2025 at 4:31 PM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
plosbiology.org
Dynamics of a supergene. A study of the BC supergene in wing color morphs of the African monarch #butterfly by @rishidekayne.bsky.social &co reveals dynamic evolution of #supergene haplotypes, fueled by incomplete recombination suppression 🧪 @plosbiology.org plos.io/3DiFhnL
Top: Topology weightings across chr15 showing how the karamu haplotype is related to the klugii and orientis haplotypes. Upper panel shows three possible rooted genealogical topologies. Second panel shows weights for each topology along the chromosome, smoothed with a 20 kb span. Arrows above the plot indicate the locations of inversions. Third panel shows unsmoothed topology weightings across a 1.5 Mb region corresponding to Inversion 2. Bottom: Ancestry painting across a 100 kb region within Inversion 2, showing ancestry tracts for two homozygous karamu individuals compared to two representative individuals homozygous for the orientis and klugii haplotypes. Coding regions are indicated below the plot, with the candidate gene for background colouration yellow indicated. Green triangles represent the top 10 SNPs for background colour in our GWAS. There is evidence for recombination throughout the supergene region, and specifically in the vicinity of yellow, consistent with the hypothesis that orientis ancestry at this locus (i.e., the B allele) is associated with darker colouration in karamu individuals.
March 3, 2025 at 10:00 AM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
helsenjana.bsky.social
Centromere evolution isn't a sudden switch!

Our study shows centromere transitions are a step-by-step process driven by a combination of drift and selection. Discover how the kinetochore interface shapes this gradual change in our new preprint 🥳 doi.org/10.1101/2025.01.16.633479 🧵(1/8)
January 17, 2025 at 11:17 AM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
davetoews.bsky.social
🦉🧪 Questions about high latitude myrtle warblers have been "up in the air" (pun intended) since 1899! @stephszarmach.bsky.social used fancy new geolocators that track light AND barometric pressure to add an unexpected chapter to this tale ......
stephszarmach.bsky.social Steph Szarmach @stephszarmach.bsky.social · Oct 11
Excited to share our preprint on the migration of high-latitude breeding myrtle warblers! Using barometric geolocators and stable isotopes we found most birds migrated >5,000km to the Gulf Coast rather than to the closer Pacific Coast wintering area.

biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...
Left panel shows a myrtle warbler wearing a geolocator backpack and right panel shows a map with a migration track for one bird traveling from Alaska southeast across Canada and then southwest to Texas
October 14, 2024 at 1:10 PM
g-lagunasrobles.bsky.social
Our preprint on the unexpected absence of a multiple-queen supergene haplotype in supercolonial populations is up on bioRxiv! We found that the P haplotype is not necessary for supercoloniality in the Formica rufa group, despite its longstanding association with non-supercolonial polygyny.
September 19, 2024 at 9:31 PM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
jcatchen.bsky.social
Happy to release Stacks v2.67 today. This release updates process_radtags to make it easier to use SRA data and to filter poly-G (error) runs coming from Nextseq/Novaseq machines + bugfixes. We also added a genotype depth filter to populations #RADseq
catchenlab.life.illinois.edu/stacks/
Stacks
catchenlab.life.illinois.edu
July 18, 2024 at 5:50 PM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
theaga.bsky.social
New article: 'The role of conflict in the formation and maintenance of variant sex chromosome systems in mammals'
🔬 From fusions to Y chromosome loss, sex chromosome karyotypes vary widely in mammalian genomes.
1/3
June 13, 2024 at 4:01 PM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
susanjohnston.bsky.social
With a link that works 😊
March 21, 2024 at 6:40 PM