How do structural variants shape avian phenotypes?
This is what Maria Recuerda Carrasco learned mainly from chickens.

doi.org/10.1111/mec.17…
(pic by Dennis G. Jarvis - CC BY-SA 2.0)

Our paper on the genomics of vocal rhythm in birds is out in Nature Communications! We assembled a tinkerbird reference genome and using 135 whole genomes in a hybrid zone, we found that rhythm speed and stability are associated with genes that affect human speech. nature.com/articles/s4146…

Pervasive gene flow despite strong and varied reproductive barriers in swordtails dlvr.it/T5n5kK

That's not a Hybrid: How to Distinguish Patterns of Admixture and Isolation-by-Distance biorxiv.org/cgi/content/sh… #biorxiv_evobio

🚨🏝️🐦 Check out our new #openaccess paper in Royal Society Publishing, in which we investigate the importance of migratory drop-off for island colonization in birds: doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2…

Despite a high number of suspected hybrid lizards, we found low genetic hybridisation between the Critically Endangered Aeolian wall lizard and the invasive Italian wall lizard. But, the Aeolian wall lizard shows extremely low genetic diversity and an Ne/Nc ratio of just 0.05 🦎

Our review on #avian #island radiations is now published in Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Perspectives in Biology doi.org/10.1101/cshper… Amazing collaborative work with 🟦☁@stervander.com Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🐦🐡, L Valente, M Melo and JC Rando IMIB - Instituto Mixto Investigación Biodiversidad UCC+I UniOvi Universidad Oviedo 🧵1/8
#evolution #speciation #birds #ornithology

New results from comparative population genomics: Genes driving global adaptation -> low pleiotropy; genes driving local adaptation -> high pleiotropy. Consistent with migration-selection theory. Gabriele Nocchi Jim Whiting biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

More #bird #phylogenomics : A 21 Mb chunk of DNA has strongly misleading signal from the remainder of the genome. This was only possible because we had characterized phylogenetic signal across the entire genome. How many more cases like this are out there? pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…

Our #phylogenomics study on the evolutionary relationships of birds 🦉🦃🦆🦜based on whole genome analysis of 363 species is now available as a preview article in nature nature.com/articles/s4158…

BOOM, #BirdTwitter ! Flashy new family tree of #birds just landed in nature: doi.org/10.1038/s41586…. From B10K, led by Josefin Stiller, using nearly 1 BILLION ACT&Gs, we improve age estimates vastly & introduce cool new clade #Elementaves . 🧵

#ornithology #phylogenomics

Our preprint exploring the role of Ne and gene expression on purifying selection in penguins has been recommended by PCI Evolutionary Biology! Approaches can be extended to many non-model organisms, including using expression bins as a proxy for selection coefficients evolbiol.peercommunityin.org/articles/rec?i…

Delighted that this paper by Nilo Merino Recalde et al. is now published as the first Dataset paper in Anim Behav. It describes a fully annotated open dataset of 1.1M acoustic units from 110 000 songs sung by >400 individual Great Tits
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

New lab preprint by John McAuley : the genetic architecture of recombination rates is sexually-dimorphic and polygenic in wild house sparrows. What have we found…? A 🧵👇 (Image:Tilly (Matilda S) Scott)
biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

thanks to all of you #genetics of #migration ! what an amazing couple of days with wonderful people, fantastic talks, super cool discussions - and the most kind and clever crowd of people in the field you could wish for. thank you MPI for Evolutionary Biology for having us, it has been a blast.

Updated version of a site clustering test to detect introgression between divergent species or introgression that happened long ago...

Updated pre-print: Towards reliable detection of introgression in the presence of among-species rate variation biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Forgot to mention that it also works great for vertebrates, so if you have a few genes without functional annotation, give this a try! 👇👇

📣Check out our last paper published in GEB Journal where we studied how the emergence of seasonal migration allowed the evolution of an inverse latitudinal diversity gradient in shorebirds: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…

The first special issue of Evolution Letters is out now!

This collection of articles highlights the diversity of evolutionary responses to climate change and discusses future directions for continued work on this important aspect of evolutionary biology.

academic.oup.com/evlett/issue/8…

Climate change drives migratory range shift via individual plasticity in shearwaters | PNAS pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…