Great to see Timema on the cover of the latest issue of Heredity for Calopteryx_virgo's latest paper (doi.org/10.1038/s41437…)! The photo was taken by insect photographer extraordinaire @bartjzijlstra. Check out his website (bartzijlstra.com) for more excellent pics!

"Es ist kein ruhmreiches Alleinstellungsmerkmal, dass Deutschland ein weltweit einzigartiges Heer von rund 200 000 überwiegend befristet beschäftigten wissenschaftlichen Mitarbeitern unterhält" kritisch und konstruktiv, von Thomas Thiel heute in der FAZ Frankfurter Allgemeine gesamt #IchbinHanna

Curious about how parthenogenesis and hybridogenesis originated in hybrid Bacillus stick insects? Join me at my poster (360) 🤗 tonight (6pm) at #ESEB2022 🌿🦀

I am VERY excited to be joining Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn as professor and LIB as new head of the Centre for Molecular Biodiversity Research in April 2023! I am sending hugs to my group, collaborators, and mentors - big thanks for your kindness and support and trust.

Evolutionary Biologist Svante Pääbo has been awarded the 2022 #NobelPrize in Physiology or Medicine Congratulations 🎉

The stick insect is named after its unique ability to perfectly blend into its natural habitat.

Off to Kassel and the #dzg23! Looking forward to meet with old friends and make new ones. Also: Join us at our Interdisciplinary Symposium on Big Data and Big Questions on Friday! The old GOEvol crew is striking again.

Great kickoff of the #dzg23 with the #SpiderFest, meeting many friends, students and colleagues

Slightly nerve-racking moderating a panel discussion at first. Made easy though by fantastic panelists Jeanne Wilbrandt, Kai Füldner, @julxf and Walter Salzburger Lab (who both gave fantastic talks!), but also by @Nturetz, PosnienLab - moved to: @posnienlab.bsky.social, Jeremias Brand and Alex Brandt - thank you team 🙏

Functionally different chromosome sets in a parthenogenetic animal showcase a survival strategy spanning millions of years. Where did we find this? In asexual #oribatid mites! With Jens Bast Mountain @Nguiglielmoni & more biorxiv.org/content/10.110… 🧵 1/n

2/n Meet diploid 𝘗𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘺𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘶𝘴 𝘱𝘦𝘭𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘦𝘳 a tiny soil-living ancient asexual. I established an HMW 𝘨DNA extraction method to generate a phased assembly from a single individual allowing us to dive deep into asexual genome evolution! (👨‍🎨: Marcel Dominik Solbach)

3/n To investigate haplotypic independence we sequenced 5 ind. from 🇩🇪🇮🇹🇷🇺🇯🇵&🇨🇦. As expected under ancient asexuality: the 2 haplotypes display mirror topologies of populations, including all ind. of European populations, representing the ‘Meselson effect’.

4/n Haplotype trees of 🇯🇵 & 🇨🇦 populations lack such clear separation. While some individuals display a shared separation of haplotypes, this is confined to each respective population → suggesting a more recent transition to asexuality.

5/n Asexual oribatid mites are known to maintain effective purifying selection. We show haplotypic independence in differentially expressed alleles, HGTs & TEs building the substrate for evolvability & evolutionary innovation.

6/n Thus far, the Meselson effect & ancient asexuality in parthenogenetic animals only exist in oribatid mites; suggesting that the rarity of long-term asexuals relies on haplotypic independence as a source for novelty to adapt and diversify in the absence of sex.

7/n This research is part of Hüsna ‘s PhD thesis (expect more cool science 🔥). Thanks to all co-rockstars: Alex Brandt Viki Bednarski @AnneMarie_DC and others. 🙏 #EmmyNoether DFG public | @[email protected] and others for 💰

We laughed together, we cried together. And here it is out in the wild; Hüsna's Final PhD chapter and a true Magnum opus: Ancient asexual mites use independent haplotypes for novel purposes, which might help them to persist over time! Thanks all involved. The whole thread:

A high-quality chromosome-level #genome assembly of Hermannia gibba - the only documented case of a ZW system in Acariformes biorxiv.org/content/10.110… Jens Bast Dan Jeffries Nadège Guiglielmoni et al.

Congratulations to Dr Marco Niekampf for an amazing thesis and defense!! Accompanied here at #goettingen #Gänseliesl by my proud ex-PhD students Dr Fanny Weitz and Dr Sarah Bank. Fantastic #stickinsect #evolution research at the Uni Göttingen Animal Evolution Biodiversity funded by DFG public | @[email protected]

Excited to announce that I am joining the Dept. of Genetics and Evolution Genetics & Evolution at Université de Genève as a tenure-track Asst. Professor! We'll be exploring the gut-brain axis of insects. I am currently offering a fully-funded PhD position! drive.switch.ch/index.php/s/sP… Please RT #newPI