Kalyani Twyman

Thank you!

Thank you!

Very pleased to share that I passed my PhD viva on Monday! Massive thanks to my examiners, Alan Grafen and Oscar Gaggiotti, to my supervisor, @andygardner.bsky.social , and to everyone else that made the day feel special. Feeling very happy and grateful.

Innovations in Decolonising the Curriculum Join us for the launch of Innovations in Decolonising the Curriculum: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, an edited collection.

Please join us for the launch of our edited book 'Innovations in Decolonising the Curriculum: Multidisciplinary Perspectives', on campus at the University of Gloucestershire!

The book features a collection of authors from a a wide range of disciplines.

www.eventbrite.com/e/innovation...

A formal theory of group-level adaptation for obligate eusociality Abstract. Darwin argued that natural selection leads organisms to appear as if they are striving to maximize their fitness. This idea is readily recognized

A formal theory of group-level adaptation for obligate eusociality:

doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

@kztwyman.bsky.social & @andygardner.bsky.social (2025)
#OpenAccess

Congratulations!!

@kztwyman.bsky.social & @andygardner.bsky.social mathematically connect the dynamics of natural selection to optimisation to provide formal justification for viewing obligately eusocial colonies as adaptive individuals in their own right—that is, superorganism:

doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

Our upcoming book will be out TOMORROW:
'Innovations in Decolonising the Curriculum: Multidisciplinary Perspectives'

bookstore.emerald.com/innovations-...

Innovations in Decolonising the Curriculum: Multidisciplinary Perspectives.

– a new book about how to decolonize the curriculum, by Adeela ahmed Shafi et al.

www.emerald.com/books/edited...

Here is our chapter:

Out today!

Innovations in Decolonising the Curriculum: Multidisciplinary Perspectives.

I am happy (with @kztwyman.bsky.social & Jasmeen Kanwal) to have contributed a chapter – "Teaching the Science of Race and Racism" – to this important book that "moves beyond debate to action"

Please do read.

Very happy to see our opinion article out in @cp-trendsecolevo.bsky.social today. 🥳 We ask whether sexual signals can influence the evolutionary trajectory of naturally selected adaptations, such as protective colouration, for better or for worse 🧐 1/n
doi.org/10.1016/j.tr...

New paper out today in @ecol-evol.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1002/ece3....

The total size of the body’s fat stores is a crucial factor in understanding animal health, life history and conservation biology, but no established method exists to measure it in large marine animals without capturing them.

AI image generated using Google's Gemini.

New paper: "A formal theory of group-level adaptation for obligate eusociality", with Kalyani Twyman (@kztwyman.bsky.social) #OpenAccess

academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-...

#Image #GoogleGemini @jevbio.bsky.social #OA

Happy to share that our paper ‘a formal theory of group-level adaptation for obligate eusociality’ (with @andygardner.bsky.social) is now out in @jevbio.bsky.social advances.

doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

#OpenAccess #Eusociality #GroupAdaptation #FormalDarwinism

This is pretty cool

Race Isn’t Biological — So Why Do So Many Still Think It Is? « Life Sciences# « Cambridge Core Blog Even though findings from genetics and other sciences unequivocally refute biological conceptions of race, this erroneous viewpoint remains widespread among the general public. Why can’t scientists co...

Why does the idea that race is biological persist despite biology so clearly refuting it? Check out a blog @kevinlala.bsky.social and I wrote about our new article titled 'Impediments to countering racist pseudoscience' (coauthored w/ @gillianrbrown1.bsky.social and Marc Feldman) for some thoughts:

Race Isn’t Biological — So Why Do So Many Still Think It Is? « Life Sciences# « Cambridge Core Blog Even though findings from genetics and other sciences unequivocally refute biological conceptions of race, this erroneous viewpoint remains widespread among the general public. Why can’t scientists co...

Here is the link to a short blog that @kztwyman.bsky.social and I wrote about our article (with @gillianrbrown1.bsky.social and Marc Feldman) entitled "Impediments to countering racist pseudoscience":

www.cambridge.org/core/blog/20...

Image from the blog showing 5 solutions to countering scientific racism 1. Introduce students to the complexities of developmental processes 2. Introduce students to the complexities of inheritance processes 3. Explain that variation between racialised groups in behavioural and cultural traits is not caused by genetic differences 4. Debunk scientific racism in school and university level science curricula 5. Acknowledge and contextualised the racist histories of academic fields

Race Isn’t Biological — So Why Do So Many Still Think It Is?

@kevinlala.bsky.social and @kztwyman.bsky.social blog about their recent paper in the journal Evolutionary Human Sciences

www.cambridge.org/core/blog/20...

Our article "Impediments to countering racist pseudoscience" (with @gillianrbrown1.bsky.social, @kztwyman.bsky.social & Marc Feldman) is now published online.

We describe five factors that contribute to the spread of racism and suggest strategies for countering them.

doi.org/10.1017/ehs....

Photo of Chedhawat Chokechaipaisarn

And Chedhawat Chokechaipaisarn, whose poster "The consequences of constrained sex allocation under local mate competition" (P02.036) is in Tuesday's session.

This is based on his recent paper in Journal of Evolutionary Biology:

doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

@jevbio.bsky.social @eseb2025.bsky.social

Photo of Kalyani Twyman.

Two other members of the research group have successfully made it to @eseb2025.bsky.social ahead of me.

Look out for @kztwyman.bsky.social, whose poster "A formal theory of group-level adaptation for obligate eusociality" (P01.068) is in this evening's session.

Really great to hear that these topics are being brought up and spoken about in class. Would love to hear their (and your) thoughts!

Shippin' out from Scotland Written by MMRP PostDoc Alec BurslemFor a while it looked like I was going to be a chef. It was 2009, and after a couple of disappointing A-level results in biology and chemistry had shaken my confide...

It's official! I'm now the newest postgraduate research fellow at the marine mammal research program at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. Bio and blog post with more details here:
www.mmrphawaii.org/alec-burslem
www.mmrphawaii.org/post/shippin...

Really happy to share this article I'm grateful to have been a part of: 'Impediments to countering racist pseudoscience' coauthored with @kevinlala.bsky.social, @gillianrbrown1.bsky.social and Marcus Feldman. Check out a preprint here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
#ScientificRacism #Antiracism

In this new article on scientific racism (coauthored with @kevinlala.bsky.social, @kztwyman.bsky.social and Marcus Feldman), we present five impediments to countering racist pseudoscience and suggest strategies for containing its spread.

#ehbea #philsci #histsci #ishpssb2025 🧪

tinyurl.com/4ptyt6w2

I'm happy to share our latest manuscript "Impediments to countering racist pseudoscience", coauthored with @gillianrbrown1.bsky.social @kztwyman.bsky.social & Marcus Feldman.

Excited to see 1st of the Evoluionary Human Sciences special issue on scientific racism come out! @kevinlala.bsky.social @gillianrbrown1.bsky.social @kztwyman.bsky.social & Marcus Feldman discuss impediments to countering racist pseudoscience & present 5 solutions www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Figure 1. Unbeatable sex allocation strategy of unconstrained females (r*) as a function of proportion of constrained females (p) under local mate competition with two foundresses colonising the patch. Shown are the result for Godfray’s (1990) erroneous diploidy solution (dashed grey line), our corrected diploidy solution (solid grey line), and our haplodiploidy solution (solid black line). Overlaid are results from individual-based simulations (discs).

New paper: "The consequences of constrained sex allocation in diploids and haplodiploids under local mate competition", with Chedhawat Chokechaipaisarn:

doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

@jevbio.bsky.social

Thank you to all who provided helpful discussion or suggestions: @alecburslem.bsky.social, Chedhawat Chokechaipaisarn, @bingdongevo.bsky.social, Steve Frank, @georgeshillcock.bsky.social, @zerenvc.bsky.social, & two anonymous reviewers. And of course, thanks to my supervisor @andygardner.bsky.social

Lastly, we find that sharing is required for division of labor to be favoured by natural selection, meaning that the “clonality window” for sharing is also a prerequisite for division of labor in this scenario, aligning with empirical evidence on the evolution of obligate multicellularity!