Dr. Wen-Juan Ma | 马文娟

Cracked, but still there: the glass ceiling persists for senior women in science To mark International Women’s Day on 8 March, Mangala Srinivas reminds junior colleagues that career success won’t protect you from gender-based bias.

To mark International Women’s Day on 8 March, Mangala Srinivas reminds junior colleagues that career success won’t protect you from gender-based bias.

go.nature.com/4umaXyr

MKado: a toolkit for McDonald-Kreitman tests of natural selection https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.02.709122v1

One more week to apply for our @fwovlaanderen.bsky.social postdoc position @vubrussel.bsky.social:

Deadline 10 Mar 2026. Details below👇

#SexChromosomeEvolution #SexChromosometurnover #Meiosisrecombination #SexSpecific

Sex chromosome stability and turnover across vertebrates: a developmental gene regulatory network perspective Sex chromosomes have evolved repeatedly across the Tree of Life, yet their evolutionary fates differ strikingly among lineages. In mammals and birds, highly degenerated Y/W chromosomes have remained s...

🚀 New lab preprint on #SexChromosomeTurnover is out on @arxiv.bsky.social

Huge congrats to lab thesis student for submitting his PhD @fwovlaanderen.bsky.social fellowship: big milestone and fingers crossed 🤞 and to all students for the submissions🤞🤞

More to come soon… 🐸🧬

arxiv.org/abs/2602.23624

This is figure 2, which shows global diversification dynamics of six diverse butterfly families.

Butterflies and moths are key indicators of functioning and healthy ecosystems. A Review in Nature Reviews Biodiversity describes the evolutionary history of the order Lepidoptera and tracks shifts in researchers’ understanding of the clade in the genomic era. go.nature.com/4r0kbgS 🌍 🧪

The molecular evolution of vertebrate organs Nature Ecology & Evolution - This Review discusses recent advances in the molecular evolution of vertebrate organs, including rates of evolution of organs and cell types, molecular mechanisms...

Our internal organs are evolutionary marvels. New technologies are transforming our understanding of the evolution of vertebrate organs. You can find more by reading here:
rdcu.be/e5EgU
#EvoBio #EvoDevo 🐟🦎🐢🦇🐊🦜

@vubrussel.bsky.social DBIO seminar season is back! 🌱🌊

Today we had Lucia Enes Gramoso speaking about
21st-Century Mangrove Expansion along the Southeastern United States

Great science, great questions, full room - thanks to all who joined!

publ. here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Plastic Germination, Temporal Niche Partitioning and Emergent Assortative Mating in Annual Plants Temporal environmental fluctuations can drive genetic diversity and species coexistence via the storage effect. Using eco-evolutionary models of annual plants, we show that adaptive plasticity in see...

V happy to share new paper led by @schmidmax.bsky.social: doi.org/10.1111/ele....

We show that plastic germination timing not only buffers environmental fluctuations (storage effect) but also promotes divergence, temporal assortative mating and thus ecological speciation. Thx @dee-unil.bsky.social

"Leveraging allelic imbalance in accessible chromatin to prioritize putative causal variants"
by Shea Ping Yip, Chien-Ling Huang, & co

"By leveraging allelic imbalance in ATAC-seq, researchers can bridge the gap between GWAS signals and molecular mechanisms..."

authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

The PopGen Vienna Seminar series schedule is ready for the next term (March-June). It's jam-packed with fantastic speakers in #evolution, #genetics, #genomics, #popgen, and more! Details and streaming link signup can be found on our website popgen-vienna.at/news/seminars/

Ancient co-option of LTR retrotransposons as yeast centromeres - Nature Evolutionarily related ‘proto-point’ centromeres providing resolution to the evolutionary origins of point centromeres are identified in yeast, and comparison shows they evolved in an ancestor with re...

Our paper is now out in Nature:

“Ancient co-option of LTR retrotransposons as yeast centromeres”

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A short thread on how retrotransposons helped give rise to yeast point centromeres.

1/14

Selection-driven color variation in the aposematic strawberry poison frog, Oophaga pumilio Aguilar-Gómez et al. use exome sequencing of 347 strawberry poison frogs to uncover the genetic basis of color variation. They identify that kit, ttc39b, and bco1 underlie blue-red, yellow-red, and gr...

The last chapter of my PhD is finally out !!!! In the same species, on neighboring islands, we see radically different warning colors emerge. Evolution in action:
Selection-driven color variation in the aposematic strawberry poison frog, Oophaga pumilio: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...

Happy Chinese New Year! May the Year of the Horse bring you good health, new ideas and smooth rides in work and life 🐎

新年快乐，祝马年顺顺利利、心想事成！🥳

#Chinesenewyear #yearofthehorse #新年快乐

Evolutionary causes and consequences of gene duplication Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 16 February 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-00935-5Gene duplication is a key evolutionary mechanism, as initially redundant paralogues diverge over time. The authors review how adaptive and non-adaptive forces influence the evolutionary fates of gene duplicates, highlighting the importance of function–fitness relationships and gene expression dynamics.

New online! Evolutionary causes and consequences of gene duplication

Eusociality has independently evolved in multiple arthropod lineages

Eusociality has independently evolved in multiple arthropod lineages

Comparative analysis across 5,678 insect species shows that, when you control for phylogenetic bias, eusociality has not evolved at a faster rate in haplodiploid species. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

A small polymerase ribozyme that can synthesize itself and its complementary strand The emergence of a chemical system capable of self-replication and evolution is a critical event in the origin of life. RNA polymerase ribozymes can replicate RNA, but their large size and structural ...

How could a simple self-replicating system emerge at the origins of life? RNA polymerase ribozymes can replicate RNA, but existing ones are so large that their self-replication seems impossible. Could they be smaller?

Excited to share our latest work in @science.org on a new small polymerase.
1/n

One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants - Nature In a case of obligate cross-species cloning, female ants of Messor ibericus need to clone males of Messor structor to obtain sperm for producing the worker caste, resulting in males from the same moth...

This one is super cool www.nature.com/articles/s41...

"Nothing could be less inviting than the first appearance. A broken field of black basaltic lava, thrown into the most rugged waves, and crossed by great fissures, is everywhere covered by stunted, sun-burnt brushwood, which shows little signs of life. The dry and parched surface, being heated by the noon-day sun, gave to the air a close and sultry feeling, like that from a stove: we fancied even that the bushes smelt unpleasantly. Although I diligently tried to collect as many plants as possible, I succeeded in getting very few; and such wretched-looking little weeds would have better become an arctic than an equatorial Flora."

In celebration of #DarwinDay, here are his decidedly mixed first impressions after landing on the Galápagos (17 Sept 1835; from 'the Voyage' Chap X):

"Nothing could be less inviting..."

As women in academia, having children can feel impossible. Talking about it makes us feel less alone The struggle is “balancing their careers not just with motherhood, but with what comes before: relationships and planning for a family,” these postdocs write

As women in academia, having children can feel impossible. Talking about it makes us feel less alone | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

A sexual revolution in the animal kingdom Wen-Juan Ma awarded ERC Grant for research into diversity and evolution in sex chromosomes

Feeling grateful to be featured by @vubrussel.bsky.social #VUBTomorrow on the International Day of Women and Girls in Science👩‍🔬

The piece highlights our lab’s work on sex chromosome evolution🧬🐸

vubtomorrow.be/en/wen-juan-...

@womeninstem.bsky.social
#WomenInScience #WomenAndGirlsInScience #STEM

Biodiversity Bioinformatics Summer School This School is co-organized by SIB/ELIXIR Switzerland and de.NBI/ELIXIR Germany Overview Biodiversity is fundamental to ecosystem functioning, yet it

#biodiversity #bioinformatics Summer School announcement ... 21-26 June in Siegen, Germany co-organised by @sib.swiss & @denbi.bsky.social www.sib.swiss/training/cou...
🟢 eDNA & ecosystems
🟣 pangenome diversity
🔵 population genetics
🟡 comparative genomics

. @thomaslenormand.bsky.social on the hot seat after his beautiful seminar today @ubcbiodiversity.bsky.social. Thanks for making the trip!

Leaving X: How scale insects evolved alternatives to chromosomal sex determination https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.31.703042v1

Robert Waterhouse — Earth BioGenome Project Rob Waterhouse has always been fascinated by life’s many interconnections, from his childhood on an isolated ranch in Swaziland to his current role leading a community of more than 1,100 researchers a...

Spotlight @ebpgenome.bsky.social www.earthbiogenome.org/newsletter-b... --- thanks to the fantastic #biodiversity #genomics @ergabiodiv.bsky.social #community!

An illustration of a woman talking to other people with a cloud of bright colored symbols behind her. The headline is: I needed a culture shift in my lab. I’m grateful one student spoke up

"… I realized that an environment where people would feel free to share their thoughts with me and think creatively, regardless of the power hierarchy, was exactly what I wanted in my lab." #ScienceWorkingLife https://scim.ag/4adQwdQ

Text: Society for the Study of Evolution Graduate Research Excellence Grants, Rosemary Grant Advanced Award, 2025 Recipients: Diego Beltran, Josh Felton, Brian Kirz, Stephen Kupchella, Hossein Madhani, Catherine Ogoma, Gabriel Priesing, Yanã Rizzieri, Juliana Rodriguez Fuentes, Wyatt Toure, Hannah Walton.

Congratulations to the recipients of the 2025 Rosemary Grant Advanced Awards!
www.evolutionsociety.org/news/display...

SMBE Best Graduate Student Paper

SMBE is calling for nominations for Best Graduate Student Papers of 2025, recognizing outstanding papers in @molbioevol.bsky.social and @genomebiolevol.bsky.social

🗓️ Deadline Feb 27

Articles published in 2025 are eligible. The nominated student must be first author; anyone can nominate authors.

Just passed my #Dutch #B1.4 exam and honestly… this might be my greatest academic achievement since my tenure-track 😅🤣

Can explain #sexchromosome #evolution in 3 languages (sort of), but ordering a broodje kaas without panicking? That’s the real milestone 🇳🇱📚

#Dutchlearning #foreignlanguage

Time to publish responsibly: DAFNEE, a database of academia-friendly journals in ecology and evolutionary biology Abstract. The current economics of scientific publishing reveal a profound imbalance: academia pays prices far exceeding the actual costs of publication. R

Responsible publication of your research!

To help you do this @nicolasgaltier.bsky.social and coauthors have put together a handy database of academia-friendly journals, DAFNEE. You can read about it in their article recently published in @jevbio.bsky.social:

doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

What You Never See in a Published Paper Published research often appears clean and linear, but much of the work that makes it successful is never visible. This post explores the unseen labor behind research, from decisions and revisions to waiting and restraint, and why it matters for early career researchers.

Published research often appears clean and linear, but much of the work that makes it successful is never visible. This post explores the unseen labor, from decisions and revisions to waiting and restraint, and why it matters for early career researchers.

#AcademicSky #SciWri #AcademicWriting