Federico Lopez

Antscan

Thanks to micro-CT and www.antscan.info, you can now explore high resolution, 3D ant images from anywhere in the world. Fantastic work from Julian Katzke, Francisco Hita Garcia, @economo.bsky.social, Thomas van de Kamp and colleagues just dropped: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

On sabotage of our young scientists, by @holdenthorp.bsky.social @science.org
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

📄 A sterility-associated long noncoding RNA involved in honey bee caste determination and adult queen and worker fertility 🐝

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www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Convergent evolution of hexenal isomerases in Lepidoptera and plants - Nature Ecology & Evolution Phylogenetic and functional analyses across 34 Lepidoptera and 183 plant species show that hexenal isomerases found in Lepidoptera exhibit functional convergence with those found in plants despite hav...

Phylogenetic and functional analyses across 34 Lepidoptera and 183 plant species show that hexenal isomerases found in Lepidoptera exhibit functional convergence with those found in plants despite having evolved independently from unrelated enzyme families 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Recently we're working with SNPs from whole genome assemblies to estimate ARGs. It's a pain to go from alignment files to vcf, keeping track of masked and invariant sites. So we wrote a snakemake/SLURM pipeline. Hope it's useful to others, and don't hesitate to post issues if there are problems!

Secrets of the Bees | Official Trailer | Narrated by Bertie Gregory | National Geographic YouTube video by National Geographic

A new documentary "Secrets of The Bees" will air on National Geographic on 31 March and land on Disney+ on 1 April and our bees are in it! See here for the trailer: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mej2...

Repeated evolution of supergenes on an ancient social chromosome Lajmi et al. describe a novel supergene associated with social structure in desert ants. Surprisingly, this supergene evolved on an ancient chromosome that also evolved an analogous supergene in fire ...

📄 Repeated evolution of supergenes on an ancient social chromosome 🐜🧬

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www.cell.com/current-biol...

If we are making lists of non-ignorable "complexity" in biology, how about the interaction of selection and development? Many biologists find it boring (unnecessary complexity) or threatening (old naive adaptationism called into question). @mauriciogforero.bsky.social does good work in this area!

A parasitic, parthenogenetic ant with only queens and without workers or males Hamaguchi, Kinomura and colleagues describe an ant species that lacks workers and males and consists exclusively of queens.

📄 A parasitic, parthenogenetic ant with only queens and without workers or males 🐜

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www.cell.com/current-biol...

🔴 Over 212,000 Russian war crimes documented in Ukraine since 2022.

It is four years ago today that the Russians launched their full scale invasion of Ukraine. Many in the west wrote Ukraine off and prophesied a “shock and awe” Russian victory. Instead Ukraine defied its attacker and their fight for freedom became decisive for the future of European freedom.

Four years have passed since Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine. Russia was supposed to win in three days. Instead, Ukraine reinvented modern warfare, built a drone industry, and can destroy a thousand Russian soldiers in a day. Ukraine can win.

Topological Approaches in Animal Comparative Genomics The surge in chromosome-scale genome sequences from across the tree of life, as well as new comparative methods, has made it possible to study the impact of genomic changes on macroevolution. In this ...

📄 Topological approaches in animal comparative genomics 🧬

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www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Annotating genomes at increased scale and resolution Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 17 February 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-00937-3In this Review, Ji et al. overview how rapidly advancing experimental and computational methods are enabling improved and automated annotation of gene structure and function, providing researchers with genome annotation resources of unprecedented scale and resolution.

New online! Annotating genomes at increased scale and resolution

Increasing applied pesticide toxicity trends counteract the global reduction target to safeguard biodiversity The 15th United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) obligates all countries to reduce pesticide risks by 50% by 2030. In this study, we derived the trends of total applied toxicity (TAT) globally ...

📄 Increasing applied pesticide toxicity trends counteract the global reduction target to safeguard biodiversity 🐝🧪

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www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Head on shot of a brownish-red moth larva on a thin tree branch. It has little white spots on its body. Its silhouette looks not unlike that of a lobster. It's grasping the twig of a plant. The background is green.

Here’s one lobster that you might not want with a side of butter: the lobster moth! Named for its lobster-like larval form, this wide-ranging insect inhabits parts of Europe & Asia. While it resembles a crustacean, it can also mimic ants as a way to deter potential predators.

Tutorial: annotation of animal genomes Nature Protocols, Published online: 28 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41596-025-01301-1This Tutorial integrates state-of-the-art tools into a streamlined workflow to create high-quality annotations for animal genomes, assigning gene symbols and annotating repeat regions for both protein-coding and non-coding RNA genes, before assessing annotation quality.

New Article! Tutorial: annotation of animal genomes

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

No evidence that haplodiploidy favors the evolution of eusociality | PNAS The potential role of haplodiploid sex determination in promoting the evolution of altruism and eusociality has been the subject of intense debate ...

📄 No evidence that haplodiploidy favors the evolution of eusociality 🐝🐜

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www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Anything you can do in Obsidian you can do from the command line.

Obsidian CLI is now available in 1.12 (early access).

The genetic foundations of convergent traits Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 02 February 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-026-00933-7Convergent phenotypic evolution, the independent acquisition of similar or nearly identical traits in multiple species, is widespread. Allard and Kumar explore the spectrum of molecular convergence in multicellular organisms, evaluate computational and artificial intelligence-based methods for detecting adaptive genetic convergence, and highlight how comparative genomics of convergent phenotypes informs complex trait evolution and human health.

New online! The genetic foundations of convergent traits

Emergence and evolution of protein-coding de novo genes Nature Reviews Genetics, Published online: 28 January 2026; doi:10.1038/s41576-025-00929-9De novo gene evolution entails the birth of new genes from previously non-coding DNA. In this Review, Bornberg-Bauer and Eicholt overview how protein-coding de novo genes are identified, the mechanistic and evolutionary processes underlying their emergence and evolution, and the patterns in their encoded protein structures.

ICYMI: New online! Emergence and evolution of protein-coding de novo genes

What were the first animals? The fierce sponge–jelly battle that just won’t end For almost two decades, scientists have debated whether sponges or comb jellies are the first animal lineage. Now some are calling for a more harmonious approach.

For almost two decades, scientists have debated whether sponges or comb jellies are the first animal lineage. A feature in Nature describes how some researchers are calling for a more harmonious approach. #evosky 🧪

Disgusting.

I wrote today about AlphaGenome, Google DeepMind's AI for DNA. It's powerful, experts told me, but it won't solve the mysteries of the genome overnight. Gift link: nyti.ms/4k5NFIl

This is figure 1, which shows AlphaGenome model architecture, training regimes and comprehensive evaluation performance.

A paper in Nature presents AlphaGenome, a deep learning model that can predict the function of long DNA sequences, up to one million base pairs. The tool can predict how DNA sequence variations affect different biological processes. go.nature.com/4t5JQa7 🧬 🧪

Structural genomics sheds light on protein functions and remote homologs across the insect tree of life - Cell Research Cell Research - Structural genomics sheds light on protein functions and remote homologs across the insect tree of life

A phylogeny of 4'854 #insects --- with structural #genomics shedding light on protein functions & remote homologs www.nature.com/articles/s41... #biodiversity

We've got ISSUES. Literally.

We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do?

arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563

A 🧵 1/n

This is Kupiansk today. Once a thriving town of 25,000 in Kharkiv region, now nothing but ruins and ash.

Russia obliterated it. Murdered or drove out its people, and bombed it into dust.

A Beginner's Guide to Structural Variants in Eco‐Evolutionary Population Genomics Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) has greatly expanded researchers' ability to study structural variants (SVs), that is, the variation in the presence, number, orientation or position of a DNA sequence. ....

📄 A beginner's guide to structural variants in eco-evolutionary population genomics 🧬

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onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...