Just a few days left to submit the ASN student research award (due March 13th)!!!! This is an AWESOME opportunity for students to get some grant writing experience!!! We LOVE reading your grants and giving feedback!!!!!!!!!!! Apply, Apply, Apply!!!!!!
www.amnat.org/announcement...
🌟 New at #Fungal26—the inaugural Fungal Spore Lecture featuring Matthew C. Fisher (Imperial College London).
Working at the One Health interface, Fisher explores how antifungal use and global trade are reshaping the Fungal Kingdom. Join us for his lecture: buff.ly/oCNlI2l
Did you know that Evolution Letters now publishes reviews?! Our inaugural one is fantastic! Deep learning is opening new doors for evolutionary genomics, especially for nonmodel organisms with sparse or uncertain genomic data. doi.org/10.1093/evle...
#Yeast #Genetics Meeting 2026 is in June - Abstract deadline is TODAY! Submit your abstract, attend the meeting this summer in Pacific Grove, CA at #Asilomar Conference Grounds, a 107-acre protected coastal state park located on the Monterey Peninsula. #Yeast26 #YGM2026 genetics-gsa.org/yeast-2026/
The Goldberg lab at UCLA is hiring one or more postdocs. Flexible start date.
We develop methods to study population genetics of humans, our primate relatives, and our pathogens.
www.goldberglab.org/join
I had fun writing this N&Vs on two fascinating new papers on centromere evolution in yeast. If you’re interested in how centromeres adapt yet stay functional, here’s my take. rdcu.be/e6DD0 @nature.com @gautamdey.bsky.social @gsherloc.bsky.social @helsenjana.bsky.social @maxhaase.bsky.social
With just two weeks to go until the 33rd Fungal Genetics Conference at Asilomar starts, we're happy to reveal the programme for Asperfest, running 16th-17th March:
aspgrpc.com/asperfest/
Will we see you at Asperfest and/or FGC?
So I pleased to announce the conceptual spawn of FigTree: PearTree (acronym still to be finalised). If you want to dive right in it is hosted as a web app here: artic-network.github.io/peartree (click the “Example...” button for immediate candy and then click every button you can find).
My latest:
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Next column will address needed guardrails for private funding of science, esp. in light of #Epstein/ #Summers etc.
Kate Snyder with a huge smile while holding two birds
Nicole Creanza and Kate Snyder stand in front of a chalkboard smiling while wearing black sweaters
New this week! Female birds sing — and new Vanderbilt research explains how social behavior shapes that evolution. Dr. Kate Snyder analyzed 1,000+ songbird species and found cooperative breeding & female song reinforce each other over evolutionary time. 🐦🎶 Read more >> https://wp.me/pbblkY-116
Call for applications, pls share!
2026 Evolutionary Medicine Summer Institute (EMSI) advances research in a frontier of evolutionary medicine. They provide training in methods needed to address cutting edge questions in that frontier.
2026 focus: Climate Change and Health
sites.duke.edu/emsi/
A night vision photo of a peccary with text overlaid. "“We have very few examples of tropical species being affected by climate change. These peccaries are just a first attempt to show that mobile organisms, who can choose where to go (most of the time), and find food everywhere, can still be affected by changes in temperature, even if in subtle ways.” -Malu Jorge"
Malu Jorge and PhD alum Michaela Peterson published cool work looking at the effects of climate change on white-lipped peccaries! Read more >> https://tinyurl.com/mr23kn7j #Science #Evolution
This is great #stuffthatmatters. Congratulations to Liedewij Laan and @embopress.org for recognizing the importance and brilliance of this work.
New paper out in EMBO Reports!
We show that Cdc42 regulation is oligomerization-dependent and that a GEF and a GAP act synergistically: Cdc24 relieves self-inhibition of oligomeric Rga2, enabling robust Cdc42 cycling.
doi.org/10.1038/s44319-026-00695-7
#cellpolarity #Cdc42 #synergy #syntheticbiology
Read how @embopress.org is expanding its focus on molecular ecology and evolution as central underpinnings of functions/interactions/diversification of biological systems – by @yehumoran.bsky.social, @berndpulverer.bsky.social, and our new team of Editorial Advisors
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
New work from graduate student Owen Hale (Behringer Lab)! The paper, "Elevated rates and biased spectra of mutations in anaerobically cultured lactic acid bacteria," was published in mBio. Hale tracked 3 species of bacteria through >1000 generations in oxygen-free conditions.
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
Read in our latest issue a paper by @rokaslab.bsky.social & co. from @vanderbilt.edu & @uncg.edu describing an integrative chemical & genomic similarity approach to link fungal secondary metabolites & biosynthetic gene clusters #natprod #secmet
Find it in full here🔽
Dear friends and fans of evolutionary biology & medicine (#EvMed), deadlines for the 2026 meeting in Kiel Germany are coming up. Looks to be excellent!
March 1, 2026: Abstract submission deadline and travel award decisions
April 1, 2026: Abstract decisions
open.substack.com/pub/evmedrev...
My quote of the day
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
Charles Darwin
As we count down to #DarwinDay, we're re-visiting some great pieces on why we teach evolution! "Evolution isn't just a story about where we came from. It's an epic at the center of life itself." https://ncse.ngo/why-teach-evolution-1
With the @rokaslab.bsky.social, three novel whole genome duplication (WGD) events were discovered in the Saccharomycotina yeast species in the Dipodascales
clade. Before now, only four WGD events were known in fungi. This work suggests WGD may be underreported.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Excited to share a new piece of work in @embojournal.org
Parasitoid wasps hijack a bacterial gene that governs venoms against host. Coauthors include @rokaslab.bsky.social and others.
Read more from: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Excited to announce our latest publication in reporting evidence for three (3!) new whole genome duplications (WGDs) in yeasts. Scientists have often wondered why WGD is so rare in fungi, it turns out we may just not have been looking hard enough! 🧪 🍄 🧬
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
If you participated in a yeast meeting in 2025, reach out to me about publishing your work from that meeting!
How much do growth morphologies in the Saccharomycotina subphylum vary? 🤔 With the @rokaslab.bsky.social, integrated datasets of 1,051 species were examined to assess filamentation evol. history and variation. ML models predicted morphologies with 70% accuracy.
academic.oup.com/femsyr/advan...
Cover of Evolutionary Studies Magazine Fall 2025 issue featuring a black Darwin's finch with a large beak perched on green succulent vegetation. The magazine title and ESI logo appear in white text at top left. Cover stories listed include 'Kate Snyder: Evolution & Birds', 'The Evolution of Exercise in Horses', and 'The Scopes Monkey Trial Centennial Symposium'.
🎉 Fall 2025 Evolutionary Studies - the Magazine is live!
Horses that ignore genetic stop signs, humans adapting to extreme deserts, the #evolution of birdsong, and our Friend of Darwin award.
Read it: https://loom.ly/cACR5HY
#science
📣 #EMBOEvoEco returns in 2026 to uncover the mechanistic foundations of ecological and evolutionary change!
Keynote lectures will spotlight the ecology and evolution of symbiosis.
Submit your abstract for the EMBO Workshop: https://s.embl.org/eae26-01-bl!
Are you a scientist studying population, evolutionary, or quantitative genetics in Drosophila, mice, mammals, maize, humans, Arabidopsis, Zebrafish, yeast, plants, worms, or other model organisms? 🪰🐁🌽👤🐟🍺🌱🪱
#PEGQ26 is the conference for you! Submit an abstract: buff.ly/ue9xUSY
#PopGen #Evo
We made a new lager beer! "Indomitus" for wild and untamed. Brewed with a wild yeast strain from Patagonia! This is the result of a super fun collaboration (and lots of hard work) with Francisco Cubillos in Chile (@fcocubillosr.bsky.social) and Andrés Furukawa at the Nils Oscar Brewery in Sweden.
