Happy to see that two lovely Timema californicum were featured on the cover of the latest issue of Heredity in association with Jeli’s latest paper.
The photo was taken by insect photographer extraordinaire Bart Zijlstra. Check out his website for more excellent pics!
MEEB-ers assemble!
Yesterday we held the MEEB biannual meeting to discuss updates and problems, and to assign roles to group members.
Surprisingly fun and great to meet with (almost) all the MEEB members in person!
Does developmental strategy influence the development of sex-biased gene expression?
In our new paper, (led by PhD student Jelisaveta Djordjevic) we take a first look at this question in insects by examining sex-biased gene expression across development in a hemimetabolous insect (Timema californicum). We find that sex-biased gene expression develops more gradually and to a lesser extent than in holometabolous insects.
This suggests that hemimetabolous development may constrain the evolution of sex-biased gene expression, but we need more developmental gene expression studies in hemimetabolous insects to verify this!
Does obligate parthenogenesis evolve via facultative parthenogenesis?
In our new preprint (led by Chloé Larose and Guillaume Lavanchy) we describe facultative parthenogenesis in several populations of Timema douglasi – a species previously thought to be obligately parthenogenetic. Parthenogenetic offspring seem to be produced in a similar way as in obligate parthenogenetic populations (via automixis), suggesting that obligate parthenogenesis (in Timema at least) may evolve via a facultative parthenogenetic stage.
Last week our paper on the convergent consequences of parthenogenesis on Timema genomes came out, nicely marking my last full day in Lausanne! Work on this paper spanned my entire 6 (SIX) year stay in Lausanne, through Brexit, Covid, and other big life changes, so very nice to see it finally out (see SIB press release here, Timema photo from Bart Zijlstra).
I have now moved to take up a lectureship in the School of Natural Sciences at Bangor University where I will work on the genetics of reproductive strategies in Timema and other critters.