José Cerca
Group leader at the Swedish Museum of Natural History
Evolutionary biologist interested in island biology, adaptive radiation, genomes and ecological niches.
Islandevolution.github.io
- So weird we're still here. To me, this shows how arbitrary it is to get space in Nature (in this case in its blog). www.nature.com/articles/d41...
- If you work with genomics, bioinformatics or evol biol, when was the last time you read a paper from Nature EcoEvo? People in our field seem obsessed about publishing there but I barely read their papers. Very ecological, macroevolutionary - which are fine subjects, but out of sync with what we do.
- Plus ... Predatory publishing fees.
- Reposted by José CercaExcited to share our new paper on Arabidopsis adaptation in the Cape Verde Islands!! 🌱🌋 We developed a new multiparent intercross population to uncover genetic variants that were previously difficult to map. Here’s a quick overview 👇🧵 @GeneticsGSA academic.oup.com/genetics/adv...
- Hit me up if you'd like to apply to a Data-driven postdoc fellowship with me in Sweden. 2 year salary, excellent community. Deadline March 31. I have a project idea on reference bias vs pangenome, but keen on hearing ideas. Please share broadly. www.scilifelab.se/data-driven/...
- Reposted by José CercaAwesome to see the first chapter of my PhD out in MBE! We used a suite of methods to describe the venom system of the green lacewing. Take a look if you're interested in everything from venom system morphology to the molecular evolution of novel traits doi.org/10.1093/molb...
- Reposted by José CercaA must read for conservation geneticists on the utility (or not??) of using molecular diversity to predict adaptive potential 👇🏻
- I'm excited to share that our preprint is now available on bioRxiv! Our study challenges the widespread use of molecular genetic diversity as a predictor adaptive potential, with important implications for how genetic data is used to inform conservation decisions. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
- Reposted by José CercaAlpha Cell is a new strategic research program at SciLifeLab dedicated to uncovering the molecular structure and function of #SingleCells in time and space 🧪 We spoke with Caroline Gallant, Scientific Program Manager for Alpha Cell, and Isolde Palombo, Project Coordinator of the program. ↓
- Reposted by José CercaThe first conference was held in 2014 at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. I still remember the plenary talk given by Drs. Peter and Rosemary Grant. #IB2026
- 最初の大会は2014年で会場はハワイ大学のマノア校でした。 フィンチの嘴で有名なグラント博士らによる講演があったのを覚えています。 #IB2026
- Reposted by José CercaCheck out this new #AJB On the Nature of Things essay! #Pangenomes as a framework for adaptive radiation, speciation & adaptation By @nicolo-tellini.bsky.social , Ole Tørresen, David Edwards, Loren Rieseberg, Kjetill Jakobsen & José Cerca doi.org/10.1002/ajb2... #botany #plantscience #evolution
- 📰 Starting this friday with some positive news: Our publication "Pangenomes as a framework for adaptive radiation, speciation, and adaptation" came out today in the American Journal of Botany! bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/1537...
- 💥 We highlight the problem (elephant in the room) of using a single reference genome. ➡️ We put forth a set of hypotheses on how variable genomes contribute to adaptation and diversification
- Go work with Julian - it's a fantastic lab!
- I am recruiting graduate students to my genomics-focused lab in EEB at Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Please spread the word if you know any students with an interest in a computational focus to genomics research! evol.mcmaster.ca/brian/evoldi...
- Reposted by José CercaWhy do queens bees live so much longer than workers? Apply for a postdoc position in my lab to figure it out! Please get in touch if you want to know more. link to job: www.uu.se/en/about-uu/... lab website: www.websterlab.net
- Reposted by José Cerca[This post could not be retrieved]
- Hybrids
- Reposted by José Cerca📢 We have an open position for a postdoc to join my lab. It's a great position @animecol-uu.bsky.social, fully salaried for 2.5 years with all benefits. www.uu.se/en/about-uu/... The project is about transmission patterns of bacteria and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in aquatic insects. 🧬🦠 (1/3)
- 📌 New publication out: Reference genome bias in light of species-specific chromosomal reorganization and translocations TL;DR - We show that the choice of reference genome biases the detection of structural variants and popgen stats. Navigate carefully - 🛳️ 😬 link.springer.com/article/10.1...
- Reposted by José CercaA very nice paper! @naturalselection.bsky.social Congrats!!!👍💪 Reference genome bias in light of species-specific chromosomal reorganization and translocations
- Reposted by José CercaNow available in Systematic Biology, a new paper (and R package) in which we outline an approach to account for non-independence in comparative analyses of lineage-pair traits academic.oup.com/sysbio/advan...
- Reposted by José CercaWe are recruiting a fully-funded PhD student to work on the evolution and mechanisms of intestinal remodelling in lampreys. @sbohvm.gla.ac.uk @uofgmvls.bsky.social www.gla.ac.uk/postgraduate...
- Reposted by José CercaDr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.
- Reposted by José CercaExcited to share our new paper in @GeneticsGSA ! We developed "Retriever," a novel method that enables high-quality genotype imputation in non-model organisms. 🧬 Congratulations to Charles on his first PhD paper! Paper: doi.org/10.1093/gene... A thread 🧵👇
- RIP Jane Goodall. You'll live through the inspiration you instilled in all of us. www.theguardian.com/science/2025...
- Reposted by José CercaExciting news! The next #PopGroup meeting will take place in Lille 🍟, France, 7–9 January 2026 – just 1 hour by train from London, Brussels, and Paris. This year, PopGroup will also host ALPHY, the annual meeting of Evolutionary Genomics. More info: populationgeneticsgroup.org.uk See you there !
- Reposted by José CercaArticle alert! Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms, Structural Variants, and Short Tandem Repeats Capture Distinct Signals of Adaptive Divergence in the Atlantic Puffin url: academic.oup.com/gbe/article/...
- Reposted by José CercaFriends: I'm recruiting at least one PhD student to join our lab in Atlanta in the Fall of 2026. Information about our research can be found at the link below. Please pass along to any students interested in the quantitative study of speciation, secondary contact, and the build-up of biodiversity!
- Reposted by José Cerca“Rich Grenyer, a biologist at the University of Oxford, said de-extinction is a “dangerous” distraction and that gene-edited animals are “at best a sort of simulation, rather like those unnerving animated AI portraits of dead relatives some… people create”.” www.theguardian.com/science/2025...
- Reposted by José CercaA while back (maybe 3-4 years?) there was a paper on common misconceptions of the genetics of various traits. One of them was eye colour in humans. I have lost this reference and can't find it anywhere. Does anyone recognise what I mean?
- 🧨 The Naturhistoriska riksmuseet has a position open for a Tenure-Track group Leader position (DDLS fellow). 17 M SEK start-up (1.6 million euros, which will account for your salary / 2 PhDs / 2 Postdocs / plenty of money for starting projects and sending peoeple to conferences). lnkd.in/d5jNr_Ti
- 🕰️ Deadline 15 Nov. 📨 I have one such position and I'm really happy at the Naturhistoriska riksmuseet (and with the DDLS program possibilities). I will be happy to meet and answer any questions you or your talented postdocs may have.
- Reposted by José CercaParallel but distinct adaptive routes in the budding and fission yeasts after 10,000 generations of experimental evolution biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
- Reposted by José CercaI'm looking for PhD students to join the lab starting August 2026. We study the evolution of insect chemical signals so if you're interested in evolutionary biology, chemical ecology, molecular biology, behavior, or genetics, this could be a good fit for you! More info here: tinyurl.com/mrxchwfm
- Cool preprint! 🚨 Lanternfish lack MHC I and functional MHC II — yet still produce antibodies! 🧬🐟 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by José CercaIf you know anyone interested in starting a Master's project working on ammonoid phylogenetics (or the phylogenetics of a mollusc group spanning the OAE2 event in the Late Cretaceous), then ask them to get in touch with me. The situation is a little tricky, as it would be funded by the remainder…
- Reposted by José CercaExcited to share that I’ve started as Associate Professor at the Technical University of Denmark! 🧑🎓 I also received an a NNF Emerging Investigator grant to use genomics + machine learning to study extinction. 👉 PhD & Postdoc positions coming soon — follow for updates! Reposts appreciated 🙏
- Reposted by José CercaWe’ve just published a paper on Senecio showing that ecological speciation and mutation-order speciation can act together rather than as an either/or. Congratulations, Maddie James and MC Melo!
- Reposted by José Cerca*Postdoc in Evolutionary genomics at Stockholm University* We are recruiting a postdoc for a large interdisciplinary project to investigate evolutionary drivers and genomic consequences of pollen evolution in response to pollination mode shifts in flowering plants. 1/5 su.varbi.com/what:job/job...
- Reposted by José Cerca🚨 We're hiring! PhD position in Evolutionary Systems Biology at Stockholm University & SciLifeLab 🎓 Focus: evolution, development, computational & mathematical modeling, prediction 📍 Stockholm, Sweden 🕒 4 years, fully-funded 🔍 Details: su.varbi.com/en/what:job/... Please share!
- Reposted by José Cerca@robinaraya.bsky.social @naturalselection.bsky.social @kjetillsj.bsky.social et al. investigate TEs in four large inversions in Atlantic cod - TEs accumulate in breakpoints, suggesting they drive inversions through ectopic recombination. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf131 #genome #evolution #TEsky
- 🆕 ✨ New publication out: Chromosomal Inversions Mediated by Tandem Insertions of Transposable Elements We find that transposable elements are the likely mechanism of (some) inversions in cod fishes! academic.oup.com/gbe/article/...
- Well done @robinaraya.bsky.social et al ( @kjetillsj.bsky.social , @oletoerresen.bsky.social, @clementgoubert.bsky.social)!!!
- Reposted by José CercaYesterday we had our symposium “Evolution in Small Populations” at #ESEB2025 🎉 It was a fantastic session, and we’re very grateful to our invited speakers, Hernán Morales @hernmoral.bsky.social and Eva Ringler, for their amazing talks 👏
- Reposted by José CercaExcited to share our new preprint for the tskit_arg_visualizer Python package! ARGs can sometimes feel like a black box, so @yanwong.bsky.social and I have been developing a method to programmatically drawing these graphs. 🔗 arxiv.org/abs/2508.03958 1/6
- 💻🧬 The Swedish Museum of Natural History is seeking a bioinformatician. Permanent position, 70-80% of the time should be dedicated to supporting day-to-day activities and long-term research of research groups. 20-30% for their own research. Please share widely! arbetsformedlingen.se/platsbanken/...
- The 2025-26 Eco-Evo job list is out. Good luck to those applying! docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
- Reposted by José Cerca🎤 Symposium: Evolution in Small Populations I’ll be speaking on Evolutionary legacies of population collapse 🗓 Thursday, 11:00–13:15, Room 115 Looking forward to this #ESEB2025 week! @hologenomics.bsky.social
- Reposted by José CercaBig news! We are recruiting a postdoc to work on tomatillo evolution: jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta.... The clade containing tomatillos and its allies (ca 300 spp) has evolved lantern fruits at least 25 times - we want to know why! Join us @rociodeanna.bsky.social & @caschenck-bio.bsky.social
- A present from one of my scientific heroes - Juan Manuel Guayasamin; Reptiles of the Galápagos 🦎🐍🐢
- Species in the Galápagos are really fascinating. Opuntia echios from two different islands separated by only 100 meters. Both plants have lenified, meaning they are quite old, but their height difference is remarkable for a single species. Natural selection or plasticity?
- *PhD position* 🦉 Would you like to do a PhD with Indo-Pacific birds and evolutionary genomics? Join us in Stockholm: <deadline> 05 September 2025, 23:59 PhD student in Evolution of Indo-Pacific birds recruit.visma.com/spa/public/a...
- <what> On remote oceanic islands, colonizing lineages often undergo founder effects. Moreover, each time a species disperses to a new island, an additional bottleneck is introduced. ...
- ... Despite these constraints, islands are hotspots for diversification, including remarkable examples of adaptive radiations. We aim to focus on different lineages of birds in the Indo-Pacific to understand the impact of sexual selection and hybridization in genetic variation of different lineages.
-
View full thread<benefits> Possibilities to attend a conference each year; Strong supervisory support and mentoring to pursue an academic career; Attractive welfare benefits; Career development programmes; Stockholm’s family-friendly surroundings with their rich opportunities for culture and outdoor activities
- Reposted by José CercaJob alert! We have a postdoc position available in the Stelkens Lab at Stockholm University. Join us and apply experimental evolution and comparative genomics in the model system yeast to test for parallel climate adaptation. Apply through this link: su.varbi.com/en/what:job/... Deadline 15 August.
- Reposted by José CercaVery pleased to see this officially out - Genome Architecture and Speciation in Plants and Animals. With @siluwang.bsky.social, @dortizba.bsky.social and Loren Rieseberg. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
- Reposted by José CercaExcellent piece. LLMs can be useful for automating tedious tasks, but for tasks that require rigour and critical thinking, such as peer review, it's problematic on multiple levels.
- A few months ago, Nature published how-to guide for using ChatGPT to write your peer reviews in 30 minutes. This is, of course, a horrible idea. Here’s my response with @jbakcoleman.bsky.social .
- Reposted by José Cerca🚨Postdoc opportunity🚨: LepEU postdoc: comparative population genomics of European scale adaptation in butterflies 2 year, full-time PD in my group, Stockholm Univ. Applications assed on rolling basis, deadline: 23 August 2025. Planned start 1 Oct. Details: christopherwheatlab.wordpress.com
- Reposted by José CercaEvolutionary dynamics in large population sizes in Pacific acorn barnacle @arcolon14.bsky.social #Evol2025
- Reposted by José CercaHow did evolution drive massive genome contraction during oceanic island colonization? A new paper from our lab. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Genomics people - can you help me? 🆘 This publication writes: "Data will be made available on request." www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... ENA: "No public data is associated with this project." What do you do when the author and the editor in chief @mariannakruithof.bsky.social do not answer?
- EcoEvo jobs is having an interesting anonymous discussion on de-extinction: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
- "The abuse of species concepts to justify ethically and scientifically questionable work has caused me to lose (...) respect (...). This isn't just marketing hype, it's a complete sell-out of intellectual integrity and rigor for shareholder value and salary from supposed role models" 🫳🎤
- Reposted by José CercaNew from The Strain Team: 🎊 Springer Nature Discovers MDPI 🎊 Springer Nature has spawned a copycat journal series called "Discover" mimicking #MDPI journal titles and citation behaviours. We even made a browser game to prove it (see 🔗). Gross! 😀 1/n #ResearchIntegrity #SciPub #AcademicSky
- Reposted by José CercaOnly two more days to apply!! Put your name in the hat, even if you feel like you don't match all criteria listed. Happy to chat regardless!
- 🚨 Wanted: PhD student excited about population genomics, Natural History Collections and birds! 📍 Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, Germany 🕒 3 Years, fully funded by the Leibniz Junior Researchgroup program Details and Application portal 👇 jobs.museumfuernaturkunde.berlin/jobposting/8...
- Reposted by José Cerca🧬 Microbial Marvels: Biodiversity & Evolution of Yeasts Top scientists @hittingerlab.bsky.social & @stelkens.bsky.social reveal how yeasts evolve, adapt, and speciate. @uv.es @upv.es Don’t miss this inspiring workshop! 📅 June 16 📍 @iatacsic.bsky.social🔗https://bit.ly/4mytSC2 #YeastScience
- New publication out! 🆕 📤 "No evidence of transposable element bursts in the Galápagos Scalesia adaptive radiation despite hybridization, diversification and ecological niche shifts" mobilednajournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.... #TransposableElements #Speciation #AdaptiveRadiation #Genomics
- We tested whether TEs were associated with diversification, speciation, hybridization or niche shifts. We did this in response to the growing literature that claims that TE bursts are drivers/associated with diversification.
- 🔍 Despite rapid speciation, niche shifts, and hybridization, we found no significant TE accumulation differences across species or hybrids. 🌵 Even in arid-adapted lineages—where genome downsizing may be expected—TEs didn’t decline.
-
View full threadSo our conclusion was 📉 Rather than fueling macroevolution, TEs might just be "along for the ride", and we emphasize the distinction between TEs as drivers of specific phenotypes (e.g. melanic form of the pepper moth) and TEs are drivers of diversification (which they do not seem to do).
- Well done @saabalde.bsky.social !
- @saabalde.bsky.social & Jondelius characterize opsins and phototransduction genes in Xenacoelomorpha, identifying cnidarian-like and lineage-specific opsins. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf078 #genome #evolution #bilateria
- Absolutely love this. From: "The what, how, and why of trait-based analyses in ecology" in ECOGRAPHY Guillerme et al
- Reposted by José Cerca🧬 🕷️ I spoke about the wild side of evolutionary biology—sexual dimorphism, maternal effects, even sexual cannibalism. Grateful for the chance to share how nature really works! 📖 Read the article: www.delo.si/novice/znano... #EvolutionaryBiology #ScienceCommunication
- Rosemary Gillespie 🕷️ 🕸️ was awarded the 2025 Molecular Ecology prize🏆 - so well deserved! www.molecularecologist.com/2025/05/21/2...
- Reposted by José CercaHere’s an exciting PhD opportunity for those interested in genomics and adaptive radiation: jobs.museumfuernaturkunde.berlin/jobposting/8...
- Reposted by José CercaJust out in PNAS! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... "The evolution of thermal performance curves in response to rising temperatures across the model genus yeast". Beautiful work using experimental evolution forecasting climate impacts on biodiversity by Jennifer Molinet @jennifermolinet.bsky.social
- Reposted by José Cerca🚨Field assistant job in South Africa working with sociable weavers 🚨 🔌Experienced in electronics? 🏷️Enjoy working with RFID technology? 🪶Like working with birds? Find more information below! Applications close on 08/06/2025 sociableweaverproject.com/recruitment/... #fieldwork #ornithology
- Reposted by José Cerca
- People vote and choose to enable a capitalist system - where everything is measured/valued/considered in the lens of money. We need societal change and that begins with moving from a capitalist economy.
- Reposted by José CercaMore good news this month! 🎉 I'm excited to share my PhD colleague Filip Thörn's fantastic study on hybridisation in lek-mating Birds-of-Paradise, which I had the privilege to be part of. 🐦 doi.org/10.1111/mec.... #museomics #genomics #hybridisation
- It's quite a cowardish thing to do; to claim "scheduling conflicts". Be brave and come out that in good faith you cannot meet a racist president.
- Shout out to Jalen Hurts and “scheduling conflicts” 💚🦅💚 #eagles
- Reposted by José CercaThe rest of Mendel's alleles characterized! So, out of 7 traits, 3 caused by TE insertions!!! (though apparently there are two different green alleles, one cause by a TE insertion, but another a promoter deletion allele) www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by José CercaReally excited that our DFG grant on the Speciation Genomics of Eye Size variation in *Heliconius* has been funded :) In the next weeks, I will post an advert for a PhD, but if you know of good students, please suggest they get in touch. Please repost.
