Ben Hopkins
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brhopkins92.bsky.social
Ben Hopkins
@brhopkins92.bsky.social
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Incoming Assistant Professor at University of Florida. Functional, developmental, and evolutionary genetics of organs. Currently @HFSP Long-Term Fellow @ucdavis | PhD @OxZooDept

https://hopkins-lab.com/
Pinned
The Hopkins Lab (hopkins-lab.com) at the University of Florida is looking to recruit a postdoc to work on the genetics of organ function and evolution across Drosophila and beyond. Please visit tinyurl.com/vcsjpmzz or email me for more info. And please RT or send to anyone who might be interested!
Reposted by Ben Hopkins
Wisconsin Evolution is accepting applications for our Seminar Series' Early Career Scientist Award. Come share your evolution research and visit UW-Madison's evolution community. Open to grad students and postdocs (<5 yrs post PhD) from outside UW-Madison.

Apply by Dec 15th here: shorturl.at/4a4O6
Early Career Scientist Awards 2026
Application to the UW-Madison Evolution Seminar Series - Early Career Scientist Awards.
urldefense.com
November 19, 2025 at 8:55 PM
One week left to apply for this position!
The Hopkins Lab (hopkins-lab.com) at the University of Florida is looking to recruit a postdoc to work on the genetics of organ function and evolution across Drosophila and beyond. Please visit tinyurl.com/vcsjpmzz or email me for more info. And please RT or send to anyone who might be interested!
November 11, 2025 at 2:31 PM
Reposted by Ben Hopkins
🚨 We're hiring! 🚨 Our lab at the University of Málaga, Spain🇪🇸 is looking for a bioinformatician researcher for a postdoc position (1+1 years). Check the ad, and if you're interested, get in touch!
📅 Starting date early 2026, with some flexibility.
🙏Please, RT!
October 30, 2025 at 5:50 PM
Great to see that our mosquito cell atlas is now out in Cell. Amazing work from @oliviagoldman.net and @nadavshai.bsky.social to organise so much data and so many interesting stories into a single paper!
Excited to announce the final version of the Mosquito Cell Atlas is out now in @cellpress.bsky.social!! 🦟🩸

There is SO much left to find & investigate in this dataset (& the rich biology of the Aedes aegypti mosquito)! We hope this helps scientists in many fields!
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
A single-nucleus transcriptomic atlas of the adult Aedes aegypti mosquito
A comprehensive single-nucleus RNA-seq atlas of >367,000 nuclei from male and female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes reveals sexual dimorphism in sensory systems and brain cell types and widespread co-expres...
www.cell.com
October 30, 2025 at 8:52 PM
Reposted by Ben Hopkins
The Hopkins Lab (hopkins-lab.com) at the University of Florida is looking to recruit a postdoc to work on the genetics of organ function and evolution across Drosophila and beyond. Please visit tinyurl.com/vcsjpmzz or email me for more info. And please RT or send to anyone who might be interested!
October 15, 2025 at 8:42 PM
Reposted by Ben Hopkins
One week left on this! Good opportunity for someone interested in #behaviour, #genomics and #migration to come work will some fun seabirds and some fun people 🧬🐣🛰️

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
October 24, 2025 at 4:05 PM
Reposted by Ben Hopkins
I'm recruiting PhD students for the Barker Lab @uofa-eeb.bsky.social We study plant evolutionary genomics - polyploidy, hybridization & machine learning for genome evolution. Work with Selaginella, Xanthisma, Brassica & more. Funding available via CAMBIUM Fellowships. Reach out if interested! 🧬🌵🤖
October 24, 2025 at 5:01 AM
The Hopkins Lab (hopkins-lab.com) at the University of Florida is looking to recruit a postdoc to work on the genetics of organ function and evolution across Drosophila and beyond. Please visit tinyurl.com/vcsjpmzz or email me for more info. And please RT or send to anyone who might be interested!
October 15, 2025 at 8:42 PM
Reposted by Ben Hopkins
I'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
September 11, 2025 at 1:45 PM
Reposted by Ben Hopkins
I am looking for a postdoc! Please share with Evo-devo-neuro-sensory people who might be interested.

We have multiple projects available so don't feel like you are not qualified to apply if you don't check every single box on the job ad!

Apply here: explore.jobs.ufl.edu/en-us/job/53...
University of Florida - Details - Postdoctoral Associate
explore.jobs.ufl.edu
July 25, 2025 at 3:36 PM
Reposted by Ben Hopkins
Our paper describing the Range Extender element which is required and sufficient for long-range enhancer activation at the Shh locus is now available at @nature.com. Congrats to @gracebower.bsky.social who led the study. Below is a brief summary of the main findings www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/
Range extender mediates long-distance enhancer activity - Nature
The REX element is associated with long-range enhancer–promoter interactions.
www.nature.com
July 2, 2025 at 4:17 PM
Reposted by Ben Hopkins
New preprint from lab: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Sexual dimorphism arises not through wholesale transcriptional reprogramming, but via selective sex-specific survival of neurons defined by birth order and shared developmental programs.
A Role for Exaptation in Sculpting Sexually Dimorphic Brains from Shared Neural Lineages
Sex differences in behaviours arise from variations in female and male nervous systems, yet the cellular and molecular bases of these differences remain poorly defined. Here, we take an unbiased, sing...
www.biorxiv.org
June 9, 2025 at 1:12 PM
I am delighted to be starting as an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics & Microbiology at the University of Florida in January 2026. The lab is broadly interested in the functional, developmental, and evolutionary genetics of cell types and organs across flies and beyond 🪰🧬
June 18, 2025 at 6:27 PM
Reposted by Ben Hopkins
🦟 Join us at the #VosshallLab @RockefellerUniv
and @HHMI as a postdoctoral scientist! We're seeking a creative individual who is enthusiastic about our research in mosquito neurogenetics.
Apply: hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern...

Some of our 2025 cool science>
hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com
June 3, 2025 at 3:38 PM
Reposted by Ben Hopkins
Really 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.
April 22, 2025 at 7:28 AM
Reposted by Ben Hopkins
If using Bloomigton #Drosophila Stock Center stocks, pls. acknowledge them & their NIH funding (P40 OD018537). Papers listing this no. are being harvested as evidence. We massively depend on the @bdsc.bsky.social & they need our support in these dire times! @flybase.bsky.social @fly-eds.bsky.social
April 10, 2025 at 6:06 AM
Reposted by Ben Hopkins
We are looking for a PhD student! If you are interested in Drosophilids, systematics, bioinformatics, fiddling with museum specimens of old/weird flies, and chemosensation, then maybe this is for you! Please rebutterfly(?)! Apply below.
lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/...
April 7, 2025 at 7:10 PM
Reposted by Ben Hopkins
I am thrilled to present the Mosquito Cell Atlas! We analyzed 367K nuclei from 19 tissues in male & female mosquitoes, creating a comprehensive resource for vector biology & infectious disease research.

Plus we made some surprising discoveries! 🦟🧵

biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

1/n
March 5, 2025 at 5:54 PM
Please consider submitting an abstract to our workshop at #Dros25! The deadline is Jan 15th.
Calling all fly biologists: submit your research for consideration in the “Everything you ever wanted to know about sex” workshop at #Dros25! We hope to highlight diverse science, researchers, and career stages. Email submission to rmgraze@auburn.edu by Wed, Jan 15.
January 13, 2025 at 8:34 PM
Reposted by Ben Hopkins
New preprint by butterfly wizard
@lucalivraghi.bsky.social

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We mapped optix (again?!) as the switch gene of a natural polymorphism, this time controlling silver patches of a mountain butterfly. Gorgeous RNAi validation, evidence of selective sweeps, introgression
December 17, 2024 at 3:18 PM
Reposted by Ben Hopkins
Calling all fly biologists: submit your research for consideration in the “Everything you ever wanted to know about sex” workshop at #Dros25! We hope to highlight diverse science, researchers, and career stages. Email submission to rmgraze@auburn.edu by Wed, Jan 15.
December 9, 2024 at 9:05 PM
Reposted by Ben Hopkins
There are a lot of new people here, so I've set up a starter pack on Mating Systems, including sexual selection and conflict, sex differences and determination. Let me know if you want to be added! go.bsky.app/QXrYoQY
November 10, 2024 at 4:47 PM
Reposted by Ben Hopkins
(thread) New butterfly Hox paper out
doi.org/10.7554/eLif...
I want to highlight the main part on Hox "insulation"

How do butterflies forewings differ from hindwings in patterns and shape? Rare spontaneous mutants show patches of forewing transformed into hindwing identities? How is that possible?
January 23, 2024 at 11:18 PM
Reposted by Ben Hopkins
So glad our paper on lethal hybrid incompatibilities is out at Nature today: rdcu.be/dvFcM ! @ben-moran.bsky.social moved mountains for this project: we identified two new incompatibilities in swordtail hybrids , characterize mechanisms of lethality, and their evolutionary history.
rdcu.be
January 10, 2024 at 6:49 PM
Reposted by Ben Hopkins
Applications are invited for two Leverhulme Trust-funded post-doctoral positions to join our lab in the Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour to study the neural circuits' underlying sexual behaviours.
 
Apply: tinyurl.com/552u5nfr
 
Please RT
December 16, 2023 at 1:04 PM