Attended a solemn and thoughtful Remembrance Day ceremony at UBC. Grateful to all those who have given so much.

Pleased to see published today: the Molecular Ecology special issue on "Genomics of Speciation"; many interesting papers: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1365294x...

Included in this issue is our paper on "The Distribution and Dispersal of Large Haploblocks in a Superspecies":

doi.org/10.1111/mec....

Now published in the October 2025 issue of Molecular Ecology:

"Biochemical and Genomic Underpinnings of Carotenoid Colour Variation Across a Hybrid Zone Between South Asian Flameback Woodpeckers"

by Rashika Ranasinghe, Jocelyn Hudon, Sampath Seneviratne, and myself

doi.org/10.1111/mec....

Like woodpeckers?
Like pretty colors?
Like genomics of pretty colors in woodpeckers?
Then this is for you!

"Biochemical and Genomic Underpinnings of Carotenoid Colour Variation Across a Hybrid Zone Between South Asian Flameback Woodpeckers"

Lead author: Rashika Ranasinghe

doi.org/10.1111/mec....

Now available online in Accepted Manuscript form:

"Evidence for ancient selective sweeps followed by differentiation among three species of Sphyrapicus sapsuckers"

In the Journal of Evolutionary Biology: doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

Congrats to lead author Libby Natola!

The view from Canada:

Dear U.S. tourism operators & city councils:
Rather than offering deals and writing letters to Canada, Canadians want to see you standing up for your own U.S. Constitution and for the rights of travellers to have free speech, for the rights of transgender travellers, and against threats to Canada.

The rectangle below contains 900,000 small blue dots.

Each represents a human being who had obtained legal status to be in the USA, but in the last couple days were told (by online app) that they now must leave immediately.

www.cbc.ca/news/world/u...

With this paper, we are releasing a new Julia package, GenomicDiversity.jl, which was used to conduct analyses and make figures in the paper.

GenomicDiversity is officially registered as a Julia package, so can be easily installed like any other package.

github.com/darreni/Geno...

#julialang

What better way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day than publishing about GREENish Warblers! (and/ or reading about them)

OK who's ready for some science?

Do you like speciation? Genomics? Hybridization? Bioinformatics? Then this is for you:

Published today: "The Distribution & Dispersal of Large Haploblocks in a Superspecies"

Bonus interest if you like ring species and cute greenish birds:

doi.org/10.1111/mec....

I recently developed & taught a 1-credit graduate course titled Computer Programming for Biologists. The students produced some fantastic projects!

For the course & for you, I developed tutorials in the Julia programming language. I share these here:

darreni.github.io/JuliaProgram...

#julialang

UBC snow report: GOOD

Canada's a good place y'all. 😀

The view from Vancouver (all headlines in the Vancouver Sun). I don't think most U.S. citizens understand the damage being done to international trust in their country, nor the repercussions it will have:

Greenish warblers (Phylloscopus trochiloides) are magnificent beasts of Asian forests. If they keep evolving, they may someday become green.

In these waning days of 2024, we are announcing the publication of our updated review of Ring Species:

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I thank coauthor Shawn Kuchta, who is an expert on the Ensatina ring species, and posthumous coauthor David Wake, who worked with me on the 2016 review.