The Yellow-legged Gull (Larus michahellis), recently better known as pope gull (Larus urbietorbicum 😁), has now a chromosome-scale sequenced reference genome! Our first publication from the #LarOmics project, congrats @eksramos.bsky.social et al., see: wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/10-...

And we found that classical ecological theory (Elton's pyramid) predicts very well the trajectory of effective population sizes since the radiations unfolded - predators de- and herbivores increasing in population size - and thus the ecology of an evolved (instead of assembled) community.

We found that the coalescence patterns support a very recent origin of the Lake Victoria radiation <16,700 years when the lake dried out, and also a very recent origin of the Lakes Edward/Kivu and Lake Albert radiations.

Memories of a successful final field season in the LarOmics project. Thank you again to my group, @eksramos.bsky.social and Melody Wu, as well as to Magdalena Zagalska-Neubauer and our team in Poland!

Today, I had the privilege to handle some of the most iconic but sadly extinct birds at the Natural History Museum Basel with Ferran Sayol / U Barcelona for his research. How beautiful they are and what a tragedy that we will never be able to experience them in the wild again 😥

Off to Poland for our second field season in Poland, to catch gulls, take a little blood and release them again. Our #Laromics group with Melody Wu and Elisa Ramos is looking forward to meet our Polish collaborators!