German Lagunas-Robles
g-lagunasrobles.bsky.social
German Lagunas-Robles
@g-lagunasrobles.bsky.social
postdoc @ IU Bloomington (Bracewell Lab)
genome evolution, ants, and beetles 🧬🐜🪲
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
New in @currentbiology.bsky.social
"Genomic evidence of a complex supergene system linking dispersal to social polymorphism"
#Myrmecina_graminicola
Mona,S., Gay,E.J., Ducancel,J., Laso-Jadart,R., Chifflet-Belle, P., Doums,C. @isyeb.mnhn.fr @ephe-psl.bsky.social et al.
🐜 www.cell.com/current-biol...
Genomic evidence of a complex supergene system linking dispersal to social polymorphism
Mona et al. report a complex supergene system in the ant Myrmecina graminicola characterized by three alleles determining both the number of queens in a colony (monogyne vs. polygyne) and the presence...
www.cell.com
November 21, 2025 at 9:55 AM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
#Haplodiploid inheritance is found in all species of #Hymenoptera. @mwbstr.bsky.social &co map the #sex determining #gene of the red mason #bee to the ANTSR gene region, suggesting a shared, ancient origin of #SexDetermination in bees & ants >150 Mya ago @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/47COEtH
November 4, 2025 at 1:58 PM
2 year postdoc position in evolutionary genomics at University of California, Riverside in the Purcell Lab! 🧬🐜
October 17, 2025 at 9:58 PM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
How many chromosomes can an animal have?

In our paper out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social we show that the Atlas blue butterfly has 229 chromosome pairs- the highest in diploid Metazoa! These arose by rapid autosome fragmentation while sex chromosomes stayed intact.
www.cell.com/current-biol...
Constraints on chromosome evolution revealed by the 229 chromosome pairs of the Atlas blue butterfly
The genome of the Atlas blue butterfly contains ten times more chromosomes than most butterflies, and more than any other known diploid animal. Wright et al. show that this extraordinary karyotype is ...
tinyurl.com
September 11, 2025 at 3:22 PM
ggplot2 ethusiasts, new update just dropped! 🔥🔥🔥
I am beyond excited to announce that ggplot2 4.0.0 has just landed on CRAN.

It's not every day we have a new major #ggplot2 release but it is a fitting 18 year birthday present for the package.

Get an overview of the release in this blog post and be on the lookout for more in-depth posts #rstats
ggplot2 4.0.0
A new major version of ggplot2 has been released on CRAN. Find out what is new here.
www.tidyverse.org
September 11, 2025 at 1:33 PM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
I am beyond excited to announce that ggplot2 4.0.0 has just landed on CRAN.

It's not every day we have a new major #ggplot2 release but it is a fitting 18 year birthday present for the package.

Get an overview of the release in this blog post and be on the lookout for more in-depth posts #rstats
ggplot2 4.0.0
A new major version of ggplot2 has been released on CRAN. Find out what is new here.
www.tidyverse.org
September 11, 2025 at 11:20 AM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
A common type of ant in Europe breaks a fundamental rule in biology: its queens can produce male offspring that are a whole different species

go.nature.com/4mOb5T9
‘Almost unimaginable’: these ants are different species but share a mother
Ant queens of one species clone ants of another to create hybrid workers that do their bidding.
go.nature.com
September 3, 2025 at 3:34 PM
Check out our latest preprint in Formica ants! We investigate how the sex ratio supergene evolved. We find that a colony-level sex ratio supergene evolved twice! This likely occurred as a result of recombination between the the ancestral queen number supergenes present in Formica. 🧬🐜🧬🐜🧬🐜
Multiple origins of a sex ratio supergene in Formica ants https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.27.672632v1
September 2, 2025 at 2:32 PM
Excited to share some of the latest work coming from the Formica ant supergene system 🐜🧬! This project represents many collection trips and years of work!
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Variation in social organization and supergene control along a latitudinal gradient
Widespread species often experience vastly different environmental conditions across their range. In species with polymorphic traits under strong genetic control, we can investigate how environmental ...
doi.org
July 24, 2025 at 1:39 PM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
Very 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/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
June 27, 2025 at 1:22 PM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
The #EditorsChoice for this month from EIC @maxreuter.bsky.social is

"Unexpected absence of a multiple-queen supergene haplotype from supercolonial populations of Formica ants" by

@g-lagunasrobles.bsky.social et al

academic.oup.com/jeb/article/...
Unexpected absence of a multiple-queen supergene haplotype from supercolonial populations of Formica ants
Abstract. Ants exhibit many complex social organization strategies. One particularly elaborate strategy is supercoloniality, in which a colony consists of
academic.oup.com
April 23, 2025 at 7:59 AM
Is supercoloniality a simple extension of polygyny?Supercolonies, networks of interconnected nests with many queens, have been proposed as a natural extension of multi-queen nests. In many Formica ants, a supergene determines whether a colony has a single queen or many queens. (1/n)
April 9, 2025 at 2:01 PM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
A novel supergene controls queen size and colony social organization in the ant Myrmica ruginodis https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.24.644106v1
March 26, 2025 at 4:31 PM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
Dynamics of a supergene. A study of the BC supergene in wing color morphs of the African monarch #butterfly by @rishidekayne.bsky.social &co reveals dynamic evolution of #supergene haplotypes, fueled by incomplete recombination suppression 🧪 @plosbiology.org plos.io/3DiFhnL
March 3, 2025 at 10:00 AM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
Centromere evolution isn't a sudden switch!

Our study shows centromere transitions are a step-by-step process driven by a combination of drift and selection. Discover how the kinetochore interface shapes this gradual change in our new preprint 🥳 doi.org/10.1101/2025.01.16.633479 🧵(1/8)
January 17, 2025 at 11:17 AM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
🦉🧪 Questions about high latitude myrtle warblers have been "up in the air" (pun intended) since 1899! @stephszarmach.bsky.social used fancy new geolocators that track light AND barometric pressure to add an unexpected chapter to this tale ......
Excited to share our preprint on the migration of high-latitude breeding myrtle warblers! Using barometric geolocators and stable isotopes we found most birds migrated >5,000km to the Gulf Coast rather than to the closer Pacific Coast wintering area.

biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...
October 14, 2024 at 1:10 PM
Our preprint on the unexpected absence of a multiple-queen supergene haplotype in supercolonial populations is up on bioRxiv! We found that the P haplotype is not necessary for supercoloniality in the Formica rufa group, despite its longstanding association with non-supercolonial polygyny.
September 19, 2024 at 9:31 PM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
Happy to release Stacks v2.67 today. This release updates process_radtags to make it easier to use SRA data and to filter poly-G (error) runs coming from Nextseq/Novaseq machines + bugfixes. We also added a genotype depth filter to populations #RADseq
catchenlab.life.illinois.edu/stacks/
Stacks
catchenlab.life.illinois.edu
July 18, 2024 at 5:50 PM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
New article: 'The role of conflict in the formation and maintenance of variant sex chromosome systems in mammals'
🔬 From fusions to Y chromosome loss, sex chromosome karyotypes vary widely in mammalian genomes.
1/3
June 13, 2024 at 4:01 PM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
With a link that works 😊
March 21, 2024 at 6:40 PM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
Hey ya'll. Our paper on the phenotypic consequences of intraspecific variation in repeat content and genome size was published over the holidays. Check it out when you get back to work :)

journals.plos.org/plosgenetics...
Quantifying the role of genome size and repeat content in adaptive variation and the architecture of...
Author summary The remarkable and seemingly inconsequential variation in genome size across species has long been an enigma in evolutionary biology. Calling this viewpoint into question, correlations ...
journals.plos.org
January 2, 2024 at 6:04 PM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
Excited to share the first paper from my postdoc, using phylogenomics to uncover dynamic genome evolution in Rumex! Featuring @joannarifkin.bsky.social, @bmsacchi.bsky.social, @stepheniwright.bsky.social, and others not on the app!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Phylogenomics resolves key relationships in Rumex and uncovers a dynamic history of independently ev...
bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution
www.biorxiv.org
December 14, 2023 at 10:40 PM
Posting for my colleague Giulia Scarparo and collaborators. Check out their new paper on a supergene that controls for queen miniaturization! Giulia's post attached below.

Paper here: www.cell.com/current-biol...
November 21, 2023 at 1:23 AM
Reposted by German Lagunas-Robles
Steph Szarmach discusses her geolocator work on Alaskan Myrtle warblers! *Spoiler alert*: there are no spoilers!
wilsonsociety.org/2023/11/07/g...
Guest Post: Tracking the Migrations of Alaskan Myrtle Warblers
Standing in a clearing surrounded by black spruce and birch, I raise my binoculars after spotting a quick flash of movement high up in the foliage.
wilsonsociety.org
November 8, 2023 at 7:12 PM