If only I wee a candle in the dark.

Glad to share my work on phylogenetic inference for wee, tiny organisms (or highly diverse): the infered topologies seem largely unaffected by unaccounted recurrent mutations, but branch lengths, and mutation-selection usage biases, are significantly impacted.
#eseb #eseb2025

@janekay27.bsky.social presenting her work on merging time scales of evolution to infer adaptive evolution. Great talk! #eseb #fwf

I love engaging in outreach activities with math-enthusiastic students, and I always take the opportunity to introduce them to stochastic processes. One process I particularly enjoy teaching is the Gambler’s Ruin.

@uniofstandrews.bsky.social
#standrews #smmb #statistics #maths

7/8 To illustrate how mutation models can influence the quantification of forces other than drift, we further present a case study showing that the BM model exaggerates the intensity of selective constraints acting on the three codon positions of the bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens.

5/8 Our analyses further reveal that the BM model tends to overestimate the effective population size, particularly in bacteria, where estimated population sizes can be more than five times larger than those expected by the recurrent mutation model.

4/8 By examining mutation rates and effective population sizes across the Tree of Life, we demonstrate that the BM model remains valid for most species but significantly deviates in bacteria.

3/8 However, one can alternatively assume a recurrent mutation model (RM), which additionally considers mutations contributing to shifts in allele frequency.
In this study, we compare these two models.

2/8 A common assumption is that mutations are infrequent, so when a new mutation arises, the previous one has either become fixed or lost. This assumption implies that mutations occur exclusively at fixed sites and is referred to as the boundary mutation model (BM).

Glad to present my work on the implications of different mutation models in #popgen and #phylo inference at #PopGroup58 in Sheffield (even tried my hand at cèilidh dancing). Kudos to the organizers for this excellent meeting! #statsstandrews

Super proud of @janekay27.bsky.social for receiving an OEAW grant to continue their PhD work on codon evolution for another two years 🥳 It was a pity I couldn't be there in person for the award ceremony, but @bio-diogo.bsky.social did a fantastic job stepping in and capturing some great photos:

A problem for a stormy, rainy day: #maths #mathproblems #OPM

In my free time, I love solving math competition problems that don’t require extensive prior knowledge. They're mostly based on intuition and are super fun to tackle! Here's one from the Portuguese Mathematical Olympiad -- can you guess the answer? #maths #mathproblems