Amazing time at the 35th LUOVA Spring Symposium held in Viikki @helsinki.fi, organised by PhD researchers. Grateful to this year’s keynote speakers @ricardonature.bsky.social, @profkathrynelmer.bsky.social, and Marco Gamba for their talks, insights, and engagement with the community of PhDs.
Looking for a PhD? I am advertising two industry sponsored PhD projects. One on black soldier fly genetics with #betabugs and another on searching insect biodiversity for novel enzymes #Syngenta. Get in touch if you are interested!! bbsrcdtp.lifesci.cam.ac.uk/available-ic...
Reminder that to see the world as one giant, living web, one must go outside. So excited that the summer field season is now in full swing.
iCASE projects for academic year 2026-2027 line_divider.png Project: Understanding cellulose digestion by cryo-EM structure of cellulose microfibril-enzyme complexes Project reference: ICS-BIO-PD26 S...
The groups first field trip is underway! @paulinea73.bsky.social got the first caterpillar of her PhD 🥳 @michalbartak.bsky.social
Michal Barták
Michal Barták
Michal Barták
New preprint!
“Climate-driven specialisation in plant–pollinator networks peaks outside the tropics”
Testing the long-debated latitudinal specialisation gradient using >3,400 quantitative networks (>110,000 interactions). Led by @saileesakhalkar.bsky.social and myself ☺️
doi.org/10.1101/2025...
One of my PhD chapters is now out! It’s a review on pyrazines in insects and their biological roles and their evolution.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
@lepphylo.bsky.social
@jmappes.bsky.social
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
Funded PhD position available 🎉 Come and work with me in Helsinki to uncover the pathways producing colourful tiger moth wings. Lots of options for genomics, CRISPR, fieldwork, behaviour experiments… Email with questions! jobs.helsinki.fi/job/Helsinki...
Michal Barták
Chris Jiggins
Chemical communication is the oldest and most widespread form of signalling among and within organisms. Among the many compounds involved in such communication, pyrazines – nitrogen-containing hetero...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
A new major version of ggplot2 has been released on CRAN. Find out what is new here.
A few summers ago, we individually reared 1200 wood tiger moth caterpillars with the aim to understand the associations and genetic basis of different traits; colour, chemical defences, behaviour, pheromones and more. The results are here!
Melanie Brien
Melanie Brien
Robert Tropek
Zowi Oudendijk
Thomas Lin Pedersen
And here is the working link: jobs.helsinki.fi/job/Helsinki...
Melanie Brien
Postdoctoral Researcher in Evolutionary Genetics & Ecology of Colour and Performance
Thrilled to announce a Postdoc opportunity in our group on the evolutionary genetics and ecology of colour. Wonderful system, great collaborators, and room to shape your own ideas.
Apply by 7 Jan: jobs.helsinki.fi/job/13477181...
Independent major-effect loci and limited trait associations characterise warning colour variation across sexes and life stages in the wood tiger moth (Arctia plantaginis) https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.03.729769v1
