BBSRC fellow at Liverpool Uni - insect adaptation to freshwater environments, comparative genomics and gene evolution.
I enjoy genomes, bioinformatics, and moths.
Treasurer for Systematics Association systass.org
He/Him 🇮🇪
🔗 http://petermulhair.com
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Whole genome duplications over 450 million years ago enabled the emergence of different kinds of brain cells 🧠
These cellular innovations are shared across vertebrates - from primitive fish to mammals - and form the basis of the sophisticated brains seen today 👇
This was a very fun project with lots of interesting findings to follow up on.
Sampling of the focal species, Maniola jurtina, during the summer months at Wytham woods with Peter and Asia was a pleasure. All samples were used for RNA sequencing and differential gene expression analyses. 🧬
Latest paper lead by Asia Hoile with @peterhox.bsky.social is out! 🦋
Nymphalid butterflies have reduced forelegs. Gene expression patterns show support for more palp-like genes involved in sensory processes in the forelegs relative to the walking legs.
doi.org/10.1111/imb....
The new OrthoFinder paper is out now!
In this new work, we introduce major advances in accuracy and scalability, allowing analysis on much larger datasets
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
github.com/OrthoFinder/...
A big preprint from my group!
Muller Elements are considered to be conserved in flies. We tested it by reconstructing the ancestral dipteran karyotype using 340 chromosomal genomes and suprise suprise, they're not...
Led by @juliagries.bsky.social and Sam Ebdon. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
🧵👇
Capolavoro 🎨 alert 🚨! What is the role of gene body methylation in invertebrates? Despite extensive speculation linking it to plasticity and environmental responses, its mechanistic effects and heritability remain unclear. Our take out in @natecoevo.nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/
📣🧬 Postdoc Alert🧬📣
We are hiring a 2+ year NERC-funded postdoc at Edinburgh Uni investigating causes and consequences of sex differences in recombination in house sparrows in Norway. Informal enquiries welcome at [email protected] 🙂
Details here: elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...
Abstract submission (and early-bird!) deadline for the BioSyst.EU approaches!
You have until Sunday, May 31st to send it in!
Join us and our fellow European systematics associations in Uppsala, August 17-19, 2026 for the 4th BioSyst.EU meeting!
Details: www.trippus.net/BioSyst2026
#BioSystEU2026
Our latest manuscript on (Harry Potter and) the effect of elevated temperature on embryonic development in flies. Even a small increase in temperature causes developmental defects, indicating problems in the face of global warming! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
1/ Our new paper in Systematic Biology "Modeling Site-and-Branch-Heterogeneity with GFmix" led by @cgpmcc.bsky.social describes improved ways to model compositional heterogeneity across both sites and branches—an important source of error in deep phylogenomics.
doi.org/10.1093/sysb...
Transcriptome analysis reveals that the small non-walking front legs of a butterfly have distinct gene expression to the four walking legs. Reduced front legs express a gene with putative mechanosen...
doi.org
The updated OrthoFinder v3 software boosts accuracy and scalability in phylogenetic orthology inference with massive and diverse datasets.
Experiments in the cnidarian Nematostella vectensis show a role of gene body methylation in transposable element suppression and that epigenetic inheritance is constrained by chromatin context and tra...
www.nature.com
A three-day conference celebrating European systematics and biodiversity research at its origin
Kale et al. show that nuclear divisions are defective at elevated temperature, leading to gastrulation defects and embryo lethality. Their work finds that F-actin – microtubule interactions during mit...
www.nature.com
Abstract. Phylogenetic trees are often inferred from protein sequences sampled from diverse taxa across the tree of life. The compositions of these amino a
