Bailey Crowley

Join @berasymbionts.bsky.social , @tatsuyanobori.bsky.social and us for a postdoc on the remarkable developmental biology of symbiosis!

Applications are due March 25th 🪲🦠

@johninnescentre.bsky.social @thesainsburylab.bsky.social

A flyer reading "MCC Education Working Group Committee Members Needed" It asks if you are an early career scientist wanting to explore careers paths and if you enjoy networking. Learn more at microbiomecenter.org

The Microbiome Centers Consortium (MCC) Early Career Working Group is looking for committee members! It's a great opportunity to explore career paths and connect with scientists across academia, industry and policy by assembling speaker panels for fellow early-career scientists!

lnkd.in/em4hyq7E

Take it or leaf it: bees learn leaf shape as a cue when flower colour is easily learned Over a century of research has demonstrated that pollinators, such as bees, associatively learn diverse flower cues, including tactile, visual and olf…

Curious whether bees can learn non-floral cues to find floral rewards? New paper in Animal Behavior @animbehsociety.bsky.social by @mtcastagna.bsky.social, @jentomology.bsky.social, Ciara Stewart, and myself!

We find evidence that bees can learn leaf shape!

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

We are just one week away! Please reach out if you are interested in joining, we’d love to have you along.

How specific are heritable symbioses?

And what can we learn from swapping obligate symbionts across host species?

We address this in our latest, led by @inespons.bsky.social & in our collaboration w/ @microbiome.bsky.social 🦠🪲 Out today in @natcomms.nature.com!

1/n
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Diagram illustrating early genome erosion during the transition from a free-living Sodalis bacterium to two host-associated endosymbionts inside the long-tailed mealybug. Circular genomes show intact genes in blue and pseudogenes in red, highlighting increased pseudogene accumulation in symbiotic forms. Caption asks: “What are the downstream molecular consequences of early genome erosion?”

Happy to share a preprint—the last chapter of my dissertation with @mcsymbiont.bsky.social and Co—on what happens when bacterial endosymbionts accumulate huge numbers of pseudogenes during early genome reduction.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

NEW: Registration is now FREE for graduate students and postdocs for the 14th Annual Yosemite Symbiosis workshop. THANKS to the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation! Space is limited. Learn more and REGISTER here: snri.ucmerced.edu/form/symbios...

Thank you to ECODIM for their involvement as well!

Please join the @symbiosisalumni.bsky.social during our next Alumni Network seminar to learn about the origin and complexities of mealybug endosymbioses from @filiphusnik.bsky.social:

🗓️ February 25th
🕥 8am WET
📍on zoom (PM for link)

symbnet.bsky.social
moorefound.bsky.social
mblscience.bsky.social

*correct link
Very excited to share a preprint from stellar lab postdoc, Dr. Younghwan Kwak.

“Intrahost mutational dynamics parallel long-term genome evolution in endosymbionts”

Cool, skillful work and a nifty story!
#symbiosis #insects #evolution

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Plant Pathogens Moonlighting as Beneficial Insect Symbionts Herbivorous insects can shape the epidemiology of disease in plants by vectoring numerous phytopathogens. While the consequences of infection are often well-characterized in the host plant, the extent...

Can plant pathogens boost vector fitness?

Together with @hassansalem.bsky.social, we review how phytopathogens can spread further by moonlighting as insect symbionts 🪲 More on this nifty lifestyle in @annualreviews.bsky.social!

www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Very cool work, congrats! The link above wasn’t working: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Thanks for the opportunity to share a little bit about the start of my PhD journey! The Alumni Network has been a great way to meet others excited about symbioses. Looking forward to learning more about ongoing research in the community. Shout out to the #BBSRC for funding this upcoming work.

Microbial determinants of behaviour in herbivorous beetles (SALEM_J26DTP) | Doctoral Training Partnership Many animals rely on beneficial microbes for nutrition, defence, or reproduction. In this project, the student will explore an exciting new dimension of these relationships:

There’ll be several opportunities to join the group, starting w/ a PhD studentship via the BBSRC-NRP Doctoral Training Partnership.

Team up w/ us, @saskiahogenhout.bsky.social & @berasymbionts.bsky.social to answer how microbes shape insect behavior:
biodtp.norwichresearchpark.ac.uk/projects/mic...

Phage diversity mirrors bacterial strain diversity in the honey bee gut microbiota - Nature Communications Authors analyse paired viral and bacterial shotgun metagenomics data from individual honeybee guts, revealing modular, nested phage–bacteria networks, with viral diversity mirroring bacterial strain c...

🐝🦠 New paper: rdcu.be/eOf7A
Phages may drive microbial diversity, yet we often don’t even know how phages & bacteria correlate in nature. Our new study tackles this in the honeybee gut, thanks to the great work of PhD student @malickndiaye.bsky.social at @dmf-unil.bsky.social @fbm-unil.bsky.social

Save the date! Our next Alumni Network seminar:
📅 Wednesday, October 29th
🕙 12pm EST (Massachusetts) / 12pm CLT (Chile) / 4pm WEST (Oeiras)
📍 over Zoom (PM for link)

@symbnet.bsky.social

@moorefound.bsky.social

@mblscience.bsky.social
@ECODIM

Evolutionary Diversification and Functions of the Candidate Male Killing Gene wmk Abstract. Symbiont-mediated male killing (MK) is a mechanism that selectively eliminates male offspring, often by disrupting sex-specific developmental pro

New accepted manuscript (preprint) on the evolution, phylogenetic types, expression, and fxns of a male-killing gene from a phage in a common endosymbiont of animals. Credit to many lab coauthors and led by Dr. Emilie Lefoulon. Lots of fun and insights in this one. academic.oup.com/gbe/advance-...

Figure 1. Diversity of male-killing (MK) endosymbionts across arthropods.

"Striking diversity of male-killing symbionts and their mechanisms"
by Hiroshi Arai (@haraipapilio.bsky.social), Daisuke Kageyama (@daisukekageyama.bsky.social) & co

"Why [and how] do maternally inherited endosymbionts kill male hosts?"

Find out here:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Congrats, Cheryl!! 🎉

Looking forward to seeing you in our next Alumni Network seminar next week:
📅 Wednesday, August 27th
🕙 11am EST (Massachusetts) / 11am CLT (Chile) / 4pm WEST (Oeiras)
📍 over Zoom (PM for link)

@symbnet.bsky.social @moorefound.bsky.social @mblscience.bsky.social @ECODIM

I am quite excited! Looking forward to meeting everyone late September!!

I’m pleased to announce that I’ve accepted a PhD studentship Dr. @greghurst.bsky.social’s lab at the @liverpooluni.bsky.social supported by @ukri.org’s #BBSRC training program. With Drs. Alistair Darby and Michael Brockhurst, we seek to understand insect host’s response to symbiont evolution.

Hypermutable hotspot enables the rapid evolution of self/non-self recognition genes in Dictyostelium Cells require highly polymorphic receptors to perform accurate self/non-self recognition. In the amoeba Dicytostelium discoideum, polymorphic TgrB1 & TgrC1 proteins are used to bind sister cells and e...

I'm excited to announce our new biorxiv preprint, wherein we investigate the evolution of the weirdest genetic locus I've ever seen! Behold the tgr genes of the social amoeba, which mediate self/non-self discrimination during facultative multicellularity 🐅 🧵 1/
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

two pages from our been book, lots of of images and a bit of text for each bee genera

cover of our Bees of Pennsylvania book with photo of green sweat bee

Our guide to bees of Pennsylvania is available for free now, you can order print copy (just have to pay shipping) and/or download PDF from Penn State Extension page: extension.psu.edu/bees-of-penn...

For every one of the 47 bee genera we have beautiful photo(s) and natural history facts

An endosymbiotic origin of the crimson pigment from the lac insect | PNAS Symbioses with microorganisms expand the genetic and metabolic repertoire of many insects. The lac insect Kerria lacca (Hemiptera: Sternorrhyncha) ...

I once visited Mayan ruins in Mexico and was told that is not known how they were able to make such bright blue colors. Also heard the same about bright red ones. It turns out, at least for the red color, a fungus is responsible! Read more here: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Please help get the word out - We are hiring at all levels (graduate students, technicians, and postdocs)! If you are interested in sponges, cell biology, evolution, immunity, and symbiosis, please don’t hesitate to contact me to learn more.

Shifts in bee diet breadths are associated with gene gains and losses and positive selection across olfactory receptors Abstract. Bees are palynivorous insects that vary widely in the number of plant families from which they collect pollen. Their evolutionary history has bee

🧬 Shift between specialized & generalized diets in #bees is associated with evolutionary changes in their sensory genes. Generalists lose odorant receptors (ORs) and gain gustatory receptors (GRs), while specialists diversify existing genes 🌸🐝 #genomics #pollinators
academic.oup.com/g3journal/ad...

The @symbiosisalumni.bsky.social is excited to welcome our next seminar speakers, Dr. Leslie Daille and PhD candidate Lindsey Markowitz, on June 25th at 4pm WEST via zoom.

Please reach out if you are interested in attending.

The Wolbachia Project V3 YouTube video by Penn State Eberly College of Science

Free biotech labs, equipment, and training are all bundled into student-driven discoveries and teacher growth. Student publications? Yep. Industry partner? Naturally. This is a must watch highlight reel of Sarah Bordenstein digging into @wolbachiaproj.bsky.social.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAun...