#Pangolins

Two posters presented at the 11th Oppenheimer Research Conference in Midrand

Frederic Delsuc

Oct 6, 2022
1 min

Two posters presented at the 11th Oppenheimer Research Conference in Midrand

Sophie and Frédéric attended the 11th Oppenheimer Research Conference (ORC 2022) in Mirand (South Africa). Sophie presented a poster on her study of the gut microbiota of ant- and termite-eating mammals to understand convergent dietary adaptations. Frédéric's poster presented results from a shallow metagenomic approach on faecal samples for fine-scale diet characterization of myrmecophagous mammals in Tswalu Kalahari and Tussen die Riviere reserves. These studies are conducte

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Fieldwork session at Tswalu Kalahari Reserve (South Africa)

Frederic Delsuc

Oct 2, 2022
1 min

Fieldwork session at Tswalu Kalahari Reserve (South Africa)

After a three-year hiatus caused by the global COVID pandemic, Sophie and Frédéric returned to Tswalu Kalahari Reserve (South Africa) to conduct a 12 day-long fieldwork session. The aim was to collect fresh hyaena fecal samples for metagenomic sequencing of the gut microbiome to compare with the myrmecophagous aardwolf. Again, Wendy Panaino's field expertise was instrumental to help us collect fresh fecal samples. Because of numerous load-sheddings related to South Africa's m

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Sophie presented her long-read metagenomics work at ESEB 2022 in Prague

Frederic Delsuc

Aug 16, 2022
1 min

Sophie presented her long-read metagenomics work at ESEB 2022 in Prague

As the last step in her oral presentation marathon, Sophie had the opportunity to present her work on long-read metagenomics and chitinase genes the Congress of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB 2022) in Prague (Czech Republic). Sophie's presentation was selected as part of an exciting symposium dedicated to understanding "Microbiomes in the wild: the drivers and evolutionary consequences of microbiome variation". Teullet S.*, Tilak M.-K., Magdeleine A., Sch

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Sophie talked metagenomics at the European Meeting for PhD Students in Evolutionary Biology

Frederic Delsuc

May 26, 2022
1 min

Sophie talked metagenomics at the European Meeting for PhD Students in Evolutionary Biology

After two years of online talks, Sophie finally had the opportunity to present in-person the metagenomic part of her PhD project at the 27th European Meeting for PhD Students in Evolutionary Biology (EMPSEB27) in Espoo (Finland) (https://empseb.wordpress.com/). This meeting organized for PhD students by PhD students is sponsored by the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB) and aims at creating links between fellow European PhD students. A wonderful opportunity for

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Frédéric presented a talk on chitinase gene family evolution at the ALPHY/AIEM meeting

Frederic Delsuc

Mar 15, 2022
1 min

Frédéric presented a talk on chitinase gene family evolution at the ALPHY/AIEM meeting

After two years of virtual meetings, Frédéric was especially delighted to attend the ALPHY/AIEM annual meeting of the evolutionary genomics and bioinformatics French community in Rennes (France). Frédéric exposed our latest results on comparative genomics and transcriptomics of salivary glands to investigate the evolution of the chitinase gene family in placentals. Our results demonstrate that divergent molecular mechanisms underlie convergent adaptation to the ant-eating die

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First publication of the European Reference Genome Atlas (ERGA) consortium

Frederic Delsuc

Jan 23, 2022
1 min

First publication of the European Reference Genome Atlas (ERGA) consortium

As a member of the recently created European Reference Genome Atlas (ERGA), Frédéric participated to the first paper of the consortium published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution (doi:10.1016/j.tree.2021.11.008). The ERGA is a pan-European scientific initiative aimed at generating high-quality complete genome resources for eukaryote species of continental Europe. This first consortium paper highlights the usefulness of producing high-quality complete genome resources in larg

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Chris' new paper on gene loss in the melatonin pathway published in Open Research Europe

Frederic Delsuc

Dec 12, 2021
2 min

Chris' new paper on gene loss in the melatonin pathway published in Open Research Europe

Chris' study on the molecular evolution and loss of function of the genes involved in the melatonin pathway in vertebrates has been published in Open Research Europe (doi:10.12688/openreseurope.13795.1) a new gold open access journal edited by the European Commission with a transparent process of peer-review. In this work, we studied the molecular evolution of genes involved in the synthesis (AANAT, ASMT) and signaling (MTNR1A, MTNR1B) of melatonin, a hormone secreted by the

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Sophie talked long read metagenomics at the Animal Microbiome Research Group virtual meeting

Frederic Delsuc

Nov 10, 2021
1 min

Sophie talked long read metagenomics at the Animal Microbiome Research Group virtual meeting

Sophie Teullet presented her work on using long read metagenomics to study dietary adaptations in ant-eating mammal at the 2nd annual Animal Microbiome Research Group (AMRG) virtual meeting (https://amrg.mystrikingly.com/). The AMRG is an interdisciplinary and international community of early career scientists interested in using the microbiome as a tool to address fundamental questions in ecology and evolution and provides a research network and platform for early career res

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Two ConvergeAnt talks presented at the virtual Evolution 2021 meeting

Frederic Delsuc

Jun 25, 2021
2 min

Two ConvergeAnt talks presented at the virtual Evolution 2021 meeting

Chris and Frédéric presented talks at the Virtual Evolution 2021 meeting the annual meeting of the American Society of Naturalists, the Society for the Study of Evolution, and the Society of Systematic Biologists held online because of travel restrictions due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Chris presented his work on the molecular erosion of tooth-related genes in the xenarthran radiation (armadillos, anteaters, and sloths) showing that independent and distinct events of d

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Frederic Delsuc

May 20, 2021
1 min

Sophie presented a plenary talk at virtual London Calling 2021

After submitting a poster abstract to present her work on ant-eating mammal microbiomes using long read metagenomics, Sophie Teullet was invited to present a plenary talk at the virtual London Calling 2021 Nanopore conference (https://londoncallingconf.co.uk/lc21). Sophie took up the challenge and her talk entitled "Long-read metagenomic sequencing of faecal samples to study convergent dietary adaptation in ant-eating mammals" can be watch on the video below. Congrats Sophie

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Congrats to Rémi for successfully defending his PhD!

Frederic Delsuc

Feb 11, 2021
1 min

Congrats to Rémi for successfully defending his PhD!

Despite a last year largely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, Rémi Allio managed to successfully defended his PhD entitled "Phylogenomics and comparative genomics in myrmecophagous mammals" co-directed by Frédéric Delsuc and Benoit Nabholz. Thanks to all jury members for joining virtually or physically: Carole Smadja (CNRS, University of Montpellier, France), Emmanuelle Jousselin (INRAe, France), Marie Sémon (ENS Lyon, France), Robert Waterhouse (Uni

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Welcome to Victor and Timothée as new Master students

Frederic Delsuc

Jan 31, 2021
1 min

Welcome to Victor and Timothée as new Master students

We are pleased to welcome Victor Luxey and Timothée Kastylevky as new Master students in the ConvergeAnt project for the next six months. Victor is a second year Master student from the Master program in Bioinformatics of the University of Bordeaux. His project consists in studying chitinase genes in mammalian fecal metagenomes. Timothée is a post-Master student from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure (ENS) Lyon co-supervised with Marie Sémon. His project is looking at molecular

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Two new PhD students join the ConvergeAnt project

Frederic Delsuc

Sep 30, 2020
1 min

Two new PhD students join the ConvergeAnt project

We are pleased to welcome back Sophie Teullet and Mathilde Barthe both starting their PhD within the ConvergeAnt project for the next three years. For her PhD, Sophie will follow-up from her Master degree investigating dietary adaptations in the genomes of ant-eating mammals but will also explore the functional potential of their gut microbiomes for insect digestion. Mathilde secured a PhD grant from the Center for the Study of Biodiversity in Amazonia (CEBA) to work on detec

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Frederic Delsuc

Jun 4, 2020
1 min

Congratulations to Sophie!

Congratulations to Sophie Teullet who virtually, but successfully, defended her project from the Ecology and Evolution Master from the University of Toulouse (MEE). Sophie's M2 project dissected the molecular evolution of chitinase genes in mammals using genomic and transcriptomic data. Despite the lockdown consecutive to the COVID-19 epidemics, Sophie did a wonderful job while working remotely on her project and obtained her degree with highest honors. Congrats again! #Tran

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Rémi's MitoFinder paper published in Molecular Ecology Resources

Frederic Delsuc

Apr 8, 2020
1 min

Rémi's MitoFinder paper published in Molecular Ecology Resources

Rémi's first PhD paper describing the MitoFinder bioinformatic pipeline designed to automatically extract mitogenomic signal from genomic data has been published in Molecular Ecology Resources. MitoFinder software can be downloaded from GitHub (https://github.com/RemiAllio/MitoFinder). We illustrated MitoFinder efficiency with ant UCE libraries but it also works well with other type of capture data in which numerous off-target reads are sequenced, as well as with RNAseq trans

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Frederic Delsuc

Jan 6, 2020
1 min

Welcome to Sophie Teullet!

We are pleased to welcome Sophie Teullet in the ConvergeAnt project for the next six months. Sophie is a Master student (M2) from the Master Programme in Ecologyof the University Paul Sabatier (Toulouse, France). She will be working on chitinase evolution in ant-eating mammals using both genomic and transcriptomic data. #Anteaters #Armadillos #Aardwolf #Aardvark #Master #Students #Bioinformatics #Transcriptomes #Pangolins #Genomes

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Congrats Sérgio for a successful PhD defense!

Frederic Delsuc

Nov 29, 2019
1 min

Congrats Sérgio for a successful PhD defense!

Congratulations to Sérgio Ferreira-Cardoso who successfully defended his PhD entitled "Morphological convergence and dental simplification in myrmecophagous placentals" co-directed by Frédéric and Lionel. Thanks to his reviewers Anjali Goswami (The Natural History Museum London, UK) and John Nyakatura (Humboldt Universität Berlin, Germany), and examiners Thomas Lehman (Senckenberg Research Institute Frankfurt am Main, Germany), Anthony Herrel (Muséum National d'Histoire Natur

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New paper by Sérgio on skull shape variation in pangolins

Frederic Delsuc

Nov 9, 2019
1 min

New paper by Sérgio on skull shape variation in pangolins

Sérgio's second PhD paper on skull shape variation in extant pangolins and its implications for systematics just appeared in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society (https://doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlz096). This paper is based on geometric morphometrics analyses of 243 museum specimens from the eight extant species of pangolins. Our results shed light on the morphological diversity of the skull of these enigmatic myrmecophagous mammals and confirm the genus-level cla

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Frederic Delsuc

Oct 12, 2019
1 min

Kathleen presented a poster at SVP 2019

Kathleen attended SVP 2019, the 79th Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in her Brisbane hometown (Australia). She presented a poster on using cribiform plate as a proxy to characterize the olfactory capacities of myrmecophagous mammals based on 3D CT-scans obtained during her Master project in the ConvergeAnt team. Reference: Garland K.*, Hautier L., Ferreira-Cardoso S., Wright M., Martinez Q., Fabre P.-H., Lebrun R. & Delsuc F. (2019). Exploring the olfactory

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Frederic Delsuc

Jul 27, 2019
1 min

Two ConvergeAnt talks at ICVM 2019

Sérgio and Lionel participated to ICVM 2019, the International Congress of Vertebrate Morphology in Prague (Czech Republic). Sérgio gave a presentation on patterns of phenotypic covariation in the skull of myrmecophagous placentals based on modularity analyses. Lionel talked about covariation patterns in the olfactory system of myrmecophagous mammals based on 3D CT-scans of olfactory turbinals and cribiform plates respectively obtained by Mark and Kathleen during their Master

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