Kevin Daly

Four angels to get to know me.

The gambling addiction and dead dog factory that is greyhound racing is the lifeblood of rural Ireland no doubt

Petition to try to regulate some of the high-impact culling of feral goats in Scotland, such as killing pregnant females or nursing females with kids petitions.parliament.scot/petitions/PE...

We've [with @louis-lhote.bsky.social] published an article on @theconversation.com about our work on #adna of sheeppox virus.

I rarely say "hang 'em" but oh my god www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2026...

Let me get this straight. There's a title. There's a commentary article. There's an abstract. There's a set of bullet point highlights. There's a graphical abstract. AND YOU STILL THINK I NEED YOUR AI AGENT TO SUMMARIZE THE ARTICLE FOR ME?

Mullin et al. use WGS from 101 museum specimens of British/Irish moss carder bumblebees from 1894-2019 to reveal a dramatic drop in genetic diversity: ∼24.6% decrease in heterozygosity and a 2.86-fold increase in ROH 🔗 academic.oup.com/mbe/article/... 📷 Gavin Broad #societyjournal #naturalhistory

The brilliant Jack Scullion made wonderful art for my group and the HERDPATH project! He's on Linked-In: www.linkedin.com/in/jack-scul...

Our sheeppox virus research was covered by Le Figaro!

I'm actually disgusted by this.

🔬Exciting research on the history of the deadly sheeppox virus (SPPV):hidden DNA from medieval manuscripts shows that capripoxviruses diverged after their hosts were domesticated. Prof. Calvignac-Spencer contributed to this collaborative effort, supporting Louis L’Hôte during a 3-month stay at HIOH🤝

unless you're waking up early to get the bus, Luas or DART, in which case you'll soon be paying 30% more per journey

#aDNA

I'm hiring a postdoc as part of my ERC project - the deadline is tomorrow noon GMT, apologies for the little notice If you have interest but can't make the deadline, please DM/email me immediately and i can try extend the deadline a few days

VIRUS ALERT! Sheeppox virus found in our parchment! Luckily, it is the ancient kind, so no extra precautions needed 😅 What a multidisciplinary effort - congrats to everyone involved! (Incidentally, the culprit MS is currently on display in our exhibition) www.science.org/content/arti...

Our paper on archaic introgression in imputed ancient genomes is out. Imputation performs better in archaic regions, making Neanderthal and Denisovan segments detectable in low-coverage data. Thousands of archived genomes become usable. doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Extremely happy to share our new study on Sheeppox virus (SPPV) ! We notably found many genomes in Medieval parchments🦠📖 A short thread about it : share.google/JqVOTB2lvxcO...

So the government cut excise on fuel to reduce fuel prices but are increasing public transport fares because of inflation. In a cost of living and climate crisis. Make it make sense.

Ancient parchments, covered in ancient disease DNA! Researchers led by @ucddublin.bsky.social's @gingerhowley.bsky.social recover the genes of a deadly animal pathogen from medieval manuscripts. @science.org

Our paper on ancient sheeppox virus genomes, including many found from parchment samples, is now published af Science Advances. Congrats to all our co-authors and particularly first author Louis. #aDNA share.google/JqVOTB2lvxcO...

The recent consultation to allow pets on public transport has been published & the NTA will be relaxing carriage rules for dogs, cats and other small animals with no carrier required www.rte.ie/news/ireland...

This is grim. We're heading to a disaster, at best.

Finally have my name on my office! Hopefully will get lost less now.

What wasn't said about Glen Hansard nialler9music.substack.com/p/the-news-a...

To re-up this, Jolijn did some very nice simulations on this trying to estimate the effective population size of goat as they were introduced to Mediterranean Europe in the Neolithic! #aDNA

🧵 New preprint: Have you ever tried to perform molecular clock dating of ancient mitogenomes using BEAST? Have you struggled using manual tools to create your input files, run your analyses and extract your results? We hope our pipeline provides a solution to this: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The genomic identity of early smallpox in South America There's so few variola genomes! Crazy. Here's the earliest in South America, from work led by Shigeki Nakagome and Bruno González. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

An obscure part of my childhood.

How did the rapid Mediterranean dispersal of Neolithic livestock shape their genomes? 16 Neolithic sheep & goat genomes from the Mediterranean Áine Halpin, @gingerhowley.bsky.social Roger Alcàntara Fors, Maria Saña-Segui, @brad-dan.bsky.social and others www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #aDNA

Imagine an entire cheery article on self expression ending in this paragraph on children. “Girlguiding’s new look is being launched shortly before a change in the charity’s membership policy from 6 September, which will force transgender girls to leave.”

They will do literally anything except hold tech companies responsible for their products and what they publish

New paper (from my colleagues @cpgsthlm.bsky.social!) showing children in Viking-Age & Medieval Sweden were buried in gendered ways, but those buried together were rarely close biological relatives. A great example of how #AncientDNA sheds new light on childhood, kinship & social organization 🧬

Thousands attend Trans and Intersex Pride in Dublin.

The Irish Coursing Club has refused to provide evidence for its claim, repeated by the junior minister for agriculture, that hare coursing contributes €70m to the Irish economy annually. It comes ahead of a Dáil vote to ban the blood sport tomorrow night. jrnl.ie/7094305t

Hard to keep impressing upon people in Ireland how wild this is as government has normalised it and are working to rewrite the legislation underpinning our electricity infrastructure to facilitate more data centres.

Daly group at #ICP2026

#ICP2026 Stockholm is over, but ICP will return... in 2028! #ICP2028 will be hosted by Trinity College Dublin 🎉☘️🇮🇪

Dublin crew at #ICP2026

Me

Day 3 of #ICP2026 with these lovely people.

Reposting in case any #ICP2026 attendee would like to chat!

Our recent study on a mass mortality assemblage of sheep, covered nicely in this article from Paris One.

Only photo of me in action at Sciencebatter.

Wrote a short piece about the opportunities and challenges of pushing ancient pathogen genomics into a new frontier: the zooarchaeological record. Pretty excited about what is going to come. www.science.org/eprint/MSG3Z...

If you're you have experience in working in animal / pathogen #aDNA and are interested in a postdoctoral position as part of my ERC Project HERDPATH, please DM/email me kevin[at]palaeome.org