Yuttapong Thawornwattana
Mosquito diversity and evolution in a changing world
Research Fellow, Ziheng Yang’s group
Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment (GEE), University College London (UCL), UK
📬 gmail.com, ucl.ac.uk: yuttapong.thawornwattana
Jump to: 🌱 Training | 🐳 Publications | 🎤 Talks | 💬 Teaching
🐌 Current projects | 🐛 Tutorials | 🐙 On Github | 🪸 Bio | 🪲 Research
Hi there 👋
- 🦟 Currently working on the phylogeny and evolution of Anopheles mosquitoes
- 🐝 Currently learning: genome assembly, vector-borne disease biology and epidemiology
- 🐛 Looking to collaborate on mosquito genomics, phylogeny and evolution, inference of gene flow from genomic data
Training & Research Experience ⤴️
- 🔩 2024-2026. Research Fellow, UCL Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment (GEE), UK (with Ziheng Yang)
- 🦋 2020-2024. PhD Organismic and Evolutionary Biology (OEB), Harvard University, USA (with James Mallet and Ziheng Yang), with Interdisciplinary Concentration in Infectious Disease Epidemiology (ID Epi) from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
- 🦠 2018-2020. Research assistant, Center for Microbial Genomics (CENMIG), Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Thailand (with Prasit Palittapongarnpim and Pakorn Aiewsakun)
- 🧬 2014-2018. MPhil Genetics, Evolution and Environment, UCL GEE, UK (with Ziheng Yang)
- 🛠 2012-2013. MSc Computational Statistics and Machine Learning, UCL Computer Science, UK
- 🐛 2009-2012. BSc Biological Sciences, UCL GEE, UK (with Ziheng Yang and Mario dos Reis)
Research ⤴️
How do insects become vectors of human diseases? Why are some species better vectors than others? How are they adapting to changing environments and what does it mean for transmission of vector-borne diseases? To answer these questions, I use malaria mosquitoes in the genus Anopheles as model systems. They are powerful for studying not only fundamental questions in evolutionary biology about species divergence and speciation but also practical questions in infectious disease biology and epidemiology ranging from vector surveillance to disease eradication and global health.
More broadly, I study how populations and species evolve, and how traits of medical and epidemiological interests arise and change over time using genomic data and statistical approaches in phylogenetics and population genetics, particularly multispecies coalescent methods.
Research areas: phylogenetics, evolutionary genomics, mosquito diversity and evolution, malaria and global health, computational statistics
Publications ⤴️
Google Scholar | ResearchGate | NCBI Bibliography | ORCID | Web of Science
- On the robustness of Bayesian inference of gene flow to intragenic recombination and natural selection 🧬
Thawornwattana Y, Rannala B, Yang Z
Mol. Biol. Evol. 2026, 43(1):msaf327 [data & scripts] - A new skipper butterfly from Panama and Colombia with its genome (Lepidoptera: Hesperiidae: Eudaminae) 🦋
Nakahara S, Thawornwattana Y, Scott TJ, Vega Y, Keegan K, Calhoun JV, MacDonald JR, Thurman A
Zool. J. Linn. Soc. 2025, 205(2):zlaf133 [sequencing data; datasets] [RG] - Inference of gene flow between species from genomic data when the mode, direction and lineages are misspecified 🧬
Thawornwattana Y, Flouri T, Mallet J, Yang Z
Mol. Biol. Evol. 2025, 42(6):msaf121 [C code] - Species, Concepts of
Mallet J, Seixas FA, Thawornwattana Y
In Scheiner, S. M., editor, Encyclopedia of Biodiversity (Third Edition) 2024, 7:531-545, Elsevier [RG] - Major patterns in the introgression history of Heliconius butterflies 🦋
Thawornwattana Y, Seixas FA, Yang Z, Mallet J
eLife 2023, 12:RP90656 [data] - Inferring the direction of introgression using genomic sequence data 🧬
Thawornwattana Y, Huang J, Flouri T, Mallet J, Yang Z
Mol. Biol. Evol. 2023, 40(8):msad178 [Heliconius data] - Inference of gene flow between species under misspecified models 🧬
Huang J, Thawornwattana Y, Flouri T, Mallet J, Yang Z
Mol. Biol. Evol. 2022, 39(12):msac237 [C code] - Full-likelihood genomic analysis clarifies a complex history of species divergence and introgression: the example of the erato-sara group of Heliconius butterflies 🦋
Thawornwattana Y, Seixas FA, Yang Z, Mallet J
Syst. Biol. 2022, 71(5):1159–1177 [data] - Genomic epidemiology of Streptococcus agalactiae ST283 in Southeast Asia 🦠
Aiewsakun P, Ruangchai W, Thawornwattana Y, Jaemsai B, Mahasirimongkol S, Homkaew A, Suksomchit P, Dubbs P, Palittapongarnpim P
Sci. Rep. 2022, 12(1):4185 - Whole-genome single nucleotide variant phylogenetic analysis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis lineage 1 in endemic regions of Asia and Africa 🦠
Netikul T, Thawornwattana Y, Mahasirimongkol S, Yanai H, Maung HMW, Chongsuvivatwong V, Palittapongarnpim P
Sci. Rep. 2022, 12(1):1565 [phylogeny: Asia/Africa/Oceania; phylogeny: global 1; phylogeny: global 2] - Estimation of the global burden of Mycobacterium tuberculosis lineage 1 🦠
Netikul T, Palittapongarnpim P, Thawornwattana Y, Plitphonganphim S
Infect. Genet. Evol. 2021, 91:104802 - Tilapia lake virus (TiLV): Genomic epidemiology and its early origin 🦠
Thawornwattana Y, Dong HT, Phiwsaiya K, Sangsuriya P, Senapin S, Aiewsakun P
Transbound. Emerg. Dis. 2021, 68(2):435–444 - Revised nomenclature and SNP barcode for Mycobacterium tuberculosis lineage 2 🦠
Thawornwattana Y, Mahasirimongkol S, Yanai H, Maung HMW, Cui Z, Chongsuvivatwong V, Palittapongarnpim P
Microb. Genom. 2021, 7(11):000697 [phylogeny: discovery; phylogeny: discovery+test] - A novel Ancestral Beijing sublineage of Mycobacterium tuberculosis suggests the transition site to Modern Beijing genotypes 🦠
Ajawatanawong P, Yanai H, Smittipat N, Disratthakit A, Yamada N, Miyahara R, Nedsuwan S, Imasanguan W, Kantipong P, Chaiyasirinroje B, Wongyai J, Plitphonganphim S, Tantivitayakul P, Phelan J, Parkhill J, Clark TG, Hibberd ML, Ruangchai W, Palittapongarnpim P, Juthayothin T, Thawornwattana Y, Viratyosin W, Tongsima S, Mahasirimongkol S, Tokunaga K, Palittapongarnpim P
Sci. Rep. 2019, 9:13718 - Coalescent analysis of phylogenomic data confidently resolves the species relationships in the Anopheles gambiae species complex 🦟
Thawornwattana Y, Dalquen D, Yang Z
Mol. Biol. Evol. 2018, 35(10):2512–2527 - Designing simple and efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo proposal kernels
Thawornwattana Y, Dalquen D, Yang Z
Bayesian Anal. 2018, 13(4):1037–1063 - Uncertainty in the timing of origin of animals and the limits of precision in molecular timescales
dos Reis M, Thawornwattana Y, Angelis K, Telford MJ, Donoghue PC, Yang Z
Curr. Biol. 2015, 25(22):2939–2950 [data]
Talks ⤴️
- 2025/12. “Detecting gene flow from genomic data: Insights from simulation studies” at 4th AsiaEvo Conference, Kunming, China [slides]
- 2025/11. “Hybridization, introgression and speciation in Heliconius butterflies: Inferring introgression history from whole-genome sequence data Anopheles mosquitoes” at Taxon-Omics Seminar Series on Reticulate Evolution, with James Mallet [slides]
- 2025/09. “Inferring gene flow between cryptic sibling species of Anopheles mosquitoes” at Mathematical and Statistical Aspects of Molecular Biology Annual Meeting (MASAMB) meeting, Natural History Museum, London, UK
- 2025/07. “Species complexes of malaria mosquitoes in North America” at SMBE meeting, Beijing, China [slides coming soon]
- 2025/02. “Species complexes of Anopheles mosquitoes in North America” at Wellcome Sanger Institute, UK
- 2024/12. “Species complexes and the making of malaria mosquitoes” at UCL Centre for Life’s Origins and Evolution (CLOE), UK
- 2024/10. “Evolutionary genomics of mosquitoes” at the 5th International Course on Ecological Determinants of Vector-Borne Disease Dynamics, Reserva Ecológica de Guapiaçu (REGUA), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil [slides]
- 2024/09. “Evolutionary genomics of Anopheles mosquitoes” at the Department of Parasitology, Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University, Thailand [slides]
- 2024/09. “Evolutionary genomics of malaria mosquitoes” at Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University, Thailand [slides]
- 2024/07. “Inferring species phylogeny and gene flow from genomic data”, a dissertation seminar at Harvard OEB, USA [slides]
- 2024/04. “Evolution of Anopheles mosquitoes in North America” in G4 Symposium at Harvard OEB, USA
- 2023/09. “Inferring the direction of gene flow from genomic data” at Boston Evolutionary Genomics Supergroup Annual Retreat 2023, the Broad Institute (chalk talk)
- 2023/06. “Inferring phylogenies using full-likelihood multispecies coalescent with introgression” at Evolution conference, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA [slides, with builds] [recording]
- 2021/06. “Full-likelihood analysis of divergence and introgression in the erato-sara group of Heliconius” at Heliconius Seminar (now Lepinars) [slides]
- 2020/12. “Whole-genome sequencing for strain typing in practice” at CENMIG Workshop, Mahidol University, Thailand [slides]
- 2020/11. “Population genomics of Mycobacterium tuberculosis” at the Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Thailand [slides]
- 2020/07. “Population genomics of Mycobacterium tuberculosis” at MAEMOD journal club [slides]
- 2018/11. “Next generation phylogenetics: Building trees from whole genome data” at the Division of Medical Bioinformatics, Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University, Thailand [slides]
- 2018/08. “Resolving the species relationships in the Anopheles gambiae species complex from whole genome data” at the Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Thailand [slides]
Teaching / Workshops / Conferences ⤴️
- 2025/12. Symposium on “Efficient computation for studying molecular evolution in the genomic era: from theory to practice”, with Sishuo Wang (Chinese University of Hong Kong) and Xiyun Jiao (Southern University of Science and Technology) at 4th AsiaEvo Conference, Kunming, China
- 2025/11. 4-day Workshop on Computational Genomics at Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
- 2025/04. 2-day Bayesian Phylogenetics Workshop at UCL, UK [slides]
- 2025/03. 4-day Workshop on Computational Genomics at Sun Yat-sen University Institute of Advanced Studies Hong Kong [slides, tutorials]
- 2023/Fall. Teaching Fellow, OEB10 Foundations of Biological Diversity, Harvard University
- 2022/Fall. Teaching Fellow, OEB50 Genetics and genomics, Harvard University
- 2021/Fall. Teaching Fellow, OEB230 Comparative and evolutionary genomics, Harvard University
Tutorials ⤴️
- Generating multilocus datasets from genome sequencing data - slides, code
- Bayesian linear regression (2018) - slides
- Dirichlet process mixture (DPM) model (2018) - slides
- TensorFlow tutorial (2016)
On Github ⤴️
multilocus: A bioinformatic pipeline for generating multilocus sequence alignments from short-read sequencing dataiimmsci2s: Calculate asymptotic maximum likelihood estimates, also known as pseudo-true parameter values, of parameters under the multispecies coalescent model with pulse introgression or continuous migrationmake-3s-data: Phase multilocus data and sample 3 sequences per locus for 3s analysismtbtyper: Genotype strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates from whole-genome sequence datagroup-specific-variants: Identify group-specific single-nucleotide variants from multiple sequence alignmentdvrcaller: Detect DVR (direct variable repeat) deletion pattern in the CRISPR region of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from whole-genome sequence datasnpplet: Nextflow pipeline for short variant calling (SNPs) from paired-end short-read genome sequencing data
Current projects ⤴️
- Phylogeny and evolution of Anopheles mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae: Anophelinae) in North America: specimens, COI, Crucians COI
- Species-level phylogeny of mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae)
- Methods for inferring gene flow from genomic sequence data: theory, statistical inference and applications
- Computational pipeline for generating multilocus data from short-read sequencing data
- Introgression histories in Heliconius butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae: Heliconiinae: Heliconiini)
- Taxonomic catalogue of Heliconiinae (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae)
Bio ⤴️
After receiving degrees in biology and statistics/computer science from University College London (UCL), I spent the next few years in Thailand, working mainly at the Center for Microbial Genomics (CENMIG), Mahidol University, where I focused on pathogen genomics, particularly Mycobacterium tuberculosis. I went on to do my PhD with James Mallet at Harvard University, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology (OEB), where I used genomic data to study gene flow in Heliconius butterflies and Anopheles mosquitoes. My genomic and phylogenetic analyses of diverse Anopheles species laid the groundwork for using Anopheles mosquitoes to study speciation and vector evolution. I also studied infectious disease biology and epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health focusing on malaria and global health.
After my docterate, I was a Research Fellow in Ziheng Yang’s group at UCL. I continue to work on evolutionary genomics of Anopheles mosquitoes and gene flow.
Last updated: Jan 2026