Our new commentary rdcu.be/ftx6h in @natecoevo.nature.com written with folks from @inaturalist.bsky.social and @cornellbirds.bsky.social shows that use of AI to manipulate existing or create new wildlife images undermines the huge value of vast citizen science databases. 🌍🪰🪶 #Ornithology 🧵 1/10

Happy #WorldHorseshoeCrabDay!
 These spinning #horseshoecrab (Limulus polyphemus) embryos are developing inside their eggs, just weeks away from hatching. Despite their name, horseshoe crabs are closer relatives of spiders and scorpions than crustaceans.

First pre-print from the lab, a collaborative effort led by Jess Bourn @bournsupremacy.bsky.social, a fantastic PhD in my group. We resolve a key problem in development + evolution: how do we quantify heterochrony and link temporal variation to phenotype? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Gene family evolutionary dynamics reveal convergent genomic signatures in pancrustacean metamorphosis https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.06.723392v1

We present TaxonMatch, a tool designed to align taxonomic names, resolve synonymy, and correct typographical and structural inconsistencies across species name databases www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #biodiversity #taxonomy #bioinformatics

New preprint!! 🌟📝 Can we tell if a horseshoe crab will moult ? Will it moult tomorrow or maybe in a week? 🤔👀 In this study, we developed a simple and non-invasive approach in determining the moult stage of the Atlantic #horseshoe crab by looking at key structures. #inverts #science

🎮 pokemon tree of life for pokémon's 30th anniversary, explore a visualization and field guide to 1,000+ pokémon. what inspired them, where they came from, and how they connect. 포켓몬 30주년, 1,000개 이상의 포켓몬을 시각화했습니다! ➡️ str.sg/viz-poke30

From our project on arthropod moulting, see also this great paper

New Preprint!! 🦐🪰🦀 In this study we compared moulting gene expression across insects and crustaceans. #insects #crustaceans Thread ⬇️ (1/6) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Just saw a video of a molting nauplius posted on reddit. 🤩🦀 #crustmas www.reddit.com/r/microscopy...

HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL OF YOU!🎄✨

Christmas miracle, anyone?

Triops and their moults. #crustmas 🧪🎄

A new study shows that over 90% of insect biomass declines are driven by shrinking species numbers, posing a risk to ecosystem function. www.idiv.de/majority-of-... #biodiversity

😯 🦀 🦀

RegEvol: detection of directional selection in regulatory sequences through phenotypic predictions and phenotype-to-fitness functions www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧬🖥️🧪 github.com/mrrlab/RegEvol

link.springer.com/article/10.1... @ebablab.bsky.social and I helped a bit in this really informative article by Robin Grob in the el Jundi lab on spatial orientation strategies in Lepidoptera. Have a read :-)

👏👏

Why are some species smaller than a paperclip while others grow longer than a school bus? How is body size evolution governed in animals? Out now in @pnas.org we tackle these longstanding questions through a genetic lens using my favorite group of fishes as our model!! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Our lab has published a couple of major papers in the past few months, which I would like to highlight in this thread! 🧵

A lot of pressure on the different grant schemes, and pretty much independent of career stage.

Latest work out today in @currentbiology.bsky.social We find the fly development gene bicoid is much older than previously thought (~20 million yrs older!) 🪰🧬 To pinpoint its origins we tackled the Diptera phylogeny, providing some resolution (many open questions remain). 🔗 tinyurl.com/2vyuevpy

A very nice paper! @naturalselection.bsky.social Congrats!!!👍💪 Reference genome bias in light of species-specific chromosomal reorganization and translocations

And that's how you integrate digital elements into an exhibition. Part of the temporary "China's Dinosaur World" at the Shanghai Natural History Museum, China. Closing this November. Video source: Shanghai Let's Meet

A nice shift in perceived colour between central and peripheral vision. The fixated disc looks purple while the others look blue. The effect presumably comes from the absence of S-cones in the fovea. From Hinnerk Schulz-Hildebrandt: arxiv.org/pdf/2509.115...

The buff-tip moth (Phalera bucephala) has mastered a very particular kind of camouflage. When they close their wings up, they resemble a broken twig. Native to large parts of Europe, there's regional pattern variation that reflects the local tree species. This one best resembles birch twigs?

Another preprint from @pankajd.bsky.social ! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Heads up: ignore samtools dot org, similarly minimap2 dot com and likely others. It's owned by a known phishing site and while the binaries they offer look valid currently (but note they may be serving us different binaries to others), that could change. Ie: it's not us (Samtools team)! Be warned

X-Mapper 🦠🧬🧪 - a sequence aligner developed for microbes, now on Bioconda! 🚀 • 11–24× fewer suboptimal alignments (same for human genome) • 3–579× lower inconsistency • improves on ~30% of reads aligned to non-target species github.com/mathjeff/map... bioconda.github.io/recipes/x-ma... #microsky

Our annotated chromosome(ish)-scale assembly of the genome of the terrestrial isopod Armadillidium vulgare, the common pillbug, is available on NCBI: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/datasets/gen... Work carried out at Ecologie et Biologie des Interactions (EBI) lab in Poitiers.

⚠️ We’re excited to announce our invited speakers for the #PalAss Annual Meeting! 🎉 🔗 Registration link ⬇️ palass.org/annual-meeti... #conference #uk #palaeontology #meeting

“Just when you think you’ve seen it all, social insects reveal another surprise.” https://scim.ag/47sVFyS

Lunar eclipse seen from Switzerland🌒

Our MoultDB project, which combines fossils, phenotypic, and genomic data about arthropod moulting, highlighted on the @sib.swiss Expasy page: www.expasy.org

Like for #ismbeccb2025, I'll be live-posting #ESEB2025 from my Mastodon account, which you can follow there or on the bridging account quoted (the "live" will sometimes be a bit delayed).

I am announcing an open PhD position involving bioinformatics, genomics and machine learning to work on functional prediction of adaptive genetic variation in krill and herring! www.uu.se/en/about-uu/... Going to #ESEB2025 @eseb.bsky.social ? Find me in poster session 1 for a chat!

A reminder you/your lab can support FlyBase at Cambridge through the following link. Every bit helps. Please share if you yourself can't donate. www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk/give-to-camb...

amazing things are happening in the shrimp rodeo community www.reddit.com/r/ShrimpsIsB...

Proud to make my National Geographic debut with this incredible discovery: an extremely weird little guy with independently-evolved "feathers" that solves a longstanding Triassic mystery and makes one of the period's oddest families even stranger

Ever see a spotted lantern fly entering their final form?

Fantastic keynote by @marcrr.bsky.social at the joint EvolCompGen-Function session of #ISMBECCB2025 on the power of (curated & FAIR) gene expression data from @bgee.org to study functional retention and innovation across animals, summarising 15+ yrs of work Paper: www.unil.ch/dee/en/home/...

Visual information in the dark: Bioluminescence and perceptual design through evolution - Oakley - Functional Ecology - Wiley Online Library besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Trilobite fossil likely used as amulet/jewelry by the Romans, found in Spain! Original article at doi.org/10.1007/s125... 🧪 #science 🏺 #Archaeology #anthropology #paleo

BUSCO v6.0.0 has been released. busco.ezlab.org

Check out our recent paper “Tracing the evolution of key traits in dorid nudibranchs”! 🧬🐌 dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour... Nudibranchs are a fascinating and diverse group of molluscs, unique and interesting systems in ecology and evolutionary biology. @molluscular.bsky.social

Registration is open for our @sib.swiss course Biodiversity bioinformatics: from large-scale phylogenomics to gene families and functions! Orthologs, paralogs, non model animal genomes, comparison of gene expression and of function, and more! www.sib.swiss/training/cou...

#NewSpecies! New isopod from the #paracelislands just came in: Bathynomus paracelensis Treatment: treatment.plazi.org/id/8CC82366-... Publication: doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.... #BiodiversityDataJournal #BathynomusParacelensis #FAIRdata #OA #taxonomy #nature #conservation #arthropods #crustacea #isopods

I enjoyed Carl Bergstrom's @carlbergstrom.com talk today @unswbabs.bsky.social on the current 'Peer review meltdown' phenomenon. Misery loves company, so I was glad to find out I'm not the only editor struggling to find reviewers. Carl et al. have narrow it down to a few factors including ->

Happy International Horseshoe Crab day!!