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

hey bluesky 👋 visa hurdles mean I’m looking for opportunities outside the US. I’m a computational biologist (bacterial + phage genomics, postdoc in Koonin’s group @ NIH). I am interested in teaming up on funding apps. reach out if this resonates!

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!!

Glad to see this paper finally out! An episodic burst of massive genomic rearrangements and the origin of non-marine annelids @natecoevo.nature.com @ibe-barcelona.bsky.social @csic.es @erc.europa.eu www.nature.com/articles/s41...

"This spider’s barf is worse than its bite Small office plant–dwelling hunters don’t bother injecting venom" www.sciencenews.org/article/spid...

We currently have a call for support that has gone out to European labs, to support FlyBase-UK. We are asking our colleagues from labs in the US and other countries to wait for a similar call to them that will go out in the near future, to support the US sites. We thank you for your patience.

🚨We’re proud that The Genetics Society @gensocuk.bsky.social supports the upcoming UK EvoDevo meeting. Register for only £5 and submit your abstracts before June 1st! Link to register: eshop.qmul.ac.uk/conferences-...

Hidden virus harboured by fruit flies may influence experimental accuracy. buff.ly/TtHCYLQ

🪰 Are you having trouble identifying an insect? Stop the guesswork & get the answers you need with a free expert consult. Fill out our form & our knowledgeable team will help you out 🔽 buff.ly/8XIysJt #AskAnEntomologist #Entomology #Insects #AskAnExpert #InsectIdentification

A newly-emerged cicada, I think Platypedia sp., in the Pryor Mountains of Montana a week ago. It still has a bit of its teneral (just-molted) coloration - note the turquoise highlights on the wing veins - but the overall colors will darken as the exoskeleton hardens. #insects 🐙🌿📷

Germany to create an alternative to PubMed. Isn't that what EuropePMC is supposed to be? www.infodocket.com/2025/05/15/r...

When insect fossils are this intact, just looking at them makes you go WHOA. Plus, preserved body structures reveal how their group evolved! In my latest for @cnn.com, I wrote about how a truly stunning cicada fossil from Germany's Messel Pit places singing cicadas in Europe earlier than expected 🧪

Postdoc job opportunity! We're looking for ECR in evolutionary genomics to study the relation between intra-specific gene expression variability, polymorphism, and macro-evolutionary rates. We have the data in 3 fishes & amphioxus, just waiting for your expertise and enthusiasm! tinyurl.com/3aewk286

📝 New Publication 🧪 Congratulations to team members Richard Taylor and Dan Macqueen for their paper exploring the functional and evolutionary outcomes of whole genome duplication using single cell transcriptomics! @genomebiolevol.bsky.social #WGDip academic.oup.com/gbe/advance-...

Really happy to share our new preprint on the central complex of Heliconiini butterflies www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1.... Check it out! @neuroethology.org @brainevolutionnews.bsky.social @prelights.bsky.social @tibbe-evolneuro.bsky.social #brainevolution #heliconius #centralcomplex

Looking for a post-doc? In the frame of the #MSCA-PF 2025 program at @sorbonne-universite.fr , the #DEEVA team (biom.obs-banyuls.fr/presentation...) from @biom-banyuls.bsky.social and @obs-banyuls.fr in #WindyBanyuls proposes a research project (www.sorbonne-universite.fr/sites/defaul...).

Postcards from Paris

Mesolimulus walchii Desmarest, 1817 Jurassic, Tithonian, 152 - 145 Ma

Check out our latest work on the evolution of animal genome regulation out today in @nature.com. Nicely summarized below by @ianakim.bsky.social. www.nature.com/articles/s41... This is a major output from our ERC-StG project Evocellmap @erc.europa.eu at @crg.eu

I thought my first post on Bluesky should be something positive and motivational

What I wish I knew: 33 thoughts for early career researchers Reflections I wish someone had shared with me early in my research career. predirections.substack.com/p/what-i-wis...

Our Echinoderm paper got published !! 🤩🌟 In this study, we examined reproductive isolation among broadcast spawning and sympatric lineages of the tropical echinoderm Stichopus cf. horrens using high-resolution SNPs. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

🧪 New paper led by @noracc.bsky.social! We measured redox around decaying organisms. Turns out, the bigger and richer in protein you are, the more easily reducing conditions form around you after death, making you more likely to get mineralized and become a fossil (?). www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Now published!!!! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I really enjoyed reading this paper.(1/3) Adaptive adjustment of profile HMM significance thresholds improves functional and metabolic insights into microbial genomes doi.org/10.1093/bioa... #MicroSky

Our latest work indicates that termination of paused RNA polymerase is its most likely fate, while attempting to reconcile disparate estimates of relative rates and pause residency times from previous studies: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...