Did someone say resting fish face? The #LonghornCowfish is easy to spot with its bright yellow color and the signature horns jutting from its head. But those horns aren’t just for style — scientists think they evolved to make this little cowfish a mouthful most predators can’t swallow.

It's that time again :>

New study from @wcs.org and partners document 85% decline in abundance of Nassau grouper at their spawning site at Glover's Reef over 20 years, moving the population to local extirpation. Read more from Coral Reefs: link.springer.com/article/10.1... Photo (c) Connor Holland/Ocean Image Bank

1 of #365Minerals 🧪⚒️ Quetzalcoatlite: - Named after Quetzalcoatl, an Aztec and Toltec god of the sea, due to its sea-blue colour - Forms in the oxidised zone of tellurium-bearing hydrothermal deposits #minerals - This below is a co-type specimen (one of the specimens used to define the species)

New manta ray new manta ray NEW MANTA RAY!

Phenomenal first PhD paper by the marvelous @lljeannot.bsky.social – check it out folks, it has birds, coral reefs, and tiny fish!

🐠🦈 Just out: In this paper we ask "How has reef trophic structure changed since humans started removing predatory fishes from Caribbean coral reefs?". www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Illustrations @cookedillustrations.com

New research challenges the long-held belief that coral reefs are “oases” in marine deserts. While among the world’s most productive ecosystems, their existence in nutrient-deprived oceans is the exception rather than the rule. @gobyone.bsky.social @utmsi.bsky.social cns.utexas.edu/news/researc...

Our new paper on the historical and scientific basis of Darwin’s ‘coral reef paradox’ is out @currentbiology.bsky.social! Summary below by @gobyone.bsky.social. Also with @paulinenarvaez.bsky.social @oclaripv.bsky.social and Vale Parravicini! Free-access link: authors.elsevier.com/a/1lDFm3QW8S...

Cool description of seven miniature fish species from the Triassic that may be similar to modern day cryptobenthics. Apparently they were all over the Tethys Sea 240 million years ago, measuring in at a whopping 4cm adult body size 🥹 Scale bar in 📷 is 5mm! linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii...

Global Patterns and Drivers of Freshwater Fish Extinctions: Can We Learn From Our Losses? 🔗 buff.ly/1ljgy5X

Heard of "Darwin's paradox"? It refers to Charles Darwin's observation that coral reefs are wildly productive despite occurring in nutrient-poor tropical oceans. Reefs are, so the story goes, oases in marine deserts 🏝️... Turns out that 2/3 of these assertions are very wrong... 🌐 🦑🧪 🧵⬇️

☀️🌏🇮🇹High pressure conditions have cleaned the sky almost everywhere over a wonderfully green #Italy and its islands, reaching 30°C in multiple regions for the first time in 2025. In the meanwhile a heavy saharahn dust event is about to touch the SW coast of Sardegna.⬇️View of Sentinel3 on May 2.

In good tradition, here are a few tiny fishes with bunny ears 🐰

I am pleased to announce The Macroevolution Lab at Ohio State opens this August! We will be housed in the Museum of Biological Diversity 🐟🐠🐡

When thinking of the 'model' planktivore on reefs, fusiliers come to mind - their fusiform bodies, forked caudal fins, and large eyes appear built for the job. But are these traits common among most plankton-feeding reef fishes? 🐟 🔗 The story is more nuanced than we thought: doi.org/10.1007/s111...

What do dolphins, toadfishes, and snapping shrimp have in common? They all go quiet when disaster strikes. We show that historic rainfalls in South Texas silenced an otherwise noisy estuary for several months, suggesting a sustained loss of ecosystem functioning. 👉 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Fish for sale in Sunday morning in Raiatea, French Polynesia I was surprised to see titan trigger fish for sale I didn't think people ate those

Thank you for this contribution to Ecology!🐟

In 2019, we showed that tiny, bottom-dwelling fish can fuel coral reef energy fluxes. In our new paper, we reveal a dramatic dichotomy in their functional role across coral reef habitats separated by a few 100 meters. esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... @esajournals.bsky.social

Incredibly informative & accessible review by @tjnear.bsky.social and Chris Thacker on the systematics and biology of acanthopterygian fish clades. Treated myself to a quick read this morning and amazed that Blenniiformes and Atheriniformes are sister lineages! 🤯 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Fri-yay goby appreciation post: this is the Mesoamerican Sponge Goby Elacatinus colini, which spends its entire adult life inside some random sponge in a warm, cozy coral reef lagoon. Sponges have notoriously poor WiFi, so he persists in blissful ignorance... 🥹

@lionelhenry.bsky.social and I are so excited to finally announce Air - an extremely fast R code formatter! 🎉 With Air, you'll never need to worry about styling your #rstats code ever again. All you need to do is save, and Air takes care of the rest. www.tidyverse.org/blog/2025/02...

Animal agency indeed! "..the role of animals in shaping Earth's landscapes is much more significant that previously recognised. From beavers creating wetlands to ants building mounds of soil, these diverse natural processes are crucial, yet we risk losing them as biodiversity declines."

📖Published📖 Denelle et al. present bioregion, a package that includes all the steps of a bioregionalization workflow under a single architecture 🌎 🧪 Read more here 👇 https://buff.ly/3CHqC5p

I'm going to take solace in posting actual science is a simple form of resistance. This is another must read from Robin Waples. #PopGen #ConsGen onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Oh hey. Hey you. Keep swimming. You're doing great. Bluestripe Snapper (Lutjanus kasmira), South Ari Atoll, Maldives

Here are a few fancy moths to brighten your day. These are all tiger moths - (Hyperthaema sp.), (Bernathonomus sp.), (Amaxia sp.) #Inverts #MothMonday Bellavista Cloud Forest Reserve, Ecuador

Anemonefish use sialic acid metabolism as Trojan horse to avoid giant sea anemone stinging | BMC Biology | Full Text

If you woke up grumpy this Monday morning because of... uh, everything... remember that somewhere in the Pacific, among the branches of a dying coral, there lives a goby who is grumpier than you. Yet, he does not falter. He sits, stoically. Resisting. Scheming. The Rasp Coralgoby (Gobiodon brochus)

I used to joke that “I’m not a mad scientist, I’m just a disappointed scientist.” I’m mad now.

If you care about science & higher ed in America right now, your world has changed. We have been forced into a battle we didn’t choose. Whatever our titles, our jobs now also includes emergency response, psychological first aid, organizing & many other things we weren’t trained in

Dear federal scientists: If you have been affected by the probationary firings and would be willing to speak with Science, please reach out to me by email ([email protected]) or on Signal. We can guarantee annonymity.

New tilefish just dropped! 🐟🦑🌎🧪 novataxa.blogspot.com/2025/02/bran...

🦑🧪 Three days left to apply for the postdoctoral position in my lab. We're looking for a population geneticist/ecologist/evolutionary biologist who is interested in studying tiny fishes in the Indo-Pacific! Come join us! 🤗 fishandfunctions.com/s/Postdoc_Ad...

{tinyplot} 0.3.0 is out! 🚨 It's a lightweight #Rstats 📦 to draw beautiful and complex plots, using an ultra-simple and concise syntax. This is a massive release! @gmcd.bsky.social @zeileis.org and I worked hard to add tons of new themes and plot types. Check it out! grantmcdermott.com/tinyplot/

Made it thru Monday with a little help from Henry.

NEW JOB: How does pelagic-reef connectivity vary across atolls and oceans? 2 year post-doc position based at research-intensive @lancasteruni.bsky.social, and part of the fantastic @lec-reefs.bsky.social team Apply: hr-jobs.lancs.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx... #AcademicSky 🦑 🧪 🌊 🌍

Texas Water Penny Beetle, Psephenus texanus. San Saba County, Texas Lavae are aquatic and feed on algae on rocks. Their presence generally indicates high water quality.

New paper out today on climate change adaptation in coral reef tourism: doi.org/10.5751/ES-1... & led by my uber-productive former PhD student Henry Bartelet. Spatial diversification still working as a response, but for how much longer?

📣POSTDOC wanted: We are looking for a marine ecologist to join our #kelp forest team at IMR in Norway 🌊🌿. The position is focused on impacts of harvesting on kelp and kelp forest #biodiversity. Enthusiasm, strong cv and interest in #fieldwork is required. www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

🐠🧪🎓 New position alert: I am looking for a full-time research technician to work on my NSF CAREER project. Perks: ✅ SCUBA-based fieldwork in Belize 🤿 ✅ Chemistry labwork 🧪 ✅ Lots of fish and fun(ctions) 🐠📈😀 Deadline: Feb 21st utaustin.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/UTstaff/job/... Please share widely.

Two weeks left to apply for a postdoctoral researcher position in my lab, working on cuties like this Trimma capostriatum. If you're into pop gen, fish, and fieldwork, please consider applying. We're a fun group to science with! 🥹👉👈 fishandfunctions.com/join fishandfunctions.com/s/Postdoc_Ad...

Haters gonna hate.

Nice work! If anyone is interested in the potential spread of this species have a look at link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Non-native regal demoiselles (Neopomacentrus cyanomos) have become more common and abundant in the Western Gulf of Mexico, but thus far, they appear to have no effect on potential competitors. New paper by my student Mariana Rivera-Higueras dx.doi.org/10.5343/bms....

Hello All, plz share. Last call for applications for a post-doc position in our lab to study immune function in frogs infected with the fungal pathogen Bd. Deadline is Feb 1, reviews will begin soon after. zamudiolab.org/2024/12/17/p...

Here's another cool fish that we caught in Okinawa. The Wahoo is one of the top dogs in tropical pelagic ecosystems. Theyre like longer angrier tunas. Theyre a cool fish because they seem to be pretty uncommon in most places, so catching even one is a serious surprise