There are more individuals of the deep-sea fish Cyclothone than any other vertebrate genus, maybe as many as one million billion. Distinctively ornamented ichthyoliths place the origin of Cyclothone in the greenhouse world of the early Eocene, ~55.6 Ma. royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

For reef fishes, benthic feeding is where it’s at! Our new paper in PNAS shows that diversification rates for reef fishes increased through time, likely caused by the rise of benthic-feeding groups like surgeonfish, rabbitfish, butterflyfish, and parrotfish! Read here: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Great to see our pre-print out! Give it a read if you're curious about the underlying theory and potential applications of the discretized stochastic diffusion model: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

SSE is pleased to offer free virtual #Evol2026 registration to all SSE members residing in 152 countries and territories around the world including India, Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. Request your free registration code today! www.evolutionsociety.org/index.php?mo...

New paper out with @cichlidnick.bsky.social and Peter C. Wainwright. We show that different habitats impact fish diversification. Habitats with a complex benthos show increased diversification rates across ray-finned fishes. www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

‼️NEW ANGLERFISH PAPER! 🐟🎣 So excited to share the final part of my Master’s research! We explore the bizarre tacklebox of anglerfish lures and show how these fishes evolved different ways to attract prey and maybe even mates in the deep sea. 🧪🦑🌊🦇🦀 Open access paper link: doi.org/10.1643/i202...

Hi all. I am very excited that after 6 years I finally got my phylogenetic comparative methods book and online exercises online. Feel free to use and share. The book is here: nhcooper123.github.io/pcm-primer/. Note that it is not finished, we had to abandon it before the sunk costs fallacy broke us

Fun news! @gcbias.bsky.social and I are teaching a 2-week online population genetics workshop this summer to raise money for the Center for Population Biology at UC Davis. We're trying to gauge interest -- please fill this out if you might be interested! And please share broadly!

New paper out now! We show that innovations can have varied effects on a phenotypic evolution, determined by the interaction between external ecological context and internal changes to organismal structure. Read here: royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

We're excited to be recruiting an NIH funded postdoc to work in the Coop lab at UC Davis. We're specifically interested in candidates who are want to work at the intersection of human genetics, GWAS, and population genetics modeling. Please RT

Excited to announce that the 1st paper from my postdoc is now out in @currentbiology.bsky.social ! Using a large dataset of 3D preserved fossils, we explore the diversification of jaws in early bony fishes. 1/15 www.cell.com/current-biol...

Large #teeth & highly protrusible #jaws are 2 feeding innovations that have evolved in #fish. But @cichlidnick.bsky.social &co suggest that they're incompatible with each other; large teeth unlock new feeding modes, but constrain how prey can be captured @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/3HVH7go

Large #teeth & highly protrusible #jaws are 2 feeding innovations that have evolved in #fish. But @cichlidnick.bsky.social &co suggest that they're incompatible with each other; large teeth unlock new feeding modes, but constrain how prey can be captured @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/3HVH7go

Out today in @plosbiology.org! We show that two major advances in fish feeding - highly protrusible jaws and large teeth - are functionally and evolutionarily incompatible with each other. @mikemihalitsis.bsky.social and Peter Wainwright. Free to read: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

I'm defending my dissertation next week, Monday June 30th at 10 AM ET. DM for a zoom link if interested!