Postdoc @aaronhgriffing.bsky.social showing off some cool new methods and data at the NYC Miltenyi lightsheet microscope users symposium

#DBfeature #InHoxWeTrust 🪲 Divergent Hox cluster arrangement in horned beetles retain conserved embryonic and adult expression patterns. by Erica Nadolski, Isabel Manley, Sukhmani Gill, Armin Moczek @ericanadolski.bsky.social tinyurl.com/ycxabrh5

Excited to share that @socdevbio.bsky.social has a new and improved merch store! Rep your fav model organism in one of the Society’s new original designs 🤗 sdb-official-merch.printify.me

Happy to announce the alpha release of the SCINKD3! SCINKD3 is an extension of SCINKD streamlines the use of WGS data from multiple individuals to identify sex chromosomes. In testing, its shown to be robust in many cases with as few as 4 individuals. github.com/DrPintoThe2n...

axial skeleton of the tuatara (Rhynchocephalia: Sphenodon): insights on intraspecific variability, ontogeny, sexual dimorphism, and remarks on fossil taxa url: academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/a...

Hey y'all. I'm a month late to this, but I wanted to share that one of my PhD chapters was published in Systematic Biology with my advisor, Frank Burbrink. Here, we explore how ecological opportunity influences phenotypic evolution in North American natricid snakes. 🧵/8

🪳 Natuurlijke en naar het leven nauwkeurige gekleurde afbeeldingen en beschrijvingen der spoken, wandelende bladen, zabelspringhanen, krekels, trekspringhanen en kakkerlakken: Amsterdam: J.C. Sepp, 1813. [Source]

Just got back from an amazing trip to Japan with the @griffinlabpaleo.bsky.social to work on evo-devo-paleo collaborations with the Hirasawa group at UTokyo

New paper in @journalofanatomy.bsky.social with PAD Wise and AP Russell! We show that using morphological criteria to assign developmental stage provides more ossification sequence resolution than embryo size or developmental time (days). onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.... #GeckoEvoDevo

We're hiring a *post doc*! Are you a global change ecologist (broadly defined) and want to work with Jenny McGuire, @benjaminfreeman.bsky.social, me & many others?!🦎🐦🦴⛰️ Come join an amazing, hungry, and very exciting eco-evo group here at GT! careers.hprod.onehcm.usg.edu/psc/careers/...

Something different for #TrilobiteTuesday This is an X-ray of a Chotecops trilobite from the Devonian Hunsruck slate near Bundenbach, Germany. The soft tissues were replaced with pyrite or fool's gold and are denser than the rock. The X-ray shows the denser material including legs and gills.

I’m so excited to announce our new paper in @journal-evo.bsky.social showing how embryology can help us determine ancestral character states in temporal niche academic.oup.com/evolut/advan... Collab w/ A Bauer, A Wegerski, @tonygamble.bsky.social, & A Rasys #GeckoEvoDevo #Aristelliger 1/x

Out now in @anatrecord.bsky.social: The distinct synsacrum of knob-tailed geckos (Gekkota: Carphodactylidae: Nephrurus) doi.org/10.1002/ar.7...

🧠 Thx 2 @NHM_London 4 contributing this dog & human embryo fig. frm the bk: Homo vs. Darwin. An interesting read. [Source]

🐉 The naturalists' miscellany: . London: Printed for Nodder co, 1789.. Smaller cousin of fire-breathing dragons? Flying Dragon has folds of skin that it uses 2 glide through the air #bhlib [Source]

To a first approximation, all Australian vertebrates are lizards. 🦎 But not just any lizards, Sphenomorphine skinks! With more than 280 species they are hyper variable. Now, Janne Torkkola has pulled together the biggest phylogeny of the group to date. Read for free: doi.org/10.1016/j.ym... 1/4

These ultra-fine structures shown at 30X magnification are the reason why geckos can adhere to most surfaces, using Van der Waals force. The power of hairy lizard toes! (🔬: Power & Syred, SciencePhotoLibrary)

From Tiny Spines to Sticky Toes: What Cyrtodactylus Geckos Can Tell Us about the Evolution of Stickiness in Lizards Like anoles, geckos are famous for their adhesive toepads, enabling astonishing climbing abilities. Since adhesive toepads evolved independently in geckos and anoles, these two…

Also this month, Šulcová et al., studied how teeth attach to jaws across vertebrates. In veiled chameleons, firmly ankylosed teeth formed via a transient cell type at the tooth–bone interface showing both osteoblast- and odontoblast-like features. The authors call these theorised cells ankyloblasts

🌹 Historia naturalis ranarum nostratium: Nürnberg: gedrucht bey Johann Joseph Fleischmann, 1758. [Source]

Cricket embryo for #FluorescenceFriday ! (macroH2A in magenta, neurons in yellow and F-Actin in cyan)

Excited that our study on oogenesis and germinal bed morphology in the brown anole is published! Find it here: anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... @stowersinstitute.bsky.social @mdandersn.bsk.social @oxfordwomenshealth.bsky.social @cambiochem.bsky.social @ox.ac.uk @cam.ac.uk

Updated preprint available describing our method to identify sex chromosomes from a diploid genome, but better, doi.org/10.1101/2025...

08-Jan: Born on this day in 1823, the man who independently of Darwin came up with the idea of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace. Here’s a post I wrote about Darwin’s and Wallace’s friendship… friendsofdarwin.com/articles/dar... #HistSci

‘tis the season to celebrate the many animal species that reproduce via parthenogenesis - or reproduction from an unfertilized egg. Pictured here are 3 species of all-female, parthenogenetic gecko: Mourning Gecko; Bynoe's gecko; & Indopacific slender gecko #MerryChristmas #Herpetology 🎄🧪🦎

New in BMC Genomics! Genome size in anurans (frogs and toads) ranges from 0.5Gb to 10.0Gb of DNA. John Neddermeyer and I teamed with Andrew Rubio and @adamstuckert.bsky.social and found one type of retrotransposon active over the last ~30my is the likely culprit: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Can't believe my postdoc paper is finally out. Christmas came early this year, holy moly 🎄 Molecular basis for de novo thymus regeneration in a vertebrate, the axolotl | Science Immunology www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

True toads (Bufonidae) originated in South America and invaded Africa via the Antarctic in the Cenozoic! (which was temperate/sub-tropical at the time). Super cool. 🐸🐸🐸 royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Very excited to share that our latest paper is out in Science! We show that the type specimen of Nanotyrannus—an isolated skull—is fully grown, showing that it is not a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex but a distinct species (1/12) www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Happy World Wildlife Conservation Day in the #NewJersey #Pinelands! Here's a sampling of the wildlife that can be found in the 1.1-million-acre Pinelands National Reserve. 🐍 🐦 🐸 🌎 📷: Pinelands Commission staff #wildlife #WildlifeConservationDay

Now out in Evolution @journal-evo.bsky.social Tetrapod vocal evolution reveals faster rates and higher-pitched sounds for mammals 🐘🦉🐸. Mammalian hearing likely allowed the rapid diversification of their vocalizations. Open access here: doi.org/10.1093/evol... #bioacoustics #animalcommunication

I'm happy to share that, together with @juvelas.bsky.social and Daniel Vásquez-Restrepo to examine how Andean uplift influenced the evolution of South American squamates as part of the book Andean Herpetofauna: Explorations of Diversity, Ecology and Conservation by @springernature.com (1/3)

@tywooldr.bsky.social et al. present assemblies for three bear species — the sun, sloth, and Andean bears — and use a whole-genome alignment of all bear species and other carnivores to reconstruct the evolution of Ursidae. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf188 #genome #evolution

🐸 Bilder-Atlas zur wissenschaftlich-populären Naturgeschichte der Amphibien in ihren sämmtlichen Hauptformen Wien: Kaiserl. Koenigl. Hof- und Staatsdr., 1864 [Source]

New paper out in @devdynamics.bsky.social on lizard lung development! Project co-led w/ Kaleb Hill and also w/ @tonygamble.bsky.social @shylonatasha.bsky.social @aussiebiologist.bsky.social @bezbez.bsky.social @celestemnelson.bsky.social anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

New preprint from my postdoc work! Using fluorescent imaging, scRNA-seq, and ATAC-seq of mouse, anole, and chicken embryos, we provide evidence that birds have co-opted vascular smooth muscle to generate the pulmonary smooth muscle in their lungs. More on this later! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Super-proud of former MPhil student Emily Hillan for publishing her dissertation on the evolution of rib skeleton regionalisation in the evolution of snake-like body forms in squamates! royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

A study finds that chameleons have longer & more coiled optic nerves than other squamates & known tetrapods, providing slack & reduced strain during extensive eye rotation characteristic of chameleon eyes, & providing an excellent historical review of our knowledge. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Very happy that our new paper on the odd, looped optic nerves of chameleons is now out! It turns out having highly mobile eyes require some pretty specialized connections! doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Our big squamate origins and early evolution review is now fully published as open access! with @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social and F. Burbrink www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Pretty stoked that our article got the cover of the latest issue of @journalofanatomy.bsky.social! Check it out here: doi.org/10.1111/joa....

Now in Evolution: academic.oup.com/evolut/artic... This paper started when @3rdreviewer.bsky.social, Mike, and I had a lunch at which there was a lot of, "What do you mean when you say X?" Fun to spend time thinking about when terms get too muddy, and great work by Drew to pull it all together!

Recent paper from our lab on the puncture performance of hemipene spines in snakes! Some are like cat claws, others barely puncture. A single species can have many different spine morphologies and thousands of spines! 🧪 🐍 royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

I'll also be looking to recruit an MS student to study the functional morphology and biomechanics of adhesion, friction, and/or locomotion in sea urchins, geckos, or anoles! Please share! @sicb-dcb-dvm.bsky.social @sicb.bsky.social

The November cover of Genome Biology and Evolution features @raularayadonoso.bsky.social @kenrokusumi.bsky.social @anthonygeneva.bsky.social et al., who studied how structural rearrangements and selection promote phenotypic evolution in Anolis. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf196 #genome #evolution

"The project that was terminated was on this hummingbird, the white-necked jacobin....I suspect that it has something to do with studying a species that doesn’t fit the binary." Researcher @jjinsing.bsky.social interviewed by @carlzimmer.com #birds #nature #science #fundscience #nonbinary 🧪

Ever seen a clear and stained little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus)? 🦇 I love how their modified forelimbs, with elongated phalanges that support the wing membrane used for flight. Look how big those fangs are! 🧪🎃

🥈 Second Prize – DevBio Art Contest 🎨
Hyloscirtus lynchi tadpoles captured in watercolor! 🐸 A tribute to this critically endangered Andean frog, showcasing its natural colors, unique hindlimb sacs & delicate morphology. 🌿 Painting by Sebastian Plata #DevBio #ScienceArt

Repeated gene losses have independently shaped colour diversity in marsupials. An ASIP deletion is associated with eastern quoll melanism and is convergent with the related Tassie devil, while MC1R truncation is found in the pale-yellow marsupial mole. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Paper out! We tested the ability of short-read pangenomes to capture variants for population genomics. Super excited to have been part of this project. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...