Paraphyletic sharks www.sciencefocus.com/news/sharks-...

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

Wow! Sawfish alert

Time to update my BIOL 1040 Principles of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology lecture notes!

Chase Brownstein's shark paper covered in Nature News!

New slide for upcoming lecture in my ichthyology course...filer feeding in sharks and rays is amazing and has at least four origins. Looking for something to add to the big white space in the upper right quadrant of the slide. Suggestions?

Alas, poor ostracoderms!

FYI #AncientSky - the upcoming release of Caitlin C. Gillespie's "Women and Resistance in the "Annals" of Tacitus" is happening soon. And, it can be on your bookshelf, if you do not resist your excitement and head to the @cornellupress.bsky.social site: www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...

Honored that #NearLab work on fish phylogenetics is recognized with this award, in particular our work on Black Basses (Micropterus) that includes the famous Largemouth Bass

New from the #NearLab, Chase Brownstein chasedbrownstein.bsky.social takes the lead on Phylogenomics and the origins of sharks. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Acanthomorph teleosts (spiny-rayed fishes) comprise nearly one third of all living species of vertebrates. This important study describes a new fossil taxa that pushes the group back 20 million years in the geologic record! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

A very interesting and well-executed study. royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

For almost two decades, scientists have debated whether sponges or comb jellies are the first animal lineage. A feature in Nature describes how some researchers are calling for a more harmonious approach. #evosky 🧪

From 1,750–2,000 m deep, we collected one of the rarest deepsea fishes out there: a one-jaw eel (family Monognathidae). Only ~100 specimens of this group are known worldwide and we hold the largest collection (~46), most just a few inches long… The one we collected though, 6 inches or 154 mm!

New paper story time. 👁️🐟🦴🩻 Here is your gormless jawless relative Jamoytius: [1/8]

Barua, @marcrr.ecoevo.social.ap.brid.gy et al. searched for convergent substitutions in teleost fishes, detecting convergence in 89 protein-coding gene families across 143 genomes. Functional experiments support functional roles of convergent genes. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msag015 #evobio #molbio

My first microscope! www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

New paper describing a replicated movement study aimed at understanding movement across culverts in Louisiana. Fish movement is hard. doi.org/10.1002/rra.70017 #fish #ecology #movement #culvert

Starting off 2026 the right way, new from the #NearLab w/dartersdanjmac.weebly.com taking the lead on genomic and phenotypic species delimitation in North American endemic darters

How have mountain building and climate change shaped alpine biodiversity over millions of years? Check out our new study in Science Advances! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A postdoc in my lab, Ben Flanagan, just had a really nice paper come out in MB&E @official-smbe.bsky.social comparing transcriptomic response to a standardized immune challenge in 14 phylogenetically diverse species of ray-finned fishes academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-...

Great news article about the Tulane University Biodiversity Research Institute's Royal D. Suttkus Fish Collection and our recent accessions of specimens from the DEEPEND Consortium and the University of Louisiana at Monroe.

Huge congrats to my mentee @pfschwarz.bsky.social on her first first-author paper! Three-way secondary contact and mosaic hybridization in darters. Plus a bonus comparison of ddRAD vs lcWGS. @fishgenomes.bsky.social @tjnear.bsky.social #fish #evolution #genomics doi.org/10.1093/evol...

I am very excited to share our new paper with my amazing co-authors and mentors @dmacguig.bsky.social @fishgenomes.bsky.social @tjnear.bsky.social . We investigate a secondary contact zone in #darters. track.smtpsendmail.com/9032119/c?p=...

Here are just a few of the many fish I painted this year (not to scale). It's fun to stick a bunch of them together into a collage and see some of the incredible diversity of body shape and color patterns. Merry Fishmas! 🐡🐟🐠

New from #NearLab The role of ecology in allopatric speciation of darters in the Central Highlands, USA shorturl.at/YEmxH

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...

New paper! Here we look at shape evolution of the mandible in Pelagiaria, a group of open-ocean fishes that includes tuna and mackerel. We find that shape disparity accumulated rapidly at the origin of the clade at around the K/Pg boundary... academic.oup.com/evlett/advan...

Female deep-sea anglerfish...final answer! yaledailynews.com/blog/2025/12...

Congratulations to UMMP Associate Research Scientist Miriam Zelditch on the release of the third edition of the indispensable "Geometric Morphometrics for Biologists" (a.k.a. the green book)! #FossilFriday

Wonderful new review of The Tree of Life in Science by Yan Wong. "This mix of the uncertainty of research, the excitement of new discovery, and the importance of solving “science’s greatest puzzle” is what makes the book such a delight" www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

😍

Another nice Oreosomatidae on the way back to the surface. They're hoping for 2 more dives before the expedition ends. @schmidtocean.bsky.social dive 875 #asgardarchaea #MarineLife

Coming up tomorrow on #HoPWaG: we meet Pierre Gassendi, who rivaled Descartes as an early French protagonist of the "new science."

A phylogenetic analysis of Tui Chubs (Siphateles spp.) from the Great Basin, focusing on refining their taxonomic classification: doi.org/10.3897/zook... #fishes #phylogenetics #ichthyology

Saving the C-Gar! “Cuban scientists race against time to save fish as old as the dinosaurs” LINK: www.reuters.com/business/env...

I'm recruiting a new master's student for fall 2026 in my lab at Northern Michigan University @bionmu.bsky.social ! Students with interests in evolution of freshwater fish are encouraged to apply. Please see our lab website lizmandeville.github.io and the attached advertisement for more information.

A wonderful Saybrook College Tea with Yale World Fellow and Saybrook Fellow, Trinh Nguyen yaledailynews.com/blog/2025/11...

More news about the Birmingham Darter and the Project Marvel mega data center abc3340.com/news/local/w...

Bridle Shiner, Notropis bifrenatus. Plymouth Co., Massachusetts

Diverging fish biodiversity trends in cold and warm rivers and streams. Nature (2025). doi.org/10.1038/s415...

This may be the best thing ive read yet on AI in higher ed, and its written by a Yale undergrad. Highly recommend.

The story of the Birmingham Darter and the mega data center covered by Lee Hedgepeth and Dennis Pillion that reports on our latest field work in October 2025 insideclimatenews.org/news/1311202...

1/2 #NearLab @chasedbrownstein.bsky.social described Birmingham Darter Etheostoma birminghamesnse in April 2025 It is under threat from a mega data center. A petition was filed yesterday by the @biologicaldiversity.org to review the species for protection under the ESA www.wbrc.com/2025/11/14/n...

Dias et al. used genetic data from 27 Drosophilidae species and 6 outgroups to reconstruct the evolutionary relationships of fruit flies, recovering Drosophilidae as nonmonophyletic, underscoring the need for taxonomic revision. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf269 #evobio #molbio #drosophila

NEW pub in @science.org 🥳 Is it sponges (panels A & B) or comb jellies (C & D) that root the animal tree of life? For over 15 years, #phylogenomic studies have been divided. We provide new evidence suggesting that... 🔗: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

What he said ⬇️ 🎯

Max Telford's 1993 paper with Peter Holland on the phylogenetic affinities of chaetognaths was a big inspiration as I began my work on the phylogenetics of Acanthocephala. Telford has written a book and the preview looks amazing.

The Fudge Lab at Chapman University is recruiting a postdoc for an NSF-funded project on the biophysics of hagfish defensive slime deployment. Please repost! Apply here: tinyurl.com/4p937dn5