A new post about the three #newspecies of toad we have just described from Tanzania, feat @christianthrane.bsky.social, Simon Loader, @alicepetzold.bsky.social, John Lyakurwa, and Michele Menegon! 🧪🐸🇹🇿 www.markscherz.com/archives/6208

Today we described three new toad species that give birth to fully formed toadlets, from the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania! 🇹🇿🧪🐸 vertebrate-zoology.arphahub.com/article/1670...

Three new species of tree toads from Tanzania have been discovered. 🐸 These amphibians don’t lay frogspawn or have a tadpole phase like most other toads, but instead give birth to live young! Find out how museum specimens helped scientists to discover these species. 👇 www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/new...

Watch this space for some news at 12:00 GMT tomorrow! Something new for me, and a really awesome collaboration. 🐸🧪

Seems obvious to me that having a gut that be longer than your body is clearly advantageous. This is a great way to overcome one of the limits imposed by diminutive body size itself!

It has been an extremely dry year for me in terms of publications so far, but a flurry of activity in the last few weeks has left me with eight papers submitted and two in press due to drop in the next couple of weeks! A total turnaround. Huge push by many coauthors. Next year may be a bumper! 🧪

My exit from the other site cost me a contact and wondering if anyone can assist with a taxonomist who works on polychaetes??? 🪱🧪🔬

A few cool #newspecies coming soon! Watch this space! 🧪🐸

🧬 Now published in Bioinformatics Advances: “Advances and challenges in understanding evolution through genome comparison.” Read the full paper here: https://doi.org/10.1093/bioadv/vbaf223

Frog-people! What’s the current consensus on the origin of chytrid? Is shipping Xenopus around the world in the 1930s still the vibe or is an East Asian/Korean origin for the pandemic lineage where we’re at these days? 🐸

Excited to share our new #biorxivpreprint: “Sexual dimorphism in the complete connectome of the Drosophila male central nervous system” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... We describe the #connectomics reconstruction and analysis of an entire adult #maleCNS #drosophila central nervous system. 1/10

Violet webcap (Cortinarius violaceus) growing under gorse today near the Devil’s Punchbowl in Surrey. An absolute stunner of a mushroom and nationally rare - it’s always good to see these beauties. #ukfungi

After ELEVEN YEARS of work, today I finally submitted my 205-page monograph on the diamond frogs of Madagascar, genus Rhombophryne, in which we are describing several new species. Feels so good to finally have it submitted. I can't wait to share the new species with you all! 🧪🐸🟤💎

🔁Please share - we remind the SMBE community that the Call for Symposia for #SMBE2026 in Copenhagen is open. We invite you to submit a symposium proposal to help shape the scientific content of our annual meeting. 🗓️Deadline: October 15th More info: smbe2026.org/symposia @official-smbe.bsky.social

Oh, what a beautiful morning!

So sorry to hear of Dame Jane Goodall's passing. What a life to celebrate, though! One of my most prised possessions is my copy of the Silmarillion, which she signed for me in 2014 when she came to deliver a talk in Munich. She said that she, too, admired the works of Tolkien. 🧝‍♀️💎💎💎

Spent a little time in the last couple of day working with micro-CT scans of frogs again. This is the holotype of Rhombophryne coronata. I’m hoping to submit a manuscript including a plate of this specimen’s skeleton tomorrow! 🧪🐸🩻

@herphighlights.bsky.social heya, the call you played as Heterixalus boettgeri in Episode 235 is a microhylid, not a Heterixalus. It may be a Plethodontohyla or a Platypelis. Heterixalus have cricket-like stridulating calls.

+++ Hissscord🐍 NEWS +++ Our new server is live! 🐍 A free space for young and experienced herpetologists to connect, collaborate, and get quick help. 💬 DM me here on Bluesky or elsewhere for an invite to the Discord channel! Please feel free to share and repost! #Herpetology #SEH2025 #Hissscord

Newly minted Full Professor Anders P. Tøttrup is giving his inaugural lecture as Professor of #CitizenScience at the @nhmdk.bsky.social now. 🧪🦅🦩🦢

Four generic frogs? No! These are members of four different FAMILIES from Europe, Borneo, Madagascar, and East Africa, convergently evolved on the generic brown frog morphotype! 🧪🐸

Check out the remarkable variation in the Critically Endangered Anodonthyla theoi. It is restricted to a tiny area of littoral forest in SE Madagascar, and its habitat is extremely threatened by deforestation and fire. When the rains come, males emerge from tree holes and leaf axils to call. 🐸🧪

Just another day at the office! Today, we needed to get a specimen out of the freezer to be prepped as a skeleton, so we pulled out this nice big Paleosuchus trigonatus. 🐊🧪

Look at the fantastic variety of shape in these wonderful frogs I photographed in Gunung Mulu National Park on Borneo last year. Amazing how much frogs can do with so little. 🐸🧪

Having a diffuse research group means that I rarely get to spend any time with my group in 3D. It was a great delight therefore to be joined by @collinbos.bsky.social @alicepetzold.bsky.social @njorisfleck.bsky.social and @clarakeusgen.bsky.social together in Bonn for the #SEH2025! 🧪🐸🦎🐍🧬

Actual advertisement is here: utep.interviewexchange.com/jobofferdeta...

Just a small taste of some of the work we have going on behind the scenes right now. It feels like everything is painfully slow at the moment, but there are some very nice things on the way! These are skeletons of type specimens of Platypelis tetra, a little microhylid from NE Madagascar 🇲🇬 🧪🐸

Please share widely! The Natural History Museum Denmark @nhmdk.bsky.social is offering a PhD fellowship in collection-based Natural History Research, focused on dark taxa & unknown species, pref. including representatives of Danish flora, fauna or geology. candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationI...

A wonderful opportunity for a fully funded #PhD position in collections-based research at Natural History Musuem Denmark @nhmdk.bsky.social Reach out if interested in a PhD project in #peatland #sedges, #aquatic plants, or #ferns! 🌿🍂🌾 #globalchange #eco-evo employment.ku.dk/phd/?show=16...

Firstly, @alicepetzold.bsky.social and I organized our first symposium: Herp-omics: a #genomic perspective on earth’s herpetofaunal #diversity, with 27 participants and it was great fun. The variety of projects showed just how exciting this field of research is. #systematics #conservation #ecology

The @nhmdk.bsky.social is offering a #PhD position in collections-based taxonomic or similar research, ideally focused on 'dark taxa' occurring in Denmark. The call is a broad one. Get in touch with a relevant curator if you're interested! 🧪🐝🪰💐🪱 candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationI...

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I’m setting up a Discord server for young herpetologists, derived from an idea at #SEH2025. The goal is to create a space for quick help, collaboration, and networking. If you’d like to give input or get involved, let me know! #herpetology

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The final plenary of #SEH2025 is Angele Martins, talking about descriptive anatomy of blindsnakes, worm snakes, and thread snakes. Fantastic animals, and wonderful work! 🐍🧪

If you'll settle for one of the best radio broadcasts ever, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is available on archive.org. archive.org/details/hhgt...

Loving the Herp-Omics symposium at #SEH2025! Proud to see several members of my lab presenting here—my postdoc @alicepetzold.bsky.social presented and is one of the chairs! Up now, @clarakeusgen.bsky.social is presenting on the Bachelor’s thesis that she did with us.

It’s actually a big deal in all organisms! Amphibians are just a really cool system in which to show it off.

A wonderful first day of the #SEH2025 meeting today here in Bonn! Seeing my students presenting is especially gratifying; @clarakeusgen.bsky.social brought this absolutely beautiful poster. 🧪🐸

Meet the newest species of Brazilian flea-toad 🐸 Brachycephalus nanicus! 🐸 B. nanicus is <1cm long & dwells under the leaf litter in the cloud forests of Serro do Mar, southeastern Brazil I CT scanned this specimen for the osteological description Out today in Zootaxa: mapress.com/zt/article/v...

Look I’m not being hyperbolic: this is the best thing on this whole website.

On my way to Bonn for the #SEH2025 23rd European Congress of Herpetology! I’ll be giving a plenary on Wednesday about miniaturisation. Really looking forward to seeing old friends and making new ones, and exchanging ideas across the field 🐢🐍🐸🧪

Come to beautiful Copenhagen for the SMBE conference next summer! Call for symposia is now OPEN! smbe2026.org 🧪

Today I had the great pleasure to be an invited speaker at the meeting of the Nordisk Herpetologisk Forening. A good opportunity to share the work my team and I have been doing at the @nhmdk.bsky.social for the last four years, as well as the history of our remarkable collection. 🧪🐸🐍🐢🦎🐊

Any chance someone can give us a confident ID on these two Phrynosoma models? @somuchpingle.bsky.social @afroherper.bsky.social @ethankocak.com @emilytaylorscience.com

Worker ant, bronze, finished at last. Got her to sit for a proper portrait.

Great to be at Copenhagen Pride today! Appreciated this sign in particular!

It's #worldlizardday and the newest @squamatespod.bsky.social episode it out now! Go give it a listen 🦎 youtube.com/watch?v=OePk...

Celebrate #WorldLizardDay with us! Episode 36 is live now on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify! You can join us in the live chat on the YouTube Premiere! 🦎🧪 youtu.be/OePkLM5DTgc

Thrilled to announce version 2.0 of my poster featuring some of Madagascar's endemic frog species, to scale! This version features 176 species—40 more than version 1.1 (now retired)! Check it out! 🐸🧪 www.redbubble.com/i/poster/Som...