New paper published! Another of my "sabbatical papers" - a series of papers that evolved and matured through discussions with colleagues while I was on a six month roaming sabbatical a couple of years ago. This one discusses the #Cambrian #explosion. 1/6 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Interested in miRNAs, early animal evolution, and RNA biology? We’re recruiting a BBSRC-funded Postdoctoral Research Associate @bristolbiosci.bsky.social #Postdoc #microRNA #RNAbiology Apply by 14 May 2026. 👉 www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find-in...

The version of record is here @natcomms.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🥳 Happy for this collaboration with @emmanuelhaillot.bsky.social and Stephan Schneider At #EED24 in Helsinki we met. Instead of competing, we got our 2 stories togheter into a bigger one #EvoDevo #DevBio

Now published. Congrats to Soham and all co-authors! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/.... @embl.org

First home grown lobate!😍 Thanks @pawelburkhardt.bsky.social and @alexandrejan.bsky.social for sharing ctenophore larvae!

Very proud of my 2nd PhD student, Pedro Romero Charria, who defended his viva yesterday. Big thanks to @michael-imbeault.bsky.social and Roman Arguello for the discussion. Pedro's main work on #6mA in protists was published late last year (www.nature.com/articles/s41...), but there's more to come!

🌊 Professor @profstevesimpson.bsky.social, marine biologist, warns: overfishing threatens UK seas, communities & our climate 🐟 Join Steve and add your voice to our petition to tell the PM to end overfishing! act.oceana.org/page/178303/...

Félicitations à Luis BEZARES-CALDERON @biodev-vlfr.bsky.social lauréat d'une bourse « Research Grant » de Human Frontier Science Program Organization @hfspo.bsky.social pour le projet Tracing the Evolutionary History of Sensory Perception via TPR Channels www.insb.cnrs.fr/fr/cnrsinfo/...

New preprint from us and @emiliapsantos.bsky.social’s #NERC grant, led by Jake Morris, @gadusmo.bsky.social et al Using an interspecific cross between two #cichlids to think about models of #brainevolution 🐟🧠 Feedback and suggestions welcome! 🙏🏻 🧪

I'm thrilled to announce that I'll be joining Reed College @reed.edu in the winter of 2027 as a tenure track Assistant Professor in the Biology Department! My lab will continue to work on understanding and characterizing cnidarian-algal symbioses across various taxa. Contact me for collabs!

Most creatures use daylight to keep time. But a newly discovered jellyfish species has a mysterious biological clock that tracks periods of 20 hours, instead of 24. It suggests there may be more unconventional clocks across the tree of life.

Only 1 weeks to apply (April 7) for the joint Master program on "Evolutionary Genomics and Systems Biology" in Vienna. studieren.univie.ac.at/en/admission... Cool program with hands-on experience taught by leading scientists in PopGen, EvoDevo, Evolutionary Systems Biology. Spread it!

#Cilia are beautiful! That's it, that's the tweet. Oh, and Happy #FluorescenceFriday 🔬

Nighttime shapes many ecological processes and ecosystem functions: The largest synchronous migration of biomass on Earth happens daily at night — diel vertical migration of plankton Broadcast spawning in corals, molluscs, crustaceans, fish,... Moths pollinating flowers Bats hunting for insects

Have you ever wondered what #wildlife does at #night? How prevalent night-time activity/ nocturnality is? 🦇 🦉 🦗 How night-time conditions differ from daytime and between nights? 🌃 🌟 🌑 🌕️🌘 We, Almut Kelber & myself, just published a Quick Guide on Nocturnality @Currentbiology 🧵 ➡️ shorturl.at/TpA13

Day 4 of the Iberian Cordillera Fieldtrip, our Palaeontology & Evolution students @bristolpalaeo.bsky.social constructed a sea level curve and palaeogeography for middle and upper Ordovician of Fombuena

Happy to announce that we received the HFSP to study the evolution of TRP channels! bit.ly/4uGmMQ3 This project is a collaboration between Luis Bezares from the @biodev-vlfr.bsky.social LBDV in Viellefranch and the University of Southampton. @unisouthampton.bsky.social

The first poster session of #ASABSpring2026 was bustling! There’s no way to have seen every one, so please free to drop your poster below as well ⬇️ 👀

Transparency is key in the deep sea. 🗝️⁠ ⁠ Solmissus jellies, also known as dinner plate jellies, are dominant predators in Monterey Bay. With few places to hide in the open waters of the ocean, many deep-sea animals use their colors (or lack thereof) to hide from potential predators and prey. ⁠

🧵 New preprint led by @bingbrunton.bsky.social, @elliottabe.bsky.social, @lawrencehu.bsky.social We gave a worm brain control of a fly body and it walked What did we learn? Nothing, other than deep reinforcement learning is effective We call it the digital sphinx www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Our study on shape diversity in cnidarians is now published. The final version includes extensive new data that substantially extend the original bioRxiv preprint. Congrats to everyone who contributed to this work! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... @embl.org

full paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s42... @icreacommunity.bsky.social @csic.es

May 5th: if you are around London, please join the London #EvoDevo symposium at QMUL / Charterhouse campus, as usual we will have selected talks and post-event 🍻. A warm up for #EED2026 in Glasgow. Registration £0, more info here: londonevodevo.co.uk

Really excellent paper on the genetics of caterpillar butt ornaments journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Rave worm! What a gorgeous display this polychaete worm’s setae is giving under UV light! #marineplankton 🦑

New paper on common cuckoo behaviour is out! When cuckoo females parasitize a nest, they always take an egg out. And we found that they strongly prefer red over green experimental eggs. Check what we think about it: doi.org/10.1016/j.be... @lisandrinamari.bsky.social

What do you get when you study deep sea annelids & sea sponges on the Getsuyo Seamount? A symbiotic relationship resulting in two newly-described species of Hesionid from two sister-clades! Inhabiting the same sponge host, they share a niche...suggesting convergent specialisation! 🧪

Attention scientists from all over the world🙃 The 2026 #HFSPResearchGrants are out! 🥳 117 scientists from 31 countries will pursue bold, interdisciplinary research, from #neuroscience to #ecology and beyond! 🧪 Are you one of the new #HFSPAwardees? 🔗https://bit.ly/4uGmMQ3 #sts #HFSP

The E3 ubiquitin ligase mechanism specifying target-directed microRNA degradation (TDMD) is now published! 🎉🍾 We, @bartellab.bsky.social and Schulman lab, describe how 2-RNA factors control protein degradation by recruiting an E3 ligase. @mpibiochem.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🌊 Marvels in the midwater 🌊 ROV pilots zoomed in on this siphonophore at 755 meters during a recent #OBVI #LivingBioreactors dive offshore of Brazil, offering a breathtaking glimpse of a colonial animal comprised of zooids working in concert to survive and thrive in the deep Ocean.

Welcome Kevin! I am sure the dive into the evolution of ctenophore neurons is gonna be adventurous!😄 This project is supported by a generous @leverhulme.ac.uk grant.

Today the EMBO Journal special issue on molecular ecology and evolution is finally published. It was a pleasure coordinating this collection together with @berndpulverer.bsky.social and many outstanding authors. Editorial: link.springer.com/article/10.1... Cover art by @munafomarzia.bsky.social

Confocal micrograph of a transgenic adult zebrafish heart with cardiomyocytes in 🧡, blood vessels in 🩷, and cell nuclei in 💙. Credit to Dr. Aaron Scott (prev. w/ @beckrichardson.bsky.social @bristoluni.bsky.social). #ZebrafishZunday 🧪

Honored and very grateful to receive the GfE PhD Award 2026! Many thanks to GfE for the recognition of our work! This would not have been possible without the guidance of my supervisor @genikhovich.bsky.social and the many amazing collaborators and colleagues who contributed along the way ❤️.#GfE2026

A new mechanism for “RNA memory”! This time in Planaria! (Here's a video of a Planarian with mulitple heads, one of the heritable phenotypes we studied). This work summarizes >10 years of research and is an amazing collaboration with the labs of Jochen Rink and Omri Wurtzel labs. Read thrad below👇

Wow. Foraminifera! ROV pilots paused and carefully zoomed in to collect footage of these single-celled microorganisms, or protists, at 843 m during the #OBVI #LivingBioreactors expedition w/ @schmidtsciences.bsky.social offshore of Argentina. Read the full caption: youtube.com/shorts/Yv_ud...

Sea-urchin spines generate electrical signals in flowing water www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Curious about the origin of development during the transition to multicellularity? A very belated preprint alert: bit.ly/4rr2mHU Reproduction emerges from ecological interactions at the onset of multicellularity. A short 🧵 with lots of videos...

It's #InternationalWomensDay, and for the past year we've been commemorating the 80th anniversary of the election of our first women Fellows. Find out more about trailblazing women scientists and help us chart science history with our interactive map: royalsociety.org/news-resourc...

🌊🧪🦑🌏 Hotspots beyond borders: quantitative assessment of Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems on the Corner Rise seamounts with implications for conservation planning "depth and water mass structure are key drivers of coral and sponge biogeography on the CRS. " doi.org/10.3389/fmar...

Thrilled to share that our preprint has been accepted in Science Advances! Grateful to an incredible team & collaborators. Link: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 👏 @annaferraioli.bsky.social @maikekittelmann.bsky.social @msarscentre.bsky.social @erc.europa.eu @hfspo.bsky.social #ctenophores

Even more excited — our paper is featured on the cover of Science Advances! Huge thanks to @alexandrejan.bsky.social who took this incredible photo of a ctenophore (aka comb jelly) and the editors. Here’s the cover 👇 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

New from @chemamd.bsky.social lab @qmulsbbs.bsky.social Collab with Elaine Seaver, @baxevanislab.bsky.social @neva-meyer.bsky.social @abhinavsur.bsky.social New chromosome-level assembly for Capitella teleta 🪱 academic.oup.com/gbe/advance-... #DevBio #WormWednesday @genomebiolevol.bsky.social

To increase the use of gene editing in corals, we have made a comprehensive methods paper describing the protocol. We hope this helps the field of functional genetics in corals. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Really excited to share our new paper in @nature.com! We uncovered how a physical instability of the cytoplasm coupled with the cell cycle drives cytoplasmic partitioning in early embryos #zebrafish #drosophila. Read more in this🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🤩 @poldresden.bsky.social @mpi-cbg.de

This poses an intriguing question: how is cytoplasm robustly and accurately organized in absence of physical barriers, and how is cytoplasmic partitioning achieved within the constrained time window of rapid embryonic divisions? (2/9)

Glob-glob! Absolutely magical sea anemone larva (about 7 mm) from The Lombok Strait, Indonesia 🇮🇩

🪼🌊 A new species of ornamental jellyfish has been described from Japanese waters. 👉 Find out more through our blog: blog.pensoft.net/2026/02/25/n... 📖 Read the full study: doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1268.173354

What a week in Bristol! Highlights included our @bristolbiosci.bsky.social MSc Science Communication for a Better Planet Art+Science exhibition tackling EcoAnxiety, Sir David Attenborough's Ocean with the Welsh National Opera Orchestra, and a chat on the Career Ladder with the wonderful Max Klymenko

🚨 Thrilled to announce that I’ve been awarded a new project by Artsdatabanken, the Norwegian Biodiversity Information Centre. Project ODIN will investigate Octocoral Diversity In Norway 🌊🪸, tackling it with a synergetic combination of imaging 🔬📽️ and sequencing 🧬💻 tools. Picture: Erling Svensen.