Recently discovered in Japan, the Skeleton Panda Sea Squirt was formally titled 'Clavelina ossipandae' which translates to “little bottle of panda bones.” #AGoodPlace Source: www.reddit.com/r/natureisbe...

How utterly fabulous! I’ve seen plenty of Ptychocylis urnula (a ciliate) empty lorica (the little cup) before, but never a live one! I’m so excited!! #marineplankton 🦑

Evolution of Threespine Stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) Defensive Traits following the Stocking of Brook Trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) Led by Grant Haines - published in Am Nat www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....

Genome size and phenotypic change: insights on contemporary evolution across biological groups Led by Lucas Gorne - published in J Evol Biol academic.oup.com/jeb/article/...

It is with great pleasure that we announce the appointment of Professor Alanna Watt, of the Department of Biology, as Dean of the Faculty of Science at McGill University. Her five-year renewable term will begin on May 1. Read the full announcement ➡️ mcgill.ca/x/5AH

This Earth Day, I’m spending it with some incredible denizens of the deep that are all unknown to science . 🦑🧪😍 You can too by joining us on the @schmidtocean.bsky.social dive stream: www.youtube.com/schmidtocean.... #onwardsanddownwards #DesigningTheFuture3

I missed that someone finally managed to find and photograph the rare punk rock ant Camponotus thadeus.

Researchers studying 450-million-year-old fossils discovered about 50 km northeast of Quebec City have identified a new species of basal medusozoan: Paleocanna tentaculum, a soft-bodied, tube-shaped polyp with a ring of tentacles. Closely related to modern jellyfish. Read more ➡️ mcgill.ca/x/5Ac

McGill has received a 2026 Campus Sustainability Achievement Award from AASHE for its work in climate resilience. 🌱 The award recognizes its Climate Risk Assessment, helping guide how McGill adapts and keeping it on track to address 100% of critical climate risks by 2030. 📸 Louis Alson

Fascinating!

The eyes of long-spined porcupinefish are quite the sight, as with most nocturnal fish. In the shallow coral reefs where they live, the corneal iridescence significantly increases their visual range as they hunt for snails, sea urchins and hermit crabs under the cover of darkness.

Happy #CtenophoreCtuesday! Enjoy this bloody-belly comb jelly (Lampocteis cruentiventer) for your moment of zen 🔊🪼 The color red is nearly invisible in deep-sea allowing these jellies to hide from potential predators. Credit video to @mbarinews.bsky.social. #sciart #science #scicomm #ctenophore

Southern Blue-ringed Octopus: one of the most venomous animals on Earth, 1,200x more toxic than cyanide - no antidote exists

NASA just dropped this image of Artemis II astronaut Christina Koch looking back at us. The first woman to ever see our planet in its entirety. I’m not crying you’re crying 🥹🔭🧪 📸: NASA

✨ This Xenopus 🐸 tadpole came to #FluorescenceFriday serving eye-conic energy 👀 Stage 39 eye stained with a whole rainbow: 💙 DAPI | ❤️ Acetylated tubulin | 💚 RPE | 🩵 Rhodopsin | 💜 Pax6. 📸 Image from Jian Sun.

This is what baby eels looks like. The long trailing tail is its *stomach* (nope, we scientists have no idea why) Eels hold their mysteries close 📽️ by Fan Zhang

Here are ten seconds of Flamingoes feeding underwater.

Swim, sea pig, swim! @echinoblog.bsky.social says this smooth swimmer, fr #ArgentinianDeepSeeps (2864m) belongs to family Elpidiidae, genus Peniagone. The urchin is an Echinothurioid, aka pancake urchin, w/cute "booties" on their spines around the bottom fringe for "walking" on soft sediments.

As the McGill Sustainability Park takes shape, its academic team is forming to define the Park’s research, teaching and engagement vision. Academic Director Rees Kassen will guide the group as it develops the Park’s academic plan and fosters new sustainability collaborations. 🔗 mcgill.ca/x/5Y4

Plantation glass frog from Costa Rica.

Explore the intricate beauty and complexity of spider webs, where nature's artistry meets engineering marvels. Discover their secrets today.

Want to observe how beautiful #devbio is? Make more transgenic #zebrafish (ideally showing lateral plate mesoderm-derived structures, of course). 🧬🫀🐟🧪 (7 dpf tmem88a:EGFP, ventral view; pic cred Marycruz Flores Flores) #PILIfe #LPM #MesodermIsStillRelevant

Congratulations to the Pollock Lab for their paper in the Journal of Biogeography! They explore how the potential loss of species-at-risk threatens community-level taxonomic, functional & interaction diversity across Canada, especially in northern ecosystems. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Congratulations to Dr. Sabih Rashid and Prof. Richard Roy for their recent paper in PLoS Biology! They have characterized a novel RNA-binding helicase, HZL-1, which regulates reproductive developmental quiescence in C. elegans through the inhibition of key mRNAs. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

1/2] Congratulations to Dr. Logan James, Profs. Woolley & Sakata, et al for their recent paper in Science! Darwin noted how various ornaments of animals (eg. bird plumage) were aesthetically pleasing to humans, even though these traits evolved without human influence. www.science.org/doi/epdf/10....

A wonderfully weird creature you'll find deep in the endangered Chocó Rainforest of Ecuador. It's a moss-mimic walking stick insect (Trychopeplus laciniatus). #insect #camouflage #rainforest

We brake for nautilus! “We usually stopped what we were doing whenever we saw nautilus, b/c they are such amazing animals to watch,” said #VisioningCoralSea Chief Scientist Dr. Robin Beaman of James Cook University. This enigmatic cephalopod navigated the depths before dinosaurs roamed the Earth!

A McGill University-led study has found that humans share acoustic preferences with other species, at least when it comes to animal calls. The results provide experimental evidence that shared sensory processing mechanisms may shape aesthetic judgments of sound. Read more ➡️ mcgill.ca/x/5fn

This rarely-seen Glass Octopus was caught on camera. The clear sea creature was filmed by an underwater robot during an expedition off of the Phoenix Islands more than 3,200 miles northeast of Sydney, Australia. Original post

New paper from the Hendry & Barrett labs, led by Sarah Sanderson, found that after a severe drought an at-risk population of unarmoured stickleback became mostly armoured, providing insight into how extreme events can influence unique populations. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

🌊 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.

Connecting the dots for global biodiversity action; two big perspectives out in @pnas.org this week lead by @billsutherland.bsky.social and @bio-diverse.bsky.social from the @royalsociety.org and @nationalacademies.org biodiversity forum last summer. My thoughts: anil.recoil.org/notes/nas-rs... 🌍

#McGill researchers‼️ 📣 You can now request a research/lab website using a ready-to-customize template in McGill’s web management system 💻 Image-based layouts, easy-to-edit sections, and web support are available to help you quickly launch or refresh your research website! mcgill.ca/x/5q2

✨Crepidula fornicata (slipper snail) 🐚 A classic model for spiral cleavage! 🧬 Crepidula embryos reveal how early cell divisions shape body plans and establish left-right asymmetry in spiralian animals 📸 Image by Jake Leyhr #ModelMonday

The teeth of the Californian Horn #shark (Heterodontus francisci) are incredible - this CT image by @ellanicklin.bsky.social shows the first rows of the juvenile dentition. How scary can this shark be when it has jazz-hands for teeth!? 🦈🦷 @ufresearch.bsky.social 👐

One of the keynote speakers for the upcoming Ontario Ecology, Ethology, and Evolution Colloquium (OE3C) at Brock University.

Best buddies? More like budding buddies 🪼👯‍♀️✨ Six stages of asexual budding in Hydra to generate new genetically identical individuals (clones). 🟣: collagen 🟢: stem cells. 📸 Image by Ben Cox #FluorescentFriday

Unifying Ecology Across Scales - Gordon Research Conference. With @jennsunday.bsky.social as Chair www.grc.org/unifying-eco...

McGill Biology is hosting a panel to showcase non-academic careers in Biology. Come listen to former PhDs and MScs now working in non-profits, industry, and government. biologygraduatestudent.association.mcgill.ca/events/career-panel Come out on Tues, March 24 from 2-4:30pm @biomcgill.bsky.social

Scavenging for drains in the brain: depleted lymphatic cells replaced by new vasculature This Research Highlight showcases work from Stefan Schulte-Merker and colleagues ( @uni-muenster.de ): journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

The comb jelly or sea walnut (Mnemiopsis leidyi) undergoes a Ctenophore-specific cleavage program that is characterized as unipolar and holoblastic (total cleavage). This offspring came from a specimen found in Eel Pond in Woods Hole, USA. Credit to 2017 Embryology Course at @mblscience.bsky.social.

New from our lab: Using the invasive round goby as a model predator, we show how model selection in functional response experiments is affected by context (habitat complexity; mobile vs immobile prey). link.springer.com/article/10.1...

We have more #biodiversity data than ever — from 🛰️, field work, citizen obs., and Indigenous knowledge. But, are we halting biodiversity loss? The answer is uncertain. Why? Because the chain of evidence needs to be stronger Our new #PNAS paper proposes a way forward www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

Coral life inside out, cosmic anomalies, and iguana patrol. Check out this month's sharpest science images, chosen by the Nature photo team: www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

A 2000 year old barrel sponges in the Banda Sea spawn with the full moon, a rare natural spectacle of life. Found throughout the   tropical coral reef environments in the Atlantic Ocean, these sponges grow slowly but can live for centuries or thousands of years in

Let's meet Micromelo undatus, also called "miniature melo", a species of "bubble shell" sea snail. She's got a little art deco backpack! These snails live in shallow waters at locations around the world (Hawaii, South Africa, Japan).

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

#McGill's VP of Research and Innovation, Dominique Bérubé, recently spoke with Steve Scherer about the surge of international interest in Canada’s universities, especially in new research chair opportunities at McGill🍁 Check it out⤵️ mcgill.ca/x/5GJ

✨Kelp embryos looking extra photogenic under the confocal today 🌱🔬 Young Egregia menziesii embryos developing from the megagametophyte 📸 Image by Siobhan Braybrook #FluorescentFriday