Should we measure trait evolution in unit of time or in unit of substitutions? Our new paper in @evolletters.bsky.social looks at this from a theoretical perspective. #Evolution #Phylogenetics DOI: doi.org/10.1093/evle... 🧵 thread below 🧵

I would have bet actual money that the dark rover ant, Brachymyrmex patagonicus, was supercolonial. This is a relatively recent arrival to Texas, and it's one of our most common ants now, getting into everything, in huge numbers. And I would have been very wrong.

The paper: Statistical and Structural Bias in Birth-Death Models by @phylieu.bsky.social & @omearabrian.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Looking for perspectives! Background: For some time I've been cooking up a document which provides etymologies for all genus-group names of ants, plus historical and sociocultural commentary. The direct inspiration is Wheeler&Wheeler's 'Myrmecological Orthoepy & Onomatology". [continued]

What's your favorite tool for extracting mitogenomes from whole-genome sequences? Since the last time I tried this, the options have proliferated. Any recommendations would be great!

Job alert! Post-doc position available in the Tsutsui lab at UC Berkeley. I'm specifically looking for someone optimize and scale RNA interference for invasive ant control and eradication. Happy to take questions at [email protected]. Spread the word! aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05325

New preprint on the recent history of phylogenetic biogeography, with co-authors Isabel Sanmartín and Joel Cracraft, now up on EcoEvoRxiv: ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

@mossworm.bsky.social new hypothesis, fairy scrumps are just free-living woodlouse nervous systems.

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

I like the thinking and suggestions here. . . "Biology needs philosophy, but what philosophy?" DiFirsco & Orzack 2026 doi.org/10.1093/bios...

Ants are experts at telling nestmates from foreigners via subtle differences in odor profiles. In this new paper, we explore the conditions under which ants develop and maintain tolerance to foreigners. Turns out the ant recognition system is surprisingly plastic. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Couldn't sum it up better than this: "I've realized now that writing *is* how I think best: often, my thoughts only crystallize once I try to put words on the page and then revise those words repeatedly." If you outsource your writing, you outsource your thinking. And then what is even the point?

Just in case anybody out there wants a postdoc with some of the coolest people in the field, here it is! jobs.anu.edu.au/jobs/researc...

📢 Including fossil tips in your phylogeny can double your continuous trait model fitting accuracy! Updated preprint out now on @ecoevorxiv.bsky.social. 🔗 doi.org/10.32942/X27... with @pedrolgodoy.bsky.social @macroecoevoale.bsky.social and @bethanyjallen.bsky.social

Our new paper 'A covarion model for phylogenetic estimation using discrete morphological datasets,' is out in SysBio! We introduce the "covariomorph" model in RevBayes to capture character and lineage specific rates of morphological traits. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/sysb...

Hey bsky! I’d like to share some cool work I recently coauthored that integrates entomology, paleontology, and German cultural history. 🔶🐜⚡️ We discovered a fossil ant in the amber collection of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe! Read on for a delightful story of #museomics and #collectomics. >> 1/

reading about organisms that aren’t your specialty is like margins of the quorbus eplungulate, ploobular processes bent posteriorly towards the foobulum define term “eplungulate” - lacking plungae. synonym: thubulous

We've got ISSUES. Literally. We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do? arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563 A 🧵 1/n

Another responses to the recent sponge/ctenophore paper in Science. . .also worth a read!

New work from @miyapan.bsky.social and our team, bringing ant, bee, and wasp labs together. @chuanxinyu.bsky.social shows that the ANTSR locus we discovered in ants has determined sex for 150+ My across bees and stinging wasps 🐜🐝, despite virtually no sequence conservation 😮 doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

New Ant Lab video today about pincer wasps and a new research project. This one has some really cool, newly-filmed insect behavior in it! youtu.be/9osTBzQ0zbk

I posted an eLetter to the recent Science paper claiming strong evidence for sponges as the sister group to all other animals. The eLetter can be found under the original article. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Looking for leads on methods for inferring ancestral areas (historical biogeography) that incorporate fossils - specifically total-clade fossils. I've seen ways to use fossils in Bayesian biogeo, but those required the fossils to be resolved tips.

Harmony in the hive? Think again! 🐝⚔️ Insect societies are famous for cooperation, but beneath the surface lies a brutal conflict over who gets to wear the crown! Our new review in Biological Reviews explores the evolutionary battleground caused by such caste fate conflict. 🧵

Assessing the impact of character evolution models on phylogenetic and macroevolutionary inferences from fossil data onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @daveyfwright.bsky.social @datadryad.bsky.social

Dear colleagues, I'd like to share a short new contribution on the application of highly complex site-heterogeneous models, in particular CAT-GTR, to phylogenomic inference. While this paper arises from a recent publication on the early-branching topology of ants...

Out now in Biology Letters, my latest paper tackles an apparently simple question: how many characters are needed to reconstruct a phylogeny? TL;DR: in most cases between 100 and 500, more than a substantial portion of morphological datasets, but the story is more complex... doi.org/10.1098/rsbl...

Absolutely beautiful figures in this one

Here is a confocal stack of a clonal raider ant antenna from first author and FISHerman extraordinaire Giacomo Glotzer. You can see the densely packed cell bodies of olfactory sensory neurons, along with fluorescent signal from two different odorant receptors and an intergenic region.

super excited to share this big project with @daeaton.bsky.social out now in Systematic Biology! We derived distributions for -- given an arbitrary species tree model -- how far you have to move along a genome before observing a change in the underlying genealogy: doi.org/10.1093/sysb...

Excited to share a new paper! "Sorting of ancestral polymorphism and its impact on morphological phylogenetics and macroevolution". Part of some work I've been doing on modelling the evolution of polymorphic traits in fossil echinoderms. academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

International shipments and museum loans: some helpful, aggravating notes from Chris on the ECN listserv that I'm leaving here for future reference.

Arrived at Powdermill to give a talk about fungus beetles, they have truly rolled out the red carpet

1) Branching morphogenesis is fundamental to animal development, shaping complex organs like lungs, kidneys, and vascular networks. Gills are another highly branched organ. Yet, the developmental processes behind gill formation in zebrafish remain poorly understood. #zebrafish #gills #microscopy

Mesquite 4 beta released! Many new features, esp. phylogenomic. Check out the trailer and longer video on the home page: www.mesquiteproject.org, and use the download link there to get a copy. Feedback welcome! Ask and discuss on our new Google Group (groups.google.com/g/mesquite-p...).

Mmmmmmmmm models

@apsciencebylyn.bsky.social important taxonomic question: are dryinids mopes, gargoyles, or something else entirely?

Our global phylogeny of Eurytomidae is now published in Systematic Entomology @respublications.bsky.social resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Anyone know how to specify priors on exchangeabilities and stationary frequencies for GTR in BASEML (PAML)? o.o

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BREAKING NEWS: DIRE SEA CUCUMBER OFFICIALLY DE-EXTINCTED! These incredible predators were once feared throughout the Pleistocene landscape by even the mightiest of slowly falling marine detritus particles

I feel like I once saw a flowchart for determining the nomenclatural gender of a genus-group name according to the ICZN. . .anyone have an idea of where this might have been published or posted?

Y'all, I got BEAST2 problems. Is anyone BEAST-savvy and would be willing to talk through some issues? I am specifically trying to set up a skyline FBD (unresolved) and am hitting the wall from a mix of total-group, stem, and crown fossil constraints, and a fixed extant topology.

Anyone know their way around MACSE and might be able to help with a few (probably silly) questions? Same with HyPhy :3

I'm an uncomplicated person - I see a paper by Parins-Fukuchi, I read it. Another great piece of research with much to chew on!

Just a girl and her bundle of baby clones she's wearing like an ass turban 🥹 My population of Schizomida (parthenogenic tailless whipscorpions) are so happy in their box of dirt. As always, tending a box of dirt is such a good decision and I recommend it.

most field biologists at least a few years in are sitting on dozens of cool discoveries and undescribed species, and it totally tears us up inside every day. we don't generally get paid to write about them and our jobs make us tired for nearly no money. it's like if your hobby was more working

Intriguing approach and potential applications!

Long shot, but does anyone have a .pdf of Zhang, J.; Sun, B.; Zhang, X. 1994. Miocene insects and spiders from Shanwang, Shandong. Beijing: Science Press? I've been unable to get a library copy! Alternately, if you have it and could just scan a few pages, that would be amazing!

When you see these authors say they found something interesting - read it up!