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!

16 candidates to fill 8 vacancies of #ICZN Commissioners: iczn.org #zoology #taxonomy

Anytime I read a paper where they timescale a parsimony tree

@inaturalist.bsky.social is there a mechanism for reporting incorrect information *not in an ID* but for a taxon's "about" page? I am looking at genus Dolichoderus which has incorrect Distribution stating "in all the continents except Antarctica" (by ref to a dead link). They are absent in Africa.

Dolichoderus quadripunctatus, the "four star large shrimp." More good auto-translation, this time from Japanese. Proof of the symmetry property of "shrimps is bugs"?

Sometimes trying to auto-translate poorly OCRd photocopies of Chinese text yield fun results. I especially like the unintentional emoticon here: The head is wide, light, and national. Jaw life island. East of the chest scales! The furnace has been established; Zhuangqin guide! Flying noodles )~:

Farewell to the Year of the Moribund Aardvark, welcome to the Year of the Luminous Lemur (and GNU TP).

Treehopper fashion show

!!Call for specimens!! I am seeking material of Dolichoderus carbonarius or D. c. latisquamis for nondestructive DNA extraction. If you or collectors you know may have obtained these somewhere in Indomalaya, they would be extremely useful! Rarely collected but highly distinctive shorturl.at/Jk0ah

turns out you can do some pretty cool stuff with the power of diceCT, SPROUT (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...), and the SmARTR pipeline (www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...)

Awesome funky beetles! Check out the link - best pictures of aleocharines I've ever seen.

Day 16 of my 2024 favorites: Velvet ant mimic ant lions! I'd seen one of the velvet ant mimicking larvae a few years ago but none since, until this silly creature showed up above ground one afternoon. ❤️ The adults are Very Long. They're delightful.

A beautiful Sierra Nevada ensatina (*Ensatina escholtzii platensis*) from Emigrant Gap, CA, with habitat. See also these woodpecker holes - I think the large ones are from a pileated; and some wonderful cheesy slime flux which yielded many adorable nosodendrid beetles.

More carnivore habitat, this time from Sagehen Creek Basin in the California Sierra Nevada. This "hanging bog" is a minerotrophic fen, that is, a groundwater-fed peat-forming wetland. Transition from forest can be stark, or more gradual - see these stunted lodgepole pines marking the boundary (1/3)

California carnivores, Butterfly Valley Botanical Area in the Plumas National Forest. 𝘋𝘢𝘳𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘵𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘢 𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢 emerging and sparkling 𝘋𝘳𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘢 𝘳𝘰𝘵𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘧𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘢 lining the rills and ponds.

Can't imagine a better first post over here than sharing that our new paper, led by amazing undergraduate Mahalia Donaldson and with @corriemoreau.bsky.social, is out now in Annals of the @entsocamerica.bsky.social! Check it out: doi.org/10.1093/aesa...