Interesting new tool to extract phylogenies from images (Tremble). It is crazy that this is still something we have to do. doi.org/10.1093/bioi...

As a geoscientist with lots of biology in my background, training, & interests, I love these examples of how plate tectonics intersects with evolution: in this case, frog diversification driven by tectonic processes, with the latter also influencing climate. 🧪🪨⚒️🐸🌋

I am very happy to see Becci Morris' first ever paper published 🥳 In this study we find that the New Guinea frog genus Mantophryne diversified due to a combination of tectonic activity and climate reorganisation in the Late Pliocene – Early Pleistocene doi.org/10.1002/ece3... 🧪🐸

Amazing first full day of our Newcastle University undergraduate Biology/Zoology Scotland fieldcourse. This year we have come to the shore of Loch Lomond. My group have been doing reptile and amphibian ecological surveys and we found adders, slow worms, frogs, toads, and palmate newts 🐍🐸🧪

Our new paper (led by Rémi Martin) found that British toads have low genetic diversity and low geographic structuring. Most of the genetic differences were driven by isolation-by-distance. Levels of genetic diversity decreased the further north the population tinyurl.com/43wxrfuk 🧪🐸🌎🐍#consgen

Adios *Anilios*! Glad our phylogeny was somewhat helpful in synonymising @simonmaddock.bsky.social! mapress.com/zt/article/v...

Workshop on #ConservationGenetics at #HWM2026 led by Axel Barlow and @simonmaddock.bsky.social of @bangoruniversity.bsky.social and Newcastle University -assessing participant knowledge and solving scenarios.

The most exciting find of my recent fieldwork: the Montane Mahé Caecilian. Only found on the highest peak in Seychelles, this Critically Endangered amphibian had not been observed since 2015. 📷: @simonmaddock.bsky.social

I have a new preprint demonstrating a genome-architecture-aware approach to inferring species trees and introgression landscapes from a small number of genomes. If you are interested in phylogenomics, birds, or hybridization, this is for you! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Over 41% of amphibian species are threatened with extinction. The challenges they face are huge—but so are the successes. I'm honored to contribute to this new paper offering a rare optimistic look at amphibian conservation. 👉rdcu.be/eQPL7

🚨Job opportunity🚨 We are hiring a 3yr research technician. If you love fieldwork, are passionate about forests & mountains, and want to up-skill in remote sensing, sensor networks and running field experiments this could be the dream job for you! 🧪🌳⛰️🛰️🌡️🍄 www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...

New and improved! (as of today, now with page numbers and an issue number ;) "Evidence for ancient selective sweeps followed by differentiation among three species of Sphyrapicus sapsuckers" Led by Dr. Libby Natola: doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

Day three of the #30DayMapChallenge - Polygons. This map shows the earths tectonic plates. I have overlayed all of the earthquakes with a magnitude greater than 4.0 over the last 20 years, coloured according to their magnitude (blue (smallest) - red (largest).

Here is the link to the open access article academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/a...

Awesome work by @deepakveerappan.bsky.social on this paper. Here we explore "Island-hopping anurans: diversification dynamics in a widespread frog family". The article is Open Access so go and check it out!

📢 We're excited to launch our AaRCademy Workshop Series kicking off October 7th online! 🧬Our first session, "aDNA Data Processing", will be led by Nikolay Oskolkov from Lund University. 📅 Registration closes September 7th! Sign up via the QR code or link below. #aDNA @aarc-community.bsky.social

Thrilled that Rachel Gray had a successful viva today! 🐢🐢🧬🧬 My first PhD student #ProudPI Major thanks to @simonmaddock.bsky.social and Axel Barlow for being examiners @sciencesncl.bsky.social

I'm not procrastinating.... making #Pride caecilian DNA stickers is a requirement of my dissertation. Schistometopum thomense and S. ephele, the iconic duo of my PhD work.

Returning from another amazing field course hosted at Leshiba Wilderness in South Africa. Wonderful students, great colleagues @simonmaddock.bsky.social and Marion! Highlight was the honey badger on the camera trap! @sciencesncl.bsky.social

DICE is advertising an additional four PhD studentships through our Leverhulme ‘Space for Nature’ Doctoral Scholars programme. All have a deadline of Deadline 23/04/25. www.kent.ac.uk/durrell-inst...

Online map of non-woodland trees in England published by @forestresearchuk.bsky.social

New paper led by Miranda Sherlock on "Submerged Corridors of Ancient Gene Flow in an Island Amphibian". In this paper we found that populations of the Seychelles #caecilian Hypogeophis rostratus would have been connected by palaeo-islands across Seychelles onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.... 🧪🐸🐍

We made the cover www.nature.com/articles/s41...

JOB ALERT Exciting opportunity for a Lecturer (equivalent to Assistant Professor) in #PhysicalGeography specialising in #peatland science to join our #Geography department at @uniofmanchester.bsky.social. Full details for the job can be found here: www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

An awesome evening for the launch of the new Adder Pilsner label from Allendale Brewery. Beer and adder talks (the work going on in the North Pennines). What is not to like?! Lucy and Samuel did a fantastic job presenting the work we have been doing on Conservation Genomics of adders in the region.

New paper alert! 🚨- My final PhD chapter is finally out! What happens to different eDNA components in water? 🌊💧 We tested particle size (small vs. large) and DNA molecule length (86 vs. 387 bp) in recirculating streams—and what we found might surprise you! 🧵👇 #eDNA #MolecularEcology 🔗 Read more:

Looking for a PhD in birds and woodlands? We have a funded project available to those eligible to apply as a domestic student (in Australia) @uq-cbcs.bsky.social - message me if interested!

If you missed the webinar on progress on the NERC ECOMIX project then you can now view it online. In the presentation, the team provide an update on the monitoring, modelling and ecotoxicology work being done on Yorkshire's rivers. www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSXB...

The IUCN Red List and Green Status workshops are going fantastically. Tonight we had a break from the computer and found several of the #amphibians that we have been assessing. Here is a beautiful Gardiner's Seychelles #frog (Sechellophryne gardineri), one of the smallest frogs in the World. 🧪🐍🐸🔬

The first day of the joint IUCN Red List and Green Status of Species workshop (the first time they have ever run concurrently) was a great success, focussing on the #frogs of the Seychelles. On to the #caecilians tomorrow

Today's "SEYCHELLES ENDEMIC AMPHIBIANS AND REPTILES: CURRENT KNOWLEDGE AND NEXT STEPS FOR CONSERVATION" symposium was a great success, with many fascinating talks. There have been lots of updates since the last time we ran a Seychelles amphibian symposium in 2019.

It was a great pleasure to present Seychelles reptile diversity and my research on the endemic bronze geckos today at the "Seychelles Endemic #Amphibian & #Reptile Symposium". 🦎🐍 @jimlabisko.bsky.social @simonmaddock.bsky.social

Happening now! Don't miss it!

Proud supervisor alert 🚨 @ellensharkey.bsky.social is looking at the impacts of climate change on Seychelles caecilians for her PhD. Today she encountered her first ever #caecilian and it was a beauty ... a large female Stejneger's Caecilian (Hypogeophis alternans) @seychellesherps.bsky.social 🧪🐸

Finally published: migration routes and adult survival of the critically endangered Yellow-breasted Bunting doi.org/10.1038/s415... -moderate survival in E but no returning birds in W -long autumn (moult) stopovers in China Many thanks to all collaborators in 🇷🇺🇩🇪🇲🇳🇹🇭🇲🇲 #animalmigration #ornithology

Leap into amphibian genomics 🐸 with this new year read. The Amphibian Genomics Consortium (AGC) is advancing global efforts to sequence high-quality genomes and bridge the gap in amphibian research.

Are you or do you know an undergrad interested in evolution? The SSE Undergraduate Diversity at Evolution program provides funding, mentoring, and a presentation opportunity at #Evol2025. Applications due Monday! https://buff.ly/4eExoFL

There is a symposium happening on Monday 20th Jan, titled "SEYCHELLES ENDEMIC #AMPHIBIANS AND #REPTILES: CURRENT KNOWLEDGE AND NEXT STEPS FOR #CONSERVATION". We will be streaming the talks if you can't be here: Link tinyurl.com/Seychelleshe... or use QR code. Nb. Schedule is Seychelles time. 🧪🐍🐸🔬

This is a reminder that the closing date for applications for this PhD is today at 12 midday (GMT)

🎉Here we go agaaaaaaain🎉 Another year, another new species round up! Over the last 12 months @nhm-london.bsky.social scientists have described ✨190 new species✨, including everything from bats to bees. Although my favourite from this year is probably the caecillian 🥰🧪 www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/new...

✅ Do you use R or Python? ✅ Are you an ecologist/biologist? Then you might find our website ALA Labs useful! ALA Labs is full of how-to articles to visualise or analyse biodiversity data. Some are for beginners, others are advanced/experimental 😀 labs.ala.org.au 🧪🌏 #rstats #python #quartopub

This is also a reminder that we are looking for a PhD student to work on adder conservation in the UK. Get in touch if you want to know more!

We are looking for a PhD student to work on "Faunal diversity dynamics of the Seychelles using environmental DNA". Your primary supervisors would be David Gower (NHM, London) and Julia Day (UCL). For more details of the project and funding see trees-dla.ac.uk/projects/fau... 🐍🧪🐸🔬

Friends don't let friends make bad graphs repo has been updated! Friends don't let friends use boxplot for binomial (bimodal) data. Is your box plot hiding something from you? #DataVisualization github.com/cxli233/Frie...

Our new preprint on designing the first custom SNP array for a #frog is out now! 🤩🐸🧬 Designed to improve conservation outcomes in the Endangered corroboree frog, we genotyped >900 frogs, looked at their population structure & diversity… @keoghlabanu.bsky.social doi.org/10.22541/au....

Following up on Nat. Commun. 2018, we analyzed the relationship between TE transcription and expression levels of genes involved in TE silencing in somatic and germline tissues across vertebrates. doi.org/10.1093/gbe/...

Achieving higher standards in species distribution modeling by leveraging the diversity of available software https://nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecog.07346 #Software #Code #Rstats

Lecturer position in Conservation Genetics available at Murdoch University #conservationgenetics #conservationgenomics www.seek.com.au/job/80462290

Our new paper outlines methods to ID albatross and petrel species using DNA from feathers. This provides tools to determine which #seabirds species are threatened by fisheries bycatch #ConservationGenetics 🧬🧪🌏🦑 Here's a news story on our research: www.antarctica.gov.au/news/2024/us...

PhD opp in my lab with Prof Darren Tomlinson, & Prof Andrew Cunningham (Zoological Society of London). Come work with us on next gen biosensors for emerging infectious diseases in conservation. Funding via BBSRC Yorkshire Bioscience DTP, closes 6th Jan 2025 🌍🧪🧬🖥️🍄🐸💦 www.findaphd.com/phds/project...