Three field seasons 219 lizards 🦎 >1,000 hours of behavioural video scoring Proud of Ioanna Gavriilidi for getting this major chapter of her PhD on insularity and lizard behaviur published. Serious dedication!

First PhD paper out for Eleesha Annear—and what a start! Her work uncovers surprising variation in osteoderm size and shape across populations, sexes, and body regions in a cordylid lizard 🦎 academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/a...

Paper alert from @uafunmorph.bsky.social! 💥PhD researcher Cas Jorissen just published a chapter of his #PhD in @jexpbiol.bsky.social on torque–frequency trade-offs in muscle-driven lever systems

From mammalian #mastication to specialized #jaw movements in fishes or #tongue driven processing in amphibians, vertebrates have evolved a remarkable diversity of ways to process food!

🦎Check out this new study by Ioanna Gavriilidi of @uafunmorph.bsky.social. 🦎 Taking personality into account, the team showed how lizards with higher spatial cognition scores exploit the thermal heterogeneity of their environment but with less accurate thermoregulation. 📖 doi.org/10.1016/j.jt...

Behavioural #thermoregulation is vital for #reptiles and may involve cognitive processes! A new FunMorph study led by Ioanna Gavriilidi tested whether better spatial cognition is correlated with more efficient thermoregulatory behaviour, while accounting for personality. 🦎🔥 #cognition #behaviour

Now online - Kinematic analyses of Lake Malawi cichlids reveal that algae specialists use head expansions that happen synchronously along the head, hypothesized to increase feeding efficiency in contrast to the wave-like pattern of piscivores.🐟 @uafunmorph.bsky.social doi.org/10.1038/s420...

Fish suck... but species that feed on algae suck differently! 🐟 A new publication in Communications Biology by #UAFunMorph members Jana De Ridder, Peter Aerts, and Sam Van Wassenbergh, demonstrates how head motion patterns for generating suction are finetuned to the species' main diets.

Extreme climate events can catalyze rapid evolutionary change! in our new Current Biology (@currentbiology.bsky.social) piece, Colin and I argue it’s time to study their evolutionary consequences systematically — beyond opportunistic observations. www.cell.com/current-biol...

You can now also follow us on LinkedIn! 👏 Check out the FunMorph Lab LinkedIn page here: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

Let’s kick off the new academic year! 🎉 FunMorph welcomes 12+ @uantwerpen.be master’s students this year, working with a very diverse set of study organisms, just like our lab members: boxfish 🐡, sharks 🦈, cats 🐆, otters 🦦, sealions, hippos 🦛, tapirs 🐱/🐴, snakes 🐍, lizards 🦎, ducks 🦆, canaries 🐤

While both #island & mainland #lizards may recognize their own #scent and that of others — islanders tongue-flick much less, hinting at reduced reliance on chemical cues in island environments zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @uafunmorph.bsky.social @simon.baeckens.bsky.social

Lukas Hageneder from @uafunmorph.bsky.social is studying how the tongue and skeleton of ducks interact to successfully filter food

Today is the day! #SEBExPalaeo will be live at #SEBCONFERENCE 9h30 in Nightingale 1&2 (follow signs for Bird Rooms) Looking forward to seeing you for plenty of experimental #palaeontology #palaeobotany #3D #modelling and fun discussions!

A lizard in sight whets the appetite? 🦎 Read how conspecifics influence island and mainland lizards’ foraging decisions in @UAFunMorph's new paper by Ioanna Gavriilidi! Link to the full article: authors.elsevier.com/a/1lPDn1LenM...

Another PhD chapter published for Ioanna Gavriilidi @uafunmorph.bsky.social, now in @jzoology.bsky.social! She finds that island-dwelling lizards tend to rely less on chemosensory cues compared to their mainland counterparts. zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

New paper alert! 💥Check out the paper of FunMorph's Lisa Van Linden exploring the potential role of interspecific admixture during the colonisation of a small island by Italian wall #lizards using population #genomic analyses 🧬💻 Spoiler alert: they did it all by themselves! 🦎🏝️ See link below:

🗓️ Save the date! 26-28 May 2025 | Université de Bordeaux, France. Symposium and workshop : Biomechanical simulation techniques in evolutionary morphology and biomedical sciences. More info and registration: www.eventbrite.fr/e/1263754958...

How do beak dimensions affect feeding performance in birds? 🐦 In our new study published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, we studied 87 domestic canaries to test if beak size affects feeding performance—revealing a trade-off between force and speed. 🧵👇

Final week of the @UAFunMorph Galápagos expedition! 🎥 Capturing high-speed footage of Darwin's finches while they feed and sing to study beak movement. Best of luck to Irene, Cas, and Jan for the final data collection! 🙌 We are grateful to our helpers and sponsors. #DarwinsFinches #Galapagos

Two great scientists working on #InternationalDayofWomenandGirlsinScience! #PhD student Eleesha Annear and #Masters student Ilke Boutsen @UAFunMorph working on measuring #ungulate necks at the @africamuseumbe - exciting project results coming soon! #ExPalaeo

Do you work on experimental #biology to understand past organisms and ecosystems? Could your work be applicable to organisms in the #fossil record? Perhaps the @sebiology.bsky.social Annual Meeting special session "Experimental Palaeontology" #SEB_ExPalaeo is something for you?! (1/n)

Something is coming (back) this summer... in Antwerp... in July... 🇧🇪🦣🦕🌿🦠 More details to follow soon! @narimanechatar.bsky.social @peterfalkingham.com @sesamoidstreet.bsky.social @sebiology.bsky.social

Hard biting #birds are slow singers - which has more consequences than you might think! In my newest article, published in The Conversation, you can learn about how beak size affects the singing and #evolution of songbirds. 🪶 theconversation.com/hard-bites-a... #ornithology #scicomm #science

Follow Maja and her research here: @maja-mielke.bsky.social 🐦🎨

[1/2] Hard biting #birds are slow singers - which has more consequences than you might think! 🪶 🐦 In her newest article, published in The Conversation, #UAFunMorph member Maja Mielke writes about how beak size affects the singing and #evolution of songbirds.

Hello world! The Functional Morphology Lab of the UAntwerp Biology Department is finally on Bluesky! Let us share with you our research, academic activities, and our passion for #science. 🦎🐦 🐟 🦩 🐓 👩‍🔬 🎓 👨‍🔬 Here are some of the animals that keep us busy at the moment.