We still have space in our variant calling workshop happening next week!

Our eLetter github.com/caseywdunn/s... responding to a recent Science paper was just posted. The paper found more genes with consistent support for sponge-sister than ctenophore-sister. We found several technical issues that, when corrected, reverse the conclusions and recover ctenophore-sister.

Out in @nature.com today, we shake up the ornithischian family tree. Remember those weird Late Cretaceous iguanodontians, the rhabdodontids? Well they're weird because they aren't iguanodontians. They're ceratopsians. Well, at least some of them are... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Jellyfish & sea anemones lack brains & yet seem to sleep in ways similar to humans New findings bolster a theory that sleep evolved before centralized nervous systems to repair DNA damage that builds up in individual nerve cells while animals are awake. “Neurons are very precious”

This wheel is to the boy squirrel the way that the football is to Charlie Brown and it still makes me laugh every time he tries to use it only to be immediately spun.

New paper from the lab! Led by PhD student Chris Carlson, with me and Matt Osmond (not on Bluesky), this study explored the effects of genotype-by-environment interactions on the maintenance of genetic variation in mutualisms

Come learn with us! #REU!

Finally out! We studied the retinas of the longest-living vertebrate, the Greenland shark, and found that the retinas remain remarkably healthy in animals around 150 years old. What is the mechanism? It may be a highly efficient DNA repair system. Enjoy! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Applications now open for the International Travel Stipends to attend #Evol2026! Funds cover registration, travel, food, and lodging. Apply by January 30: www.evolutionsociety.org/content/soci... @evolmtg.bsky.social

Important warning

Last Thursday @palaeoverse.bsky.social I shared some of our recent projects, exploring the application of phylogenetic methods and the exciting new wave of Bayesian diversification models. #paleobiology #paleontology #macroevolution youtu.be/vd-E4E6iFNg?...

BIGGEST Longnose Gar for the @garlab.bsky.social team! At 60.5 inches (154 cm), this fish was a true giant for its species. Caught-tagged-released, it will help us learn more about river-floodplain connectivity👍 I’m aiming the fish toward our collaborators’ sonar, so we can track/measure it! 🧪🐟

Thrilled to see our review article "The evolutionary origins of synaptic proteins" highlighted on the cover of Nature Reviews Neuroscience 🤩. www.nature.com/articles/s41... @msarscentre.bsky.social 🧠✨🧬🌊🪼🧽

More details coming soon, but mark your calendars ... Breakout meeting for @systbiol.bsky.social‬ The Society of Systematic Biologists - will be Jan 9-11 in Baton Rouge! Topic is 'The Importance of Natural History Collections' @jembrown.bsky.social is primary host/organizer ssb2026.github.io

NSF plans to streamline merit review to heal self-inflicted staffing wound www.science.org/content/arti...

Thrilled to announce a Postdoc opportunity in our group on the evolutionary genetics and ecology of colour. Wonderful system, great collaborators, and room to shape your own ideas. Apply by 7 Jan: jobs.helsinki.fi/job/13477181...

Excited to announce that my second manuscript, “Fossilised Melanosomes Reveal Colour Patterning in A Sauropod Dinosaur” has been published in @royalsociety.org !! Diplodocus scales are complex and diverse, and it turns out their color patterning was even more so. A 🧵🦕 1/26

How do new centromeres evolve while staying compatible with the division machinery? Discover it in our new Nature paper! We show centromeres transition gradually via a mix of drift, selection, and sex, reaching new states that still work with the kinetochore. 👉 doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09779-1

I don’t think people really understand when I say Giant Isopods can gorge themselves on a meal. Look at how much the stomach of this small male is extended from snacking on raw chicken in my trap.

Folks have been super kind regarding this manuscript It is such a contentious topic that I wondered if letting this project go beyond the four walls of the lab was a personal/emotional mistake But no - it wasn't People are chill. People are nice. This community rules 🤘 bsky.app/profile/jlst...

📢 Adoption of new IUCN resolution on #amphibian #conservation 📢 🐸 Big news, since a recent study showed that amphib conservation is serially underfunded. The TLDR of this are calls for: -updated conservation guidelines -govts to implement long term national plans -funding research

“Before you write a single word: Can you explain your project in three sentences? Can someone outside your subfield understand why it matters? Do you have a clear narrative arc from question to approach to impact? If not, you’re not ready to write. You’re ready to storyboard.”

Out now on the cover of @journal-evo.bsky.social! Led by Sarah Khalil, we took a genomic approach to investigate the hybrid zone between different-colored Red-backed Fairywren subspecies. We found some interesting candidate genes under selection. Check it out! academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

ASN Address: Pirates of the Caribbean (and Elsewhere): Three-Legged Lizards and the Study of Evolutionary Adaptation by Losos et al. Read now ahead of print! www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1...

We're excited to be recruiting an NIH funded postdoc to work in the Coop lab at UC Davis. We're specifically interested in candidates who are want to work at the intersection of human genetics, GWAS, and population genetics modeling. Please RT

We've already got hundreds of students and mentors here, sharing how the sudden policy change has derailed plans. We're looking at formally "delivering" results to NSF leadership tomorrow, please do keep sharing and spreading the word: laurenkuehne.github.io/grfpChanges/

I just edited a Wikipedia page for the first time, and it was so exhilarating.

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA 10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

let me share a little story about a remarkable wasp that I encountered yesterday in our local deserts I stumbled across her, and scrambled to get a few crappy photos .... but then realized that she had a burrow, perhaps a better photo op was possible ?? here she is at her burrow entrance.

Our review on the last decade+ of hybrid incompatibility research is now out! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Original thread here: bsky.app/profile/moll...

Cool study. Shows low dispersal of mammals across continents. Most are continental scale endemics. Significant in understanding the modern structure of the Bretskyan hierarchy from mammalian perspective. nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.... 🧪 ⚒️ #Paleobio #EvoBio #Macroecology

Monitor lizards, also known in Australia as goannas, are some of the most iconic reptiles on the continent. In our new study, we looked beneath their skin with cutting-edge imaging techniques – and we may just have found the key to their evolutionary success. youtu.be/RfOK2wWYjLo

Please share! Our lab is recruiting a PhD student to join us starting fall 2026. Our group is broadly interested in plant molecular evolution and comparative genomics. More info about our lab and grad programs at Colorado St. is available on our lab website. sites.google.com/site/danielb...

I’m so proud of Sadie and Jordan! They did a great job presenting their research on genetic and morphological examination of non-native New Mexico whiptail lizards. #JMIH25

Differential gene expression was observed between tissues, species, and reproductive modes (asexual vs sexual) in whiptail lizards by Josh Rivera. Very cool! #JMIH25

Higher rates of amino-acid changing mutations in a hybrid unisexual whiptail species compared to its parental species with lots of variation in different gene categories- super cool findings by Zoë Müller! #JMIH25

What the heck are unisexual salamanders good at? @amphibs.bsky.social looked into the chemical composition of skin secretions. Of 67 unique compounds, sexual species have more than the unisexuals- so more digging is left to answer the original question.

The impact of salinity exposure during development has been examined in fish and amphibians, but little is known about reptiles (despite many coastal species). Sydney Wayne gave a fantastic talk showing the negative impact of both exposure to and development in saline environments #JMIH25

Andrew Durso presented on the utility and development of a snake ID app. Many cases of snake bite go un/misidentified to the species level (only 5% are identified in the USA). The app is awesome on par with several other major AI identification apps (inat, Merlin) #JMIH25

The evolutionary foundations of transcriptional regulation in animals www.nature.com/articles/s41... (read free: rdcu.be/evDcA) 🧬🖥️🧪

Jack Dirck showed that Mediterranean House Geckos introduced broadly in the USA show evidence of dispersal via stepping stone and a mainland-island effect (in different regions).

Dellen Roush showed that a species of lungless salamander (Plethodon cinerea) don’t seem to select regions under cover refugia for thermoregulation- at least when looking at the two dimensional space. It may be that they thermoregulate vertically in the soil rather than across the horizontal space.

Herbivorous lizards have several “rules” (rare, large bodies, tropical, warm climates) that are broken in the family Liolaemidae- the family of lizards with the most herbivorous species. Bobby Espinoza gave such a fun talk packed with photos, data, hypotheses, and questions. #JMIH25

Snake fungal disease, officially reported in the US in 2006, might have origins as early as 1945. Looking at 531 New Mexico museum specimens from five snake species, Hannah Bradley assessed presence of SFD, performed swab tests, and qPCR, with evidence for SFD in NM dating back to 2006. #JMIH25

Looking at stable isotopes in museum-preserved fishes and herps from the past ~70 years, Bryce Sweely showed relatively slow niche shifts occur in native species compared to introduced species. Some intro sp have narrow niches that directly compete with nat sp, while others are more broad #JMIH25

#JMIH25 hit a home run with the plenary by @amphibs.bsky.social on the history and new findings of work with unisexual Ambystoma. An excellently transparent explanation of how frustrating and fascinating this group has been, with data frequently created more questions without answering current ones.

I love an inspiring travelogue. #JMIH25 started for me with a great talk about adventure, resilience, accepting mistakes, and making discoveries in both new- and old-world tropics by David Bickford.

The official hashtag for the Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists & Herpetologists 2025 is #JMIH25