“A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress - though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known" - Bertrand Russell, 1976. Time-lapse video of Vampyrella lateritia eating Spirogyra algae from Science Source/Oliver Skibbe. 🦠

You should be able to respond to reviewer comments with memes to liven up the peer review process.

Clay letters from ancient Mesopotamia are alive with idiom, sayings, and everyday language that I love. Here are just a few random ones so you can enjoy them too.

Scientists around former IMP group leader David Keays (@lmumuenchen.bsky.social show that #pigeons detect magnetic fields through their inner ear. Their discovery was now published in the journal @science.org: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... More: www.imp.ac.at/news/article...

Have you ever wondered what you would find if you could keep your eyes on a bee for more than a few meters? Us, too! preprint (with videos!) + thread 🧵 Precise, individualized foraging flights in honey #bees 🐝 revealed by multicopter drone-based tracking www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/9

Extra virgin?

That was not really what I meant...

A newly discovered archaeal cell has a tiny genome and can’t metabolize biomolecules. It’s upending biologists’ definition of a living thing. “These types of organisms have been found before, but not as extreme as this,” said microbiologist Thijs Ettema.

#OnThisDay in 1859, Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species was first published. Much of the original manuscript was used as scrap paper by Darwin's children. On the back of this painting of a house is an original manuscript page from Origin! #CambridgeUniversityLibrary (DAR 185)

"potentially divisive"

They are now published: the results of a study I contributed to when I was recently employed as an antiquarian at Lund University’s Historical Museum! The emergence and diversification of #dog #morphology | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

On the event of James Watson's death, I highly recommend this 2023 commentary from @matthewcobb.bsky.social and Nathaniel Comfort with crucial new insights into the discovery of the double helix. (And also check out Cobb's brand new biography of Francis Crick) www.nature.com/articles/d41...

An Asgard archaeon with internal membrane compartments Brilliant study led by @fmacleod.bsky.social and Andriko von Kügelgen. Tight collaboration with @buzzbaum.bsky.social and lab. Congrats to all authors! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Independently evolved supergenes control colony social organization and queen reproductive strategies in several ant lineages. Sigeman et al. uncover a novel 9 Mb supergene controlling queen size and social organization in Myrmica ruginodis. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf255 #evobio #molbio #ants

Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching

“The bad review will come from your list of suggested reviewers”

1/ Hello Drosophila-philists and braino-maniacs! 👋🪰🧠🧪 The Caron lab has a new preprint, and it is about 🥁🥁🥁 democracy! Neuro-democracy, to be precise. So: drop EVERYTHING and listen up — a 🧶! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

First neurons didn’t appear overnight. We trace their roots to ancient secretory cells - showing how lifestyle & behavior shaped the evolution of first synapses.🧠🌊 #Evolution #Neuroscience Our latest in @natrevneuro.nature.com Link: rdcu.be/eMX3E @jeffcolgren.bsky.social @msarscentre.bsky.social

By comparing differently tuned glomeruli, this work shows that the brain uses different circuit layouts for specialised vs general smells, offering new insight into how odour meaning is encoded. buff.ly/XDmo4Ue

How does life evolve to adapt to modern cities? Out now in Science, my PhD work with @lindymcbr.bsky.social uncovers the ancient origin of the “London Underground mosquito” – one of the most iconic examples of urban adaptation. 🧵(1/n) @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ady4515

New preprint led by the brilliant @aleksandra-marconi.bsky.social on cichlid brain diversification, fgf8a signalling and regulatory divergence with TEs on the mix! All part of a wonderful collaboration with @ebablab.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... @camzoology.bsky.social

My Autumn aerial embroideries I made last Autumn... I've made a start on this year's landscapes now! Lots and lots of colourful and brown trees coming soon 🧡💛🍂 including another geometric one maybe? #embroidery #art

Great episode!

We are in Bluesky and we are happy to share our two last consortium publications: the DrosEU expanded DEST dataset and a Continent-wide study of phenotypic differentiation among European #Drosophila melanogaster populations (1/7)

I'm looking to recruit a post-doc to help push forward our growing interests in insect ecotoxicology. Apply here by Nov 30th! (thanks for reposting) career5.successfactors.eu/sfcareer/job...

If you study plants, you need this book. 🧵1/n

My little book on Schrödinger's famous classic 'What Is Life?' is out! Offering the most comprehensive analysis ever undertaken of the book's origins, reception, impact, and legacy, it uncovers Schrödinger's motivations in writing it, and shows how it has shaped our current understanding of the cell

Looks like a great conference! 🦣🐝🦟🧌

Incredible!

What is agency? How did it emerge through evolution? Why is it key to understanding complexity? Check out this brilliant Open Access book by my dear colleagues Alvaro Moreno & @julipereto.bsky.social. A deep exploration of a crucial concept. Highly recommended! link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

Check out this postdoc opportunity: exciting electrophysiology collaboration on Parkinson-diabetes links in a great team at Karolinska Institutet.

Case Western Reserve Department of Biology is hiring! We're recruiting for a tenure-track position focusing on eukaryotic microbiology, especially microbial/environment interactions. Please share widely: apply.interfolio.com/174456

And here we are. Another damn’d thick, square book. A real wrist-sprainer. UK edition (pictured) has endpapers showing Crick and Brenner’s blackboard and colour plates. Both U.K. and US editions have sections heralded by a double page photo as here. Loads of illustrations. Out in November!

A nice shift in perceived colour between central and peripheral vision. The fixated disc looks purple while the others look blue. The effect presumably comes from the absence of S-cones in the fovea. From Hinnerk Schulz-Hildebrandt: arxiv.org/pdf/2509.115...

Maybe the Brits make Trump a lord, the Norwegians give him the Peace Prize, we Swedes hand over the rest of the Nobels, and he retires quietly in Florida.🤔

Hello. I wrote a nice long essay about AI and this very strange moment where we're constantly told we're living in the dawn of a strange new future but the only thing that's actually clear is that everyone feels pretty unmoored and uncertain. I hope you'll read it

#Job alert: associate professor (universitetslektor) at the program in Human #Paleogenomics and #Population #Genomics. Please see the ad for more information. Application deadline: Sept 1st. #vacancy @haam-community.bsky.social @cschlebu.bsky.social www.uu.se/om-uu/jobba-...

Giovanna Tornabuoni, perfect in profile in 1488, as painted by Domenico Ghirlandaio. Today is his day.

2. Bing Brunton and John Tuthill use this example and others to argue that neuroscientists will need to develop embodied models of brains if they hope to understand how animals actually work. /end

🚨Very happy that my PhD work is now out in @nature.com! We discovered that evolution, by acting in the midbrain, shifted the threshold to escape in Peromyscus mice, to fine-tune defensive strategies in different environments www.nature.com/articles/s41... This was a truly collaborative effort! 🧵⬇️

Unique 1.5m year-old ice to be melted to unlock climate mystery www.bbc.com/news/article...

The type specimens of Drosophila melanogaster from Meigen’s collection at the Natural history museum in Paris! 🤓

Its all crab!

CryoRhodopsins: A comprehensive characterization of a group of microbial rhodopsins from cold environments www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I love that the title uses "delve": Delving into LLM-assisted writing in biomedical publications through excess vocabulary www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

On Sunday I traveled to the middle of the desert to capture this: The ISS against our sun. What I didn't expect: the sun producing a magnificent flare at the same time A once-in-a-lifetime shot I'm thrilled to share with you. See the uncropped shot or get the print in the reply

Darwinian evolution FTW

Really neat paper from my colleagues Eric Warrant and Stanley Heinze at @biologylu.bsky.social!