Morning from a Kansas reef 🐟🦀🦑🌊🦇

Kansas snow day with the reef

These MN blizzard conditions make me long for Cretaceous weather.

When your R code runs perfectly on the first try 🧪

Lil puppies with fins

The swimming candy cane 🌊🐟🦑🦇

An urchin a day keeps the bad vibes away

Snack time 🌊🦑🦇

If you hold it like this, it’s a hat! 🦑🌊🦇🧪

When life puts a rock in the way, carry it around like an urchin 🦑🌊🦇🧪

Watching the world go by 🦑🌊🦇🧪

Snack time on the reef 🦑🌊🦇🧪

POV you’re in a crabby mood 🦑 🌊 🧪 🦇

Our mini snail aquarium for this week’s lab on gastropods!

Snail radula in action

We didn't carve pumpkins this year, but here are some deep-sea fish jack-o'-lanterns l've made in prior years!

Happy Halloween! 🎃 🦇 🧪

Ever seen a clear and stained little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus)? 🦇 I love how their modified forelimbs, with elongated phalanges that support the wing membrane used for flight. Look how big those fangs are! 🧪🎃

A 3D printer is glamorous until you have to fix a wiring issue…

Bellator militaris — the horned searobin. Just like other armored searobins, they possess modified pectoral fin rays used to walk and detect food on the seafloor. This specimen is TCWC 6818.17 available on MorphoSource. www.morphosource.org/concern/biol... 🦑 🌊 🧪

Bellator militaris — the horned searobin. Just like other armored searobins, they possess modified pectoral fin rays used to walk and detect food on the seafloor. This specimen is TCWC 6818.17 available on MorphoSource. www.morphosource.org/concern/biol... 🦑 🌊 🧪

Just a few more pieces left to glue — the monkfish is nearly complete! 🦑 🌊 🧪

Happy Monday from these three amigos 🦑 🌊

Just clown’in around 🦑 🌊 🧪

New addition to the aquarium! A Longnose Hawkfish (Oxycirrhites typus). Loves the camera more than any other fish I’ve had.

New urchin, who dis? 🦑 🌊

Hoplostethus mediterraneus – the Mediterranean slimehead (Trachichthyidae). Remarkably, slimeheads have been documented to live for over 230 years. This specimen is KU 42748 from the KU Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum. 🦑🌊

Monocentris japonica — the Japanese pineapplefish (or pinecone fish)

Anyone else walk into the fish store and suddenly feel like handing over their wallet for a new tank?

Went to Duluth to celebrate wedding anniversary prior to #JMIH. Pretty cool aquarium and sturgeon touch tank!

Returned from visiting family to see new leaves on my mangroves! 🧪🌊🦑

Always ask your doctor for a copy of your CT scan. You never know when it may come in handy, say for Halloween…

Such smol mouths 👄… Poor things don’t have typical tetrodontid beaks

Have you ever seen a sargassum frogfish (Histrio histrio) eat in slowmo? This is Freddy eating his favorite food: anchovies. #marinelife #anglerfish

Have you ever seen a juvenile Buffalo Trunkfish (Lactophrys trigonus)? I absolutely love their weird skeleton which forms this bony carapace making their body rigid.

New molecular + morphological anglerfish phylogeny! #marinelife

1/11 New #OpenAccess #anglerfish paper in @plosone.org! We combine genomic, mitochondrial, and morphological data to produce the most complete evolutionary hypothesis for anglerfishes! Includes new body shape, habitat analyses, and a new frogfish subfamily) 🦑 doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Can’t believe we missed the phenotypic species concept! Gar + turtle = Dunkleosteus brought back from extinction! Brought to you by Colossal Biosciences.

They’re too cute and too smol 🦑

I love seeing all the excitement about anglerfishes this past week! Last week, researchers from the NGO Condrik Tenerife captured rare footage of a deep-sea anglerfish, Melanocetus johnsonii, in broad daylight—an unusual sight for a fish that typically dwells in the deep ocean. (1/6)

Lil buddy out here looking like a cosmic cheeto

Snow days with the fam

Merry Christmas and happy holidays!

Getting fishies ready for some alone time while we head home for the holidays.

I’ve been itching to carve this fish for my #JackOLantern for a while now… I present my pelican eel (Eurypharynx pelecanoides)! These fishes have a highly expandable mouth (like a pelican) to consume large prey and they have a pinkish bioluminescent organ on their tail tip!

It’s that time of the year again to pick out a pumpkin for a fish jack-o-lantern. Previous years I carved a whalefish (Cetomimidae), dragonfish (Stomiidae), anglerfish (Melanocetidae), and a fangtooth (Anoplogastridae).

Yesterday we had a very special visitor to the KU Natural History Museum… Ray Troll! He was very interested in our coelacanth and our entry way floor artwork! He wanted a special photo of the ichthyology department posing with the artwork.

Happy Easter! I hope the Foxface Rabbitfish (Siganus vulpinus) brought you a fishy basket!

Haven't taken any fishy photos for a while... I broke out my V box and tried out my new lights from Christmas. Here's my yellowspotted scorpionfish (Sebastapistes cyanostigma), Midas blend (Ecsenius midas), and Snowflake eel (Echidna nebulosa).

I always wonder if my eel, scorpionfish, and blenny think an earthquake hits them when I'm actually just cleaning their tank… 🦑