Hi! We need lice for our diversity and adaptation project. Specifically, we need lice from zebras, camelids (camels, llamas, alpacas, vicuñas, guanacos) & aardvarks. If you or someone you know might have lice, I'm happy to discuss our inclusive collaboration plans! sites.google.com/nhm.org/anop...

The camtrapR R package: From data management to interactive ecological analysis of camera trap data https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.26.678697v1

I've long thought of our research as artworks 😉. But now it is actually true - our research on Caspian seal conservation has been integrated into an artwork in Berlin, on ecological degradation and human-nature interactions. w/ @phoca-sapiens.bsky.social. www.studio1-0-6.com/carried-by-t...

Genomic divergence across the tree of life 🧪🌐https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2319389122

Wa hoo! Our paper in Science is out today, revealing why some prey use conspicuous warning colouration while others use camouflaging colours. A huge global collaboration under incredible leadership by Iliana Medina and @wlallen.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I drew a poem about this summer, living in between worlds with my dearest bud www.lastwordonnothing.com/2025/09/24/t...

Lions across Africa are under threat from habitat loss, poaching, and wildlife trade. A continent-wide survey of 132 lion subpopulations was conducted in collaboration with landscape managers and lion researchers to determine perceived threat severity. [1/2] @biology.ox.ac.uk

Comparing Neanderthal introgression maps reveals core agreement but substantial heterogeneity https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.23.678138v1

Just wow! 🧪🌍🦑🐳🦭

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 🧵)

In which I proudly stay on my soapbox to counter the #ColossalBio #DisInformation; they made GMO grey wolves, not dire ones whether it was for fun, function, or fiction #ExtinctionReallyIsForever 🐺 🧫 🧬 🧪

🚨 We are hiring! 28 doctoral + 28 #postdoc positions in #climate #research, spanning natural & social #science. Be part of an international team exploring climate & society. Apply here: www.cliccs.uni-hamburg.de/career/jobs.... #phd #jobs #cliccs #hamburg @uni-hamburg.de

"After the fall of the Roman Empire, elephants virtually disappeared from Western Europe. Since there was no real knowledge of how the animal looked, illustrators had to rely on oral and written transmissions to morphologically reconstruct the elephant" www.uliwestphal.de/elephas-anth...

Most mammals do not wander: few species escape continental endemism vist.ly/47xag #Mammals #Biogeography #Diet

Having worked on invasive disease risks for biodiversity in Galapagos, this is a worrying story - growing tourism and weaknesses in regulation heighten the chance of new pathogen introductions that could threaten endemic species. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/b...

Super excited to see our reference bias work out in Cell! Reviewers gave us some excellent ideas, and Maria added on some new analyses that broke down how SNPs from heterospecific references mapped or did not map in a conspecific reference.

Genuinely curious, eDNA is not my field. Are there similar studies elsewhere showing that eDNA primers reflect survey data well? This study would seem to suggest very little correlation. Also, would anyone trust eDNA results more than survey data? E.g. fish get scared and leave when humans survey.

Pleased to announce that our #preprint on the evolutionary history of gene functions is now online at #bioRxiv! We overlayed functional annotations on the evolutionary history of ~4.5M genes from 508 species across the tree of life and found some very cool stuff! tinyurl.com/FuncEvol 🧵 1/10

Heitzmann et al. compared brain transcriptomes of four sexual genotypes of the African pygmy mouse, showing how sex and neo-sex chromosomes impacted transcriptomes to reflect their transmission mode, evolutionary trajectories, and genomic conflicts. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf208 #evobio #molbio

Some beautiful oak galls around at the moment.

The Indigenous community of San José Poaquil is using technology to monitor the health and integrity of their ancestral forest. Locals have created online maps for their forest, which have allowed them to keep track of wildfires, deforestation and other illicit activities that threaten the area.

The invasive form of Ae. #aegypti mosquito evolved within the Americas, after arriving from Africa ~320 ya. Our most recent paper is out @science.org. Years of work with collaborators all around led by J. Crawford! Great resource for the Vector Research community!. www.science.org/content/arti...

The warming climate is changing #birds.

Interested in giving a talk at the Plant and Animal Genome conference (PAG 33) in San Diego? Together with several colleagues, we are arranging 5 interconnected sessions. To submit an abstract, please fill out this Google Form before Oct 12th, 2025: forms.gle/q7j275Di6umY...

I wanted to get a video of this ghost crab but every time I got close to their hole they scuttled back in, so I tried getting clever with it. I made a little sandcastle and shoved my phone into it, hit record, and walked away. Crab was VERY suspicious of this addition to their environment.

Terrific new feature presented by @theo.io on @pathoplexus.org called SeqSets for generating DOIs for sequence subsets used in publications, that can then be tracked for impact via CrossRef that will allow data generators to track impact! #IMMEMXiV

#OTD 19 September 1991, walkers in the high Ötztal alps on the Italian border, found a body melting out of the ice. It turned out to be the remains of a c.5200 year old man preserved with all his kit. Of course, it was essential to replicate him in Playmobil. 1🧵 #PlaymobilÖtzi #PlaymobilInfestation

The Caspian Sea is shrinking at record speed – water levels falling up to 30cm a year. Simon Goodman (Univ. of Leeds) warns this is a glimpse of climate risks we all face. These changes are here, now. We need forward-looking plans to adapt, and to act without delay.

FAMM will be particularly useful for researchers seeking to use inter-disciplinary techniques to understand how #Arctic #marine #mammals will respond to the current #ClimateCrisis Open-Access Link: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... 🧵 🦴/🦴

🐋 🐻‍❄️ 🦭 MASSIVE NEW FOSSIL DATABASE 🐋 🐻‍❄️ 🦭 Our FAMM (Fossil Arctic Marine Mammal) database has now been published #OpenAccess in Global Ecology and Biogeography! Come learn about the cool stuff you can do with #Arctic #fossil material and bio-molecular archives! ☢️ ⚛️ 🧬 Link and thread below! 🧵 1/🦴

Americans used to know birds by thousands of unique local folk names. Ruddy Ducks alone were called dummy duck, dinky, dipper, dopper, dumb-bird, and god-damn. My latest piece is on the joy of folk names and losing them to the bureaucratic formalization of knowledge about birds.

Our paper Genomic diversity of the African malaria vector Anopheles funestus was published in Science today! It features inversions, selection in action, museum specimens and putative new ecotypes. doi.org/10.1126/scie...

We love jumping spiders because they are smol, cute, active, friendly and always looking around curiously with their huge eyes. But do you know they’re also masters of mimicry? Check out the bugs they pretend to be (and some of those are really good)!💚💚

#ICESASC25 attendees, a conference for your calendar next year! It's different (more diversity of topics, geographies) but super fun and engaging.

Leopard seals sing songs similar to nursery rhymes, study news.mongabay.com/2025/08/leop... 🦑🧪🌎

🚨 NEW: Climate change is already causing 30,000 deaths per year - a global annual economic loss of $100-350B USD - but the true damage is probably 10x higher. Out TODAY in Nature Climate Change: the first systematic look at the science of "health impact attribution" 🔓 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🚨 Register today and get your questions answered! 🧬 Ask the experts your questions at the Frontiers Deep Dive 🔥 What will you ask these EBP trailblazers about the Phase II Roadmap? 👉 bit.ly/46ko9cZ 🌍 Frontiers in Science Deep Dive 🗓️ 18 Sept 2025 ⏰ 16:00–17:30 CEST 👉 Register: bit.ly/4plyPzG

Some coverage in the @uk.theconversation.com of our recent work on the ecological, social and economic impacts of Caspian Sea Level declines... Given the growing geopolitical importance of the region, the ramifications are likely to extend far beyond the sea's borders 🌍🧪.

Grim news for the Caspian Sea, with rates of decline unprecedented since instrumental records. Global warming is fast shrinking this world’s largest inland sea. Natural and societal impacts will be devasting - just look to the Aral to its east... #geosky theconversation.com/climate-chan...

#Gig 9 of the year - the sublime Jolie Holland, Trades Club, Hebden Bridge, 14th Sept. 🎸

Fresh off the press! Our perspective in @natrevbiodiv.nature.com discusses the wealth of information on biodiversity contained in historical sources, and its integration for long-term ecological knowledge and biodiversity conservation. A thread on the paper and what led to it: rdcu.be/eEcIt

A well written engaging article, an end of the week reminder that humans are capable of acting for the greater good, but also of what's at stake when we don't... www.theguardian.com/news/2025/se...

How many chromosomes can an animal have? In our paper out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social we show that the Atlas blue butterfly has 229 chromosome pairs- the highest in diploid Metazoa! These arose by rapid autosome fragmentation while sex chromosomes stayed intact. www.cell.com/current-biol...

I've been managing BHL's #Bluesky account for 4 months now. It's an honour to share such beautiful & significant content, particularly at this critical time. BHL's future is uncertain, but hopeful. Follow along @biodivlibrary.bsky.social & on the #BHLblog: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/tag/transition

New preprint! 🥳🎉 We looked at viral coinfection patterns at the largest scale ever in wildlife. We found a strong association among CoVs, PMVs, and influenza A, and higher coinfection rates in wildlife trade; plus, evidence that bats accumulate persistent infections. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Earth BioGenome Project Frontiers Online Forum 🗓️ September 18, 2025 (07:00 PT | 16:00 CEST) Scaling up and charting the next steps for reference genome generation 📌 Register here: events.frontiersin.org/earth-biogen...

I am beyond excited to announce that ggplot2 4.0.0 has just landed on CRAN. It's not every day we have a new major #ggplot2 release but it is a fitting 18 year birthday present for the package. Get an overview of the release in this blog post and be on the lookout for more in-depth posts #rstats

Slo-mo waves in evening light, off the Sussex coast.

SINGER is a fantastic method for ARG Inference and based on some of the analyses I've seen definitely the best trade off between accuracy and sample size