Two funded PhD positions investigating the evolution of sarcomeres @ibdm.bsky.social in @biancah0406.bsky.social and our lab, together with @cnidevo.bsky.social - Interested to explore how similar or different Jellyfish sarcomeres are to Drosophila or human ones? www.ibdm.univ-amu.fr/ibdm_job/2-a...

How do #sponges coordinate their bodies despite lacking neurons and true muscles? We show that sponges use monoamines to control water flow in their canals — reminiscent of how adrenaline regulates blood vessels. My PhD story, now on BioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #Evolution

In @eLife: Neural connectome of the ctenophore statocyst https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.108420 Version of record of our ctenophore nerve-net connectome paper.

Registration is OPEN for the 2026 Santa Cruz Meeting on Developmental Biology!!! Please spread the word! @mads100tist.bsky.social @socdevbio.bsky.social @bsdb.bsky.social @xenbase.bsky.social @isdb.bsky.social @devbiol.bsky.social @the-node.bsky.social scdb2026.sites.ucsc.edu

Congratulations to @arnausebe.bsky.social, Premi Ciutat de Barcelona 2025 in the category of Life Sciences and Medicine. The award ceremony will take place today at the historic Saló de Cent and was presided over by the Mayor of Barcelona. Full story: www.crg.eu/en/news/arna...

Excited to announce a new preprint from my PhD student @pawley.bsky.social : "The discovery of an external bacterial niche reconciles sequencing-based microbiomes in a freshwater sponge."

The last word on Ctenophores versus Sponges (not). www.nature.com/articles/d41...

❤️‍🔥

Seeing this video of two Great Horned owls (Bubo virginianus) from Colton Lockridge you might think: "Get a room, you two." But, uh... these are juvenile siblings. 🤨 The behavior shown here is called 'billing' or 'bill fencing' & it's a playful social interaction, *no matter what it looks like*.

1/3 Jellyfish and anemones also sleep, despite not having a brain Not only do they sleep, but their behavior is affected if they lack sleep; they become clumsier and need to catch up on lost sleep. Interestingly, they sleep 8 hours a day, just like us. (paper) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A giant virus forms a specialized subcellular environment within its amoeba host for efficient translation www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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.

Our latest: Independent origins of spicules reconcile paleontological and molecular evidence of sponge evolutionary history, led by @meleonora-rossi.bsky.social with help from friends @bristolpalaeo.bsky.social including @anariesgo.bsky.social @evopalaeo.bsky.social Davide Pisani and many others

Tectura paleacea … surfgrass limpet. Only grows as wide as the seagrass blade it lives on.

Help with invert ID? Point lobos, Carmel CA. I don’t know what either the yellow or the while things are. White looks like it has two siphons, yellow has only one. Thinking the yellow might be a keyhole limpet? No idea about the white one….

It's official - my new book is officially published today! If you mentor science students who write - grad or undergrad - you're the reason we wrote this. Mentoring/teaching writing is hard; but we can make it easier!

Finally, we’ve solved a long-standing mystery: what tintinnid shells are actually made of: A new class of biomaterial formed by remarkable structural proteins unique to tintinnids. A major milestone after 3 years of work! Read about it in our preprint: doi.org/10.64898/202... #ProtistsOnSky

My review of Max Telford’s excellent new book ‘The Tree of Life’ by @maxjtelford.bsky.social published today in the Wall Street Journal @wsj.com @wwnorton.com www.wsj.com/arts-culture...

Tour de force #UExM study of #protist #cytoskeleton structures (>200 species🤯), led by @dudinlab.bsky.social, @gautamdey.bsky.social. A must for #tubulin & #centrin aficionados🤩 www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

End-of-year preprint dump! A collaboration with @messorensen.bsky.social and German and Korean colleagues: "The phylogenetic context for the origin of a unique purple-green photosymbiosis " doi.org/10.64898/202...

🚨 POSTDOC OPENING 🚨 NIH-funded Bio-Fluid Mechanics Postdoc in my lab @univmiami.bsky.social Hofstenia miamia | cilia-driven flows | behavior & neuroscience Collab w/ Mansi Srivastava @harvard.edu 🕒 Start: Jan–Feb 2026 ⏳ 1 yr, renewable | Email me ASAP! #Postdoc #Biophysics #FluidDynamics

Excited to share the final version of our study on Nematostella cell type regulatory programs. Part of our @erc.europa.eu StG project, this was a challenging 5-year effort extraodinarily led by @aelek.bsky.social and @martaig.bsky.social. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I have seen many people say that no academic needs to use LLMs for writing, because of course we are all already excellent at writing. I fear that risks exacerbating imposter syndrome in early career researchers. I therefore want to raise my hand and say while I enjoy writing, I find it hard.

Thanks @jcellsci.bsky.social for this opportunity to contribute to your centenary collection with our take on the state of the field - 10 years after its modern reincarnation 🧪🌍 W/ @alebenoit.bsky.social @eelcotromer.bsky.social @fritzlaylin.bsky.social journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

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 🧠✨🧬🌊🪼🧽

Like living in an extraordinarily beautiful place? Excited about world class aquatic research, education, and outreach? Flathead Lake Biological Station is seeking a new Director: apply.interfolio.com/178916

The new Enabling Discovery through GEnomics (EDGE) Program page is posted. Please contact us at [email protected] if you have questions. www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

Some more shenanigans on the Ctenophora Porifera debate from @rcply.bsky.social academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-...

How do microbes shape animal life? From Lyme disease control to applications of the vibrio-squid symbiosis, the Fall 2025 Microcosm uncovers the vital ties between animals, microbes and the people and environments with which they interact.🔗 asm.social/2Jc

Read @jtsangwrites.bsky.social's article about the squid-vibrio symbiosis in the latest @asm.org Microcosm magazine!

Interested in cell adhesion, evolution of multicellularity, or developing tools for emerging marine models? My lab at UM is hiring a postdoc, and the application is now open: 🔗 tinyurl.com/28jvu4aa If you know anyone looking for a postdoc, please pass this along!

Oh hey congratulations @oliverio.bsky.social @rmshepherd.bsky.social @hbrappap.bsky.social on the awesome thermophilic amoeba story!

The law of the jungle. Interactions of cells in a collective lead to global rotation. In 80% of the case HUVEC cells turn clockwise. How many cells does it take for this to happen?

SAVE THE DATE! Stoked to organize the 2026 Santa Cruz Developmental Biology Meeting with @rashmi-priya.bsky.social, @lowelab.bsky.social, and Shelbi Russell. Come learn about Biomedicine, Biomechanics, and the Biosphere, August 24-28, 2026. Registration dates, etc., coming soon! Please RT

NEW pub in @science.org 🥳 Is it sponges (panels A & B) or comb jellies (C & D) that root the animal tree of life? For over 15 years, #phylogenomic studies have been divided. We provide new evidence suggesting that... 🔗: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The evolutionary origins of synaptic proteins and their changing roles in different organisms across evolution — a Review by Jeffrey J. Colgren & Pawel Burkhardt @jeffcolgren.bsky.social @pawelburkhardt.bsky.social #neuroscience #neuroskyence www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I've written a piece about great new article by @thibautbrunet.bsky.social, Chantal Combredet & Mylan Ansel. (www.cell.com/cell-reports... ) theconversation.com/how-the-firs...

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

We have a bunch of new job ads out @arcadiascience.com. If you haven’t checked them out, take a look! www.arcadiascience.com/careers

There's a PhD position now available with me in Bath, on the evolution of symbiosis. www.findaphd.com/phds/project.... The supervisory team also includes @anja1.bsky.social @phil-donoghue.bsky.social and others. NB, this is open both to UK-based students *and* to international students :)

🚨 My lab is hiring at all levels! Interested in animal origins & evolutionary cell biology? I'm recruiting a postdoc, PhD students & a research assistant to study the molecular evolution of cell adhesion using marine invertebrates + comparative genomics. 🔗: clarkelab.com/join/ Please repost!

Our science photo book The Radiant Sea is out Sept 2nd!! 30 years of research, 10 years of "we should", and a year of collating pix and writing. Sönke and I show (mostly for the first time) images of how organisms produce, use, and interact with light in the sea. #bioluminescence #fluorescence 🦑🧪🌊

Jared Polis wants Coloradans to get sick.

Mechanosensation and fast reorientation of ciliary structures: Marvin's work on the surprising locomotion capabilities of Trichoplax, an animal without neurons! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Soooo. I have a new paper on the origin and spread of the expression "Cambrian explosion," with some fun mid-twentieth century paleo, as well as some remarks on post-Wonderful Life shenanigans. Also, Darwin, Lyell, Simpson, Preston Cloud, TC Chamberlin and more! www.extinctblog.org/palaeonews/2...

Cell adhesions (magenta) at the leading edge of a sponge epithelium at the interface with the coverslip substrate.

I'm excited to announce our new biorxiv preprint, wherein we investigate the evolution of the weirdest genetic locus I've ever seen! Behold the tgr genes of the social amoeba, which mediate self/non-self discrimination during facultative multicellularity 🐅 🧵 1/ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Extra kudos and thanks to all the staff at NIH and NSF and other federal funding agencies for working extra hard in very small windows of opportunity to get grants reviewed and funds released before the attention-addled federal policies change again (on an hourly basis).