Dear 🪰folks, for a project I am looking for D. buzzati, D. gaucha, D. recens and Z. sepsoides. Please get in touch if you have them in your lab and willing to share.

Excited to share a new paper written by a AAAS Policy Fellow I mentor, Dr. Lisa Walsh. “This review synthesizes literature on fieldwork safety across scientific disciplines, highlighting four facets of safety for leaders and researchers to address: physical, social, financial, and psychological.”

So I pleased to announce the conceptual spawn of FigTree: PearTree (acronym still to be finalised). If you want to dive right in it is hosted as a web app here: artic-network.github.io/peartree (click the “Example...” button for immediate candy and then click every button you can find).

#JMIH26 Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists 2026 Annual meeting of: Amer. Soc. of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists 🐟, Amer. Elasmobranch Soc. 🦈, Herpetologists' League 🐍 & Soc. for Study of Amphibians & Reptiles 🐸 The abstract submission and meeting website is now open jmih.net

Very sad news just in from Neil Shubin that Hans-Dieter Sues has died: suddenly in his sleep this past weekend. Hans’ knowledge of vertebrate palaeontology was exceeded only by his good humour. 😞

All BHL staff have been secured! 🧪 As we enter our next chapter, the team who steward BHL’s collections & infrastructure remain in place, led by Colleen Funkhouser in her new role of Managing Director. Meet the team guiding BHL forward: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2026/02/celebrating-bhl-team.html

A work colleague in neuro/ophthalmology was telling me about how chameleons have unique coiled optic nerves. Turns out this was learned largely from digitized specimens in oVert. I remember when oVert was a grant proposal. Such an amazing resource 💚 www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/scie...

My department at CSU Northridge is hiring a vertebrate functional morphologist! We've got a great EEB group, and we're looking for someone to carry forward a tradition of enriching organismal courses and community-engaged research. App review starts March 15 csucareers.calstate.edu/mob/cw/en-us...

Awesome! "Embryology reveals a morphological signature of ancestral diurnality maintained in a nocturnal lineage" By Griffing et al. in @journal-evo.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/evol... (Are there any similar analyses for Nocturnal Caprimulgiformes -> Diurnal Apodidae / Trochilidae ? )

To a first approximation, all Australian vertebrates are lizards. 🦎 But not just any lizards, Sphenomorphine skinks! With more than 280 species they are hyper variable. Now, Janne Torkkola has pulled together the biggest phylogeny of the group to date. Read for free: doi.org/10.1016/j.ym... 1/4

Registration is now open! Early-bird closes April 15. www.evolutionmeetings.org/registration...

Ending this operation is not enough. We need justice and accountability. That starts with independent investigations into the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, economic restitution for businesses impacted, abolishing ICE, and the impeachment of Kristi Noem.

Happy birthday to one of my favourite haters, Charles Darwin

Congratulations to joint first authors @a-weberling.bsky.social and @holyanole.bsky.social for leading this incredible work published in @devdynamics.bsky.social! Read the full press release: www.wrh.ox.ac.uk/news/new-stu... #EvoDevo #DevBio

Check out our paper on the neo-sex chromosomes in mountain pine beetle! We assembled THREE neo-Ys that are quite distinct and their corresponding neo-Xs .

One reason Minneapolis remains in the world's eye is we have one of the most robust & independent media ecosystems remaining in the country. You all need this...and more! @mprnews.org @startribune.com @sahanjournal.bsky.social @minnesotareformer.com @minnpost.bsky.social @racketmn.com etc.

Highlighting the speaker who stood in front of the Surprise mayor and told him to consider what the Mayor of Ohrdruf must’ve thought before he died by suicide: “He might have thought ‘how is this my fault I had no jurisdiction over this’ maybe he said ‘this site was not subject to local zoning.’”

Slim 5 can now simulate genomes with multiple chromosomes like autosomes, sex chromosomes, mitochondria and chloroplast dna academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...

New preprint!! 🚨 Did you know that many vertebrate species determine sex based on environmental conditions rather than chromosomes? Some turtles, like Trachemys scripta, rely on temperature. We learned more about how this happen molecularly.👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Tom Morello leads the crowd in ‘Killing in the Name’ at First Ave 🎸🎶 🎥: @chrisrstrib.bsky.social

Want to do a postdoc at Friday Harbor Labs? We have two positions open. Apply by March 1st. I am happy to discuss potential projects with fish people. apply.interfolio.com/180092 🧪

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Stay free

"ICE OUT" on Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis, as seen from my flight leaving MSP airport

For those asking where we go from here: Not voting to fund ICE is a great place for us to start.

ICE and DHS are out of control and making our communities less safe. I will not support funding for DHS without clear accountability and stronger controls over the agency. It is time for the Senate to do its job and rein in this lawlessness.

It was cold, but we Minnesotans are strong. We are fighting hard things - against cruelty and lack of humanity. And we get stronger together as we fight for each other.

It’s -9 degrees. Downtown Minneapolis is packed for the anti-ICE rally and the crowd keeps growing

National media should really be covering the fact thay every major school, museum, and arts institution in the Twin Cities, and hundreds of local businesses are closed tomorrow to protest federal occupation. Nothing like this at this scale has happened anywhere in America anytime in living memory.

🚨Hiring a postdoc! Are you interested in #evolutionarygenomics, #sexchromosomes, #transposableelements & #Sexspecific #recombination in 🐸🧬? Join my lab @vubrussel.bsky.social 🔹 @fwovlaanderen.bsky.social funded up to 3y 🔹 Deadline 10/3/2026 🔹 Start ~1/6/2026 Apply 👉: jobs.vub.be/job/Elsene-P...

New publication from my lab, led by @njorisfleck.bsky.social! 🧪 We explore the diversity and origins of a genus of tiny frogs 🐸 on an isolated mountain in north Madagascar. A cool case study of both in-situ diversification and repeated colonisation! vertebrate-zoology.arphahub.com/article/1664...

Hello, Chicago! I'll be giving a public talk on Wednesday about reporting on science in these rocky times. events.uchicago.edu/event/259056...

We have the CDC-funded Hepatitis Vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau protocol. It’s worse than you thought. Check it out, first in Inside Medicine… with @pauloffit.bsky.social David Boulware and others. insidemedicine.substack.com/p/scoop-the-...

This year, why not publish your research with a Society Journal? The Linnean Society is committed to publishing high-quality and groundbreaking scientific research across the four themes of botany, zoology, biology and evolution, striving to make these accessible & engaging to a global audience.

Hey, @amyklobuchar.com and @smith.senate.gov: I'm not a senator, but if ICE thugs were rampaging through the major city in my state, I might try to impede Senate business as usual and try to bring everything to a halt until I could get answers or force some votes. open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...

New work from @miyapan.bsky.social and our team, bringing ant, bee, and wasp labs together. @chuanxinyu.bsky.social shows that the ANTSR locus we discovered in ants has determined sex for 150+ My across bees and stinging wasps 🐜🐝, despite virtually no sequence conservation 😮 doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

The killings will continue until morale improves

Hey folks of Minneapolis!! If you need a tow truck, don’t use Cedar Towing & Auction !!!! One of their tow truck drivers attempted to drive his truck through the protest of people today while proudly wearing his MAGA hat

I'm gearing up to teach a non-majors "Evolution and Society" class for the first time. One unit will be on debunking myths and misconceptions about evolution. Which ones do I absolutely have to include?

Nice video explainer to go along with this cool article about spectral tuning of motion vision in butterflies in relation to wing color: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...

I am excited to share my new book, California Amphibians and How To Find Them, hot off the press from Heyday Books and ready to help guide your wet winter frog and salamander adventures! It is available now from my website or Feb 3 at bookstores. www.centralcoastsnakeservices.com/shop.html

Soul Asylum played a great show at @firstave.bsky.social last night. They performed a number of older songs that I’ve not seen them play for a while. #MinnesotaMusic 🎶

‘tis the season to celebrate the many animal species that reproduce via parthenogenesis - or reproduction from an unfertilized egg. Pictured here are 3 species of all-female, parthenogenetic gecko: Mourning Gecko; Bynoe's gecko; & Indopacific slender gecko #MerryChristmas #Herpetology 🎄🧪🦎

Me: Who the heck submits a ton of jobs to the High Performance Computing Cluster, completely clogging the queue, just before a holiday? Also me: frantically submitting jobs to the High Performance Computing Cluster, completely clogging the queue, just before a holiday.

The Chicago Botanic Garden’s Lightscape exhibit was eerily quiet tonight due to extreme cold.

They want banks to be able to go back to openly discriminating against women and POC. They want women to need to have a man to cosign a credit card or a bank loan like before this rule was passed.

Post a photo of an animal that looks Gen-AI but is 100% real. Aeluroscalabotes felinus, Malaysia

What’s your “how can one album have so many bangers” album

Adding a new line to my cv

We are thrilled to announce the first official release (v0.1.8) of #𝗯𝗲𝗱𝗱𝗲𝗿, the successor to one of our flagship tool, #𝗯𝗲𝗱𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗹𝘀! Based on ideas we conceived of long ago (!), this was achieved thanks to the dedication of Brent Pedersen. 1/n

Snowy morning! ❄️