Well this can’t be good… 🧪

Wait, there are reptile parties???

Do you know an outstanding aquarist? We're hiring a Senior Aquarist to help run our cephalopod facility at Columbia University. Our team maintains a colony of 250+ cuttlefish, develops new husbandry techniques (inc transgenics) & studies cuttlefish camouflage and social behavior. 1/3 [Pls repost!]

The concise history of modeling character evolution. Handy timeline. academic.oup.com/sysbio/advan... 🧪 #EvoBio #Paleobio

A big preprint from my group! Muller Elements are considered to be conserved in flies. We tested it by reconstructing the ancestral dipteran karyotype using 340 chromosomal genomes and suprise suprise, they're not... Led by @juliagries.bsky.social and Sam Ebdon. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵👇

There is a straightforward mechanism for the public to comment. Former NIH program office Elizabeth Ginexi has written an exceptionally helpful guide on how to so, with detailed suggestions. 3/n elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/what-we-ne...

CT technician position available at the U-M Museum of Zoology/Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology: careers.umich.edu/job_detail/2...

Calling all Scientists! Research Administrators! Deans! Fans of Science! No one is coming to save us. Here is your assignment. I have written a step by step, easy to understand "how-to" document to help you comment on the proposed OMB rule. elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/what-we-ne...

“We demonstrate perfect concordance with minimap2, enabling its backwards compatibility as a drop-in replacement for minimap2-based workflows.” ‼️

If you are around Chicago on June 16th, come have a beer and learn about the evolution and development of sexual diversity.

Chromosomal rearrangements: tempo and mode of karyotype evolution in Scarabaeoidea @seanchien.bsky.social & Heath Blackmon @tamu.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

Colbert guest hosted a public access TV show in Monroe, Michigan a day after the Late Show ended. Guest star: Jeff Daniels Special appearance by: Eminem Musical director: Jack White Genius. youtu.be/jJTXB5uT_C4?...

🚨NEW STUDY DROP🚨 New species of giant mosasaur, Tylosaurus rex, based on over 12 specimens previously referred to other species of Tylosaurus. Culmination of the PhD research of lead author @tyrantlzrdqueen.bsky.social the paper is extremely thorough! 🎨: AlderonGames + @formorphology.bsky.social

We get a new mosasaur today! T. rex! As in, Tylosaurus rex. Congrats to @tyrantlzrdqueen.bsky.social and colleagues on the publication. digitallibrary.amnh.org/items/dbbf9d...

Subterranean allopatric speciation... news.yale.edu/2026/05/21/u...

New paper with the brilliant @ewanflintham.bsky.social How fast does recombination suppression evolve among sex chromosomes? We show that even weak sexual antagonism (so hard to detect) makes this fast, often via inversions fixing on X/Z depending on mating system: doi.org/10.1093/evle...

New evo-devo textbook 'Eco-Evo-Devo: The Environmental Regulation of Development, Evolution, and Health' 📗In this post on the Node, Scott F. Gilbert announces a new eco-evo-devo textbook. ⬇️ thenode.biologists.com/new-evo-devo... #DevBio

Do you know any students who are planning to apply to graduate school this cycle? Encourage them to apply to the Biology Preview Program! We provide intensive workshops to help students w/ their applications + 1:1 mentorship.

Did you know that Development publishes Research Reports? These short articles emphasise an important finding, laying the groundwork for future research. Browse a selection of our latest, free-to-read Research Report highlights in our subject collection journals.biologists.com/dev/collecti...

Free and open-source images, icons, and tools for creating scientific illustrations doi.org/10.59350/5zt... 🧪

New Phyllodactylus phylogeny with @tonygamble.bsky.social et al is finally out! So excited to see this cross the finish line after many many years 🦎

@drpintothe2nd.bsky.social et al. present SCINKD as a framework to identify unannotated sex chromosomes and curate diploid genome assemblies from a single individual. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msag067 #evobio #molbio #compbio

Happy to announce two-fold news! 1) The SCINKD paper is now published in @molbioevol.bsky.social - doi.org/10.1093/molb... 2) SCINKD [v2.2.4] release has reduced runtimes (about 2x) and the revitalized mode for genomes >5Gb is now live and tested on genomes up to 21Gb! 🐸 github.com/DrPintoThe2n...

More details on the firing of the National Science Board. The NSF now has no director, deputy director, or board. They have issued almost no new awards in 2026. The plan appears to be to completely destroyed the agency. The details are horrifying and have Russ Vought written all over them.

Reptile eggs come in all shapes and sizes. Here are two bird extremes in the @griffinlabpaleo.bsky.social right now: bobwhite quail and ostrich eggs. Most gecko species also make hard-shelled eggs and are tiny by comparison, like these Hemidactylus and Sphaerodactylus eggs. #BirdEvoDevo#GeckoEvoDevo

A reminder that scientists and educators play an important role in defending the human rights of trans, nonbinary, & intersex folks, particularly when repression is rationalized in the name of "science" doi.org/10.1002/sce....

U.S. President Donald Trump has fired all 24 members of the National Science Board, the body that oversees the National Science Foundation. https://scim.ag/4cxQWhl

Ver excited to share my just-published Darwin Review with @lh3lh3.bsky.social on population-scale long-read sequencing! royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

SSAR Live & Silent Auctions at JMIH 2026 (New Orleans, July 8–12). Accepting herp-related art, books, gifts, etc. No live animals or herp products. Donations support student travel. Bring items or ship to local host. Questions: [email protected] or [email protected].

Behrens et al. investigate the evolution of sex chromosomes in the ancestors of the lacustrine radiations of East African cichlids, showing slower sex chromosome turnover than in the rapidly diversifying haplochromines. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf191 #genome #evolution #cichlids

I’m holding the Senate floor tonight in protest of legislation that would allow a copper-nickel sulfide mine on the doorstep of the Boundary Waters. Not this mine. Not this place.

Postdoc @aaronhgriffing.bsky.social showing off some cool new methods and data at the NYC Miltenyi lightsheet microscope users symposium

1/ BRAKER4 hatched! The Earth BioGenome Project is on track to sequence ~1.5M eukaryotic species. Every one needs a structural annotation. No Perl monolith was going to survive that. So we rewrote BRAKER from the ground up. github.com/Gaius-August...

Female mice grow testes after this single DNA tweak www.nature.com/articles/d41...

My PhD student will be finishing soon and is looking for a postdoc position to start in the fall semester. If you have a postdoc ad or opening and are looking for someone experienced especially in population/evolutionary genomics with a knack for coding and bioinformatics, let me know.

Recording engineer Don Landee passed away earlier this week. He recorded albums by The Doors, Van Morrison, Doobie Brothers, Carly Simon, Montrose, and Van Halen. A huge loss for the music world. www.vhnd.com/2026/04/05/d...

PREPRINT ALERT !!! Excited to share our #reptile #embryo cryopreservation method optimised on peri-gastrulation veiled chameleon embryos! This lays the foundation for functional studies & reptile #conservation efforts! #devbio #squamates #evodevo www.biorxiv.org/content/bior...

Oh no. NSF Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program shuttered. This one leaves me winded. A good story from 2025 by @seattletimes-rss.bsky.social offers insight into what we are losing: www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

Happy to announce the alpha release of the SCINKD3! SCINKD3 is an extension of SCINKD streamlines the use of WGS data from multiple individuals to identify sex chromosomes. In testing, its shown to be robust in many cases with as few as 4 individuals. github.com/DrPintoThe2n...

🐍 Seasonal Herpetological Technician – Join Illinois Natural History Survey! Assist with reptile and amphibian surveys throughout northern Illinois! Apps due Apr. 10, 2026 👉 Apply now: https://loom.ly/nyKlxKU

I am often asked what laws I would recommend blue states adopt. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach, there are seven changes every state could adopt right now, for virtually no cost or administrative burden. www.democracydocket.com/opinion/seve...

There are several gecko species native to Crete and they have different sex-determining systems. The Common Wall Gecko (Tarentola mauritanica) has TSD. The Mediterranean House Gecko (Hemidactylus turcicus) has XX/XY sex chromosomes. We found both at the conference hotel! 🧪🦎 @biol-vsd.bsky.social

Presenting our latest turtle sex determination preprint at the @biol-vsd.bsky.social meeting in beautiful Crete 😊. Check it out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🏝️ In Crete island, enjoying the iconic Vertebrate Sex Determination Synposium @biol-vsd.bsky.social Thanks to the organizers for the invitation and especially to @nitzan-gonen.bsky.social & Humphrey Yao for making this meeting a reality

🚨 IT'S DAY 2 of VSD26 After a successful start, we are continuing today with our second plenary speaker. Susana M. Chuva de Sousa Lopes is presenting her amazing work on sex-specific features and reaggregation of human fetal gonads. 🧬 Enjoy day 2 ! ✨ #VSD26 #crete #day2

New paper in @journalofanatomy.bsky.social with PAD Wise and AP Russell! We show that using morphological criteria to assign developmental stage provides more ossification sequence resolution than embryo size or developmental time (days). onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.... #GeckoEvoDevo

Celebrating Dr. Jay Savage onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/KRZNRF... 🐸🐍🐢🦎🇨🇷

I’m so excited to announce our new paper in @journal-evo.bsky.social showing how embryology can help us determine ancestral character states in temporal niche academic.oup.com/evolut/advan... Collab w/ A Bauer, A Wegerski, @tonygamble.bsky.social, & A Rasys #GeckoEvoDevo #Aristelliger 1/x

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.”