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.”

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...