In case you are interested in #skyislands, #frogs, #lizards, #snakes, #evolution, #mountains, and #westernghats, the talk I gave at explore2025 event organised by @rgsibg.bsky.social is available to watch. Thanks @rgsibg.bsky.social for the opportunity. www.rgs.org/events/talks...

It's snow time! ❄️ 🦮

A bit of rain and a big Fire salamander (Salamandra s. bernardezi) on the uni stairs is a good way to start the week.

Large-eyed animals like owls 🦉 have a trade-off between large eyes & short optic nerves, which lowers eye mobility (to compensate they evolved swivelly necks) But chameleons 🦎 have long, coiled optic nerves with extra slack for eye mobility, allowing them to use their famous large swivelly eyes 👀🧪🌏

Super-proud of former MPhil student Emily Hillan for publishing her dissertation on the evolution of rib skeleton regionalisation in the evolution of snake-like body forms in squamates! royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

New species 🚨, we describe two new species of #agamid #lizards from Northeast #India! Both species have restricted distribution in northeast India. It took us a few years to verify their identity, they are morphologically cryptic but are deeply divergent mitochondrial lineages. #newspecies

Hi Folks ! Just a few more days to register for the POPGROUP meeting (deadline = this Monday 10/11/2025). Join us in the beautiful city of #Lille just across the Channel for three exciting days of science and more ! www.hautsdefrancetourism.com/destinations... --> populationgeneticsgroup.org.uk

Awesome work by @deepakveerappan.bsky.social on this paper. Here we explore "Island-hopping anurans: diversification dynamics in a widespread frog family". The article is Open Access so go and check it out!

Hot off the press. Our study on the #biogeography of Ceratobatrachid #frogs is now out in @ZoolJLinnSoc.bsky.social I had a chance to present this work at the World Congress of #herpetology last year. I tried to compile the highlights from this study. Read the open access paper for more details

We’re excited for the first full day of the #RGSExploreWeekend2025 at the Society tomorrow! Learn from leading professionals and meet like-minded people united by a passion for discovery and making a difference 👣 It's not too late to join us there 👉https://www.rgs.org/explore#RGSExploreWeekend2025

Now that I have hit 2k followers, here is a California whipsnake (Masticophis lateralis) 🐍 for your #bluesky feed. We saw it in #California this summer while hiking through the #pinnaclesnationalpark. No condors but can't complain 😉 #herping #snakes

Join me at #RGSExploreWeekend2025 on 31 Oct – 2 Nov, where yours truly will be talking about "Sky Islands as Natural Laboratories: field notes from Western Ghats" 🐸🦎🐍⛰️. Tickets can be booked via the RGS website 👉 www.rgs.org/explore

Next illustration of the series: lab animals #art #digitalart #illustration

major traffic incident

And my herp pin collection grows 😀

I finally had a chance to go through the photos from our trip to the US last month. Here are the snakes that we came across. They were all taken in situ; note there are some images of roadkill animals in this series.

#worldsnakeday A beautiful copperhead from Eastern US.

#newspecies🚨 🦎 from the #easternghats of #India

Today we celebrate the incredible biodiversity of our planet – and the power of #OpenAccess to protect it. The Biodiversity Heritage Library makes over 62 million pages of biodiversity knowledge freely available to all. 🔗 biodiversitylibrary.org #EarthDay #EarthDay2025 #Biodiversity #BHLib

Here's where things #spawnwatch were at today. Rapidly maturing #tadpoles, packed in the shallows. This is good to see and would be a commoner sight if more people let gardens go wild and built more ponds. #frogs #ponds

It was a great day to go see adders in the North Pennines. We also saw slow worms, common 🦎, many raptors, rabbits, lapwings and the famous grouse! #spring #vipers #ukwildlife

🧵 1/ New study on squamate color evolution hits the press: we show that brightness variation in lizards & snakes is strongly linked to habitat openness 🌞 This reveals how ecological pressures drive color evolution in one of the most diverse groups of tetrapods www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New paper in @nature.com led by @patricepottier.bsky.social! We demonstrated global vulnerability of amphibians to warming, threatening 10% of >5,000 species examined. How did we do it? See thread🧵 Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Come work with us on squamate brain evolution! 🐍🧠🦎 @draliceclement.bsky.social @michael-s-y-lee.bsky.social

Here, she is on her way to a marathon

A little 🐢 named after yours truly is roaming the Spanish countryside 😃

Slide from a forthcoming talk on 🐍🐍

In a sentence never before uttered by humans, I am delighted to share that an alligator stole my conservation instructor’s hat by jauntily walking into the water while wearing it 🐊

Year of the 🐍 Here is a beautiful red-headed krait (Bungarus flaviceps) which we saw in #Borneo last year. Only managed to click the tail. Look it up online it is a pretty snake

We spotted a 🌚🦭 in our neighborhood 😀 #tyneRiver

The Royal Society's Newton International Fellowships will open for applications next week on 21 January. These fellowships are for non-UK early career scientists who wish to conduct research in the UK. Find out more on our website: #RSGrants royalsociety.org/grants/newto...

🐍 Do you talk about reptiles with strangers🦎 🧬 Do you lay awake thinking about N50 scores? Close your eyes and see Manhattan plots?🧬 Well, have I got the answer for you. Come check out the Open Consortium for Squamate Genomics (OCSG - that’s a mouthful). Sign up here: forms.gle/TTmTwAMUqzWJ...

"Fieldwork-based research and education in ecology are under multiple threats and are progressively declining." This issue is linked to the erosion of natural history training in general.

⚫️ 🐑 🐏 somewhere between Edinburgh and Abington

Non-native English speakers need 50% more time to write a paper When they do, they face a 2.5 times higher chance of being rejected because of language journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Wordle 1,291 4/6 ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜ ⬜🟨⬜🟨🟨 🟨🟩🟨⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

National Museum of Scotland has some nice public displays except for some of the random plastic models. The rattle snake next to Matta Matta turtle is not to scale.

New, detailed description of hindlimb musculoskeletal anatomy in the Komodo dragon-- includes abundant muscle fibre data: www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/15...

Conservationists and nature defenders who died in 2024 https://buff.ly/40cA5L1

Yours truly has contributed to the description of 9 #newspecies of #reptiles this year. 6 from northeast #India, 2 from the Western #Ghats & 1 from #Myanmar. All this work was possible through multiple small grants, which allowed us to document #biodiversity in these #Hotspots for the past decade 🦎🐍

Last #frogfriday of the year! Here is one of my favorite clicks of two horned frogs #Megophrys 🐸 from #Borneo

Leopard gecko

Giving way to a splendid ✨️ 🐈‍⬛️

#FrogFriday 🐸: #Frog Vase Nazca, Peru 100 BCE - 600 CE terracotta, paint 12.4 cm x 8.5 cm x 15 cm Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels AAM00046.7.188 #PeruvianArt #IndigenousArt www.carmentis.be/eMP/eMuseumP...

Anolis charlesmyersi is so beautiful!! This species is classified as Least Concern by the IUCN, however its last formal evaluation was in 2012 so it's probably due for re-evaluation.

Working with collaborators in the Global South it upsets me how many pay expensive software license fees, or use insecure pirated versions, when free open-source alternatives are available. Below is a list of easy swaps. Please add to it and share! 👇

We need to all collectively decide to stop propping up these journals (MDPI and “Frontiers In” megajournals) by lending them our credibility. Every time you submit to, review for, guest edit, or even cite (??) these journals, you lend them your hard earned credibility. Don’t do it.

A beautiful slug #snake (Asthenodipsas) we came across in peninsular earlier this year #Malaysia 🐌🐍

#crystalpalace giants are 😎