New paper in Paleobiology! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

My daughter’s cat hates our other cat, and will sometimes sit watching him sleep from behind my office door

Reflections on the evolving practice of systematic biology, a joy to write with Michael Donoghue for the upcoming 75th volume of Systematic Biology! academic.oup.com/sysbio/advan...

No molecular evidence for Muller's ratchet in mitochondrial genomes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.16.694700v1

Very excited for this incredible lineup of talks at #SSB2026! ssb2026.github.io/talks.html For those giving talks, more instructions will be sent shortly. @systbiol.bsky.social

Improved Phylogenetic Posterior Estimation through Regularised Conditional Clade Distributions https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.16.694737v1

Have you ever wondered: just how strong *is* the evidence for Muller's ratchet on mtDNA? Well, wonder no more! (Project led by Yu Mo, with @smishra677.bsky.social and @yadirapga.bsky.social) "No molecular evidence for Muller's ratchet in mitochondrial genomes" www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Does anyone know any current or former recipients of an SNF mobility grant based in Germany? I'd be grateful for any leads!

New post by me on #MITPressReader @mitpress.bsky.social On the 100th anniversary of the #ScopesMonkeyTrial the ways we depict #evolution can still give an erroneous progressive view (that evolution leads to humans or ‘increased complexity’). thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/is-our-pictu...

A quick reminder for everyone registered for SSB2026: please take a moment to complete the survey to submit lightning talks, sign up for workshops, and indicate your interest in other meeting activities. If you haven’t filled it out yet, today’s the day! We're excited to see you all in January!

Deadline soon (end of Nov) for this PhD position in evolutionary genomics/bioinformatics in my group.

The last five months with Claude Code have completely changed how we work. matsen.group/agentic.html details: • How agents work (& why it matters) • Git Flow with agents • Using agents for science • The human-agent interface Questions? What has your experience been?

Check out this new paper in Systematic Biology! Aside from the author list including leaders in the field who happen to be some of my favorite scientists, this paper discusses * both * phylogeny inference incorporating continuous characters AND dicynodont evolution. How cool is that? 🧪

Interested in using continuous traits for phylogenetic estimation? We took a hard look at this in a well-studied clade. There’s a lot of promise to these data, but still much work to do to be able to make full use of them doi.org/10.1093/sysb...

By shifting water to a higher elevation, the giant Three Gorges Dam caused the Earth to spin more slowly. www.wired.com/story/can-a-...

Congratulations to Joe Felsenstein on being awarded the 2026 Mendel Medal!

If you're a #teacher interested in a great #openaccess write up on reading #phylogenetic trees, check out www.digitalatlasofancientlife.org/learn/system... created by @jonhendricks.bsky.social and Elizabeth Hermsen.

PhD position available in evolutionary genomics/bioinformatics (hoehnalab.github.io/job_adverts/...). Topic: analyzing gene expression evolution across several firefly species and linking expression changes to genomic architecture. The position is jointly supervised with @anaevolcatalan.bsky.social

Glad to have this one out! As some of you might remember, I'd kicked around the idea for some time, but the inestimable @wrightam.bsky.social got it all pulled together properly. It's a first step - we still need to include likelihoods of stasis between first & … www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Nice, intelligent review of my book "The Tree of Life" in Nature Ecology and Evolution by @bethanyjallen.bsky.social. www.nature.com/articles/s41... www.amazon.co.uk/Tree-Life-So... Out in USA next Tuesday! www.amazon.com/Tree-Life-So...

🚨New paper out in Palaeontology! Check it out if you're interested morphological evolution, fossil phylogenetics, and macroevolution 🧪 "Assessing the impact of character evolution models on phylogenetic and macroevolutionary inferences from fossil data"

The dark truth behind FormatMyPaper.com

We call this hypotheses the 'Zarathustran hypothesis', following Nietzsche’s idea that the maintenance of life does not merely follow from conservation, but rather from constant renovation, movement, and expansion. 3/3

I’m really happy to see Kat’s first dissertation chapter published! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Excited to share our new paper where we find that the rise, decline and fall of clades is not explained by the usual suspects (diversity-dependence, ecological opportunities) but rather by species' insidious loss of macroevolutionary fitness: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/3

Out now in Biology Letters, my latest paper tackles an apparently simple question: how many characters are needed to reconstruct a phylogeny? TL;DR: in most cases between 100 and 500, more than a substantial portion of morphological datasets, but the story is more complex... doi.org/10.1098/rsbl...

Our paper on perceptions of punctuated equilibrium - including suggestions for how to teach about this essential evolutionary concept - is now available online! doi.org/10.1017/pab....

We hope that our contribution will not only be a useful reference for all researchers wanting to perform a tip-dating analysis on their favorite group of organisms, but also a starting point of discussion to further improve this class of methods and its application to empirical data!

Non-exhaustive list of things you can find in our paper: - A survey of all fossil tip-dating studies published until 2023 - A flowchart with all the steps to set up a tip-dating analysis - Detailed discussion of all the elements making up a tip-dating analysis, from molecular alignment to FBD models

Ever wondered how to incorporate fossils as tips in a phylogenetic tree? Our new paper provides a comprehensive guide! #EarlyFossilFriday #FossilFriday #TipDating #Phylogeny #EvolutionaryBiology

Practical Guide and Review of Fossil Tip-Dating in Phylogenetics https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40990492/

Incredibly proud and also very emotional to see this new paper published in @systbiol.bsky.social. The study was lead by Pierre Cockx, who sadly passed away in July. academic.oup.com/sysbio/advan...

New from #BiologyLetters: Combining fossil taxa with and without morphological data improves dated phylogenetic analyses buff.ly/abJm5Zv | #Evolution #Palaeontology #Taxonomy

I am recruiting a PhD student this application cycle to explore questions on the evolution of morphological variation and phylogenetics. I'm especially seeking folks interested in fossil marine inverts. Please reach out to me if interested! Portal opens Nov. 1 eeb.utoronto.ca/education/gr...

Excited to share a new paper! "Sorting of ancestral polymorphism and its impact on morphological phylogenetics and macroevolution". Part of some work I've been doing on modelling the evolution of polymorphic traits in fossil echinoderms. academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

"Living organisms are assumed to produce same-species offspring. Here, we report a shift from this norm..." Haldane was right. Nature is awesome in its capacity to get weird! 🧪

The Occurrence Birth-Death Diffusion Process: Unraveling Diversification Histories with Fossils and Heterogeneous Rates https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.26.672414v1

Impact of Partition Models on Phylogenetic Inference and Divergence Times of Lampyridae from Mitochondrial Genomes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.19.671050v1

Don’t threaten me with a good time!

Final words of the last #ESEB2025 plenary by @jmappes.bsky.social: "Science moves forward when we keep both our curiosity and our humility"

Know anyone looking for a funded MS thesis project focused on native fish conservation? Send them this ad. NDOW and U. of Nevada-Reno are going to be learning more about this newly described species. (Note that the application deadline is quickly approaching.)

Unfortunately, I couldn't join in person #eseb2025, but the organizers kindly accommodated a video. Posted here in case you missed it! youtu.be/n9Ls9-8p8x0?...

Extremely proud to be part of this project integrating stratigraphic paleobiology with phylogenetics. Go and chat to Nik if you’re at #ESEB25 or check out his poster via the link below!

hi friends, let me know if you'd like a zoom link for my defense next week!

Registration is now open for #SSB2026! I'm so excited to see many of you here in Baton Rouge in January! We're going to hear great talks, discuss the immeasurable value of natural history collections, and continue to strengthen our scientific community. ssb2026.github.io @systbiol.bsky.social

Our paper describing our new improved GFmix models for phylogenetic inference that capture site-and-branch heterogeneity in amino acid composition. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Phylogenetic networks empower biodiversity research | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Registration for the SSB breakout meeting in Baton Rouge, LA in Jan. 2026 will be opening soon! Registrants need to be SSB members, so make sure to check on your membership today and join/renew if needed: www.systbio.org Check here regularly for updates: ssb2026.github.io @systbiol.bsky.social

Check out our new paper! We find cavefish colonized caves 3x and global cooling events may have influenced these events. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...