Working on a murder mystery game for the upcoming 8th grade hangout

Unpopular opinion: rice does not belong in a burrito. The tortilla is already your grain. There’s a reason nobody eats potato sandwiches — carbs within carbs becomes tedious.

FABULOUS 😍

My new favorite Bsky account

Biolojical is on Bluesky! Share some emoji-based science! @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social @whysharksmatter.bsky.social @sarahmackattack.bsky.social @edyong209.bsky.social @carlbergstrom.com @jopabinia.bsky.social @carlzimmer.com @tetzoo.bsky.social

Biolojical is now on BlueSky! (not promising anything new, but moved some of my favorite posts over from the other site)

Species: 🦁 Genus: 🦁🐯 Family: 🦁🐯🐱 Order: 🦁🐯🐱🐻 Class: 🦁🐯🐱🐻🐨 Phylum: 🦁🐯🐱🐻🐨🐸 Kingdom: 🦁🐯🐱🐻🐨🐸🦑 Domain: 🦁🐯🐱🐻🐨🐸🦑 🍅🍆🌶️🍠🍑🍌🌲 Kingdom: 🍅🍆🌶️🍠🍑🍌🌲 Phylum: 🍅🍆🌶️🍠🍑🍌 Class: 🍅🍆🌶️🍠🍑 Order: 🍅🍆🌶️🍠 Family: 🍅🍆🌶️ Genus: 🍅🍆 Species: 🍅

°Latitude: 90❄️ 80🐺 70🐺🐻 60🐺🐻🐍🐿 50🐺🐻🐍🐿 40🐺🐻🐍🐿🐵🐯 30🐺🐻🐍🐿🐵🐯🦜🐘🐊🐪🦚🐼 20🐺🐍🐿🐵🐯🦜🐘🐊🐪🦚 10🐺🐍🦛🐵🐯🦜🐘🐊🐪🦚🦓 0🐧🦙🐍🦛🐵🐯🦜🐘🐊🐪🦓🦍 10🐧🦙🐍🦛🐵🐯🦜🐘🐊🦓 20🐧🦙🐍🦛🐵🦘🦜🐘🐊🦓🐨 30🐧🦙🐍🦛🐵🦘🦜🐘🐊🦓🐨 40🐧🦙🐍🦘🦜 50🐧🦙🦜 60🐧 70🐧 80🐧 90❄️

Who shares a common ancestor with you __ million years ago? 2⁰👩🏽 2¹👩🏽 2²👩🏽 2³👩🏽🦍 2⁴👩🏽🦍 2⁵👩🏽🦍🐒 2⁶👩🏽🦍🐒 2⁷👩🏽🦍🐒🐮🦊 2⁸👩🏽🦍🐒🐮🦊🐨🦘 2⁹👩🏽🦍🐒🐮🦊🐨🦘🦆🐠 2¹⁰👩🏽🦍🐒🐮🦊🐨🦘🦆🐠🐙🦋 2¹¹👩🏽🦍🐒🐮🦊🐨🦘🦆🐠🐙🦋🍄🌳 2¹²🌎

"The great Tree of Life… with its ever-branching and beautiful ramifications" -C Darwin   ┌🐯🐼🐺🐷🐳🦓   ┌| ┌| └🐒🦍🧒🐰🐿️🐹 | | ┌| └🐊🦖🐧🦅🐍🐢 | | | └🕷️🦀🦗🐞🦋🐝 | | ┌🌷🌾🌽🍍🍌🥥 | | └| ┌🌵🥝🥕🌻🌶️🥔 | | └| ┌🍀🥜🌹🍑🍎🍉   └|   └🍁🍊🍋🥦🍫🌺

Calendar of evolution: Jan 1☣1st life Nov 2🐚1st animals Nov 20🐛1st land animals Nov 23🦈1st sharks Nov 26🐸1st tetrapods Dec 3🌲1st seed plants Dec 9🌋💀 Dec 10🦕1st dinos Dec 11🐭1st mammals Dec 19🌼1st flowers Dec 20🐦1st birds Dec 25🦖1st T rex Dec 26☄💀 Dec 31👋1st humans

The 5 evolutionary mechanisms: Mutation 🐺🐺🐺🐺→☢️🐺→🐺🐺🐺🐕 Selection 🐺🐺🐺🐕→🧔🏿♥️🐕→🐕🐕🐕🐕 Gene flow 🐕🐕🐕🐕→🛶🐩→🐕🐩🐕🐕 Drift 🐕🐩🐕🐕→🌪️→🐩🐩🐕🐕 Non-random mating 🐩×🐕,🚫🐕×🐕→🐩🐩🐩🐩

The Scientific Method: Question  📱=❓ Hypothesis  📱=⛵️ Experiment  📱+🌊 Result  📵 Conclusion  📱≠⛵️

What evolution means for you➡️ 1. We’re all one big family⁠—share the❤️:  🌻🌳🦑🦗🐢🐘 2. A continuous🌈of variation is natural in a species:  🧑🏼—🧑🏿  ♂️—♀️  👬—👫  …& everything in between… 3. You weren’t created to fill a role, but🆓to be anything:  👷🏽‍♀️👨‍⚕️👨🏻‍🎤👩🏼‍🎓👨🏾‍🚀👩🏿‍🏭

If🕺came from🐒why do we still have🐒? If🇺🇸came from🇬🇧why do we still have🇬🇧? If🏈came from⚽️why do we still have⚽️? If🚤came from⛵️why do we still have⛵️? If✝️came from✡️why do we still have✡️? If💡came from🕯️why do we still have🕯️? If🥨came from🍞why do we still have🍞?

Precambrian: 🦠 🦠 🦠 🦠 Paleozoic: 🦠🐚 🦠🐚🌱 🦠🐚🌱🦂 🦠🐚🌱🦂🦈 Mesozoic: 🦠🐚🌱🦂🦈🐊 🦠🐚🌱🦂🦈🐊🐭 🦠🐚🌱🦂🦈🐊🐭🌼 🦠🐚🌱🦂🦈🐊🐭🌼🦆 Cenozoic: 🦠🐚🌱🦂🦈🐊🐭🌼🦆🍒 🦠🐚🌱🦂🦈🐊🐭🌼🦆🍒🐋 🦠🐚🌱🦂🦈🐊🐭🌼🦆🍒🐋🐎 🦠🐚🌱🦂🦈🐊🐭🌼🦆🍒🐋🐎👶🏾

DNA translation: dogcabcandewegg → 🐕🚕🥫💧🥚 Missense mutation: dogcabmandewegg → 🐕🚕🕴️💧🥚 Synonymous mutation: dogcarmandewegg → 🐕🚕🕴️💧🥚 Frameshift mutation: dogcodarmandewegg → 🐕🐟💪🏽&🐑 Nonsense mutation: dogcodarmendewegg → 🐕🐟💪🏽🛑

Where science happens: 🐭in vivo 🧪in vitro 🏞️in situ 🤰in utero 🥚in ovo 🖥️in silico 🧠in cerebro 📻in stereo 🔇in silencio 🥼in vestimento 👙in indusia 🏛️in institutione 🏡in domo 🌳in saltu 👩🏿‍🔬👨🏼‍🔬👩🏽‍🔬👩🏻‍🔬👨🏾‍🔬in omnio

Chromosome # 2🐜 6🦟 14🥒 16🐨🍑🍒 18🍋🥕🥦🥬 20🦘🌽 22🦗🍉 24🌷🌶️🥑🍅 26🍁 28🌹 30🦒 32🐝🍀🥥 33🍌 34🦊🐊🍎🌻 36🐌🦛 38🦁🦝🐷🍇 40🐭🥜🥭 42🐼🐀🐡 44🐬🐹🐰🦡 46👥🦓 48🦍🥔 50🐃🍍 54🐏 56🐘🍓 60🐮🐐 64🐴 66🦅🦜 70🦌 74🐻🐪🦙 76🕊️ 78🐔🐶🐺 80🦃🦆🦢 82🦏🦈 84🌺 88🦔 90🍠 110🦞 174🥝

Biolojical is now on BlueSky! (not promising anything new, but moved some of my favorite posts over from the other site)

Listen, I want a cute pet raccoon as much as the next person (ok I don't, you don't want to live a life with a chaos gremlin with HANDS). But if you've seen the paper about how raccoons are on their way to domestication... brookshire-team-trash.beehiiv.com/p/raccoons-d...

Wolf coat color is an iconic case study in pop gen, but the whole wild story — that it comes from domestic dogs via an antimicrobial peptide gene — isn't widely known. And the parallels with human color polymorphism — both the truth and our ugly misperceptions of it — are striking.

Black and White and Read All Over: pigment evolution in humans and wolves, and our oft-misguided perceptions of genetic variation adaptivediversity.wordpress.com/2025/12/04/b...

Cows, sheep, and goats are cladistically antelopes. I often hear how chicken nuggets are dinosaur meat, but rarely about the ubiquity of antelope burgers.

Please, Herb Robert was my father. Call me Stinky Bob.

Cookie Monster is a good model of a catabolic enzyme. •specific substrate •globular shape •does not remove anything, but simply breaks large reactants into smaller products •notable release of energy

His-Ala-Pro-Pro-Tyr Thr-His-Ala-Asn-Lys-Ser-Gly-Ile-Val-Ile-Asn-Gly

Conversation in my mentions about homology between heme and chlorophyll

Frankenstein’s monster, having hidden immortal in the Arctic for 200 years, learns of modern biotechnology and re-enters civilization seeking a path to true humanity. But neither reactionary prejudice nor scientific hubris has changed much in two centuries. Why isn’t this a movie or graphic novel?

A painful truth all dads must learn: if you wear a baseball cap while running around on playground equipment designed for children, the brim will block your upper view and you will bonk your head.

I always assumed (probably from the film Chocolat) that passion fruit was named for romantic love evoked by its sultry Latin habitat. Nope. Passion of the Christ.

Me: What does Lorem ipsum even mean? Cicero writing the text:

I ignore fashion trends. I’m only interested in fashion that’s statistically significant.

💥BREAKING: Birds in a tropical pluvial rainforest of the Chocó have been quietly changing in morphology for 109 years. Some have shrunk, others grown. Tails grew longer, bills grew deeper. Even in forests with continuous cover, climate change may be rewriting evolution in real time.

More cryptic taxa popping up in Anopheles mosquitoes www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Plasmodium parasites, which cause malaria by infecting our blood cells, have no common name. Their ancestors were light-harvesting algae and they still contain the remnants of photosynthetic parts. In effect, they are a seaweed that traded their sea habitat for blood. So let's call them bloodweeds.

New from George Zhang: “Adaptive tracking with antagonistic pleiotropy” as an alternative to the Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution. Yeast experiments show many mutations are beneficial but rarely fix because environments vary & fitness is highly context-dependent. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New (to me) pop gen tool: GONE (genetic optimization for Ne estimation)—finds very recent population size changes using linkage disequilibrium academic.oup.com/mbe/article/... 4 ways to install: compiled/to-compile on Mac/Linux. I tried all 4 and all failed. But worked on a different Linux server.

In complex life cycles, selection should act less efficiently in bottleneck stages. Plasmodium parasites go from a few cells at infection to 100s of millions in the blood. Selection strength varies accordingly. Brilliant work by @sarahperkins.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Polynesians had domesticated dogs, but none appear in Moana. The Lion King showcases the biodiversity of Africa but includes no canids (jackals, painted dogs, etc.) Does Disney practice deliberate dog erasure because people love dogs and they would steal the spotlight from the main characters?

You can't win, for I've already drawn you as the disheveled Putative First Animal and myself as the sleek and sophisticated Complex Early Animal.

This says Anopheles mosquitoes crossed the Atlantic when it was ~2/3 of its modern width, instead of the conventionally stated Mesozoic timing when the distance was short. Is it plausible? Mosquitoes are delicate and absent from many remote islands, but life finds a way… www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Children's book idea: A grocer decides real fruits must have seeds & reorganizes the produce stands. The fruits and veggies are appalled. Zucchinis must leave their carrot friends. Bananas protest. Grape families are split up. Customers are confused. Finally the grocer learns biology isn't identity.

Only one predator species chooses its prey based on what it senses the prey has eaten. Specifically, it wants prey full of human (or other vertebrate) blood! Meet Evarcha culicivora, the spider that prefers blood-fed mosquitoes. Called the vampire spider, but this is misleading: it EATS vampires.

Has anyone plotted the runaway inflation of PhD count per fictional character? Who has the most? Ford Pines (Gravity Falls) has 12, Mr Terrific (DC Comics) has 14, Mr Fantastic (Marvel) has 18. At this rate future media will have to give their heroes dozens of PhDs just to make the appear competent.

Right after 9/11 I lived in the Bronx and taught in Harlem. Some of my sophomores may be grandparents by now. Feeling so hopeful for them and their families as NYC rises and shines.🗽

Toxoplasma isn't "intelligent" but it manipulates the behavior of rodents & maybe other mammals. A brainless algorithm formed by natural selection to hijack brains. AI need not know what it's doing either, but versions that engage with human psyche so as to favor their own propagation will prosper.

The government refuses to end the time change, but they have been willing to adjust what day it occurs. So let's keep pushing the fall back / spring forward days together until Standard Time is just the week between Christmas and New Year's when nobody knows what time it is anyway.

An amusing subreddit to browse is /r/Birdsfacingforward

Parasites as Halloween characters: Zombie = Naegleria •Eats your brain •Once it gets you, no cure Vampire = Plasmodium •Feeds on blood •Reaches victims using flight Werewolf = Paragonimus •Associated with canids •He'll rip your lungs out, Jim