Antonio Torres-Méndez
@antoniotorm.bsky.social
Neuroscience | Evolution | RNA | 🐛🪰 MSCA Fellow in the Neural Circuits and Evolution lab @thecrick.bsky.social 🍉🏳️🌈 he/him
What happens when evolution adds an extra pair of eyes? Male mayflies evolve an extra pair of dorsal compound eyes, the Turbanate eyes, thought to help males detect females during mating swarms. we have investigate how this remarkable evolutionary novelty develops. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
So, @cataranea.bsky.social and I went to Guyana over the past week (ish) to attend #BugShot, in the Rupununi Savannah, at Karanambu Lodge. You wanna see some pictures of what we saw?
For me this paper is a career highlight..truly astonishing biology! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A queen odour mediates reproductive suppression in a eusocial mammal - Nature
Naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber) queens produce isopropyl myristate, a low-volatility ester that high-ranking animals detect and avoid, which alters prolactin and progesterone in other females t...
nature.com
BHL is featured in @theguardian.com's Age of Extinction series. The article highlights the extraordinary value of BHL and the urgent need to ensure it remains free and open into the future. Please read and share: www.theguardian.com/environment/... 🧪 🌎 📖 🔗 🐟 💚
A bonanza for fans of the natural world: the digital library sharing 64m pages of scientific knowledge with everyone
The Biodiversity Heritage Library is an invaluable online archive of historic texts on species living and lost supplied by the world’s leading museums and universities. Now its future is in doubt
theguardian.com
Our paper "Gene ancestries reveal diverse microbial associations during eukaryogenesis.” is finally out in Nature. Eukaryogenesis was likely a gradual process shaped by multiple microbial partners and virus-mediated gene transfer, rather than a single binary symbiosis. doi.org/10.1038/s415...
🧬 Excited to share our preprint: Regulatory landscape of widespread stop codon readthrough (SCR) in Drosophila 🪰 Stop codons supposedly mark the end of protein synthesis. Sometimes they don’t: >1,000 Drosophila genes undergo SCR, a process wherein translation continues past the stop.
Regulatory landscape of widespread stop codon readthrough in Drosophila
In stop codon readthrough (SCR), ribosomes continue to translate past the stop. While programmed SCR is rare in mammals, it appears remarkably widespread in insects, yet its regulation and biological ...
doi.org
This #InternationalWomensDay I want to tell the story of Lilian Vaughan Morgan. I learned of Lilian this past year - what a badass. Lilian was a leading scientist when women weren't welcome in the lab, nor even the department. But she contributed immensely to the genetics of sex determination 1/n
These numbers are key to understanding RNA and protein analysis. The different counting statistics fundamentally shape technological challenges and opportunities. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧵🌡️Empezamos una serie de hilos en los que explicaremos las bases científicas del cambio climático. En esta primera entrega vamos a aprender a diferenciar cambio climático y calentamiento global. Os mostraremos gráficas que os ayudarán a entender los conceptos #AemetDivulga
Free and open-source images, icons, and tools for creating scientific illustrations doi.org/10.59350/5zt... 🧪
Free and open-source images, icons, and tools for creating scientific illustrations
Phylopic, NIH Bioart, Bioicons, Scidraw, Open Science Art, Health Icons, Servier Medical Art, Biodiversity Heritage Library, the Noun Project, Segment Anything, Excalidraw, draw.io, Biographics
doi.org
Once upon a time I just admired nudis and sea slugs. But it was not enough. Now apparently I'm creating an R package to celebrate their colour palettes? 😅 First up, my Sydney fave, Hypselodoris bennetti. #rstats #nudibranch #dataviz 🦑🐙🧪 #marinelife #invertebrates
And here's one for @sciam.bsky.social on the amazing biology of the European blister beetle (Meloe proscarabaeus). The larvae, which clump together in an orange mass, are the first animals known to mimic flower scent - they do it to attract bees. 🧪 🪲 🐝 🌼 www.scientificamerican.com/article/beet...
These baby beetles work together to look—and smell—like flowers
Parasitic beetles are the first animals known to imitate floral scents
scientificamerican.com
These images show live embryos of animals (jellyfish, crustacean, worm, sea urchin, sea squirt, beetle) and one of animals closest single-celled relatives. They were captured taking advantage of fluorescent proteins localised on the outer membrane of cells, allowing us to observe cell outlines. 1/9
Our internal organs are evolutionary marvels. New technologies are transforming our understanding of the evolution of vertebrate organs. You can find more by reading here: rdcu.be/e5EgU #EvoBio #EvoDevo 🐟🦎🐢🦇🐊🦜
The molecular evolution of vertebrate organs
Nature Ecology & Evolution - This Review discusses recent advances in the molecular evolution of vertebrate organs, including rates of evolution of organs and cell types, molecular mechanisms...
rdcu.be
Why are some males caring toward infants while others are neglectful or abusive? I'm so pleased to share work that my colleagues and I @princeton.edu have just published @nature.com (an explanatory thread to follow!) (1/8)
Agouti integrates environmental cues to regulate paternal behaviour - Nature
Expression of agouti signalling protein in neurons in the medial preoptic area is increased by group housing and negatively associated with care, and overexpression of Agouti reduces care and enhances...
nature.com
If you are a scientist, working on biology, wondering where to submit your manuscript given the current issues with the academic publishing system, check out wheretopublish.github.io! We did this thinking change is possible. Let’s make it happen!
Where to Publish?
wheretopublish.github.io
Nicolas Clairis@nclairis.bsky.social · 6mo agoDear all, I'm happy to present you a side project done with @diegoharta.bsky.social @phylogenetrips.bsky.social & Lucas Baudouin regarding the publication landscape in Biology: wheretopublish.github.io 1/4
1/7 🧬 New preprint! What is it like to have one of the highest genomic diversities among metazoans? 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
The highly heterozygous European amphioxus (Branchiostoma lanceolatum) at the edge of panmixia
Amphioxus are small marine chordates that have broad ecological ranges, yet as adults form local settlements and exhibit limited mobility. Genomic surveys of two amphioxus species have suggested that they rank among the most genetically diverse metazoans. Here, we present the first accurate assessment of genomic diversity in the European amphioxus ( Branchiostoma lanceolatum ) and investigate the processes underlying this diversity. We leverage high-coverage whole-genome sequencing data from multiple individuals sampled at two geographically distant Atlantic and Mediterranean locations. Consistent with previous estimates in other amphioxus species, we measure exceptionally high genomic diversity, with an average heterozygosity of 2.73% in B. lanceolatum . Despite the large geographic separation between sampling sites, population differentiation is minimal, indicating extensive gene flow among distant adult settlements. Phylogenetic analyses combined with population genetic simulations confirm that this elevated genomic diversity is primarily driven by a large effective population size. Although adult amphioxus have limited mobility, our results indicate that long-distance larval dispersal mediated by ocean currents is sufficient to generate a near-panmictic population structure across their broad ecological range. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. Swiss National Science Foundation, 207853 Agence Nationale de la Recherche, ANR-21-CE13-0034
biorxiv.org
Want to get the data out of a PDF figure? As in, the actual data – not a rough trace-along-the-lines version? I made an app you might like: adamkucharski.github.io/pdf2plot/ It all started a few years ago... 🧵
Happy to share this work with Virginia Sanchez-Puerta (not on bsky) and colleagues on how loss of photosynthesis in these (strange!) plants affects translation and tRNAs in plastids and mitochondria.... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/n
No journal will take this commentary I wrote In October so fuck it, here it is on medium. 🍉
The science community is letting Palestine and the wider Arab community down
At a neurodevelopment conference I recently attended, where the focus is child health and development, I was astounded that not one voice…
medium.com
I am very happy (and a bit scared) to present to you what we have been working on over the last 4 years. This manuscript is exactly what I dreamt of when I started the lab and I could not be happier and prouder of the outcome!
bioRxivpreprint@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social · 7mo agoEvolutionary dynamics of temporal transcription factor series in the insect optic lobe https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.08.698497v1
Please take some time to look through some of the discoveries photographed in 2025. It should interest some invertebrate enthusiasts. yes? yes? bit.ly/nickybay2025
Macro Highlights – The Best of 2025 - Macro Photography by Nicky Bay
After years of trudging through forests and peering into the hidden lives of tiny creatures, the number of lifers I get should rightfully decline but 2025 proved to be remarkably defiant. This year de...
bit.ly
Do you love quantifying animal behavior as much as we do? We have just the tool for you! Presenting #OCTRON - a pipeline that helps you create rich annotation data and enables training of custom segmentation models. Have a look, particularly if you work with non-model / invertebrate organisms!
Method of the Year 2025: In his Comment, Moritz Helmstaedter looks into the future of connectomics and the feasibility of scaling up to larger brains. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Optimism for abundant whole-brain connectomes and connectomic screening - Nature Methods
Connectomics has so far outpaced the Moore’s law predictions about technological progress. At this pace, many whole-brain connectomes and connectomic screening will soon be realistic.
nature.com
Absolutely buzzing over this new video of a rarely seen giant squid
Just a murderous fungus having taken over a wasp and compelled it to die in a place advantageous to finding more victims. With its tiny spores floating off through the air in hopes of just one landing on an exoskeleton.. nothing in the rainforest wants anything to do with this little scene here…
A Halloween treat just for fun! My beloved journal covers have come to life today. Check them out here! www.behance.net/gallery/2364...
Journal Covers, Halloween - Maria Diaz de la Loza
behance.net
First neurons didn’t appear overnight. We trace their roots to ancient secretory cells - showing how lifestyle & behavior shaped the evolution of first synapses.🧠🌊 #Evolution #Neuroscience Our latest in @natrevneuro.nature.com Link: rdcu.be/eMX3E @jeffcolgren.bsky.social @msarscentre.bsky.social
The evolutionary origins of synaptic proteins and their changing roles in different organisms across evolution
Nature Reviews Neuroscience - Recent studies have shed further light on the evolutionary origins of chemical synapses, In this Review, Colgren and Burkhardt explore how ancient proteins were...
rdcu.be
