Klawitter & @alexeidrummond.bsky.social introduce novel and efficient methods for estimating the credible level of individual tree topologies using tractable tree distributions, specifically conditional clade distribution (CCD). 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msag141 #societyjournal #compbio

Bayesian credible sets for phylogenetic tree topologies with applications to coverage analysis and cross-model comparison

Abstract. Credible intervals and credible sets, such as highest posterior density intervals, form an integral statistical tool in Bayesian phylogenetics, b

doi.org

Get excited :) PhyloSpec is coming! A shared standard + modelling language for phylogenetic models. Write a model once, run it across engines like BEAST X, BEAST 2.8 & RevBayes. Easy and reproducible. Built by @tochsner.bsky.social & collaborators (ETH Zürich, Auckland, LMU). phylospec.com

I started a new part-time role @nhm-london.bsky.social today providing curatorial cover in the Fossil Echinoderm collection. Job #1 was putting away some specimens which were scanned by a visiting researcher, giving me a chance to see some of these amazing Paleozoic #crinoids (sea lilies)!

Phylogeny, classification, and evolutionary history of Neogastropoda: doi.org/10.1093/zool... #evolution #phylogenetics #systematics #mollusca

I’ve seen trees you people wouldn’t believe. Deep branches collapsing off the shoulder of a saturated site, unresolved. I watched long-branch attraction glitter in the dark near the root of the Archaea. All those topologies will be lost in time… like tips in a polytomy.

On a multi-day trip to Anticosti Island for remote paleontological fieldwork. I'll be away for several weeks looking at cool fossils and thinking about the Late Ordovician extinctions and recovery. Goodbye USA

Standing among code fragments like Chewbacca standing amongst the broken pieces of the Millennium Falcon

Science is not a zero sum game where we're racing to mine a finite set of facts available in the world. It's a collaborative process of discovery. A single place hollowing out its research infrastructure doesn't let others "win" except by trivial metrics. Instead, it impoverishes us all. 1/2

Beetles beetles beetles beetles !

KamilSJaron.bsky.social@kamilsjaron.bsky.social · 2w ago

New preprint: 338 coleopteran genomes reveal exceptional rearrangement variation compared to other insect orders. Big congrats to @arf-mln.bsky.social, for getting this giant piece together. Big collaboration of @joanameier.bsky.social's and my groups. 🧵👇 doi.org/10.64898/202...

New paper from the lab! ssarp, our R package (@ropensci.org), takes you from raw occurrence records to species- and speciation-area relationships without the weeks of data wrangling that usually stand in the way. Work with Kristen Martinet and Luke Harmon. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

<fi>ssarp</fi>: An R Package for Efficiently Inferring Species‐ and Speciation‐Area Relationships

The ssarp (Species-/Speciation-Area Relationship Projector) R package provides users with a streamlined workflow for inferring species- and speciation-area relationships for island-dwelling species. ...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

About to leave for several weeks of remote fieldwork, which means * all * of the GSA/Paleo Society conference abstracts need to be submitted now. Very excited about all of the projects!

Visited the Air and Space and was happy to see Louis Purnell honored. Sadly no mention of his work in paleontology, where he published work on fossil invertebrates at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Unfortunately, he was forced out due to racism from his colleagues.

"Closing the gap between micro- and Macroevolution, pero no mucho"

Fabio A. Machado@fmachado.bsky.social · 2w ago

new objective: add "pero no mucho" in a paper title

104 F? It should be illegal to be this hot outside

Excited to share that "Common Ancestry, Contemporary Phylogenetics, and Process Ontology" is posted at Systematic Biology. @maureenmkearney.bsky.social and I argue that GCD Griffiths' process view of systematics provides a powerful foundation for contemporary systematics. doi.org/10.1093/sysb....

Common Ancestry, Contemporary Phylogenetics, and Process Ontology

Abstract. Recent advances in systematics and evolutionary biology have revealed extraordinary complexity in phylogenetic diversification, challenged our tr

academic.oup.com

RIP to all the 'intended for main text' figures killed by the gods. But this figure is different. It's more beautiful than the gods. Maybe even better than the gods

Somehow, this absolutely incredible figure is Supplementary Information Figure 18 🤩

Jake Berv@jakeberv.bsky.social · 2w ago

Here is Supplementary Figure 18, which better showcases the beautiful illustrations we commissioned from @umich.edu undergrad Olivia Stein. These illustrated species represent clades where our method identifies significant increases in the rate of body-shape evolution. Also see Supp Table 7.

It may be surprising to some that there are thousands of undescribed species just sitting in museums awaiting description. One of the main reasons this problem exists is that taxonomy is undervalued and underfunded, a trend that coincides with the devaluing of studies on natural history.

New paper from @jakeberv.bsky.social harnesses a massive skeletal measurement dataset for passerines to show nested bursts in phenotypic evolution, many of which appear coincident with intervals of climate instability. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This is similar in spirit to the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History's 'Discovery Kits', which are museum quality exhibits (with specimens, casts, etc.) created to be sent directly to classrooms. They're * extremely * popular with students & teachers here in OK! samnoblemuseum.ou.edu/education-2/...

Classroom Resources - Sam Noble Museum

Discovery on the Road: Traveling Exhibits and Discovery Kits Bring Oklahoma’s state museum of natural history to you! Discovery on the Road, the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History’s travelin...

samnoblemuseum.ou.edu

In some ways not the most important thing right now but scientific societies had almost a decade to prepare for this moment, and they didn’t And at some point, that will need to be confronted Lessons need to be learned

An increasingly relevant take

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌@chanda.blacksky.app · 3w ago

In some ways not the most important thing right now but scientific societies had almost a decade to prepare for this moment, and they didn’t And at some point, that will need to be confronted Lessons need to be learned

Happy anniversary to the final album by the Ramones, which features dinosaurs wearing sombreros and includes their incredible cover of Tom Waits' "I Don't Want to Grow Up"

My student Corinne Soucy led my labs 1st foray into paleo-community ecology, thanks to the extraordinary @ctrlalttim.com, Emily Beasley, @francisbanville.bsky.social, Juan Carlos Gutiérrez-Marco de la @ucm.es, Bertrand Lefebvre du @cnrs-insu.bsky.social. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A paleoecological trophic network model of the Early Ordovician Lower Fezouata Shale (Morocco) fossil fauna

The fauna of the Fezouata Shale, an Early Ordovician fossil Lagerstätte from Morocco, is transitional between the Cambrian and the Great Ordovician Bi…

sciencedirect.com

Blastoid echinoderms are such beautiful fossils

David Clark@clarkeocrinus.bsky.social · 3w ago

I bought a light box to take better pictures of fossils. Still working on the lighting, but it's pretty nice. Pentremites blastoid from an unknown locality. Mississippian aged #FossilFriday

Scientific fashions, perfectionisms, and the value of traditional morphological taxonomy. #evolbio #philsci 🧪 waynemaddison.wordpress.com/2026/07/16/s...

Scientific fashions, perfectionisms, and the value of traditional morphological taxonomy

Like any conversation, science goes through wave after wave of fashion. One decade, it will be all the rage to study one type of question, and to shun sloppiness of one kind but tolerate another. A…

waynemaddison.wordpress.com

Super excited that our paper led by @sandinmm.eurosky.social in PNAS is out! We show that crown-group eukaryotes were already taxonomically and ecologically diverse throughout the Mesoproterozoic, revealing complex communities well before the Neoproterozoic radiation. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Environmental phylogenetics supports a steady diversification of crown eukaryotes starting from the mid-Proterozoic | PNAS

Molecular clock and preservation of early microfossil assemblages suggest that eukaryotes were present and already diverse more than ~1600 million ...

pnas.org

google scholar is practically unusable

Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬@daveyfwright.bsky.social · 3w ago

Anyone else having issues with Google Scholar? Over the last few days it's been inconsistent with its ability to find/export references. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it works and has errors. But most of the time it says the "system can't perform the operation." We had something nice & now it's bad

Anyone else having issues with Google Scholar? Over the last few days it's been inconsistent with its ability to find/export references. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it works and has errors. But most of the time it says the "system can't perform the operation." We had something nice & now it's bad

How it feels when a paleontologist discovers a fossil ⛏️🦕🧪