Interested in how species diversity is split between major animal groups? Here is the infographic for you! 🧪⚒️🦀🦑 #evosky

Denver lunar eclipse 😗

It'll be pretty embarrassing if the dinosaurs went out with more dignity than us. They can't say they knew about the meteor for decades, knew exactly what to do about it, had all the technology and resources to stop it but didn't so five of them could own everything

Hiding in plain sight: Animals eat the natural bioplastic PHA We discovered that many animals can break down PHA. And many of these enzymes had been sitting unnoticed in genome databases. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Animal degradation of microbial storage polyhydroxyalkanoates - Nature Ecology & Evolution

This study shows that the degradation of microbial storage polyhydroxyalkanoates is not just restricted to microorganisms by finding that some animals also have the enzymes required to break down thes...

nature.com

A fully updated preprint is now live on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social :) “Look and see” was a rather important line of thinking regarding freshwater sponge-microbe interactions, centering on the importance of spatial dynamics when evaluating animal microbiomes 🧽🦠🧪 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🐢 The Shell Game... The origin of turtles has always been a bit of a puzzle for scientists who study the evolution of animals. Turtles finally have a place in the tree of life: X‑ray study of South African fossils was a decider The phylogenetic origin of turtles🧪 www.cell.com/current-biol...

"The world has used me ill … these men of learning have sucked my brains..." Mary Anning was a pioneering palaeontologist and fossil collector. However... Despite her incredible discoveries, Mary Anning never received the full recognition she deserved.👩‍🔬🧪 www.discoverwildlife.com/people/mary-...

Successfully defended my PhD last Thursday :) Dissertation Title: “Exploring foundations of animals of host–microbe interactions in a freshwater sponge” Lab: @scottnichols.bsky.social #sponge #immunology #symbiosis

Join us Wednesday, 29th April, at 4pm WEST (Lisbon time), for two Symbiosis Alumni Seminars by @omaistrenko.bsky.social and @pawley.bsky.social. Zoom link upon free registration at gimm.idloom.events/symbnet_semi... @symbnet.bsky.social, @moorefound.bsky.social, @mblscience.bsky.social, ECODIM

“We can’t afford cancer research but $11 billion for one week of an absurd war is fine” is a hell of an argument

Thank you, Sir, for speaking plain truth.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." -Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953

This made my day and week—and will become fuel as I finish this thing they call a dissertation :,)

Letters of Note@lettersofnote.com · 8mo ago

Happy birthday to one of my favourite haters, Charles Darwin

New preprint from @pawley.bsky.social @scottnichols.bsky.social is a great testament to how intentional imaging helps untangle potential functions and mechanisms of host-microbe interactions The discovery of an external bacterial niche reconciles sequencing-based microbiomes in a freshwater sponge

The discovery of an external bacterial niche reconciles sequencing-based microbiomes in a freshwater sponge https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.07.704605v1

First manuscript of the PhD is officially a preprint, wooo! #sponge #microbe #microscopy

Scott Nichols@scottnichols.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Excited to announce a new preprint from my PhD student @pawley.bsky.social : "The discovery of an external bacterial niche reconciles sequencing-based microbiomes in a freshwater sponge."

Putting “can multi-factor authenticate through DuoMobile with my eyes closed” on my CV

I find it *extremely* disturbing that Jay Bhattacharya—who campaigned for RFK Jr during RFK’s Presidential run—is repositioning the NIH to be the research arm of RFK Jr’s anti-vaccine, anti-science MAHA movement😨

Joshua Weitz@joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 8mo ago

“I want the NIH to be a central driver of the MAHA agenda,” Bhattacharya said. “Essentially, it's kind of the research arm of MAHA.” NIH is not an ideological toy or 'arm'. We must insist on its scientific independence, especially if its Director will not. 🚨 www.dukechronicle.com/article/duke...

This is one my favorite images I’ve ever taken of a freshwater sponge The depth-coded image (stained for F-actin) beautifully shows the static nature of the choanoderm and the extremely dynamic nature of migratory cells along and around the outer epithelia :) #FluoresenceFriday #confocal

Motherfucking wind farms…

There’s a nonzero chance you will die from a cancer that could have been curable because people who couldn’t pass 7th grade biology and are scared of things like “mRNA” and “riboflavin” and “walkable cities” decided to make their ignorance everybody else’s problem

Stand Up for Science!@standupforscience.net · last yr.

Over 120 mRNA cancer trials are now at risk as the Trump admin cuts funding & tells researchers to scrub “mRNA” from grant proposals. What started as COVID fearmongering is now derailing life-saving cancer research. Hope remains - but scientists say time is running out. zurl.co/YBGNy

You can take the funds from a scientist, but you will never take their passion #4thofJuly @haleyrwom.bsky.social

Sponge choanoderm belongs in a museum #FluorescenceFriday

If we all somehow agreed to follow some unwritten rule that nobody can publish more than four or five papers per year, I think that would make our culture healthier for everybody.

This work is finally officially out! Check out our paper, where we use various advanced microscopy techniques to shed light on the structures of a complex symbiotic organ and the communities of bacteria that live inside it. journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Organ structure and bacterial microbiogeography in a reproductive organ of the Hawaiian bobtail squid reveal dimensions of a defensive symbiosis | Applied and Environmental Microbiology

Sequence-based microbiome studies have revealed much about how hosts interact with communities of symbiotic microbiota but often lack a spatial understanding of how microbes relate to each other and t...

journals.asm.org

I say this every time de-extinction comes up: it makes no sense to devote science to bringing back extinct animals when we can’t be bothered to keep extant ones alive in the first place.

For grad students and postdocs: We'd love to see you at the Molecular and Cell Biology of Symbiosis course at the Marine Biological Labs this summer! Application deadline is Apr 14, so apply soon. Please share with anyone who might be interested! www.mbl.edu/education/ad...

Molecular and Cell Biology of Symbiosis | Marine Biological Laboratory

This is an immersive research-based course designed to teach basic concepts, open research questions, and facilitate state-of-the-art experimental approaches in symbiosis research.

mbl.edu

Happy to see this finally coming to light… …sad beyond measure to know it’s a reality I spent 6 months on Johnston Atoll, an uninhabited wildlife refuge, doing conservation/invasive species eradication work in 2019 The wildlife here will ALWAYS be more important than rockets #Johnston #Elon

U.S. military aims to turn island bird refuge into SpaceX rocket site

Landing tests at Johnston Atoll in the Pacific could advance a plan to use rockets to ship military cargo but could also threaten an important nesting site.

washingtonpost.com

This is what happens when people speak up.

It is happening again! Consider taking our course on the Molecular and Cell Biology of Symbiosis at @MBLScience. We extended the deadline for applications to Apr 14, 2025. www.mbl.edu/education/ad...

Molecular and Cell Biology of Symbiosis | Marine Biological Laboratory

This is an immersive research-based course designed to teach basic concepts, open research questions, and facilitate state-of-the-art experimental approaches in symbiosis research.

mbl.edu