Looking forward to sharing one of my favorite projects of all time, developed with some of my favorite people! (with astonishing illustrations by @lifesciencestudios.bsky.social) Tuesday 12:00 pm Room 21 #Evol2026

And, big thanks to Julie Johnson @lifesciencestudios.bsky.social for her help with scientific illustration! Take a look into her work, she's terrific!

6 - These results highlight host traits and cross-kingdom microbial interactions as key drivers of colony-level microbiome assembly, beautifully illustrated by @lifesciencestudios.bsky.social in the final fig. We hope this guides discussions in microbiome research to bee eco-evo and conservation.

Our manuscript on the microbiome of a stingless bee hive is out! 🦠🐝 So excited! Here’s a short thread with some findings, going from the assembly of a consistent multi-kingdom microbiome to discussions on host traits that contribute to it. Please take a look and share : ) rdcu.be/eVNFJ

New research looks into the anthropogenic causes of behavioral diversity loss, and their consequences. I created a figure to show the pathways by which anthropogenic disturbances ultimately increase or decrease behavioral diversity.

Here are just a few of the many fish I painted this year (not to scale). It's fun to stick a bunch of them together into a collage and see some of the incredible diversity of body shape and color patterns. Merry Fishmas! 🐡🐟🐠

Don't forget about your favorite #smallbusiness this holiday season! As a bonus, if you buy manta ray stuff from my shop, the rays get a gift too! A portion of all manta ray sales will be donated to support conservation research at the Mobula Conservation Project. www.lifesciencestudios.com/shop

Check out the recent publication in Annual Reviews of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics where the authors explore genomic species delimitation in depth. You'll see a number of #sciart figures I created to help explain some of the concepts! www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

New lab logo just dropped! @michaelgbertram.bsky.social's lab studies how chemical pollution disrupts animal behavior, using Atlantic salmon and European perch in much of their research. The logo needed to showcase study organisms with an ecotoxicology twist. Enjoy your new lab logo, Bertram Lab!

Gobies big and small. Not just small…. teeny tiny! I painted 6 gobies, 3 of them not even an inch long, for this paper about the evolution of miniaturization. (To be clear, the fish are tiny, but the paintings are not.) Big congratulations to @fishfetisher.bsky.social and colleagues. 🐡🐟🧪

Yellowfin tuna get his fins painted. This fish is built for speed! 🐡🐟

We find that miniaturization has evolved multiple times in gobies! It is especially prominent within the dwarfgobies (Eviota spp.), pygmygobies (Trimma spp.) and the infantfishes (Schindleria spp.). Shoutout to @lifesciencestudios.bsky.social for providing these beautiful goby illustrations!

Who is on my desk today? A shark mackerel! This shiny #fish lives off the north coast of Australia. Unlike his living counterparts, who are busy in the ocean eating little fish, this guy will help scientists communicate their research by adorning scientific figures. Which is also an important job.

What do you mean, as big as a car!? Manta rays and devil rays are caught as bycatch in tuna fisheries, and releasing them back into the ocean is like trying to lift a car off the deck of a boat. How can this be done to maximize the likelihood that the manta ray survives the ordeal? 🧪 #conservation

Gathering guppies! 🐟 🐟 🐟 The figures I create often include a mix of illustrated conceptual elements with data. This figure needed to show how guppy shoaling behavior upstream (no predators) and downstream (predators) differed, and how those differences lead to parasite transmission. 🧪🐡

Just finished @maryroach.bsky.social new book Replaceable You and the Epilogue really got to me. Our loved one got a kidney transplant two weeks ago, and it’s awful to think of all the life saving research that has been halted by the current administration’s NIH and science funding cuts. 💔

I thought it might be fun to show you a little behind the scenes of creating a fish scientific illustration from sketch to painting to publication. 🐟 🐡 #evolutionarybiology #thereisnofrogfishemoji

When creating fish illustrations, it is very important to have a sleeping cat on your desk. Across the middle of the desk is the ideal positioning.

Have you considered using an illustrated poster for outreach? That's just what @vt-invasivespecies.bsky.social did. We created 5 posters about the ISC's mission, Virginia invasive species, and the impacts of invasive species on economics, environment, and health. Visit: tinyurl.com/mr9s93a3 🐡 🧪

Illustrated outreach: Posters as Tools for Invasive Species Awareness

Even in a digital age, posters remain one of the most effective and accessible tools for bringing community awareness of environmental issues. The Invasive Species Collaborative at Virginia Tech...

lifesciencestudios.com

Hey ecologists and evolutionary biologists! Is this you? ➡️ "This concept is way too complicated to show in a way reviewers and readers will understand" Ask for help! Life Science Studios is here to create engaging figures that clearly explain your research. 🧪 #academicsky #evolutionarybiology

Spots spots spots, endless spots! 🐟 🐠 🐡 #teamfish

You share this crazy wild world with manta rays. And maybe you'd like to wear a T-shirt that reminds you of that fact! Visit www.lifesciencestudios.com/shop.html if you want more mantas in your life. A portion of sales supports the Mobula Conservation Project. #mantaray 🐡 #marineconservation

This is the cutest thing I’ve seen!

Steve Haddock@stevehaddock.bsky.social · 12mo ago

It is great to see Mackenzie Gerringer's taxonomic work, describing a fish we collected from 3800 meters, featured in the @nytimes.com. We tried to spin this story to combat the blobfish's "ugliest creature" reputation, to get people excited by deep-sea exploration, not turned away. 🧪🦑

✨Starting on Monday!✨ #SciArtSeptember is a month-long creative challenge inspired by natural sciences. 🌿 Post on your own schedule. Post new work, old work, work-in-progress. Post artwork, music, words - whatever you like to make. (Thematic baked goods?🤞) - #SciArt #SciComm #Nature

Species paintings can really enhance your figures. There are real organisms underlying your data, and they are such beautiful organisms! Adding images of your study species can help your audience instantly understand what your work is about. 🐡 🧪 #scientificillustration

@chasedbrownstein.bsky.social @tjnear.bsky.social et al. reveal that amblyopsid fishes colonized caves at least four times from ancestors adapted to low-light environments, and use genomic data to infer ages of subterranean ecosystems in N. America. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf185 #evobio #molbio

Convergent Evolution in Amblyopsid Cavefishes and the Age of Eastern North American Subterranean Ecosystems

Abstract. Genomes provide tools for reconstructing organismal evolution and larger Earth system processes. Although genome sequences have been jointly anal

doi.org

Don’t mess up don’t mess up don’t mess up… #botanicalart #sciart

Who is on my desk today? A yellow perch, Perca flavescens! This guy was the perfect excuse to use my gold-green paint, which is practically neon. #sciart #scientificillustration #fishart

Painting brings me closer to the incredible organisms of the world. In creating these paintings of manta rays and devil rays, I got to spend time looking closely at them and learning more about their biology, behavior, and the threats they face. 🐡 #marinelife

Just a pic of my bestie beating the summer heat with her new manta ray water bottle. Manta and devil rays need our help! For every sale of gear featuring my watercolor ray paintings, I will donate 20% to my friends at Mobula Conservation Project. Get yours at www.lifesciencestudios.com/shop.html