I don’t get a lot of opportunity to share the peacock-turkey battle photo I took last year, it looked like a dinosaur showdown:

Cody. _Dude._ That talk title. _Much_ respect.

Cody Coyotee@wile-phylote.bsky.social · 2w ago

#Botany2026 is almost here! The Bulbous Lab will be there in full force (see image for times and locations of our talks)! Can’t wait to see everyone and hear about all the awesome botanical science going on!

New paper by Ph.D. student Melvin Vankelst in Proc B. We modified our semi-automated high density 3D geometric morphometrics protocol to fit carnivoran molars, and test the shape-diet links of these teeth. Check it out! @universitedeliege.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Decoupling geometry and topography reveals contrasting ecomorphological signals in carnivoran carnassial teeth

Abstract. The lower carnassial tooth (m1) is a key innovation underlying the ecological diversification of Carnivora. However, their exceptionally diverse

royalsocietypublishing.org

Velvet worms shoot rapid-hardening glue at their prey (other invertebrates). Within seconds, the sprayed liquid hardens to plastic-like consistency, trapping or slowing the target. This marvelous glue has possible human applications in recyclable bioplastics & surgical sutures that dissolve.

a close up of a slug with netflix written on the bottom right

Alt: A velvet worm, which resembles a centipede crossed with a slug: long red cylindrical body with stubby white legs and darker colored antennae. It's spraying clear liquid from nozzles on either side of its face, projecting past the camera at a surprising level of force.

media.tenor.com

Frank Ashwood@frankashwood.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I appreciate all the love for my previous post, so, here's a little more velvet worm / Peripatus cuteness to start your weekend off right! Beneath that adorable little eye, you can see the stumpy glue cannon, which it uses to subdue prey! #Macrophotography #TheWorldBeneathOurFeet 🧪

It's Trilobite Tuesday! Trilobites, while commonly seen fossilized as single individuals, were highly social animals—gathering together to mate, molt, or feed. On occasion, fossils are unearthed featuring multiple trilobites on a single slab, like these ornate 1-in- (2.5-cm-) long Devonian lichids.

Whew... my student's acknowledgement section of their thesis just made me cry.

Dear microbiome enthusiasts: I'm excited to be moving my lab to New York University this fall (& the NYU Institute for Engineering Health); with joint-appointment @isbscience.org I'm hiring a postdoc @ NYU to look at diet-driven evolution in the gut: apply.interfolio.com/189980 Please share! 🦠🤓

Who at #botany2026 is thinking about which talks to see tomorrow? Maybe I humbly recommend our talk on Physalis phylogenomics where we ask the question, why are there so many tomatillo species 50 million years after a (famous to Solanologists) bottleneck? Tomorrow 1:30pm in San Ignacio!

🚨NEW PAPER 🚨 "Deconstructing empirical fitness seascapes across scales of granularity" published in #G3 (@genetics-gsa.bsky.social) 1/2 The fitness landscape has been among the most influential instruments in evolutionary theory for nearly a century. But we often treat them as fixed and static.

I'm looking for PhD student to join my lab at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (Fall 2027)! If you're interested in evolutionary genomics, conservation genetics, or biogeography, please reach out. I'll also be at #AOS2026 this week talking about sexual selection in small populations.

We derive a working hypothesis for how the genetic code evolved, by assuming LUCA-depleted amino acids came early, using codons we infer via the 2-1-3 rule. We validate with independent data and a control ordering ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v... @seekingluca.bsky.social @hanonmcshea.bsky.social 1/13

Why do some species live longer without accumulating dangerous levels of cellular mutations? See what a simple mathematical model predicts.

Disease as a Mediator of Somatic Mutation - Lifespan Coevolution:Model Analysis and Empirical Tests

Multicellular organisms are confronted not only with germline mutations, but also with mutations emerging in somatic cells. Somatic mutations can lead to diverse pathologies, including cancer. Somatic...

biorxiv.org

This Film often has the piss taken out of it for being a rather sedentary piece about 2 people just talking a lot — BUT — it has one of the most brilliantly prescient monologues in the history of Movies imho. MY DINNER WITH ANDRE (1981) Have a listen.

my unfinished paper draft watching me start a new paper

Okay, I am going to tell a little story. It's one I have saved for the last couple years, almost nobody knows about it. But it lives in my heart. I don't know how others will feel about it, maybe something, maybe nothing. It's about the Uncanny X-Men. 1/

Major #Botany2026 FOMO, but the drive MA->OR starts this week. So, sharing from afar: I’m recruiting grad students for my new lab at OSU! Info: www.mckenzie-lab.org . We're going to have FUN with systematics, speciation genomics, methods, natural history, and more in North Am angiosperms. Reach out!

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

now on the cover @esajournals.bsky.social Front. Ecol. Env. with @ejgnam2.bsky.social beautiful photo from world's coolest site by Francesco Ventura Young seabirds are mysterious - but we need to keep learning about them! They matter for biology, and for conservation! doi.org/10.1002/fee....

Have you donated blood lately?? Give in August and get $20 PLUS a heaping load of warm fuzzies for doing a Really Good Thing. www.redcrossblood.org

The Good Place: Happy Person Thumbs Up

Alt: The Good Place: Good Person with a Thumbs Up

static.klipy.com

Excited to see everyone this week at #Botany2026 ! Check out what our lab has been working on 🌵 :

For the past 2 years I’ve been working on a feature documentary about wildfires. It’s the most important project I’ve ever worked on. It’s coming soon.

So proud of this manuscript- lead by the fantastic @henryarenas.bsky.social with two undergraduates (Cage Cochran and Quinn Evans) each doing a Herculean effort during their honors theses, and Hongfei Chen helping out tremendously with lab work. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Maintenance of phenotypic divergence in two sympatric monkeyflowers with weak reproductive isolation

Sympatric species often exhibit permeable reproductive barriers, yet many of them coexist as phenotypically distinct entities. One way to account for this apparent paradox is that selection on loci th...

biorxiv.org

Looks like the @soltislab.bsky.social #Botany2026 workshop is going well! This would have been my 8th time helping teach it. If you are missing it, you can find all the material here: soltislab.github.io/BotanyENMWor...

highlights from this morning's trail run at #botany2026. successfully avoided tripping on a rock and falling into any number of prickly things.

We are hiring in Penn State bio #botany2026 www.higheredjobs.com/faculty/deta...

Current numbers for #Botany2026! 1079 registered attendees (43% are students) 825 presentations 24 countries repped #plantpeopleFTW

I've been to _tiny_ conferences (n~30). I've been to HUGE conferences (n>1000). I've been a conference focused on a single species. I've been to ornithology, paleontology, methodological, and various evolution conferences. But I've never been to a Botany conference. I feel I missed out :/

Wanna hear about introgression and pollination syndromes? Boy, do I have a talk for you! I'll be presenting my last dissertation chapter in the Cooley Award session on Monday, 8:45am in room Tucson C-D! #botany2026