📣 📣 📣 UPDATE: The 2026-2027 list of faculty and postdoc positions in ecology and evolutionary biology is out! Be sure to check out this active and helpful community run resource! docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
ecoevojobs.net 2026-27
docs.google.com
Marcus Stensmyr
@marcusstensmyr.bsky.social
Science, drosophilids, mosquitoes, and cats. Lund university, Sweden. 🇺🇦🇸🇪
📰 Analysis of preserved incense from Pompeii hints at what life in the #Roman city smelled like 👃 🏺 #AntiquityResearch #ArchaeologyNews via @the-independent.com www.independent.co.uk/news/science...
Pompeii ashes reveal what ancient Roman city smelled like
Researchers found exotic tree resin in domestic incense burners that likely came from Asia or Africa
independent.co.uk
How crazy is this!? A plant mimicking the smell of ants injured by spiders to fool kleptoparastic flies into performing pollination 🤯 Plant shenanigans is an endless source of wonderful biology! www.cell.com/current-biol...
Olfactory floral mimicry of injured ants mediates the attraction of kleptoparasitic fly pollinators
Mochizuki reports a plant that lures pollinating flies by imitating the scent of ants injured by predators. This study reveals the first known case of ant mimicry in flowers and uncovers previously un...
cell.com
I’m thrilled to share that our search for a tenure-track colleague in my *truly wonderful and collegial* Genetics, Genomics, Evolution and Development Division in the MCB Department at Berkeley @berkeleymcb.bsky.social is live! Please share this broad search widely: aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05481
Assistant Professor -Genetics, Genomics, Evolution, and Development - Molecular and Cell Biology
University of California, Berkeley is hiring. Apply now!
aprecruit.berkeley.edu
Marco Gallio talks about how snow flies adapted to cold temperatures. Through comparative genomics he discovers a high abundance of Zinc-fingers in snow flies. Can snow flies produce heat through mitochondria thermogenesis to buffer cold temperatures for a short time?
Everyone says AI will accelerate science. I don't think it will -- at least not in biology, and at least not soon. New post where I explain why, and how the productivity paradox can be resolved: blekhman.substack.com/p/why-ai-wil...
Why AI will not speed up science (yet)
You can see AI everywhere except in the productivity statistics
blekhman.substack.com
🐜 New in @cp-iscience.bsky.social: We show that leaf-cutting ant OR gene expression is colony-specific and that it changes after exposure to non-nestmate odours. We think that this means they tune their antennae for nestmate recognition. www.cell.com/iscience/ful... #Ants #Olfaction #Behavior (1/2)
Exposure to non-nestmate odors changes the odorant receptor profile in Acromyrmex echinatior leaf-cutting ants
zoology; entomology; neuroscience
cell.com
📢 Heads-up: I'm currently finalising the job description for a 30-month postdoc modelling visual abilities in these very gorgeous and very dead creatures! If you're interested, please get in touch - anticipated start is late 2026/early 2027 and the project combines great colleagues in UK + S Korea!
Lauren Sumner-Rooney@laurensr.bsky.social · 6mo agoSo excited to have received an #HFSPResearchGrant to study trilobite eyes with Luke Parry @oxuniearthsci.bsky.social and Gil Ju Lee (Pusan National University)!🥳 I'll be recruiting a postdoc @bristolbiosci.bsky.social - if 3D data, optical modelling, and fossils tickle your interest, stay tuned!
A cemetery on a remote island in the Atlantic helped show @bitesizedna.bsky.social and his team the terrible extent of the transatlantic slave trade -- and the island's community decide how best to give the dead peace. @science.org #archaeology #aDNA
DNA from African graves provides surprising window into slave trade
Adults and children were taken from deep within continent’s interior, genetic material from remote island of St. Helena suggests
science.org
Our new paper is out in @nature.com! We uncovered how a naked mole-rat queen 👑 controls an entire colony: a natural contraceptive scent that suppresses reproduction in other females! A remarkable mammalian parallel to bees and ants! 🐝🐜 @garyrlewin.bsky.social youtu.be/enfv3zJrWKM?...
Naked mole-rats are ruled by a queen: this chemical puts her in power
YouTube video by nature video
youtu.be
Facility duty this week has been busy, but moments like this make it very rewarding: our benthic ctenophores catching food and releasing their tentacles afterwards. Beautiful little predator doing its thing. 🪼 #Ctenophore #MarineBiology @msarscentre.bsky.social & Aquarium de Paris
1/11 Excited to share my postdoc work from @schierlab.bsky.social and Rainer Friedrich! 🐟👃 How does the brain decide whether an odor is good or bad? In larval zebrafish, we find that odor preference is reflected in spatially cohesive neuronal domains of the olfactory bulb. 🧵
How ancient are the building blocks of animal sensory systems? Key components of animal sensory systems evolved before animals. We find that choanoflagellates possess diverse & spatially segregated TRP channels, pointing to ancient origins of sensory specialization. doi.org/10.64898/202...
Do you know an outstanding aquarist? We're hiring a Senior Aquarist to help run our cephalopod facility at Columbia University. Our team maintains a colony of 250+ cuttlefish, develops new husbandry techniques (inc transgenics) & studies cuttlefish camouflage and social behavior. 1/3 [Pls repost!]
Holkham beach, Norfolk - I was commissioned by someone to replicate this beautiful beach and all its shades and textures as an aerial embroidery! Lots of grasses, reeds and mud mixed in with the sand. Not sure if the tide in coming on or going out though... More close-ups are in the thread: 1/2
Wait, what?
Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior@mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social · 3mo agoNew mechanism for magnetic sensing in pigeons 🧭 Homing pigeons use magnetically responsive immune cells in their livers to sense Earth’s magnetic field, helping them navigate without visual cues like the sun. Published in Science: doi.org/10.1126/scie... @unibonn.bsky.social @unidue.bsky.social
YOU’RE LISTENING TO SISYPHUS FM, THE HOME OF NON-STOP ROCK
A fossil nervous system meets modern neurobiology. We found that a living comb jelly preserves neural architecture remarkably similar to those inferred from Cambrian fossils over 500 million years old 🤩. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
It’s still unclear whether Hantavirus is scary enough to guarantee 1,000 publications in Nature
My go-to excuses from now on.
Alison Fisk@alisonfisk.bsky.social · 4mo agoReasons recorded for worker absence on this 3,250 year-old ancient Egyptian attendance register include ‘brewing beer’🍺 ‘stung by a scorpion’ 🦂 and ‘embalming brother’! 🤯 From Deir el-Medina, royal tomb worker’s village 📷 by me #Archaeology
~ 550–520 mya was a dramatic period in evolution... This asks, what if the brain came first? And gives a different of view the Cambrian Explosion An Increase in Animal Diversity was Facilitated by Ecologically-Driven Brain Complexity Throughout the Cambrian🧪 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Here is a banger! Our new paper in @currentbiology.bsky.social is out! We have used museomics to sequence a 45yr old specimen of Drosophila enhydrobia, a rare and most unusual fly whose larvae are aquatic(!) and predatory(!). Very cool, big success. authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...
Run, don’t walk, to your closest local preprint server to see our latest 3D tracking results! I’m still tickled that our results show flies don’t exactly walk, they “ground run” everywhere. I bet they also talk fast and suffer no fools.
John Tuthill@tuthill.bsky.social · 4mo agoNew preprint: Whole-body 3D kinematics of freely behaving 𝐷𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑎 New tech from @blobology.bsky.social & others at @hhmijanelia.bsky.social, which @ispizua.bsky.social and @elliottabe.bsky.social used to gain insight into 3D structure of locomotion & courtship www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
'The heather and the hills' - close-ups of my newest aerial embroidery, combining knitting for the base again! Summer heathers, sheep and ponies dot this wild landscape... it won't be available until I made a little frame for it but I have more photos to put up in a couple days :)
When it comes to sensory processing, cortex should not get all the credit... In olfaction, a key challenge is identifying odors regardless of concentration. Our new paper in @natneuro.nature.com shows how the olfactory bulb performs this crucial computation before signals even reach the cortex.
Very excited to share our study of an ancient environmental genome extracted from lake sediment! It originates from a brown bear that lived around 9,600 years ago close to the last ice-sheet remains in northern Sweden, and has an unexpected mitochondrial haplogroup. 1/7 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Ancient environmental genome reveals a migratory brown bear individual in Early Holocene Scandinavia | PNAS
After the last ice age, species migrated into a newly deglaciated Scandinavia. Brown bear recolonization is thought to have occurred from two direc...
pnas.org
Nishapur: Persian ultra-modern ultra-minimalism from the tenth century CE @islamicartsmuseummalaysia
a bald man in a blue suit is pointing at the camera and saying `` come join us ! ''
ALT: a bald man in a blue suit is pointing at the camera and saying `` come join us ! ''
media.tenor.com
Stanley Heinze@stanley-heinze.bsky.social · 5mo agoAre you a computational scientist? Within 7 years of your PhD? Come join us at Lund University! We have two new positions as assistant professor! Deadline: 25th of May. The advert is broad, but this is your chance to push computational neuroscience in a fantastic place! lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/...
