Happy to share our new bioRxiv preprint 🔗https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.05.723031v1 🌊 We show repeatable patterns of introgression across continents, even when different lineages hybridize, emphasizing the role of demographic history in speciation in cryptic Ectocarpus species!

#FossilFriday 🦴 New paper: "Sirenian pachyostosis revisited" New method to quantify bone mass increase in sea cows (including fragments) using 3D surface models. Vertebrae are affected too, not just ribs. Open access ➡️ doi.org/10.3897/sjp.... #Palaeontology #Fossils #OpenAccess

Sirenian pachyostosis revisited

Pachyostosis, the increase in volume of bones, has been documented in a myriad of tetrapods that secondarily adapted to the aquatic environment. However, this convergent trait has hitherto only been quantified in complete ribs and long bones. This study presents a methodology designed to quantify the degree of pachyostosis in ribs and vertebrae for both complete and fragmentary skeletal elements. Using surface models, the volumes of costal and vertebral regions were measured and standardized using size proxies to devise a pachyostosis index. Sirenians are used as a case study, given the disparity in pachyostosis degrees that has already been documented in the clade, especially in their ribs. The new methodology can detect this disparity and further demonstrates that pachyostosis also affects their vertebrae. Milder cases of pachyostosis, such as in the extant Dugong dugon, are likely secondary specializations to a specific lifestyle. The craniocaudal distribution of the pachyostosis index values is also potentially helpful for further distinguishing finer lifestyle differences. This new method has the potential to clarify the causes of the disparity in pachyostosis degrees observed in the fossil record of sirenians, and it may also prove valuable in broader, non-mammalian contexts.

doi.org

#Digitalization: The “Antscan” web platform is the world’s largest digital database of 3D #insect data. It is the result of an international and interdisciplinary cooperation initiated by #KITKarlsruhe and the @oistedu.bsky.social in Japan. www.kit.edu/kit/english/...

The final part of the story: "The arduous path to obligate asexuality in Daphnia" is out in #ProcB 🥳 royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article.... 1. Instead of comparing long-established asexuals to sexuals, we generated new asexual lineages to observe the transition in action.

Happy to hare that the preprint I was advertising below has been published by the Journal of Evolutionary Biology: academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-... Thanks @jevbio.bsky.social for supporting responsible publishing!

Time to publish responsibly: DAFNEE, a database of academia-friendly journals in ecology and evolutionary biology

Abstract. The current economics of scientific publishing reveal a profound imbalance: academia pays prices far exceeding the actual costs of publication. R

academic.oup.com

Nicolas Galtier@nicolasgaltier.bsky.social · last yr.

New preprint: we advertise DAFNEE, a database of academia-friendly eco-evo-archaeo journals. 1/6 #AcademicPublishing #ecoevo #archaeology #EthicalPublishing #SocietyJournals #DiamondOpenAccess doi.org/10.32942/X24...

Rare Sex in “Obligate” Asexuals. Earlier this year, I was pleased that the first part of our work on Daphnia reproductive modes was published in JEB doi.org/10.1093/jeb/.... In brief, females from so-called obligate parthenogenetic lineages, are in fact able to rarely reproduce sexually. Thread👇

New paper out! It was an honor to collaborate with the legend Leah Krubitzer on this review to show that paleontologists and neurobiologists working together can only improve our understanding of brain evolution 🧠 www.nature.com/articles/s44... Full access to the paper: rdcu.be/eK167

The functional adaptations of mammalian brain structures through a behavioural ecology lens - Nature Reviews Biodiversity

Palaeontologists and comparative neurobiologists share a common interest in the evolution of the mammalian brain, but often fail to realize the benefits of this shared interest. This Review draws thes...

nature.com

Olfaction written in bones A new study, led by Dr Quentin Martinez (@quentinwildlife.bsky.social) and Dr Eli Amson (@eliamson.bsky.social) from State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart gives new insights into the evolution of the sense of smell in mammals. Press release: t1p.de/7riwv

Olfaction written in bones 👃🧠🦴🧬 Thrilled to see our latest study showing that the olfactory bulb endocast is a reliable proxy for mammalian olfaction, now published in @pnas.org www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Thread 👇

Happy to be a part of this big project led by Mario Bronzati & Matteo Fabbri—out today #OA in @currentbiology.bsky.social bit.ly/3M5weun —on the brain endocast of a close pterosaur cousin & what it means for pterosaur brain evolution...maybe different from bird brain evolution. 1/2

After two years of hard work, I’m proud to announce that our new special exhibition @smnstuttgart.bsky.social is now open for the public – Meet Triassic Life: Dawn of the world of reptiles (1/7).

Thrilled to have won the Amphibians and Reptiles category of the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year and to be able to share this fascinating frog behavior! #wpy61 #frogs #herpetology www.quentinmartinez.fr

🎉 PAPER OUT ! Happy to see another chapter of my PhD out in #MBE ! The African pygmy mouse flips the script on sex determination. Its multiple sex and neo-sex chromosomes 🤯 shape brain transcriptomes and drive sexual polymorphism, reflecting new evolutionary trajectories for sex-linked regions.

Molecular Biology and Evolution@molbioevol.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Heitzmann et al. compared brain transcriptomes of four sexual genotypes of the African pygmy mouse, showing how sex and neo-sex chromosomes impacted transcriptomes to reflect their transmission mode, evolutionary trajectories, and genomic conflicts. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf208 #evobio #molbio

🚨 We are looking for 2 PhD students! 🧠🐸👃 Join the Manzini Lab @jlugiessen.bsky.social to explore the olfactory system in #aquatic #vertebrates. We mainly use #amphibians, combining: 🔬 Imaging 👩‍🔬 Cell biology 🐝 Behavior 👉 bit.ly/neurophd 🌍 bit.ly/manzinilab Please share! #PhD #neuroscience #job

Our paper on rodent thumbnails is out! Big team effort, powered by museum collections. Turns out, nails can reveal a lot about rodent evolution. Shoutout to Dr. Gordon Shepherd for the wild idea to study rodents thumbs!

Science Magazine@science.org · 11mo ago

New findings in Science suggest that rodents owe much of their evolutionary success to their thumb-nail (the first digit, D1), an adaptation that gave them dexterous hands for cracking seeds and nuts. Learn more in this week's issue: https://scim.ag/46caVho

A common type of ant in Europe breaks a fundamental rule in biology: its queens can produce male offspring that are a whole different species go.nature.com/4mOb5T9

‘Almost unimaginable’: these ants are different species but share a mother

Ant queens of one species clone ants of another to create hybrid workers that do their bidding.

go.nature.com

Huge congratulations to Isabelle Toussaint-Lardé on publishing the first paper of her PhD! 🎉 Ever wondered whether paedomorphic species change their feeding strategies from larval to adult stages? Is adulthood in axolotls just an illusion? 🧠👀

I am proud and grateful to present a dream project today in @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41... Meet #Mirasaura grauvogeli, a #wonderreptilewith skin appendages that rival feathers and hairs, challenging our view of reptile #evolution🪶🦎

Thrilled to share our new paper out in BMC, part of my postdoc at @cornellvet.bsky.social! 🐘🐀 We found that larger mammals evolve more diverse morphologies, while smaller ones can explore many locomotor strategies without much change to their forelimbs. bmcecolevol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Body mass evolution as a driver of morphological and ecological diversity in terrestrial mammals - BMC Ecology and Evolution

Body mass plays a fundamental role in the macroevolutionary dynamics of morphological, ecological, and phylogenetic diversification. Given biomechanical principles, large body masses in terrestrial ve...

bmcecolevol.biomedcentral.com

A 45-million-year-old cetacean brain exhibits prominent olfactory regions, indicating that early whales retained a sense of smell 🐳🧠 academic.oup.com/evolut/advan... @smnstuttgart.bsky.social

Fossil brain 🧠🧟 of a 45-million-year-old cetacean! We are proud to publish‪ @journal-evo.bsky.social l the result of Elena Berger’s Bachelor’s thesis @smnstuttgart.bsky.social. Thread 👇 ‬

🚨🚨PhD position alert!🚨🚨 Do you like 🐢🐢? Or ecomorph evolution? I am offering a 36-month PhD position funded by the DFG about ecomorphology and neuroanatomy of turtles. Check out the ad here: www.senckenberg.de/en/career/sc... Please share and if you have questions, send me a message 😉

My official baptism of Bluesky! Hot off the press! My last chapter of PhD has been finally published! Here we compare the internal anatomy of the chela closing muscles in two species of scorpions at the extremes of the chela morphological gradient. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Functional Divergence of Scorpion Pedipalps: Musculoskeletal Specialization Toward Opposing Performance Optima

We investigated the determinants of pincer (chela) closing performance in two scorpion species representing extremes of chela morphology. Using synchrotron-based 3D models and muscle architecture dat...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Almost the weekend! Georges the caecilian (Herpele squalostoma) is clearly feeling it too! 🪱 #NameItToSaveIt #Caecilian #Amphibians @smnstuttgart.bsky.social

Paper alert 🚨 Our 1rst paper with @vivienl.bsky.social and colleagues is out in Functional Ecology! In this paper, we investigated how complete metamorphosis promotes morphological and functional diversity in Caudata.Want to know more? Read this👇 besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Complete metamorphosis promotes morphological and functional diversity in Caudata

Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Happy to have had the opportunity to write a short article discussing the findings of an exciting recent paper on the diversification of burrowing behaviour in mammals by Pinkert et al. authors.elsevier.com/a/1kzR93QW8S... (Full access via link until 10.06.25)

New @erc.europa.eu funded #ConvergeAnt preprint on using the evolution of pseudogenes to document the parallel regression of oral anatomy in myrmecophagous mammals posted at @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We are hiring!! 🦎🧠🐍 2 year postdoc to work on on the evolution of brains in snakes and lizards (on our current ARC Discovery project). Applications close 25th March 2025! careers.adelaide.edu.au/cw/en/job/51...

Learn more about South Australia's new university for the future.

careers.adelaide.edu.au

Fun data acquisition at the Senckenberg Nature Museum! More #herpetology and #mammalogy to come! 🐻🐸🐍🦎

We CT scanned thousands of vertebrates from US natural history collections and made them freely available. Countless people have used the data for research (>200 pubs) and to learn anatomy/morphology. www.morphosource.org/projects/000...

Alex Wild@alexwild.bsky.social · 2y ago

Post the amazing science things you have done with federal funding.