Spiny turbots are a small family of flatfishes whose eyes don’t completely migrate to the other side of their heads. At the right angle they look like cyclopses

Have officially arrived at JMIH!

Hundreds of thousands of bats emerge from a large Mexican-free tailed colony in East Texas. The bats gave us a spectacular show with plenty of daylight left, emerging about 20 minutes before sunset 🦇

Second, our big effort to (1) make a new fish tree (2) date it (3) define taxon names (4) build the largest fish CT scan dataset to-date (5) answer ecomorphological questions- whew! @sternarchella.bsky.social @arciladk.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New paper out today! @sternarchella.bsky.social and I review how modularity and integration influence adaptive radiations and diversification. Read it here: rdcu.be/fpcSX

If you catch a lot of fishes you have to make sure to Id them properly. Here HoWan and Sato are id’ing a bunch of lanternfishes that we caught in the Yakushima port

At a particular port in Yakushima, you can see beautiful coral reef fishes during the day, and catch deep sea lantern fishes at night using a flashlight and dipnet

Took a brief break from collecting to catch @laurenhennelly.bsky.social ‘s wedding with @arummel.bsky.social back to the fishes today

We’ve also been doing some fish printing. Scored this massive sailfish fin that was sitting is a discard pile at the fish market. Printed it as well

Collected some of my favorite parrotfishes today, these Calotomus have beautiful orange masks and strikingly lack beaks instead they have a bunch of tiny individual teeth in their jaws. Instead of coral these guys mostly eat macroalgae

The Evans Lab is back in Kagoshima, Japan chasing fishes around!

Goby gummies? Yes, goby gummies. New lab paper out by @chemingson.bsky.social besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Twenty five years on from Dolph Schluter's book "The Ecology of Adaptive Radiation" that reshaped the way adaptive radiation was studied, this review revisits key questions raised to evaluate the progress made over the past quarter century, 8 of which remain unresolved...🌍🧪👇

‘The ecology of adaptive radiation’ revisited: A 25-year reflection

Abstract. Twenty-five years ago, the book The Ecology of Adaptive Radiation by Dolph Schluter presented a testable framework that integrated ecology, genet

doi.org

Peregrine falcon hunting bats (very successfully) in Houston tonight!

I'm glad that I wasn't a grandma for once and went to the division social because @sternarchella.bsky.social taught me that flat fish have handedness preferences (!!?!!) and that parrotfish beaks are a hellscape amalgamation of teeth. Fish are wild. I 🐟 #SICB2026

The K/Pg extinction created a buffet for open-ocean fishes. A new paper shows that Pelagiaria underwent an adaptive radiation following the extinction based on new jaw shapes to fill the vacuum @knapprew.bsky.social @evoswami.bsky.social @sternarchella.bsky.social academic.oup.com/evlett/advan...

New paper! Here we look at shape evolution of the mandible in Pelagiaria, a group of open-ocean fishes that includes tuna and mackerel. We find that shape disparity accumulated rapidly at the origin of the clade at around the K/Pg boundary... academic.oup.com/evlett/advan...

Adaptive radiation of pelagiarian fishes at the K/Pg boundary led to rapid diversification of mandible morphology

Abstract. Mandibles represent a key evolutionary innovation that has enabled jawed vertebrates to adapt and diversify in response to a range of food source

academic.oup.com

This paper has been in the works for a long time for various pandemicky and other reasons, and I thank all of my excellent coauthors for their hard work and patience! @evoswami.bsky.social @friedmanlab.bsky.social @sternarchella.bsky.social @gilespalaeo.bsky.social @gizehrdelazaro.bsky.social

MicroCT scan of crypt galls induced by the cynipid wasp Bassettia pallida in branches of the southern live oak, Quercus virginiana. Hiding in the crypts are a second parasitoid wasp, the crypt-keeper - Euderus set! @sternarchella.bsky.social #biodiversity

Stoplight Parrotfish, just a ridiculously beautiful animal. #scuba #diving #oceans 🦑

Took a long time but we are finally growing baby clownfish in the lab!

I love it when art and science connect! The newest art exhibit at Rice’s Moody Center features stunning representations of fish anatomy by @sternarchella.bsky.social and some of his students!

ICB From the Evan's lab! Developmental and Functional Interactions Structure Patterns of Variational #Modularity in the Lunar #Wrasse Skull by Hugi,& @sternarchella.bsky.social et al doi.org/10.1093/icb/... Evans lab koryevans.weebly.com/people.html

91 years is a good long run for most but too short for someone like Jane Goodall. Damn.

Jane Goodall, ethologist and conservationist, has died. She was 91

Checkout the write up for our latest study! news.rice.edu/news/2025/an...

Thrilled to see our PNAS paper out! Such an amazing journey and couldn’t have asked for a better experience working with the Evans Lab 💙🐟

Kory Evans Ph.D@sternarchella.bsky.social · 10mo ago

New paper alert!!!🚨 in our new study we find that Antarctic icefishes added a new module in their skulls during their adaptive radiation special shout out to @mayaranevesbio.bsky.social who led this project! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

We have a new paper on the icefish adaptive radiation led by @mayaranevesbio.bsky.social, a new PI at UFPR 🧊🐟

Kory Evans Ph.D@sternarchella.bsky.social · 10mo ago

New paper alert!!!🚨 in our new study we find that Antarctic icefishes added a new module in their skulls during their adaptive radiation special shout out to @mayaranevesbio.bsky.social who led this project! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

New paper alert!!!🚨 in our new study we find that Antarctic icefishes added a new module in their skulls during their adaptive radiation special shout out to @mayaranevesbio.bsky.social who led this project! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Episode 62 launches this Friday! Join us as we chat with @sternarchella.bsky.social, Ichthyologist and professor of biosciences at Rice University. Dr. Evans chats with us about fish evolution, particularly through the lens of fish skulls. A fascinating discussion, fresh in your podcatcher Friday!