Steve Haddock
@stevehaddock.bsky.social
Marine biology, ctenophores, bioluminescence, deep-sea, genomics, computing for biologists. The Radiant Sea. Photo book. Cello? Views my own. bit.ly/arms-deep bit.ly/radsea
my first 'data descriptor'! hoping this one will be useful for folks interested in tracing the distribution of genomes/genes/proteins over physicochemical gradients in the (deep) marine water column.
bioRxiv Microbiology@biorxiv-microbiol.bsky.social · 2w agoDeeply-sequenced metagenomes and over 1000 draft genomes from the epipelagic to bathypelagic Northeast Pacific Ocean https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.18.739368v1
Attention fans of #ctenophores 🌊🦑🧪 Please consider joining us at the Ctenopalooza Ctwo conference/celebration in California this August. Support is potentially available for artists and communicators. www.mbari.org/event/ctenop... Register soon or miss out on the fun! Meals included!
Ctenopalooza Ctwo • MBARI
Ctenopalooza Ctwo – a meeting of those interested in ctenophores About the meeting The past decade has seen remarkable advances in our understanding of these fascinating animals—spanning genomics, cel...
mbari.org
A livestream of a volcano in the Philippines captured a meteor crashing to Earth today. What are the odds? Mayon Volcano, Location: Albay, Luzon, Philippines
I am hiring a postdoc for scRNA-seq research in Lund, Sweden on the visual systems of non-model inverts as part of an ERC project on the evolution and ecology of advanced color and polarization vision. Apply here or share the link with someone who may be interested! 🧪 lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/...
Just when you thought one couldn't revolutionize typography, Riley and the Lettermatic team blow your mind! Nearly 750,000 glyphs! But my favorite is Texture Healing. Check it out!
Riley Cran@rileycran.bsky.social · 4mo agoNew work for GitHub: Monaspace. 🔤 A superfamily of 5 open-source typefaces for code. Full case study here: lettermatic.com/custom/monas...
New work for GitHub: Monaspace. 🔤 A superfamily of 5 open-source typefaces for code. Full case study here: lettermatic.com/custom/monas...
(3/10) The Golden Glow Zoantharian is the first documented deep-sea cave species to bioluminesce. www.marinespecies.org/worms-top-te... #toptenmarinespecies #taxonomistappreciationday #OceanDecade #GenOcean
The ocean and all who love it lost an inspiring advocate with the passing this week of Tierney Thys. She brought such joy to the work of protecting and restoring our blue planet. This wonderful tribute from Danielle Thys captures her spirit so beautifully: bit.ly/4s4hVq6
The Ocean Legacy of National Geographic Explorer Dr. Tierney Thys
In Memoriam
bit.ly
When you zoom out from individual genes to consider the context of whole chromosomes across animal diversity, animal evolution takes on a different look. Oleg Simakov and I published a review in @annualreviews.bsky.social on topological approaches in comparative genomics. 🧬 doi.org/10.1146/annu...
San Francisco-area fans of ocean animals and flashy colors. 🦑🌊🧪 I'll be giving a presentation about our book The Radiant Sea at 1 pm on Saturday Feb 28 at the Book Passage shop in Corte Madera. (Preposition overload!) Swing by and say Hi. www.bookpassage.com/event/steven...
Steve Haddock@stevehaddock.bsky.social · 11mo agoOur science photo book The Radiant Sea is out Sept 2nd!! 30 years of research, 10 years of "we should", and a year of collating pix and writing. Sönke and I show (mostly for the first time) images of how organisms produce, use, and interact with light in the sea. #bioluminescence #fluorescence 🦑🧪🌊
From our new paper out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social: www.cell.com/current-biol... w/ @neurofishh.bsky.social @gkafetzis.bsky.social @denilsson.bsky.social Looking across animals, the vertebrate eye is an obvious outlier. Why is it so different that other highly visual animals?
🧪📍🌊 🦑🍎 We’re excited to announce that we are organizing a second ctenophore meeting — Ctenopalooza Ctwo — to be held at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in Monterey Bay, California, on August 23–25, 2026. Registration is now open! www.mbari.org/event/ctenop...
Ctenopalooza Ctwo • MBARI
Ctenopalooza Ctwo – a meeting of those interested in ctenophores About the meeting The past decade has seen remarkable advances in our understanding of these fascinating animals—spanning genomics, cel...
mbari.org
Calling all #ctenophore researchers and artists! Joe Ryan is organizing the Ctenopalooza Ctwo meeting, which we will host at MBARI in California August 23-25. 🦑🧪🌊 www.mbari.org/event/ctenop... Come swap notes with fellow enthusiasts about the latest news in comb jellies.
Under cover of darkness, it's a race to eat before being eaten! Attention #teachers #librarians #ocean lovers! Win a copy of THE OCEAN'S HEART, illus. by Khoa Le! Releasing March 3! 📚👍 kathytemean.wordpress.com/2026/02/17/b... #kidlit #picturebook @pbspree.bsky.social @lernerbooks.bsky.social
Related to high pressure, @ibudin.bsky.social and Jacob Winnikoff led a study which showed that a particular lipid headgroup (PPE) is more abundant in membranes of deep #ctenophores. 🧪🦑 What was amazing was when they put PPE into bacterial membranes, the bacteria became more pressure tolerant!
Grace under pressure: How membranes help comb jellies thrive in the deep
YouTube video by MBARI (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute)
youtube.com
Dr Craig R McClain@drcraigmc.bsky.social · 7mo agoSome deep-sea facts for you! High pressure changes protein folding, requiring specialized enzymes to function at depth. Deep-sea life isn’t just tougher. It runs on proteins that often stop working at surface pressure. europepmc.org/article/med/...
The re-analysis of this #sponge #ctenophore study made me realize how important it is to really *look* at your data. Their filtering pipeline was meant to retain "strong" genes, but many of them had NO ctenophores and most had polyphyletic sponges. Time to put down the pitchforks for a while.
Casey Dunn@caseywdunn.bsky.social · 7mo agoOur eLetter github.com/caseywdunn/s... responding to a recent Science paper was just posted. The paper found more genes with consistent support for sponge-sister than ctenophore-sister. We found several technical issues that, when corrected, reverse the conclusions and recover ctenophore-sister.
This is a limited, regionally relevant post, but… I’ll be giving a talk at the Sanctuary Exploration Center in Santa Cruz on Friday Jan 16th. Come say hi if you’re in town. 🦑🧪 (I’m presenting in San Francisco in early Feb as well)
‘Cleave’ can refer to splitting something apart. ‘Cleave’ can also refer to the uniting of two things. …what? A word that is also its own opposite is called a ‘contronym.’
Thrilled to see our review article "The evolutionary origins of synaptic proteins" highlighted on the cover of Nature Reviews Neuroscience 🤩. www.nature.com/articles/s41... @msarscentre.bsky.social 🧠✨🧬🌊🪼🧽
Pawel Burkhardt@pawelburkhardt.bsky.social · 9mo agoFirst neurons didn’t appear overnight. We trace their roots to ancient secretory cells - showing how lifestyle & behavior shaped the evolution of first synapses.🧠🌊 #Evolution #Neuroscience Our latest in @natrevneuro.nature.com Link: rdcu.be/eMX3E @jeffcolgren.bsky.social @msarscentre.bsky.social
This could be your dream job: working full time at the Friday Harbor Labs on marine invertebrate organismal biology. Nine month salary from an endowment, teaching and research faculty position. apply.interfolio.com/178804
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A survey for Ctenophore Ctuesday: * What way is this comb jelly swimming? Up or Down? 🧪🦑🤷♂️🌊🤿
![A pinkish, translucent, roughly bell-shaped jelly on a black background. Iridescent and red vertical stripe run down its tapered body. The top comes to a point, and the bottom is slightly flared. Upon close inspection, you can see little grape-like clusters of gonads next to the vertical stripes, which are the comb rows and main canals.
This [relatively] massive Beroe was observed on a blue-water scuba dive off California. It is 18cm (7 inches) long. Photo: S.Haddock ©MBARI 2025
Fun faCT: If you look closely, you can see the reproductive cells on both sides of the canals. Viewed from the end, rather than the side, the female eggs develop next to the major body axis (like North, S, E, W), and male cells develop on the sides of the canal that are 45° off from the axes (NorthEast, SE, SW, NW). So here you can see 2 sets of eggs, and 4 sets of male gonads.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:funpixcztysgcgvutfyjabnl/bafkreihzme4m42oopw2rfdb7aerfad2nwu3vmg2nggav5fhulfewam5on4)
OK, this is wild! Smithsonian Magazine included The Radiant Sea in their Best Photography Books of 2025! 😲 From the start, our goal was to entice people with pretty pictures, and then sneak in the science, so to have both appreciated is a complete thrill. 🦑🧪📸 Not bad for a couple biologists :^)
Not to mention… we just had our 4th ever sighting of Haliphron in over 35 years (7000+ ROV dives). Its arms were closed up but we followed it until we could see that it was again holding a jellyfish… m.youtube.com/watch?v=4_lt... See also: www.nature.com/articles/sre...
Fresh from the deep: Rarely encountered seven-arm octopus in Monterey Bay
YouTube video by MBARI (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute)
m.youtube.com
Danna Staaf@dannastaaf.bsky.social · 8mo agoOne of the least-appreciated giant cephalopods, Haliphron atlanticus, is in the news! (thx @scsmith4.bsky.social for the heads up) Unfortunately the common name seven-arm octopus - only describes males - actually doesn't even describe males Can we think of a better one?? www.bbc.com/news/article...
Our book The Radiant Sea was chosen as one of five "Must Buy" science books by the Wall Street Journal! :^D I don't like to promote Am@z0n, but... it is on sale there for super cheap right now too. Image below showing fluorescence of one of the animals featured in the book. 🦑🧪🌊
First neurons didn’t appear overnight. We trace their roots to ancient secretory cells - showing how lifestyle & behavior shaped the evolution of first synapses.🧠🌊 #Evolution #Neuroscience Our latest in @natrevneuro.nature.com Link: rdcu.be/eMX3E @jeffcolgren.bsky.social @msarscentre.bsky.social
The evolutionary origins of synaptic proteins and their changing roles in different organisms across evolution
Nature Reviews Neuroscience - Recent studies have shed further light on the evolutionary origins of chemical synapses, In this Review, Colgren and Burkhardt explore how ancient proteins were...
rdcu.be
“Cellular Olympics” our catalog of freeky ultra fast cellular superhero’s is freely available “Ann Rev of microbiology” www.annualreviews.org/content/jour... This is a compilation of world’s fastest single cell organisms - enjoy this buffet of rare delightful protists with mind bending speeds. 🧪
Let's do another #ctenophore survey. You are scuba divining and see this lobate comb jelly cruising in search of prey. Is it swimming to the LEFT or RIGHT? 🦑🧪🌊
Apologies that I'm going to be all about THE RADIANT SEA for the foreseeable future, but .... 😉 Our book has been released in the U.K. now and should be available at your local bookshops! 🦑🧪 (with @sonkejo.bsky.social)
Thanks to those of you brave enough to vote. :^) Still time to sway the results with your own thoughts on #ctenophore anatomy. 🦑🧪
Steve Haddock@stevehaddock.bsky.social · 10mo agoFor CTENOPHORE DAY, a little survey: Which end of this fishing Pleurobrachia is the mouth on? Please just "vote" in the comments — no definitive answers. 🦑🧪🌊 P.S. this is one of my earliest #ctenophore photos, shot on film in a home-built kreisel. P.P.S. Legit data-gathering for a future paper.
For CTENOPHORE DAY, a little survey: Which end of this fishing Pleurobrachia is the mouth on? Please just "vote" in the comments — no definitive answers. 🦑🧪🌊 P.S. this is one of my earliest #ctenophore photos, shot on film in a home-built kreisel. P.P.S. Legit data-gathering for a future paper.