We also showcase the creativity of scientists working in new model organisms:
human blood donations, insects flying in starlight virtual reality, custom-made ant protective suits, GPS-logging free flying bats, cuttlefish sperm donations & more…
🦇🪸🦟🦑🐜🦗
Excited to share a new review by @kocherlab.bsky.social and me:
Nature-inspired neuroscience
We discuss diverse sensory systems and behaviors across the animal kingdom and argue for their integration into neuroscience. New tools in diverse systems are making this possible ✨
tinyurl.com/y5y9du27
These fuckin chuds
Naming your biology LLM after Rosalind Franklin is… hell is not hot enough
Squid strikes a pose 👀🦑🍑 #caribbeanreefsquid #reefsquid #spanishhogfish #cephalopodsofcoralcity #strikeapose
I'm hiring! I have 2 open positions:
🔬 Postdoc
🧪 Research associate
We study how animal multicellularity evolved by exploring the molecular logic of cell adhesion using cell biology, 'omics, and tool-building in non-model organisms.
Come join us!
Details and application links 👇
Please repost
Congratulations Annika! 🎉
I'm thrilled to announce that I'll be starting my lab as a SNSF starting grant professor at the Center for Integrative Genomics in Lausanne! I'm looking for PhD students who are fascinated about the neuronal basis of behaviour across species @fbm-unil.bsky.social
First 24 hours of embryonic development in 9 different animal species: (From left to right) Zebrafish, Sea urchin, Black widow spider, Tardigrade, Sea squirt, Comb jelly, Parchment tube worm, Roundworm, Slipper snail. Credit to @tessamontague.bsky.social & Zuzka Vavrušová. #ZebrafishZunday #devbio 🧪
Imagine wearing a #jellyfish as a helmet!?!
Well, that’s exactly what this juvenile jack is doing! Mostly immune to its sting, the jack has taken the jellyfish prisoner.
Shot using #scuba, out over the deep abyss, drifting at night.
#blackwater #blackwaterdiving #scubadiving #gug
Ahaaa it’s so cute!
excited to embark on a new era @nsb-mbl.bsky.social w directors Lauren O'Connell (Stanford) + Bruce Carlson (WashU), new 6-week format for graduate students, postdocs & investigators. learn state-of-the-art methods & approach towards neural systems of behavior. deadline Feb 2. tinyurl.com/57476k4v
a t-shirt design with an orange bee, clownfish, and lily, that says "Biology is bigger than binaries"
an brightly colored eel facts advent calendar, with 4 types of eels and 24 scratch off boxes. The eels include garden eels, american and european eels, ribbon eels, and a yellow moray eel
a love notes from nature advent calendar with the year 2026 on top, and a salamander sitting on a mushroom
a bunch of valentines, with a rosy maple moth, and a praying mantis
🚨🚨 WeeooWeeoo 🚨🚨
Black Friday deals at the Squid facts shop are LIVE!
Here's the deal: When you buy calendars, stickers, and posters, you get the satisfaction of supporting science education FREE!
Wow!
What a deal!
Who could pass this opportunity up? not me! That's for sure.
SquidFacts.net
@hhmi.org Summer Undergraduate Research Experience - #CechFellows named in honor of Prof Tom Cech
Deadline to apply: 12/22/2025
Spend 9 weeks in a paid, mentored biomedical research experience in an HHMI lab. See you next summer!!!
www.hhmi.org/programs/cec...
🚨 Attention undergraduate scientists and engineers! 🚨 Want to spend a summer doing research at MIT? Join us for the 2026 MIT Summer Research Program!
Learn more and apply: oge.mit.edu/msrp/
@mitdeptofbe.bsky.social @mitcheme.bsky.social @mitkochinstitute.bsky.social
a group of Drosophila erecta fruit flies on a small food patch. flies on white background
Excited to share our new #biorxivpreprint
We discovered that the fruit fly #drosophila erecta requires food odor to mate and arousal is further enhanced by social group motion.
Cross-species analysis of brain activity reveals a novel gate evolved from within a conserved circuit
shorturl.at/gGYm7
Excited to share our new paper!
✨Natural habitat and wild behaviors of the dwarf cuttlefish, Ascarosepion bandense✨
tinyurl.com/bdew5x3s
Our first cuttlefish expedition - diving in the dark to observe our cuttlefish in the wild...
Check out the paper & new expedition tool on Cuttlebase.org 🧠
If you’re interested in ants, olfaction, gene regulation, or all of the above, here’s a new preprint from the lab for you. It describes an unorthodox mechanism of transcriptional interference by which ant olfactory sensory neurons produce a single functional receptor.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Oo my advice made the list! 🧠✨
Exciting new Ruta lab preprint by @annaryba.bsky.social et al. on the neural underpinnings of intraspecific behavioral variation: Strain variation identifies a neural substrate for behavioral evolution Drosophila
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Clearly amazing appearance around 888m in #MarDelPlataCanyon: Amphitretus sp. This telescope octopus has adapted to live in a place where there is nowhere to hide but in plain sight. Deep gratitude to @autsquidsquad.bsky.social for species ID. Description on Insta: www.instagram.com/reel/DNittGh...
I had a lot of fun talking about cuttlefish camouflage and my path to science on Mark Mattson's podcast, Brain Ponderings! 🧠✨🐙
open.spotify.com/show/39HsoeK...
www.youtube.com/@brainponder...
#neuroskyence #neuroscience #cephalopod #cuttlefish
Do you know a young person with an interest in insects? 🦋
The Douglas Boyes Fund aims to provide people aged 14-18 with access to entomology equipment, fostering their passion for insects and inspiring them to engage and share their interest with other young individuals 🔽
Silly-sounding science is what happens when researchers do exactly what they are supposed to do, which is thinking freely and exploring new ideas with wide-open curiosity. 🧪
www.americanscientist.org/article/%E2%...
Excited to share the lab's 1rst preprint! Rapid high-res immunofluorescence is now possible in cultured & environmental diatoms thanks to 4-fold expansion microscopy. A step-change for comparative cell biology in one of the most important phytoplankton groups on the planet 🥳
tinyurl.com/m9s5su7s 1/2
Barbara McClintock portrait
🧬🌽 Happy Transposon Day! 🌽🧬
Today we celebrate the birthday of Barbara McClintock - scientist extraordinaire and discoverer of jumping genes. Still the only woman to have an unshared Nobel Prize in the biomedical sciences #TransposonDay2025
Cuts have consequences, illustrated. As seen on TV 📺
My ongoing request:
If your NSF or NIH grant was terminated--whether at Harvard or elsewhere--please report it here.
NSF: grant-watch.us/submit-nsf.h...
NIH: grant-watch.us/submit-nih.h...
Our trackers are actively used in lawsuits and are often the only record that terminations ever occurred.
It's often said that we have mapped Mars better than the bottom of our oceans. A new study by @oceandiscleague.bsky.social has now quantified this: we have visually explored less than 0.001% of the deep seafloor, 1/10th the size of Belgium. My latest for @nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Cuttlefish are known for dynamic, kaleidoscopic displays—and yet they seem to be colorblind. How does an animal that can't see color project color out onto its skin?
Just one of the enigmas discussed in our latest episode, w/ @tessamontague.bsky.social!
Listen: disi.org/the-cuttlefi...
