In the footsteps of Linnaeus: scientists share their passion for species from tiny wasps to hairy plants – in pictures For his project ‘De Oförtrutna’ (The Relentless), photographer Christer Björkman pictured Swedish scientists working in the spirit of Carl Linneaus, the botanist who created the modern taxonomic syste...

Happy to be featured in this gallery of Swedish natural history #collectors portraits featured in the The Guardian! 😊 (You might recognize several others). #naturalists

Gear and equipment for the Greenpeace Deep Arctic Expedition was picked up today! It will wait for us on the Research Vessel in Ireland. J-20 days.
@greenpeace.eu @sponbiodiv.bsky.social @biodiversa.eu

Led by Britt Andermann and colleagues @uu.se , the project demonstrates how we can scale up the mobilization of historical data - with much more to come as digitization continues.
👉 Dataset: www.gbif.org/dataset/459b...

By combining digitization with Al, this work shows how handwritten archives can be transformed into structured, FAIR biodiversity data - opening up entirely new possibilities for research and reuse.

✨Unlocking the past with Al and biodiversity data

Britt Andermann just published a new dataset @gbif.org
Sweden based on the Kullenberg Excursions (1948-1996) from the Museum of Evolution @uu.se -bringing thousands of historical insect records into the global data landscape.
Curious to know more?👇

J-30 days before departure! @greenpeace.eu @sponbiodiv.bsky.social @biodiversa.eu

#Barettin is a small alkaloid produced by the deep-sea #sponge Geodia barretti with already several known therapeutic properties. We have just published that it may be a good candidate for the treatment of chronic pain! #marinenaturalproduct

pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jnatprod.6c00169

Our assistant entomology curator @fevziye.bsky.social is currently registering tiny flies 🪰 called 'fungus gnats'. Most of these species have larvae that feed on mushrooms 🍄. We have about 9,000 specimens @uu.se to upload in the database 😅, the largest collection in Sweden. #MuseumofEvolution

And another sponge #genome note from the Aquatic Symbiosis Genomics project! The large #sponge Geodia phlegraei, was sequenced by the Wellcome Sanger Institute. It can be found from Sweden/Norway to Canada in deep-sea boreal waters.
wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/11-...

Morning pilgrimage to the estate of Tunaberg in Uppsala🇸🇪. Carl P. Thunberg, successor of Linné, built his house here in the 1780s. Demolished in 1961😕, it was replaced with a school's sports hall. A circle of 12 lime trees (the apostles) planted by Thunberg remain! 🤩

This is so cool! Can't wait to read this 🤩

Enter the absorbing world of sponges - Wellcome Sanger Institute Blog Enter the absorbing world of sponges, the intricate animals that have evolved to inhabit all corners of our Earth’s waterways and oceans. Thanks to a worldwide collaboration of sponge scientists throu...

New sponge genome note from the Aquatic Symbiosis Genomics project! The large Arctic sponge Geodia parva, was sequenced by the Wellcome Sanger Institute
wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/11-...

Learn more about the absorbing world of sponges: sangerinstitute.blog/2025/07/03/e...

Our zoology collections received a fantastic donation this week, the material and archives of Dr. Erich Furreg (1901-1967), an Austrian biologist who notably studied at Uppsala University in the 1920s. Most of these boxes have not been opened for dozens of years...

Welcome to our new bachelor student Agnes! who will barcode deep-sea #sponges from the Denmark Strait (between Greenland and Iceland) collected by @mfri.bsky.social.
@sponbiodiv.bsky.social
@biodiversa.eu

Understanding connectivity in the mesophotic🪸 is crucial for conservation, as it may determine whether these areas can serve as refuge. Check out this new sponge paper 👇

Until June 2026, this drawer with shells from the Swedish Queen Lovisa Ulrica, named by #Linnaeus will be shown at the Gustavianum Museum in Uppsala @uu.se ! The first time in many, many years that part of the Uppsala Linnaeus shell collection is presented to the public. @linneansociety.bsky.social

Is the lollipop #sponge the same in the North Pacific and the North Atlantic? To answer this: a combination of morphology, molecular phylogenetics and microbial fingerprinting! 🔬🧬🧫

Independent origins of spicules reconcile paleontological and molecular evidence of sponge evolutionary history Sponges have a cryptic Ediacaran history because ancestral sponges were soft-bodied and had low fossilization potential.

A new exciting paper on #sponge #evolution! Our results suggest that early sponges did not have #spicules and that both biosilicification and biocalcification evolved independently multiple times 🤯
www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Sponge grounds are vulnerable marine ecosystems #VMEs and we need to find ways to protect them. Here is a first attempt to monitor an entire population! 🤩

A #sponge is now in the Christmas-Tree-of-Life 🎄 at the Museum of Evolution @uu.se 😅

The Schmidt collection of envelopes in the Musée Zoologique in Strasbourg Abstract. A collection of 488 small envelopes, discovered in the Musée Zoologique in Strasbourg, France, has been shown to have belonged to one of the earl

Particularly proud of this paper: the discovery of an unknown historical #collection of #sponge fragments from the German Oscar Schmidt (1823–1886) bringing us back to the early days of spongiology. What a treasure! 🤩

doi.org/10.1093/jhc/...

Really nice talk, very helpful for a non-expert!

Uppsala universitet on Instagram: "(English below) Paco Cárdenas och Julio A. Díaz har hittat helt nya svampdjur, som bland annat lever utanför Spaniens kuster. Vid närmare analys upptäckte forskarna ... 112 likes, 3 comments - uppsalauniversity on December 2, 2025: "(English below) Paco Cárdenas och Julio A. Díaz har hittat helt nya svampdjur, som bland annat lever utanför Spaniens kuster. Vid närmar...

Uppsala University was curious to see for themselves the new order of #sponges we discovered 😅

New marine sponges provide clues about animal evolution - Uppsala University

The Uppsala University News today talk about our new order of sponges! 🪸If you want to know more 👇

Healthy oceans, safe future: stop the toxic shark trade Three sharks are killed every second - Europe’s trade in shark meat is driving them toward extinction. Let’s ban shark products once and for all. Sign now!

Three sharks are killed every second - Europe’s trade in shark meat is driving them toward extinction. Let’s ban shark products once and for all. Sign now! action.wemove.eu/sign/2025-11...

This discovery highlights the sponge biomarker hypothesis, suggesting that sponges, and therefore animals, emerged 100 million years earlier than previously thought.

Once again, we are reminded how little we know about sponges, and how crucial it is to keep exploring our oceans.🦑🦞🪼🪸🤿🌊

Even more interesting: we found that vilesids all produced large amounts of 24-isopropylcholesterols🧪, a unique sterol, precursor of the fossilized steroids found in Cryogenian and Ediacaran rocks, up to 635 million years old! They are the only recent sponges to do so.

Vilesids are today found worldwide, from shallow to deep waters. Some vilesids are actually common and well known species, like this Viles ophiraphidites in the Bahamas (photo Tse-Lynn Loh) or Cymbastella coralliophila from the Pacific, but they were classified elsewhere, in other orders.

🧵We just described Vilesida @uu.se, a new ORDER of #sponges potentially linked to the earliest known animal biomarker! 🔬🪸🪼 #MueumofEvolution

doi.org/10.1093/zool...

@zoojlinnsoc.bsky.social
@ieo.es
@ucriverside.bsky.social
@sponbiodiv.bsky.social
@biodiversa.eu

Coalescent analyses inferred the split of 2 depth-related populations of Geodia to ∼10 000 years, coincident with the last postglacial maximum! Wait, what? 🤯
#SpongeThursday