Hoiho - the world’s rarest penguin, fewer than 150 mainland pairs left

🐧We researched one of the world’s rarest #penguins. The yellow‑eyed penguin (aka hoiho/takaraka) isn’t one homogeneous species after all!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

#hoiho #conservation #genomics #birds #nzwildlife #endangered #wildlife #nature

Dissecting functional regulatory convergence over 160 million years of therian evolution www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07....

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🧬🎨 When gills do Pointillism!

For this #FluorescenceFriday,
here’s a dissected gill arch expressing nuclear fgf10b:nEOS — depth color-coded: blue for medial filaments, yellow for lateral ones.

#Zebrafish #DevBio #Microscopy #Gills

The pigment transporter Redboy confers programmed body colour transition in orchid mantises - Nature Ecology & Evolution First-instar orchid mantis nymphs avoid predators by mimicking black-red assassin bugs, whereas those in later instars avoid predators and attract prey by camouflaging themselves as lighter-coloured f...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Are claims of de-extincting the moa more hype than science? Emile Donovan speaks to Associate Professor Nic Rawlence, Director of the University of Otago's Palaeogenetics Laboratory.

www.rnz.co.nz/national/pro...

Very excited to present on Wednesday at GSA this year on my HCR and spatial transcriptomic data for honeybees! I'm on at 12 in OGGB5 in the Sir Owen Glenn building!✨

Very excited to be speaking this week at #GSA about our current work on velvet worms! 🐛 Come along to the Sir Own Glenn Building (OGGB3) on Wednesday 9th July at 12:00PM to hear all about a gigantic genome, slime gland transcriptomics, and more!

Skin, scales, and cells in a Jurassic plesiosaur Marx et al. report the first detailed study of fossilized plesiosaur soft tissues. These show that plesiosaurs possessed both smooth body skin and scaly flippers.

Skin, scales, and cells in a Jurassic plesiosaur: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...

‘Absolutely insane.’ Dragonfly’s extreme loop-the-loops are unparalleled in nature Insects use “crazy turning” to dry off after a cooling dip in water

www.science.org/content/arti...

As an early-career researcher, I loved doing outreach. So I made it my career “My new path wasn’t as straightforward as the academic route,” this educator writes

scim.ag/42iV4gH

Evolution and function of chromatin domains across the tree of life - Nature Structural & Molecular Biology Szalay et al. discuss cross-kingdom similarities and differences in 3D chromatin folding in relation to gene regulation, including in bacteria, archaea, mammals and plants. This comparison reveals cer...

🔺🔺🔺RED TRIANGLE ALERT 🔺🔺🔺
Ever wonder how #TADs compare across the tree of life?Look no further & read our Review!!!

Find out what genes & 3D chromatin can & can't do in Bacteria! Archeae! Yeast! Plants! Animals!

SMCs & RNA-Pol are the only thing they have in common
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

BE AWARE: SEALION (YOUNGSTER) This little fella likes to jump out of the bushes at you!

The sealion in question

I love this town.

A picture of a velvet worm's face next to a cartoon of Maleficent, the Disney character, showing how similar their faces are

Since we've been talking about velvet worms (Onychophora), I've been looking for references and was struck by this thought - who did it it first - nature or Disney? Art imitating nature again 🤔😀

#InsertAnInvert2024

NZ and Aus wildlife among most vulnerable to climate-driven extinction - Expert Reaction New Zealand species are among the most vulnerable to extinction in a warming world, according to a global analysis of 30 years of research. The author finds that under a projected 2.7°C rise above pr...

You can check out my and others expert opinions on new research showing an increased risk of climate-driven extinctions in #NewZealand biodiversity (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...) here www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/2024/12/06/n... @smcnz.bsky.social