Chart showing the causes of death globally in 2023. The data source is the IHME Global Burden of Disease (2025). Chart CC BY to Our World in Data

On any average day, 165,000 people die globally. That’s 60 million a year.

What do they die from?

🔧📊 We built a new interactive tool that lets you answer this question, with data for every country.

Globally, 75% of deaths are from non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Heart disease alone is 1 in 3.

The Jenny Donald Undergraduate Student Conference Award is awarded to assist 3rds year genetics students to attend the annual conference. The GSA committee may elect to offer more than one award in a given year. Applications due 11:59pm 7th May AEST
genetics.org.au/awards/#Dona...

Jobs | Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Stuttgart Offene Stellen

Postdoc in Macroevolution - Deadline April 12th -

Join a team of Stuttgart botanists & myself to test drivers of Angiosperm diversification! Fully open process

Submit cover letter, CV, 3 referees & publication list in a single PDF to postdoc-botany@smns-bw.de + 3 key papers (if possible) as PDF

Plastic frogs sitting round a key board

My "Introduction to Phylogenetic Comparative Methods in R" online book is now available here: nhcooper123.github.io/pcm-primer-o... Note it only deals with basic methods and was mostly written in 2020 if you're wondering why your awesome new method/paper is missing! Please cite it if you use it :)

Nice review by Joris and co. There's several anecdotal and video evidence of blindsnakes climbing trees in Australia too!
connectsci.au/zo/article/7...

Hi all. I am very excited that after 6 years I finally got my phylogenetic comparative methods book and online exercises online. Feel free to use and share. The book is here: nhcooper123.github.io/pcm-primer/. Note that it is not finished, we had to abandon it before the sunk costs fallacy broke us

Vous voulez faire une thèse sur l'évolution de la tête des squamates au Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle?
C'est par ici: adum.fr/as/ed/voirpr...

Interested in a PhD on the evolution of the head shape of squamates at the Museum of Natural History of Paris?
Here you go:
adum.fr/as/ed/voirpr...

Delighted to see our work on the cover of Systematic Biology!! We introduce an approach for analyzing pairwise-defined traits (e.g. 'strength of RI', 'diet niche overlap') in a phylogenetically informed context (R package 'phylopairs' now on CRAN). Read it here: academic.oup.com/sysbio/artic...

We're hiring a post doc!

Looking for a global change ecologist to work with Jenny McGuire & a multidisciplinary team including me and
@jameststroud.bsky.social on the ecology side of things

please share widely!

Platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) in white studio setting, photo by Joel Sartore for National Geographic Photo Ark

This is crazy: platypus hairs have unique, hollow melanosomes (pigment cells) that may have an additional function unrelated to the brown color they produce:

A unique hollow melanosome morphology in the hairs of the platypus Ornithorhynchus anatinus
royalsocietypublishing.org/rsbl/article...

I think you've made a good case!

🐸🎉 Awesome @microbemik.bsky.social @tiffanykosch.bsky.social and team!

No justification for recognition of the blindsnake genera Anilios and Sundatyphlops (Squamata: Typhlopidae) | Zootaxa

Adios *Anilios*! Glad our phylogeny was somewhat helpful in synonymising @simonmaddock.bsky.social! mapress.com/zt/article/v...

Research Fellow - Canberra / ACT, ACT, Australia Classification: Academic Level BSalary package: $121,598 to 137,870 per annum plus 17% superannuationTerm: Full Time, Fixed Term (up to June 2030) The Position The candidate will be part of the ANU Ph...

Just in case anybody out there wants a postdoc with some of the coolest people in the field, here it is!

jobs.anu.edu.au/jobs/researc...

It's a big day for Australasian mammal fans, with three new marsupials from West Papua! For me, the best bit is that two of them closely resemble fossils from Pleistocene sites in Queensland. Papers are open access, so go read 'em!

So I pleased to announce the conceptual spawn of FigTree: PearTree (acronym still to be finalised). If you want to dive right in it is hosted as a web app here: artic-network.github.io/peartree (click the “Example...” button for immediate candy and then click every button you can find).

Two PhD scholarships are available at Murdoch University within the WEEP Lab on bat ecophysiology in the Pilbara.

🌏 Open to domestic & international applicants
📝 Applications close 30th March 2026

More information about eligibility, selection criteria, and how to apply can be found below!

New phylogenomic paper led by Janne Torkkola on Sphenomorphini - Australia's biggest vertebrate radiation🦎out now in MPE!
doi.org/10.1016/j.ym...

Phylogenomics and the origins of sharks www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02...

Climate change predicts Quaternary extinctions and extant genetic diversity in a threatened Australian lizard Ramm et al. show that Quaternary climate change predicts local extinctions and intraspecific differences in genetic diversity of the threatened Mountain Dragon (Rankinia diemensis). Their data suggest...

Out today in @currentbiology.bsky.social and led by @tillramm.bsky.social! We integrated population genomics, fossils, SDMs, and micro-CT scanning to understand how climate change has influenced extinctions and extant genetic diversity in the threatened Australian mountain dragon #ozherps #genomics

🦎THREAD: We just published something wild in @asn-amnat.bsky.social - lizards missing entire limbs not only survive, but some appear to actually thrive in the wild?!

Let me tell you about the "three-legged pirate" lizards 🏴‍☠️

[Paper: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/... ]

(1/n)

Happy #WorldSnakeDay from your mates over at @squamatespod.bsky.social! 🐍🧪

Lecturer, Animal Ecology - Townsville, QLD, Australia James Cook University (JCU) is creating a brighter future for life in the Tropics and beyond, through education and research that makes a difference locally and globally.  We now have an opportunity a...

Ongoing academic position lecturer in terrestrial animal ecology at JCU Australia. Deadline 8th August 2025. careers.jcu.edu.au/jobs/lecture...

Good morning Australasian reptile genomics folks (that seems very specific).

The Open Consortium on Squamate Genomics has a presentation by Arthur Georges (Uni Canberra) on Telomere-to-Telomere reptile genomes, this morning at 9am AEST.

Join us for some dragon chat!

bsky.app/profile/bren...

How many paths lead to evolutionary innovation? How versatile are genomic toolkits? Excited to announce my new @pnas.org paper addressing these questions in collaboration with @rokaslab.bsky.social, @hittingerlab.bsky.social, and the Pennell lab!

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Thanks @evojlinnsoc.bsky.social for a great summary! It was a pleasure working with @keoghlabanu.bsky.social, Emma Sherratt, Scott Hocknull and Andrew Amey on this paper. I counted a lot of vertebrae...

Many elongate species show a positive correlation between body size & number of vertebrae (pleomerism), but some groups lack it entirely, the reason for which we don't yet understand. Snakes, being long, are good model species for investigating this...a 🧵(1/3) 🧪🌍🐍
@puttert.bsky.social

Text: Emily Roycroft, 2025 Society for the Study of Evolution Dobzhansky Prize. Headshot of Emily Roycroft.

Congratulations to this year’s Dobzhansky Prize recipient, Dr. Emily Roycroft! She will give the Dobzhansky Prize talk at #Evol2025 in Athens, GA in June. Learn more about her work here: www.evolutionsociety.org/news/display... @emilyroycroft.bsky.social

Review of evidence that foxes and cats cause extinctions of Australia's endemic mammals Abstract. Over half of Australia's threatened and extinct endemic mammal species have been attributed to introduced red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) and cats (Fel

A recent paper claims, opposed to what conservation science has known for decades, that there is no evidence that foxes and cats were a major driver of Australia's mammal extinctions. Turns out there are quite a few issues here. Strap in for a looong thread 🧪

academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...

Helping @austevolsoc.bsky.social advertise!
careers.deakin.edu.au/en/job/57142...