I wouldn't say it's the only reason, but in hindsight, I think this has a lot to do with it for me too! Looking forward to reading the linked piece.

Perfect descent for Integrity

Virtual brain endocasts of the palaeanodont Metacheiromys marshi and the neurosensory evolution of early Pholidotamorpha We describe the endocranial anatomy of Metacheiromys marshi. Decrease in olfaction and eye movement control occurred through time in Pholidotamorpha and is likely linked to fossorial adaptations. The...

New paper out on the brain endocast of a distant relative of pangolins: Metacheiromys! We found a possible neurological convergence among myrmecophagous mammals 🧠🐜

Check it out, it's open access! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

My PhD paper on my beloved cycads and beetles on the cover of Science!!!

Check out how we studied thermal infrared as a pollination signal, from molecular mechanisms to the wonders of behavior...

science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Headshot of Wendy Valencia-Montoya. Text: Wendy Valencia-Montoya, 2026 Society for the Study of Evolution Dobzhansky Prize.

Congratulations to this year’s Dobzhansky Prize recipient, Dr. Wendy Valencia-Montoya! She will give the Dobzhansky Prize talk at #Evol2026 in Cleveland, OH in June. Learn more about her work: www.evolutionsociety.org/news/display...
@wendyssae.bsky.social

16 out of 16! First time ever!

Doing way better than my March Madness bracket this year...

I didn't hate any of the winners, but OBAA felt the most overrated to me. It was a lot of revolutionary aesthetic, and Leo's performance didn't land. I'm also just not into PTA style storytelling, but I respect his work and don't hate this as a "career achievement" kind of award

It was never in the conversation, but Bugonia was the most engrossing theater experience I've had since Hereditary and the movie that impressed me the most across multiple awards categories. No Other Choice and Secret Agent were the only others from last year that I'd put in the same tier

Cover of the journal Nature, featuring the head of a large fish with its mouth open. A smaller fish is swimming into its mouth. The cover reads "Caught in Time: Early fossils shed light on the origins of bony fish."

Osteichthyans--the bony fishes--are by far the most diverse group of living jawed vertebrates. Two papers out today in @nature.com feature remarkable new Chinese fossils that paint a picture of substantial morphological diversity among stem osteichthyans.

I continue to be fascinated by the phenomenon whereby an expert engages with any of the LLMs on their field of expertise and is instantly horrified by the wrong answers, and then goes on to use it for things they are not experts in as though it won’t be just as bad for those.

As far as the website goes, the only thing I’m left thinking at the end is… what action can I take? Especially if insurance says I’m too young for an early screening. Eat more fiber? I do an okay job of that already (being vegan helps). I also plan to run more (not less) in the coming years.

As a 33 y/o male who has run multiple marathons (currently training for another) and who also sits for 2+ hours per day (with walk breaks), I found this site to be very informative. I’m going to bring the ultra-marathon risk factor abstract to my next doctor’s visit to ask about an early screening.

Enjoyed this read!

What I’d love to see added onto the WMMs is a points system and an annual award. Nobody is going to run all 7 of them, but if you can finish top ~3 at 2 or 3 of them in a given year, that should be recognized as an immense achievement

Thrilled to be featured on the cover of @devdynamics.bsky.social

highlighting our 2 anole studies published:

anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
&
anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Thanks so much @thomsanger.bsky.social for hosting me when I took this image!

I think "break" is the right question, but I think now is the wrong time to ask it. Until we get Lina Khan back in charge of the FTC, the current focus should be on protecting people and building power. E.g., local pressure on politicians (e.g., Frey, Waltz) to arrest ICE officers who break any law.

I want every person working for or with ICE, at every level, tried for felony murder. This is now the compromise position.

Four camera-type eyes in the earliest vertebrates from the Cambrian Period:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Art: Xiangtong Lei & Sihang Zhang

When @omearabrian.bsky.social saw the manuscript, he described it as: ‘What if this figure could be an entire paper?’

I choose to interpret that as high praise.

Now accepted at AmNat: The geometry of macroevolution (with Dan Rabosky). www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

I’m convinced that current AI is only “smart” enough to do things that already don’t take that long to do. The most practical utility I’ve ever gotten from them is as a glorified search engine.

The AI model kept trying to give me a solution instead of telling me that the workflow I was trying was not possible, which would have been far more productive.

Anyways, I went back to just reading documentation from the start.

I once tried to solve a complex R coding problem with ChatGPT.

I lost about an hour to “Sorry, this is the actual name of the function from this package instead” before I gave up, opened the documentation, learned that what I wanted to do didn’t exist, and found a workaround (10 mins).

Mayor Jacob Frey: “To ICE, get the fuck out of Minneapolis.”

I’m excited to be the first ever Artist-in-Residence at #SICB2026! Stop by the @sicbjournals.bsky.social booth during the poster session to chat with me about scientific art and take home some swag with my artwork on it! 🐡

If I saw a "murder hornet," I'd be running in the other direction. But these wee frogs think they're tasty snacks—even though they get stung repeatedly while consuming them. That story and more from @science.org and science in this edition of #ScienceAdviser: www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪

Two quail embryos. The individual on the left has dark pigment in it's eye while the individual on the right has no visible pigment in the eye.

Two leopard gecko embryos. The individual on the left has dark pigment in it's eye while the individual on the right has no visible pigment in the eye.

I was collecting #quail #embryos this morning and found an individual with albinism! Look at the lack of pigment in the retinal epithelium! Reminds me of finding a leopard #gecko embryo with the same condition during my PhD.

Multicolored CT model of a fossil cichlid skeleton. Image credit: Austin Babut (project technician).

Do you like cichlids? Fossils? Fossil cichlids? Would you like to study them as part of a graduate degree at the University of Michigan, joining an NSF-funded project? Get in touch.

Yesterday I discovered that ChatGPT's PhD-level expertise didn't extend to bird anatomy. This morning I thought, perhaps I was being too hard on the half-trillion-dollar company. Birds are a little weird, anatomically speaking. Let's try something more familiar. A mammal. Behold.

Grade F level diagram of an ostrich skeleton. The pelvis is labelled as a humerus, and sternum appears to be labeled as the pelvis.

The team of Ph.D. level experts in ChatGPT apparently doesn't include any anatomists.

The way I convert has always been to start from:
0 C = 32 F
Then, every +10 C is +18 F

So,
10 C = 50 F
20 C = 68 F
30 C = 86 F
(+5 C is +9 F for filling in increments between when needed)

Adaptive landscapes unveil the complex evolutionary path from sprawling to upright forelimb function and posture in mammals The ‘sprawling-to-parasagittal’ postural transition is a key part of mammalian evolution from non-mammalian synapsids. This study uses evolutionary adaptive landscapes to reveal parasagittal postures ...

I'm so excited to share my latest paper out now! How did the ancestors of mammals make the switch from sprawling to upright, taking over the world in the process? Spoiler alert; it's complicated! journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...