A title slide of a talk, “exploring the evolution and development of complex tissues in reptiles: integrating classic and cutting-edge techniques”
Postdoc @aaronhgriffing.bsky.social showing off some cool new methods and data at the NYC Miltenyi lightsheet microscope users symposium
Genomic rearrangement of the Hox cluster in a dung beetle species with derived cephalic horn morphology
#DBfeature #InHoxWeTrust 🪲
Divergent Hox cluster arrangement in horned beetles retain conserved embryonic and adult expression patterns.
by Erica Nadolski, Isabel Manley, Sukhmani Gill, Armin Moczek @ericanadolski.bsky.social
tinyurl.com/ycxabrh5
Examples of the new model organism shirts for sale on the SDB merchandise website
Excited to share that @socdevbio.bsky.social has a new and improved merch store! Rep your fav model organism in one of the Society’s new original designs 🤗 sdb-official-merch.printify.me
Happy to announce the alpha release of the SCINKD3!
SCINKD3 is an extension of SCINKD streamlines the use of WGS data from multiple individuals to identify sex chromosomes. In testing, its shown to be robust in many cases with as few as 4 individuals.
github.com/DrPintoThe2n...
axial skeleton of the tuatara (Rhynchocephalia: Sphenodon): insights on intraspecific variability, ontogeny, sexual dimorphism, and remarks on fossil taxa url: academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/a...
Hey y'all. I'm a month late to this, but I wanted to share that one of my PhD chapters was published in Systematic Biology with my advisor, Frank Burbrink. Here, we explore how ecological opportunity influences phenotypic evolution in North American natricid snakes. 🧵/8
Illustration from 1813 showing four detailed, colored insects believed to be related to cockroaches and similar species. The largest insect (labeled 33) has extended wings with blue-green patterned hindwings and reddish forewings. A smaller insect (34) displays reddish and yellow spotted wings with a brown segmented body. Two other smaller insects (35 and 36) appear with simpler brown, red, and yellow markings. All insects have long, segmented legs and antennae. The background is plain, emphasizing the insects' anatomical features and vibrant wing patterns.
🪳 Natuurlijke en naar het leven nauwkeurige gekleurde afbeeldingen en beschrijvingen der spoken, wandelende bladen, zabelspringhanen, krekels, trekspringhanen en kakkerlakken: Amsterdam: J.C. Sepp, 1813.
[Source]
Living the dream
Presenting some of my work on reptile evo devo to the Hirasawa group
Members of the Hirasawa group (left) and Griffin lab (right) eating fresh tuna
A Buddhist temple and pear blossom trees in downtown Tokyo
A sign for the Evolutionary Morphology Laboratory featuring an alligator embryo
Just got back from an amazing trip to Japan with the @griffinlabpaleo.bsky.social to work on evo-devo-paleo collaborations with the Hirasawa group at UTokyo
Cranial ossification in leopard geckos examined using Alizarin Red staining.
A chart illustrating ossification sequence in leopard gecko crania
New paper in @journalofanatomy.bsky.social with PAD Wise and AP Russell! We show that using morphological criteria to assign developmental stage provides more ossification sequence resolution than embryo size or developmental time (days).
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
#GeckoEvoDevo
We're hiring a *post doc*!
Are you a global change ecologist (broadly defined) and want to work with Jenny McGuire, @benjaminfreeman.bsky.social, me & many others?!🦎🐦🦴⛰️
Come join an amazing, hungry, and very exciting eco-evo group here at GT!
careers.hprod.onehcm.usg.edu/psc/careers/...
Something different for #TrilobiteTuesday
This is an X-ray of a Chotecops trilobite from the Devonian Hunsruck slate near Bundenbach, Germany. The soft tissues were replaced with pyrite or fool's gold and are denser than the rock. The X-ray shows the denser material including legs and gills.
A glorious Aristelliger praesignis being active at night
Our analysis reiterates that embryonic data can be informative in estimating ancestral states. This was such a fun project to work on. Aristelliger are my favorite geckos and they keep surprising us with how cool they are! 8/8
Ancestral character estimations of diel activity in sphaerodactylid genera
These data show Aristelliger have a fovea and likely transitioned recently to nocturnality a diurnality. When we performed ancestral character reconstructions with MRCA of Aristelliger + Quedenfeldtia coded as diurnal, we gained support that the ancestor of all sphaerodactylids was diurnal! 7/x
Hematoxylin & eosin images as well as immunofluorescence of the Aristelliger retina showcasing increased photoreceptors in the fovea
Foveae are almost exclusively found in diurnal taxa. So we set out to examine the retina of an adult Aristelliger. After some careful histology, we found a very shallow photoreceptor-dense pit — a fovea! 6/x
Lateral views of the heads of five species of lizard. Diurnal lizards exhibit ocular elongation and retraction, while the nocturnal lizards do not.
This eye elongation/retraction during embryonic development is typical of diurnal lizards exhibiting #foveae — specialized pits in the retina that aid in high-acuity vision and light filtering. Here are some comparisons with three diurnal lizards on the top & two nocturnal lizards on the bottom. 5/x
Me 11 years ago collecting Aristelliger (with permits)
Aristelliger barbouri and Aristelliger praesignis embryos exhibiting ocular extension and retraction through development
Years ago, I opportunistically collected embryos of Aristelliger — a group of nocturnal (& epically cool) sphaerodactylids. This group is sister to a diurnal lineage. Several years later, I noticed that the earlier-stage embryos exhibited elongation of the temporal region of the eye. 4/x
The sphaerodactylid portion of the ancestral character estimation from Gamble et al. 2015
Ancestral states of diel activity in the #Sphaerodactylidae have been estimated, but have ultimately been difficult to resolve. Especially the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of Aristelliger + Quedenfeldtia and the MRCA of all spaherodactylids (from @tonygamble.bsky.social back in 2015) 3/x
Transitions between nocturnality and diurnality can be uncommon, but geckos went through a nocturnal bottleneck early in their evolution, but there are 10 hypothesized reversals to diurnality. An example of a primarily diurnal lineage includes the weird and wonderful sphaerodactylid geckos! 2/x
Lateral view of a preserved croaking gecko (Aristelliger) embryo
I’m so excited to announce our new paper in @journal-evo.bsky.social showing how embryology can help us determine ancestral character states in temporal niche
academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...
Collab w/ A Bauer, A Wegerski, @tonygamble.bsky.social, & A Rasys
#GeckoEvoDevo #Aristelliger
1/x
Out now in @anatrecord.bsky.social: The distinct synsacrum of knob-tailed geckos (Gekkota: Carphodactylidae: Nephrurus) doi.org/10.1002/ar.7...
Historical illustration showing two magnified embryo figures: the upper is a human embryo and the lower is a dog embryo. Both are detailed with visible early anatomical features such as curved shapes and developing structures. The image is from Darwin’s work "The Descent of Man," with the human embryo attributed to Ecker and the dog embryo to Bischoff, highlighting early developmental similarities between species in evolutionary theory. The page header reads "SECOND DAY’S SITTING" with the page number 39.
🧠 Thx 2 @NHM_London 4 contributing this dog & human embryo fig. frm the bk: Homo vs. Darwin. An interesting read.
[Source]
Illustration of a flying dragon lizard perched on a tree branch, displaying large, colorful skin folds extending from its neck to its limbs. The lizard has a scaly greenish-blue body with brown and black spots on the extended skin, resembling wings used for gliding. It has an open mouth, clawed feet gripping the branch, and a long striped tail hanging down. The tree branch features rough bark and some yellow-green foliage. The artwork mimics a mythical dragon while depicting the real animal’s distinctive gliding adaptations.
🐉 The naturalists' miscellany: .
London: Printed for Nodder co, 1789.. Smaller cousin of fire-breathing dragons? Flying Dragon has folds of skin that it uses 2 glide through the air #bhlib
[Source]
To a first approximation, all Australian vertebrates are lizards. 🦎
But not just any lizards, Sphenomorphine skinks!
With more than 280 species they are hyper variable. Now, Janne Torkkola has pulled together the biggest phylogeny of the group to date. Read for free:
doi.org/10.1016/j.ym...
1/4
Time well spent
These ultra-fine structures shown at 30X magnification are the reason why geckos can adhere to most surfaces, using Van der Waals force.
The power of hairy lizard toes!
(🔬: Power & Syred, SciencePhotoLibrary)
From Tiny Spines to Sticky Toes: What Cyrtodactylus Geckos Can Tell Us about the Evolution of Stickiness in Lizards
Like anoles, geckos are famous for their adhesive toepads, enabling astonishing climbing abilities. Since adhesive toepads evolved independently in geckos and anoles, these two…
Also this month, Šulcová et al., studied how teeth attach to jaws across vertebrates. In veiled chameleons, firmly ankylosed teeth formed via a transient cell type at the tooth–bone interface showing both osteoblast- and odontoblast-like features. The authors call these theorised cells ankyloblasts
Line drawing illustration from 1758 depicting the developmental stages of frogs, from egg clusters at the top through successive tadpole phases in middle rows, to fully formed frogs at the bottom right. At the bottom center, a detailed botanical illustration of a rose plant with leaves and blooming flowers is shown. Each stage and subject is labeled with figure numbers, emphasizing the biological progression alongside the rose plant as a botanical reference. The image is arranged clearly on a plain background with delicate, precise linework.
🌹 Historia naturalis ranarum nostratium: Nürnberg: gedrucht bey Johann Joseph Fleischmann, 1758.
[Source]
Cricket embryo for #FluorescenceFriday !
(macroH2A in magenta, neurons in yellow and F-Actin in cyan)