I love this Matt. And am thrilled by your use of contractions in scientific literature 😉

But surely it’s “gene-tree species-tree” discordance.

Hot damn that’s a great design.
Also, I think that caterpillar might’ve been in the Village People.

Mario LeMoth? 🐧

! Awesome.

Hemiergis is like:

SKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINK

One ‘I’ per each total limb loss. Like any good squamate.

That's all for now. But keep your eyes peeled for more cool research on these uniquely Australian skinks from Janne.

But if you're in Australia, you're more likely to run into one of two genera:

Ctenotus (110+ species) like this Ctenotus pantherinus.

Lerista (105+ spp) like this Lerista apoda.

These guys make up the bulk of the group and range from fully limbed to completely limbless!

📸 Stephen Zozaya.

3/4

Janne's work highlights the amazing diversity of this group and cleans up some taxonomy.

Like this long snake tooth skink Coeranoscincus reticulatus, now Saiphos reticulatus.

And this prickly forest skink Gnypetoscincus queenslandiae, now Concinnia queenslandiae.

📸 Wes Read

2/4

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

🫠

BSky’s translate feature did not rescue me here.

Surely a Wels.

I know some Oz native bees do for sure (blue-banded). I’m not sure which these are, but looks like they’re resting to me!

Isn’t that how they sleep at night? I realize it’s still light out in the pic, but

Yeah baaabbbyyy.
10 tons of floating prime rib right there.

I should also say:
a huge big hug to everyone who missed out (not sure if you were in the race Tim?), very familiar with that feeling.

Thanks Tim!
This one has a few rejections notched on its belt, so it’s nice to finally get it funded.

Keep your eyes on us for more macroevolutionary work on Australian vertebrates.

A siren’s song of friendship, if you will.

What if it’s really an invitation?

OCSG_meeting_schedule

All the past talks (and future ones too) are saved here:

docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Come see what it’s all about!

Jump into the OCSG and enjoy all the past talks and a friendly community!

bsky.app/profile/brennian.bsky.social/post/3lfqeocig4c2z

How can genomics tell us about biome change?

I don’t know. But Mitzy Pepper does, and she’s going to tell us as part of the Open Consortium of Squamate Genomics upcoming talk this Thursday at 9am Canberra time (AEDT).

Interested in joining?

Holy cow I just figured out you can submit directly to a journal from BioRxiv @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social. Awesome.

Why is it easier to submit a manuscript to @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social than to *any* journal? How is that possible?

🍎
Man, that 4 game series against the Phils in September is gonna be a doozy.

Any good recs for resources?

Has anyone on here used GitHub pages to build a website? Either for personal or for a piece of software?

Would love to ask some questions as I’m apparently too dumb to work through the GitHub instructions.

OCSG_meeting_schedule

For anyone interested in watching the monthly OCSG research talks, all have been recorded and can be found here:

docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Arthur’s incredible talk will be up soon!

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...

kermit the frog from the muppet show is standing in front of a red curtain ALT: kermit the frog from the muppet show is standing in front of a red curtain

Phew.
Thanks for coming along on that ride.
Now go outside and pet a frog.