Arden Smith and I are writing a graphic novel about the course, and we published a preview of the novel alongside the scientific paper: ssbbulletin.org/article/id/6...

Z499 (Discovering Insect Species) – The Subulate Palpomere Posts about Z499 (Discovering Insect Species) written by David Maddison

Some of the early history of the course was documented on my blog, subulatepalpomere.com/category/z49...

One of my favorite projects ever about species discovery in beetles came to fruition a week and a half ago. The paper that reported the research of my Discovering Insect Species course was published in Bulletin of the Society of Systematic Biologists, at ssbbulletin.org/article/id/5...

The Passing of the Tree of Life Web Project The Tree of Life Web Project began its journey almost 40 years ago, and was formally announced in early 1996. It has served thousands of pages of information about the evolutionary tree of life and…

After almost 30 years, the Tree of Life Web Project has been retired as an actively growing site. It will be unavailable until we can build a static site that contains its final content. More details at subulatepalpomere.com/2025/11/02/t...

Mesquite now has a built-in adventure game, which you may be able to find if you say the correct magic word. You can also build your own versions of the game.
🤔

Mesquite's two icons, one against a black background, and one against a sun on a sky blue background.

Mesquite 4.02 update released! It fixes a few bugs and adds Codon Alignment and various other improvements. Also, much faster with genomics files with 1000s of loci. www.mesquiteproject.org 🧪 #evolbio
@bembidion.bsky.social

I miss its youth too, Ainsley. It still exists (tolweb.org/tree/), but has been dormant for over a decade. I started the project in 1994, with Wayne's (@waynemaddison.bsky.social) help, and then led its growth until I no longer had the resources, and other projects (e.g., EOL) captured the moment.

Department of Botany and Plant Pathology at Oregon State University is hiring a Directory of the Herbarium

The Department of Botany and Plant Pathology at Oregon State University is Hiring!

We are searching for a Director of the Oregon State University Herbarium and applications are welcomed at the ranks of assistant, associate, or full professor.

Here's our post for a previous Mesquite video (follow the linked list back in time!).
bsky.app/profile/waynemaddison.bsky.social/post/3ltijw3bwms2j

Exporting to Google Earth YouTube video by Mesquite ProjectTeam

A two-minute video showing how to export geographic localities and trees from Mesquite 4 into Google Earth. youtu.be/tdOVmR122ts 🧪 #evolbio

A stained-glass piece of mine from a few years ago. #Canada

Displaying Chronograms in Mesquite 4 YouTube video by Mesquite ProjectTeam

A short video with a Mesquite tip showing how to display chronograms from a BEAST divergence dating analysis. youtu.be/CvxX8GauqLo 🧪 #evolbio @waynemaddison.bsky.social

Celebrating the release of Mesquite 4!

A stairwell as musical instrument. The sound is much more striking and visceral in person.

It was in that volume of 1802 that Latreille gave the generic name to my beloved beetles of the genus Bembidion. Perhaps this coin went through his hands at some point that year. [The coin’s year is marked as 11, as it was the 11th year of the French Republican Calendar.]

And here is a French coin that was minted in September 1802, a couple of months before Pierre André Latreille's third volume of “Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière des crustacés et des insects” was published.

And perhaps Charles Darwin had these coins in his pocket when his On the Origin of Species was published.

Here are two Swedish coins from 1758, which I recently acquired. I like to think that there is a possibility, however slim, that Carl Linnaeus had one of these in his pocket on the day that the 10th edition of Systema Naturae (the starting point of zoological nomenclature) was published.

Hi Darren, I'd love to be added to your starter pack! Thanks, David