I’ve spent quite a bit of time in recent months thinking about Keith McIvor AKA JD Twitch, who passed sway on Friday. There is much more to come, but here’s a first, raw tribute. Rest in power Keith - we’ll miss you x
www.juno.co.uk/junodaily/20...
Yapped about my fish and won first prize! Had a wonderful time at #egg2025 last week @britishecologicalsociety.org
Lake Masoko in Southern Tanzania, also known as Lake Kisiba, is only ~40m deep and 600m in diameter. It was formed around 50,000 years ago, and is isolated from all nearby rivers and lakes. Genetic data suggest it was colonised by Astatotilapia calliptera around 10,000 years ago.
In Lake Masoko, Astatotilapia calliptera has two ecotypes. The shallow living "littoral" ecotype has yellowish males, while the deep living "benthic" ecotype has blueish males. Recently published research led by Madeleine Carruthers and colleagues shows how these fish occupy different light regimes, and have correspondingly different visual sensitivities. Males of these ecotypes have brightly coloured eggspots, used to signal their prowess. The colours of those spots have shifted to maximise their visibility to other fish of the same ecotype. Genetic data suggest these ecotypes are largely reproductively isolated, and started to separate only 1000 years ago. Photos are kindly provided by Ad Konings.
In crater Lake Masoko one fish species is splitting into shallow and deep-living ecotypes occupying different light environments. New research shows their visual systems are diverging, and how colours of male eggspots have changed to maximise their visibility. doi.org/10.1093/molb...
Very excited about this paper led by Erika Castro. She has shown that Heliconius were ancestrally plastic in how they acquired their cyanogens, but some species have lost the ability to biosynthesise toxins, and have lost genes involved www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
A circular phylogeny of Malawi cichlids with inversion frequencies indicated for different taxa as rings around the tree.
Check out our new paper about chromosomal inversions in Malawi cichlids! 🐟🧬
Available here without a paywall: hdl.handle.net/10067/214834... (click on the ‘Full text (open access)’ link).
need one of this cushions!!!
Solidarity with trans women after today’s Supreme Court ruling.
The rollback of LGBT rights — especially trans rights — is global, bankrolled by billionaires and the far-right.
Trans rights are human rights. We must defend the Equality Act and its protections for trans people.
This is how Israeli settlers and soldiers – supported by the entire Republican party & much of the Democratic party – is responding to a movie about peace:
Four composite images showing larval marine fishes that appear to be mimicking noxious or unpalatable invertebrates.
A fascinating paper investigating circumstantial evidence that suggests that one of the ways that some pelagic marine fish larvae avoid predation is by Batesian mimicry of noxious, unpalatable, and/or low- caloric-value invertebrates primarily cnidarians & ctenophores.🐟🧪
zenodo.org/records/1488...
Our first deep dive into TEs and piRNAs in African cichlids is finally published!
genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....
rdcu.be/d69S5
Our main findings below 🧵
#TEsky