guess the bones!!!

We find that their long tails are acquired by far greater elongation of individual vertebral elements in the mid-tail region. This pattern, called a 'crescendo-decrescendo' of tail vertebral lengths, likely enhances their ability to inertially maneuver. See: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

This project started during my postdoc interview when I asked @ucsdcooperlab.bsky.social "jerboa tails seem longer. Have you looked into that?". It turns out the jerboa tail is approximately 1.5x longer than the mouse, normalized to body length, but with 3-4 *fewer* vertebrae than in mice.

Vertebral skeletal diversity in mammals is remarkable. How do the differences between vertebral size and shape develop and evolve? See how we tackled this question in our paper published in @natcomms.nature.com today!

Congratulations to @evodevodiva.bsky.social on her lifetime achievement award! Undergrad research in the Swalla lab helped make me into the evodevo scientist I am today.

Celebrating Blanche Capel with fellow Capel Lab alum Lindsey Barske at #2025ICDB #2025SDB @socdevbio.bsky.social

I'll be presenting my jerboa and mouse tail research at #ICDB2025 @socdevbio.bsky.social this week during the 'Role of Scaling in Development and Evolution' session on Friday. Hope to see you there!!

How it felt submitting a manuscript yesterday as a senior postdoc who started during covid and is facing an uncertain future amid historic hiring freezes and funding cuts

I am hunting for a manuscript on tail autotomy and regeneration in rodents published in 1941. It's been cited a lot, but I cannot track down the actual paper. Can you help me out???

The UCSD community Stands up for Science!

Today would've been my Dad's 71st birthday! He died from ALS in 2020, so it's spooky to see ALS in today's NYT puzzle.

ALS is a devastating illness, and I have been reminding my caregiver group that we NEED federal science funding to discover new ALS therapies and technologies or even a cure.

Cooper Lab journal club or

Take your daughter to (your friend’s) work day nearly 25 years ago, an important part of my path to becoming a developmental biologist:

I was reminded today of a pandemic hobby I want to get back into: science cross-stitch! Here are some of my favorite pieces.

Speaking of #SICB2024 I’ll be talking about jerboa tails on Thursday 1/4 in the development and evolution concurrent session! Come listen at 10:30 in room 606!

We were an orca sinking a yacht for Halloween. #TeamOrca

Big news coming in from the other place!!!! I’m so proud of y’all 🥲🥲💙