Ok, we're down to the last 10 (!) spots available to register for #SSB2026 in Baton Rouge in January.

Who's in?

ssb2026.github.io

@systbiol.bsky.social

The most important paper in evolutionary biology I'd never heard of:

1/

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A Pileated Woodpecker passing by overhead.

Sad news: Jane Goodall has died. She did more than any other human for our understanding and appreciation of our closest relatives, the chimpanzees.

That chimpanzees are Endangered tells you everything about our species and about what made her so exceptional.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/o...

Join us! We are hiring a new #curator at the #AMNH in #Vertebrate #Zoology careers.amnh.org/postings/4600 #academicjobs #tenuretrack

1 week left to get your image in for Evolution 2026 logo contest! www.evolutionmeetings.org/2026-logo-co...

Due Monday - don’t hesitate!

The ever more detailed data coming from bird tracking devices is letting researcher gauge whether migrating birds are threatened by offshore wind development. #ornithology

How many mammal species are there now? Updates and trends in taxonomic, nomenclatural, and geographic knowledge url: academic.oup.com/jmammal/arti...

SOUTH AMERICA HEAT WAVE

Brutally hot night in PARAGUAY🇵🇾:
Minimums up to 28.6C, but next night is the goat..
and can be the hottest September night in all Hemisphere history !

In ARGENTINA🇦🇷 Monthly record broken at Oran
with 42.3C

Tomorrow will be historic

Our new paper @asn-amnat.bsky.social develops a Grand Unified Theory including both exploitative and interference competition doi.org/10.1086/737628. The R* rule of ecology (that 2 species cannot coexist on a single resource), is widely broken, including via a new trade-off we describe. 1/9

New from #BiologyLetters: Combining fossil taxa with and without morphological data improves dated phylogenetic analyses buff.ly/abJm5Zv | #Evolution #Palaeontology #Taxonomy

Check out this cool work from @crouxevo.bsky.social and others, congrats!!! 🥳
Rapid establishment of species barriers in plants compared with that in animals | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

An Intergeneric Hybrid Between Historically Isolated Temperate and Tropical Jays Following Recent Range Expansion | doi.org/10.1002/ece3... | Ecology and Evolution | #ornithology 🪶

super excited to share this big project with @daeaton.bsky.social out now in Systematic Biology! We derived distributions for -- given an arbitrary species tree model -- how far you have to move along a genome before observing a change in the underlying genealogy: doi.org/10.1093/sysb...

Unsolicited listicle: My list of the most criminally underused/underappreciated phylogenetic comparative methods. Note, I am not involved in ANY of these methods; but I see them as things people are often asking of comparative data but have been surprised at how infrequently they have been cited.

Here's the full-text view-only link:
rdcu.be/eFvZ7

Milly Hong spearheaded this project as part of her undergraduate thesis at #UofT #undergradresearch

In contrast, the broad wings and tail of species like the Painted Redstart (bottom) are suited for maneuverability during flycatching bouts but are less efficient for long-distance migration, reflecting a tradeoff between foraging and migration.

Species like the Louisiana Waterthrush (top) forage mostly on the ground but have high-aspect-ratio wings and a short tail, enhancing long-distance flight efficiency, making them well-suited for migration.

Excited to share our new paper on flight morphology and migration in North American wood warblers. Surprisingly, ground-dwelling warblers may be better adapted for migration than aerial ones!!!

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

My feather cell type paper is finally out! doi.org/10.1111/ede.... We’ve packed a ton of stuff into this paper but I’ll go through some highlights in this thread!

Ecomorphology of the bird lumbosacral organ: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... 🪶🧪 (📷Pelletan et al.)

C. Zhang, R. Nielsen and S. Mirarab integrate all ASTRAL-like methods into a single package called ASTER, comprising several tools that collectively enhance the scalability, accuracy, and versatility of species tree inference.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf172

#evobio #molbio #compbio