C. elegans is a real animal and we set out to understand how it comes to have its distinctive biogeography. Its ancestral center of diversity is in the higher elevation forests of Hawaii. Its closest relatives are spread across east Asia. Did they travel from Asia? [Preprint 🧵]

The Church Evolution Laboratory (CEL@NYU) will be official as of Sep 1st: shchurch.github.io. We are recruiting at all levels, including a postdoc to work on evolutionary patterns and processes via comparative genomics in Hawaiian Drosophila. Please share widely!

Such cool work by @rbabedon.bsky.social! These results came from his awesome senior thesis on Atlantic man-o-war dispersal. He found iNat (@inaturalist.bsky.social) records of young colonies, they look like tiny living bubbles before they grow into the sailing giants we sometimes see further North

Check out our preprint 🧪 on the origin & dispersal dynamics of a sailing ⛵ #siphonophore! We use #iNaturalist and particle tracking simulations to show that juvenile man o' war surface in the Gulf of Mexico & Straits of FL and disperse rapidly along the Gulf Stream 🌊

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A big blow to All of Science, not just Harvard, not just the Fly community, not just Genetics. All of Science. Turbocharge was just switched off. Flies gave us so many insights.

Marine biodiversity: Gone with the wind? Our dispatch out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social

New research shows that wind and currents act as invisible barriers, reshaping our view of ocean connectivity. 🌊🪼

authors.elsevier.com/a/1lYLj3QW8S...
@iramaegele.bsky.social @msarscentre.bsky.social

Thanks, you as well!

Wish I could be at #Evol2025 this year! I’ll be starting a new lab at NYU this fall, and will be recruiting at all levels. Please spread the word if you know anyone who wants to work on evo. genomics, phylogenies, and comparative development of inverts (like Hawaiian Drosophila!) shchurch.github.io

Wow thanks Jenn! It could not have happened without you, we were very lucky you joined the Physalia team 🪼

@jenncoughlan.bsky.social @alexdemendoza.bsky.social @obog.bsky.social @planktomancer.bsky.social @zrlewis.bsky.social

Many people were essential, I can only tag a handful here! @caseywdunn.bsky.social @stevehaddock.bsky.social @colinjanthony.bsky.social @rebeccarhelm.bsky.social @catmunro.bsky.social @amandine-oceano.bsky.social @scientifikita.bsky.social @guillermodelia.bsky.social & Yale Peabody Museum

My favorite outcome was validating species descriptions from 18th century scientists who illustrated animals on their voyages. Their descriptions were often rejected as implausible – we found that in many cases they were exactly right. Yet another reason why @biodivlibrary.bsky.social is so valuable

We combined sequencing data with thousands of participatory science images via @inaturalist.bsky.social, to connect genomic clusters to distinct morphologies. Credit to awesome undergraduates River Abedon and Diego Ramirez on this part! www.inaturalist.org/observations...

Excited to share our study on sailing siphonophores, AKA bluebottles or man-o'-war! 🌊 we received hundreds of samples from scientists around the world, part of a huge effort to sequence genomes and test for multiple species 🧬 out today in @currentbiology.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/j.cu... 🦑🧪📌

New preprint out today! A really fun collaboration with @shchurch.bsky.social and Robin Hopkins in which we study flower color variation in Monarda fistulosa using iNaturalist data. We process >40,000 images and use them to phenotype flower color in >16,000 observations: doi.org/10.1101/2025...