iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Neelima Sharma

Terence Tao @teorth.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

A group of 25 Fields Medalists, including myself, have made a joint declaration on Math and AI: mathandai.org . We welcome additional signatories. See also this article in the Economist announcing the declaration: www.economist.com/science-and-...

mathandai.org

Declaration — Math and AI

Read the declaration and add your name.

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Vicky & The Sleight Lab @vs-marine.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Please share, I am hiring an evo devo postdoctoral research fellow! 📍: The Sleight Lab, University of Aberdeen, Scotland (5th oldest University in UK & English-speaking world) 📅: start after 1st December 2026 🐌: Evolution and Development (molluscs) ⌛: 3 year contract sleightlab.com/vacancies/

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Ryan N. Felice @rnf.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Hey look: A job! @echinerd.bsky.social and I are looking for a research technician to work on sea urchin development. If you are good at segmenting CT scans and want a chance to work on some super cool organisms, this job here at UCL is for you! apply now: bit.ly/4o2qccY

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Alain Goriely @alaingoriely.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

I am looking for a Post-doc in Oxford to work with me on morphogenesis at the cellular scale, with particular emphasis on growth processes and their mechanical and dynamical consequences. Please circulate my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru... This bristle is created by a single cell! Let's model it.

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Berta Verd @bertaverd.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

New Pre-Print Alert! Evolving initial conditions: an alternative developmental route to morphological diversity with Shannon Taylor and @jamesehammond.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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Neelima Sharma @neelimasharma.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

I talked with Jorge Cham (!) about synovial joints, and considering how much I enjoyed reading PhdComics during my early career, it was a real treat to talk with him ✨:

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Zena Hadjivasiliou @zenahadjivasiliou.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

Spring PhD recruitment round @crick.ac.uk is now open and we have a project on offer: www.crick.ac.uk/careers-stud.... If you have a background in maths or physics and are curious about patterning and growth in biology this could be the project for you! Please help us spread the word 💥

crick.ac.uk

Hadjivasiliou Lab | Patterning in dynamic environments

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Neelima Sharma @neelimasharma.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

Why is it that small animals like insects have a landspace body plan when viewed head-on, but larger animals like elephants are taller than wide? With @m-v.bsky.social, we find out in our new preprint titled 'Size and shape of terrestrial animals' - arxiv.org/html/2602.00...

an insect, a bird, and an elephant visualized with unit height scaling. insect is landscape shaped and the elephant is portrait shaped

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Sam England @samjakeengland.bsky.social · 24/07/2025

Why do treehoppers look so weird?! Our latest paper, out this week in @pnas.org, suggests a perhaps unexpected reason - static electricity ⚡ We show that treehoppers can detect the electrostatic cues of predators and that their crazy shapes may boost their electrosensitivity! doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

doi.org

Electroreception in treehoppers: How extreme morphologies can increase electrical sensitivity | PNAS

The link between form and function of an organism’s morphology is usually apparent or intuitive. However, some clades of organisms show remarkable ...

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SeppeKuehnLab @seppekuehnlab.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

New paper in @nature.com! With @kiseokmicro.bsky.social , Siqi Liu, Kyle Crocker, Jojo Wang, Mikhail Tikhonov & Madhav Mani — a massive dataset and simple model reveal a few conserved regimes that capture how soil microbiome metabolism responds to perturbations. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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Matteo Fabbri @mfabbri.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

New paper today about the evolution of the wrist along the dinosaur to bird transition: a bird-like configuration appeared in predatory dinosaurs first, as suggested by new exceptionally preserved hands of oviraptors and troodontids www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

Reorganization of the theropod wrist preceded the origin of avian flight - Nature

The forelimbs of two Late Cretaceous theropod dinosaurs show the presence of the pisiform bone, previously thought to have been lost early in theropod evolution and regained in birds during the evolut...

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Neil Shubin @neilshubin.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

New paper from the lab: Our teeth arose as sensory organs on the outside of the body of ancient jawless fish.!! Congrats to Yara Haridy and the team! Background and video: phys.org/news/2025-05... Open Access Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41... News and Views: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

phys.org

Teeth first evolved as sensory tissue in the armored exoskeletons of ancient fish, fossil scans find

Anyone who has ever squirmed through a dental cleaning can tell you how sensitive teeth can be. This sensitivity gives important feedback about temperature, pressure—and yes, pain—as we bite and chew ...

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Manuel Razo @mrazo.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

1/n 🧵 Excited to share our new paper! We developed a framework to reveal hidden simplicity in how organisms adapt to different environments, particularly focusing on antibiotic resistance evolution. #EvolutionaryBiology #MachineLearning

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Neelima Sharma @neelimasharma.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

Got the opportunity to write a `behind the paper' story for @the-node.bsky.social about our work on the evolution of synovial joints, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Here it is, for some leisure reading:

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Madhu Venkadesan @m-v.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

The incredible Henry Bennet-Clark passed away recently, but his wonderful science will continue to inspire. www.stcatz.ox.ac.uk/dr-henry-ben... He wrote numerous amazing papers, including on how fleas jump so high: scholar.google.com/scholar?q=au... #biomechanics #obituary #stcatz

stcatz.ox.ac.uk

Dr Henry Bennet-Clark (1934–2025) - St Catherine's College

Dr Henry Bennet-Clark (1934–2025) St Catherine’s College is deeply saddened to announce the passing of Dr Henry Bennet-Clark, Emeritus Reader...

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Tetsuya Nakamura @nakamuralab.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

Started from ontogenetic and molecular studies of living lineages, authors found reciprocally cavitated joints in placoderms. Placoderms can move pectoral fins very smoothly!! Congrats @neelimasharma.bsky.social @neilshubin.bsky.social Yara Haridy! #Teamfish #evodevo

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PLOS Biology @plosbiology.org · 26/02/2025

When did the lubricated joints that allow our skeleton to swivel, rotate and bend evolve? @crumplab.bsky.social explores a new @plosbiology.org paper by @neelimasharma.bsky.social &co that pinpoints their origin to the earliest jawed vertebrates 🧪 Paper: plos.io/3CTC8La Primer: plos.io/4kkhXa6

Left: A phylogeny of chordates, flanked by images of a lamprey, a placoderm, a brown shark, a longnose gar and a hawksbill turtle. Agnathans such as lampreys lack synovial joints. The first putative evidence of synovial joints in the fossil record is in early gnathostomes such as the antiarch placoderm fish that lived during the Silurian and Devonian periods. Modern gnathostomes such as cartilaginous fishes (i.e., chondrichthyans such as the brown shark), bony fishes (i.e., osteichthyans such as the longnose gar), and limbed vertebrates (i.e., tetrapods such as the Hawksbill turtle) possess synovial joints in their jaws, fins/limbs, and other locations. All images used are freely available without copyright restrictions. Top right: a typical agnathan joint is shown where glycosaminoglycans and proteoglycans are uniformly distributed across the cartilages (blue) that are connected by fibrous tissue (olive). Bottom right: a typical gnathostome synovial joint is shown where surface cartilage has a unique proteoglycan composition from the underlying cartilage and bone, and a fluid-filled cavity separates adjacent skeletal elements.

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PLOS Biology @plosbiology.org · 25/02/2025

When did synovial joints evolve? @neelimasharma.bsky.social @neilshubin.bsky.social &co reveal that stable, mobile & lubricated joints were present in the common ancestor of jawed fishes but lacking in jawless ones 🧪 @plosbiology.org plos.io/3CTC8La

Top: Immunostaining reveals aggrecan (yellow) at the articular surfaces in the pelvic joint of an embryonic little skate (stage 33). The nucleus is stained using DAPI and is shown in red. Bottom: Phylogenetic tree adapted from Donoghue and Keating, annotated to show that synovial joints exist in extant jawed vertebrates (gnathostomes), but the study’s results do not support their existence in cyclostomes. The presence of reciprocally shaped and cavitated joints in the dermal skeleton of antiarchs suggests that joints that function by relative sliding (similar to synovial joints) first originated in stem gnathostomes.

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Neil Shubin @neilshubin.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

New paper led by @neelimasharma.bsky.social on the lab! The evolutionary origin of highly mobile joints!

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