Seems like a normal underwater encounter: largemouth bass goes after a minnow...right? Wrong! The little fish is a bivalve, a mussel, that mimics a minnow to spray its parasitic larvae into the gills of an actual fish. 🎥U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service B. Billings R. Hagerty

The Cambrian Explosion be like:

This is the Japanese Puffer Fish - one of #nature's greatest artists. To grab a female’s attention he creates something that defies belief. Nature is more amazing than we will ever know. Protect it in all its forms. #ActOnClimate #climate #energy #rewilding #BuildBackBetter

Highly recommend looking at the alt text google assigns to your photos

Got distracted during today's seaweed sampling by these beautifully coloured brittle stars!

Why spend 4 minutes doing something in Excel when you can do it in R in 4 hours?

NEW STUDY: #Hydropower threatened by increasing floods & droughts due to #ClimateCrisis @WWFWaterRisk study in Water MDPI finds 61% of hydropower dams will be in river basins with high to extreme risk of water scarcity, floods or both by 2050 wwf.panda.org/discover/our_f…

Clouded leopards, like most cats, love playing in boxes 😍

Wiggle it…just a little bit...to identify which salamander is breeding in your pond! Jefferson salamanders (Ambystoma jeffersonianum) have loose masses with relatively few embryos and often tube-like sets of consecutive masses laid on the same stick 🧵1/2

Due to my chosen career path I fear I will be wearing backpacks until the end of my natural life

Happy #WorldWildlifeDay! Here’s just a handful of the critters I’ve been able to meet and work with over the years :)

Caterpillar: Nobody’s gonna know. Snake: They’re gonna know. C: How would they know? This spicebush caterpillar mimics a snake to deter predators. fws.gov/story/animals-… 📸: Caterpillar by Ryan Hagerty/USFWS and snake by Yuming Zou CC BY 2.0 flic.kr/p/2mrHoqb

One thing I love about fish diversity is I still learn about something new! I introduce my new friend the Lure-tongue Worm Eel, Glenoglossa wassi known from American Samoa and the Philippines. It presumably buries itself in the sand and lures in prey with its tongue!

Talked to a person on the telephone today about iridophores in squid skin, and was reminded of how ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS they are. What you’re looking at here is Hawaiian bobtail squid skin of a living animal under a microscope. The animal was hanging out in a tank, awake & chill.

Another remarkable example of tool use in ants: fire ants “paving” sticky surfaces. I’ve seen signs of this behavior, but I didn’t expect it to be so robust until my friend told me about it (Wang et al., 2021 Insect Science).

me drinking coffee so i can focus in lab 😌

Had a blast presenting my research at #JASM22! My first conference ever - what a big one to start with!