Pacific chorus frogs do not have the classic amino acid substitutions in domain IV of SCNA4 that would provide them with TTX resistance. Interesting that they can still mistakenly amplect Taricha and seem fine. See paper below for details

New special collection in Insect Systematics and Diversity: 16 articles useful to demonstrate and teach key concepts and methods in systematics, evolution, and biodiversity of insects and related arthropods. academic.oup.com/isd/pages/syst…

Also an awesome video on this work below! youtu.be/O1zF8kRi7As?si…

IT’S THE SECOND DAY OF #BlackInNHMs WEEK 2023! And it’s time for our #RollCall! Tell us who you are & what your role is in the museum (researchers, SciCommers, & more).  LETS GOOOOOO!!!

Do you or someone you love study nocturnal animals? Do you want to film behavior in infrared, but NOT spend $1k on a camera (that will die in the field anyways)? Is short battery life a constant battle? Here, this preprint will help: doi.org/10.32942/X2531K

Have you seen that our digitised #SpecialCollections are available to view on our website? Browse through our #digitisedcollections of scientific artwork and manuscripts by talented artists from across the world. #InternationalArtistsDay🎨 🖼️🌿🦋🐠🎨nhm.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/coll…

Our latest paper on marronoid spiders is published! 🔥 congratulations Jacob Gorneau Lauren Esposito SCC Kate Montana Lina Almeida and others Webs of intrigue: museum genomics elucidate relationships of the marronoid spider clade (Araneae) academic.oup.com/isd/article/7/…

Could not be more proud of this team!

I’m so proud of our amazing California Academy of Sciences undergrad interns! They are all excellent scientists & people & I loved seeing them just rock #SACNAS2023!

For Halloween, an oh-so-sweet story of spider togetherness: Congrats to our Arachnology Lab on their massive new pub proving that 3,400 species are all related despite being wildly ecologically different — adapted for caves, underwater, salt flats, & more! bit.ly/3slA3SD

Check out my talk at #EntSoc23 on the most representative molecular phylogeny of the spider family Dictynidae. In the Building a Better Insect (or Arachnid 😁) Tree of Life Symposium on Tues 11/7 at 3:05 PM in Chesapeake E-F. Also in the symposium are Dr. Lacie Newton 🏳️‍🌈 + @entomolrj !!

We just deposited a preprint of one of my dearest and longest projects, the phylogeny and biogeography of Micrathena spiny orb-weavers. I am truly happy! Thanks to all my co-authors and photographers listed in the file Link to the preprint: biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Best talk I have heard in a long time. Learned a great deal and had my perspective shifted. I might have done more taxonomy work years ago had I heard it then. 🤩

My response to a recent article in the New York Post that criticized our lab's research on neonicotinoid insecticides. The intent of the article was to spread disinformation, fool the public, and influence policymakers. Please don't be fooled, folks.

Happy b-day to curator Lauren Esposito, celebrating properly with a new scorpion species (found in CA's San Joaquin Desert), published today in ZooKeys! bit.ly/3uAiK0Z

A new study clarifies the evolutionary tree for a broad group of spiders and shows the power of extracting genetic info from museum arthropod collections. 🔗 Marronoids: The (Mostly) Little Brown Spiders With a Big Story to Tell entomologytoday.org/2023/11/30/mar…

Check out our article! 🤎🕷️ Jacob Gorneau Lauren Esposito

stoked to share the preprint for one my dissertation chapters! we use participatory science data across 6 major taxonomic clades to show that across California, historical redlining alters species richness as well as species assemblages!! thread 👇🏽 bit.ly/46OWHRy

I just found out (through a desk-reject) that Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution no longer considers most papers based on Sanger sequences (only genomic datasets). It is quite ironic that countries that hold most of the biodiversity will be unable to publish in this journal...

I can't believe I finally get to say this - my PhD dissertation has been accepted with minor revisions (!!!!!) and I was awarded the UNE Chancellor’s Doctoral Research Medal for the quality of my research!! 🐝🪰🌻😁