Arnaud Martin

How specific are heritable symbioses?

And what can we learn from swapping obligate symbionts across host species?

We address this in our latest, led by @inespons.bsky.social & in our collaboration w/ @microbiome.bsky.social 🦠🪲 Out today in @natcomms.nature.com!

1/n
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Any Toughts On Journals That Capitalize Every Word Of All Their Article Titles?

Or In Half Of Their Articles but not the other half?

REMINDER: i5k 2025-2026 Annual Meeting is TOMORROW, Wednesday February 4th, 2026! Anyone with an interest in arthropod #genomics is encouraged to join this open meeting. More details here: i5k.github.io/2025_annual_...

Anticarsia gemmatalis (aka Velvetbean Caterpillar)
#YearOfTheMoth

6 months of moths for 2026 Celebrate the Yer of the Moth by Creating Mothy Art every week from Febraury until Moth Week! 0. February 2 - The White Witch (Thysania agrippina) 1. February 9 - Bella Moth (Utetheisa ornatrix) *2. February 16 - Cryptoses choloepi (lives in sloth) 3. February 23 - Luna moth (Actias luna) 4. March 2 - Vampire moth (Calyptra thalictra) 5. March 9 - Hemiceratoides hieroglyphica 6. March 16 - Morgan’s sphinx moth (X. morganii) 7. March 23 - Death’s-head hawkmoth (Acherontia Atropos) 8. March 30 - Heterogynis penella 9. April 6 - The Nonconformist (Lithophane lamda) 10. April 13 - Water veneer (Acentria ephemerella) 11. April 20 - Monopis moth (Monopis laevigella) 12. April 27 - Astronomer Moth (Olethreutes astrologana) 13. May 4 - Police car moth (Gnophaela vermiculata) 14. May 11 - Discrete Chaperon (Cymbalophora pudica) 15. May 18 - Neighbor Moth (Haploa contigua) 16. May 25 - Green Marvel (Acronicta fallax) 17. June 1 - Four o'Clock Moth (Dysphania numana) 18. June 8 - Brahmin Moth, Indonesian owl moth (Brahmaea hearsyi) 19. June 15 - Atlas moth (Attacus atlas) 20. June 22 - Hornet moth (Sesia apiformis) 21. June 29 - Comet moth (Argema mittrei) 22. July 6 - Io moth (Automeris io) 23. July 13 - Rosy maple moth (Dryocampa rubicunda) 24. July 20 (Start of Moth Week) - Plutodes cyclaria 25. July 21 - Musical mandolin moth (Rileyiana fovea) 26. July 22 - the Somber Carpet (Disclisioprocta stellata) 27. July 23 - Agreeable Tiger Moth (Spilosoma congrua) 28. July 24 - the Dubious Tiger Moth (Spilosoma dubia) 29. July 25 - the Scorched Carpet (Ligdia adustata) 30. July 26 (End of Moth Week) - the Drinker (Euthrix potatoria)

Remember how I said it is YEAR OF THE MOTH!?

PL Weng put together an awesome list of Moths that you can celebrate each week from February until Moth Week! Think of it as a fun #SciArt Challenge!

Get ready to make this year Mothy!

#moth #teamMoth #YearOfTheMoth

Incredible work, cell biology of cuticle nanopore formation. Check out the video summary (second post in this thread)

Face of a chonky fly; white below, reddish brown uppers. Eyes sort of a blue-gray, with a red marking in each like an exclamation point written in blood. Two dark structures on her back behind her wing attachment point loom like the ears of a cat.

Side view. She's very soft-looking. Her legs gave some red as well as the eye marking. Her chonky abdomen is white, speckled with glitter-like iridescent spots showing blue from this angle

Close view of one of her eyes and that red exclamation point. The dot is shaped like a drop of blood

Top view as I found her, on an oak shoot. Reddish brown uppers, and dark wings swept back.

Not A Cat

(Cuterebra buccata, a gorgeous botfly which apparently parasitizes bunnies? So large I thought she was a cicada when I first sighted her, in the last shot!)
🌿🪰

Genomic analyses in Drosophila do not support the classic allopatric model of speciation Abstract. The allopatric model of speciation has dominated our understanding of speciation biology and biogeography since the Modern Synthesis. It is uncon

New paper out: “allopatric” Drosophila species aren’t so allopatric after all. We show that most currently allopatric species pairs probably overlapped in the past and exchanged genes at levels similar to sympatric pairs. @evolletters.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1093/evle... [1/6]

Showing Our Work: The Real U.S. Oil Payoff in Venezuela, a Timeline The U.S. invasion of Venezuela was at least partly driven by oil, but not in the ways most people are talking about.

I started throwing together background research to share with folks who wanted more details on the U.S.-Venezuela-Guyana oil triangle I wrote about in @drilledmedia.bsky.social last week, and then figured I should make it public. Hope it helps! drilled.media/news/venezue...

Genetic sex of enteric neurons enables ovarian relaxin to gate maternal gut plasticity Animals must align intestinal plasticity and feeding with reproductive state, yet the checkpoint that gates these adaptations is unknown. Here we show that an ovary-to-enteric-neuron axis gates the on...

📣First preprint of the lab📣 Did that really happen?😅

Enteric neurons, aka somatic postmitotic cells, must hold on to their sex identity tight, to deliver a tuned response to signals from the ovary that instruct the animal to engage sex-matched behavioural programmes.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

wow, crazy!

Differential neuronal survival defines a novel axis of sexual dimorphism in the Drosophila brain Allen et al. leverage a high-resolution single-cell transcriptomic atlas of the adult Drosophila central brain to map sexual dimorphism. They show that dimorphic neuronal types correlate with the expr...

Our follow up paper on Sex: Differential neuronal survival defines a novel axis of sexual dimorphism in the Drosophila brain: Cell Genomics www.cell.com/cell-genomic...

reconcILS: A gene tree-species tree reconciliation algorithm that allows for incomplete lineage sorting Reconciliation algorithms infer the evolutionary history of individual gene trees given a species tree. Many reconciliation algorithms consider only duplication and loss events (and sometimes horizont...

While our updated paper is fast approaching book-length, the results remain the same: our method (reconcILS) is still highly accurate.

So if you want to reconcile gene trees and species trees--and you might have any ILS at all--this is the best method out there!

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

Caddo agilis, a large-eyed harvestman photographed on a reflective glass background, mostly a frontal view

Caddo agilis, a large-eyed harvestman photographed on a reflective glass background, mostly a lateral view

A photo of the lateral side of a preserved Caddo agilis under a scope

A closeup of a Caddo agilis eye under a microscope

SO EXCITED to be finally talking about some funky preliminary results on the eyes of this funky harvestman at #SICB2026 on Tuesday! Here are a few sneak peak pics :D

14th century painting of St. Margaret of Antioch attacking a devil woman in a virid dress hitting a demon with a hammer

Just making sure that 2025 is definitely over

Just in time for the New Year we have a new preprint up that focuses on white cells, often used as ornaments in fish.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Not that long ago, in vivo mouse enhancer design was a dream. Today, it's a reality! Using transfer deep learning to design de novo synthetic embryonic enhancers active in the heart, limb, and CNS. Great collab with @alex-stark.bsky.social lab! @ucibiosci.bsky.social @impvienna.bsky.social

gorgeous

Live thread of the NSF biology virtual office hour:

🧵

Hypotheses of stripe pattern homology between nymphalids and hesperiids. (A) Current summary of the nymphalid ground plan, mainly based on the terminology of Schwanwitsch (Nijhout, 1991; Schwanwitsch, 1924) and including recent updates by Otaki and Mazo-Vargas et al. (Mazo-Vargas et al., 2017; Otaki, 2012; Otaki, 2021; Schwanwitsch, 1956). Discalis elements (D1 and D2); CSS, central symmetry system (cyan); BoSS, border ocelli symmetry system (magenta); Oc, forewing border ocelli; pPf and dPf, proximal and distal parafocal elements; MBS, marginal band system (green). Colored vignettes denote vein intersection landmarks. Magenta square, junction between R and M vein trunks; yellow dot, M1-M2 junction; red star, junction between discal crossvein and M3; blue cross, M3-Cu2 junction; green triangle, Cu1-Cu2 junction. Rectangles feature the name of marker genes. (B) Ventral wing patterns of the nymphalid Prepona eugenes with ground plan annotations proposed by Schwanwitsch, 1956 (left: reproduction of published drawings; right: equivalent annotations as color overlays). (C) Phylogenetic relationship between Papilionoidae families. (D) Ventral wing patterns of the hesperiid P. sidae annotated as in panel A, and highlighting the inferred CSS predicted by Schwanwitsch, 1956 (left panel). According to this author, the CSS marks a grey pattern in forewings, and a dislocated white stripe pattern in hindwings, suggesting uncoupling of pattern and color state in fore/hindwings in skippers. The forewing CSS is markedly dislocated along the Cu1 vein (arrowhead).

#WntA is a crucial marker of stripe elements early in development for the Nymphalidae butterfly family. @jasminealqassar.bsky.social & co explore if WntA has maintained its role in stripe elements over 95 million years of evolution in the Hesperiidae family of butterflies. doi.org/10.1242/bio....

Emerging tools to advance neuroethology in butterflies and moths - Journal of Comparative Physiology A Journal of Comparative Physiology A - Butterflies and moths have played historically important roles in developing our understanding of both ecology and evolutionary biology, and neuroethology. In...

New paper covering what we think is a pretty nice and comprehensive overview over tools suitable for neuroethology in butterflies and moths.
Also, check out the whole special issue if you're an insect neuroethologist.
@neuroethology.org @dzg-neurobiology.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1007/s003...

Our paper on ancestral conditions of caddisflies (described in the quoted post) is now out!

doi.org/10.3897/zook...

I taught Genetics again this year. We need to include discussion of the problematic history of our field, especially as the claims of eugenics are once again centered in our political discourse. Last year I wrote this piece, explaining my reasoning and approach 🧪 1/n
www.cell.com/trends/genet...

Development's Pathway to Independence Programme Our grants support and encourage the sharing of knowledge throughout the community by facilitating international collaboration, event attendance and the organisation of scientific meetings, conference...

Applications are open for @dev-journal.bsky.social 2026 Pathway to Independence (PI) programme, supporting postdocs applying for group leader positions:

Mentoring
Profile raising
Leadership training
Network building

Spread the word...

www.biologists.com/grants/devel...

This Gemini-image generated figure looks accurate and cosmetically good...yikes...scary.

Pretty sure this is ripping of the Biorender style, btw.

Here's the lad at the end of a 9-inch journey to a female. He's got wings but he just derpily ambles along the tree bark with the singular mission of finding the Source of those pheromones and then get scraped off as the lass crawls into a crevice for the winter

Also check out our transgenesis paper where we generated glowing silk glands.
bsky.app/profile/evol...

Huge thanks to Whitney Stoppel and Lauren Eccles at UF for the microCT scans, and to the NSF for funding this work