Arnaud Martin

I probably watched/read too much cyborg sci-fi a la Blade Runner ;-)

metabolism --> "distinctively biological purposiveness"
but this is not impossible to imaging it for machines.

I enjoyed Yogi's writing on this in the past. Thought Experiment
If we were giving AIs a body and metabolism + the need to forage their own energy to sustain their hardware and energetic balance...

Would that make them agents?
(they would need to acquire autopoiesis, would live in the large world)

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Lake Superior, 2003, silver gelatin print

Evolution of the olfactory system during the radiation of Heliconiini butterflies Abstract. Sensory system evolution plays a crucial role in shaping species’ interactions with their environment, yet the extent to which olfactory system d

New paper out! A nice collaboration.
We explore how olfactory brain structures and receptors evolved across this remarkable group, Heliconiini butterflies.

My entry for today’s #FluorescenceFriday: a pupal #Drosophila testis with muscles expressing
🔵 lifeact &
🔴 RFP-nls

Honored & grateful to receive an honorable mention at @healthcare.nikon.com Nikon Small World 🌍🔬✨

🔗 www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/20...

#NikonSmallWorld #Microscopy #ScienceArt

It's official! We are moving to Stowers!
Very exciting opportunity to expand our studies of insect-plant interactions. We have many opportunities available in biochemistry, development, behavior, genetics, evolution, genomics, AI, and even pest control. Interested in any of these things? Reach out!

Fantastic news, good luck in this exciting transition and next chapter

Workshop: Novelty, Co-option and Divergence During Gene Network Evolution. Organisers: James Hombría and Antónia Monteiro. 14-17 June 2026, Buxted Park, East Sussex, UK. Early-career researchers apply for funded places.

Calling early-career developmental biologists!

Apply for a funded place at our #Workshop, Novelty, Co-option and Divergence During Gene Network Evolution.

Application deadline: 5 December

www.biologists.com/workshops/ju...

#DevBio #BiologistsWorkshops #Collaboration #Networking

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 🧵]

YouTube video by Pawel Burkhardt Flying into sensory and mesogleal neurons from a ctenophore (comb jelly).

Our lab is 2.5 years into #ERC funding✨

Grateful for the support that enabled us to uncover the syncytial nerve net in a ctenophore - a discovery reshaping our understanding of nervous system evolution. Stay tuned for more exciting discoveries to come @erc.europa.eu

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DAE...

YouTube video by Arnaud Martin The genetic basis of silver polymorphism in Speyeria mormonia butterflies

up-to-date Youtube link here
youtu.be/Kunvn2GDq8o?...

Drosophila Genetic Database The Drosophila Genetic Database, FlyBase, is on the brink of collapse due to the sudden termination of the FlyBase NIH grant, which includes salaries for 5 literature curators based at the University ...

Flybase lost all of the NIH support overnight - it is a disaster for the community. Please consider donating. I just did! www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk/give-to-camb...

YouTube video by Storyful Viral Two Hairy Frog-Fish Take a Walk

hurry up! there is competition
www.youtube.com/watch?v=P83B...

There is a fish somewhere who wrote "Your Inner Tetrapod"

this : 🤗

The buff-tip moth (Phalera bucephala) has mastered a very particular kind of camouflage.

When they close their wings up, they resemble a broken twig.

Native to large parts of Europe, there's regional pattern variation that reflects the local tree species. This one best resembles birch twigs?

this :

One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants - Nature In a case of obligate cross-species cloning, female ants of Messor ibericus need to clone males of Messor structor to obtain sperm for producing the worker caste, resulting in males from the same moth...

Look at this crazy thing!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

sure, so I should add
3) if Ab dominant over ab but not over aB
then we have sign epistasis

I'm perfectly happy with what you said earlier
dominance : interaction between alleles of 1-locus
epistasis : between more than 1-locus

"Two physically distinct mutations in a gene interact such that the het is identical to one of the homozygotes"

... or they can also not-interact and still form a dominant allele...

Surely this table will help ;)

I don't see the interaction in example 2,
but it's late so please lmk

define a 2-bp locus with 4 alleles

1) if AB dominant over ab, Ab, and aB alleles
--> There is dominance with intralocus epistasis

2) if AB, Ab, and aB dominant over ab allele
These 3 alleles are dominant without intralocus epistasis

dominance --> one locus
epistasis --> interaction
they are not the same

Maybe the terminological kerfuffle is actually in "intralocus epistasis" because it implies two loci in one?

USDA post-doc position in Hilo (HI) in new lab of Chan Heu.
Functional genomics (CRISPR, RNAi, transgenics, etc.) in tephritid pests of agriculture.

www.zintellect.com/Opportunity/...

Another big paper by Francesco and members of the lab @ebablab.bsky.social. 😍👏

Cellular innovations and diversity in the lepidopteran compound eye - Journal of Comparative Physiology A Lepidoptera, having co-diversified with flowering plants and adapted to various diel niches, present a remarkable system for studying compound eye cell type diversity. Here we synthesize the latest re...

Among insects, lepidoptera 🦋 show one of the most diverse photoreceptor types 👁, explaining diverse spectral sensitivities including a convergent evolution of red vision.

Lu & Kronforst review the lepidopteran eye evolution.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

every single time
absolutely useless but gotta give it a little spin

how I feel using the keyence

Orange tip, Anthocharis cardamines. Five years after I found the butterfly, I was finally able to photograph the caterpillar and the pupa 🎉