Taro Nojiri, Ph.D.

A comparative developmental study of the avian syrinx: Insights into the homology of the sound‐producing muscles in birds Birds produce a wide variety of sound signals with a unique organ, syrinx. The avian syrinx shows diverse musculature around the tracheobronchial region among song birds, parrots, and others. Learn h...

Our new paper is out in Journal of Anatomy.

We compared the embryonic development of the musculoskeletal and nervous system around the syrinx and elucidated the homology of the syringeal muscles among three birds: chicks, cockatiels, and zebra finches.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Checking fertilized croc eggs

Embryonic development and cranial ossification of the Japanese Aodaishō, Elaphe climacophora (Serpentes: Colubridae): with special reference to the prootic bone and auditory evolution in snakes Snakes show remarkably deviated “body plan” from other squamate reptiles. In addition to limb loss, they have accomplished enormous anatomical specialization of the skull associated with the pit orga...

Our Aodaisho embryo was chosen as the cover image of The Anatomical Record.

See also our latest snake EvoDevo paper: anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Thanks for the highlight! This was a huge amount of virtual dissection and segmentation work by Nicolas Brualla (not yet on bsky I think), who recently defended his PhD thesis based on this work.

Here, @biosonar.bsky.social & @mdoube.bsky.social & co compared the 3D laryngeal morphology of 23 bat species from 11 families, finding muscle hypertrophy is NOT characteristic of all bats but represents differential development! (2/3)

Calling vertebrate morphologists around the globe!
Call for 2025 online ICVM Symposia Proposals!
📋 Symposium proposal guidelines: isvm-icvm.org/proposal-gui...
🗓 Deadline: Dec 9, 2024, 5 PM CET
📧 Send proposals to Nadia Fröbisch: Nadia.froebisch@hu-berlin.de

Does anyone here know biology forum that allows us to feel free to ask some technical questions?

A public symposium "Bioacoustics of bats" A public symposium titled "Bioacoustics of bats" will be held on December 2, 2024 during the 11th Annual Meeting of the Bioacoustic Society of Japan. Attendance will be available at the venue or onlin...

［Upcoming Event]
I am invited to the session on "Bioacoustics of bats" in The Japan Society for Bioacoustics 2024 (will be held in The Univ.
of Tokyo). I'll be talking about our recent project "EvoDevo×Bioacoustics" (Nojiri et al. 2024).

See the link below for details.

bacoust.org?p=1898&lang=en

爬虫類で一番種数が多いはずのトカゲ類 (Lacertilia)の胚が一番入手が難しい気がする

Embryonic development and cranial ossification of the Japanese Aodaishō, Elaphe climacophora (Serpentes: Colubridae): with special reference to the prootic bone and auditory evolution in snakes Snakes show remarkably deviated “body plan” from other squamate reptiles. In addition to limb loss, they have accomplished enormous anatomical specialization of the skull associated with the pit orga....

I forgot to announce a new paper on snake hearing evolution🐍

We reported heterochronic shift of the prootic bone within snakes. This suggests ossification timing of the bony capsule reflects dominate sensory organ (i.e. hearing or pit organ).

anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

My research articles have recently been cited over 100 times.

I'll continue to publish more and more papers on evolutionary biology of hearing & vocalization system in animals.

Great News!

Our research article that revisited "Haeckel's recapitulation theory" with bat embryos has been chosen as the most cited paper in Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B (from 2022 to2023)!

On the sequence heterochrony of cranial ossification of bats in light of Haeckel's recapitulation theory The Journal of Experimental Zoology – B (JEZ-B): Molecular and Developmental Evolution covers the structure & evolution of animal & non-animal organisms.

Please check our paper below:

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Great News!

Our research article that revisited "Haeckel's recapitulation theory" with bat embryos has been chosen as the most cited paper in Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B (from 2022 to2023)!

I was "inhaling" cats this holiday. This usually wipes all anxious matters out (And I am usually scolded by them with cute paws).

Embryologists (incl. me) traditionally try to recognize evolutionarily meaningful variations in ontogeny, I guess. In this regard, both always have to keep the possibility of neutral evolution that does not affect survival/reproduction in minds.

In these days, I am again reminded that embryologists and functional morphologists have substantially different minds and viewpoints to confer an explanation of "how morphotraits evolutionarily change" to us.

I could see two-toed sloth by my own eyes for the first time.

You'll see them at Kariyushi Aquarium in Okinawa, Japan. Here is undoubtedly a rare place that has all representative species of xenarthrans (sloths, anteaters, and armadillos)!!

My presentation at this conference is over. Among medical scientists, I provided evolutionary morphology and development of sound-related organs in birds 🐧 and bats 🦇.

I could obtain more constructive comments (exclusively on discrepancy between humans and others) than I expected.

とてもラッキーでした🦈

冨田先生ですよね！北大の水産にいらっしゃったときから存じ上げてます！機能形態・古生物屋さんまでいるなんて研究環境としても素晴らしい施設ですよね！

I'm staying in Okinawa (southern island in Japan) for annual conference of Anatomical Society Japan.

I shall position the next year as a term to practice developmental genetic approach. To this end, all upcoming papers that I mainly lead will incorporate gene expression data.

Patience is a weapon, but not a virtue. It doesn't suit everyone.

Huhhh I have finally done manuscript correction (it took for three days in total). I try to submit this by the end of this month.

Cuz my background is originally in mammalogy, all the comments from the herpetologist (my colleague) are very informative to me.

I have started to revise a pending paper (but it will take so long time due to many points to be corrected by my collaborator)

Unlike in heterochrony, highly accurate methodology of heterotopy analysis has not been developed yet, I guess.

Finally submitted a new article.

I still have ms to be submitted to the other article, so will be busy for a while.

Japanese wolves are most closely related to dogs and share DNA with East Eurasian dogs - Nature Communications The evolutionary origin of the domestic dog is uncertain. Here, the authors sequence the whole genomes of 9 extinct Japanese wolves and 11 modern Japanese dogs, applying a phylogenetic analysis to sho...

Japanese research group (SOKENDAI) elucidates the evolutionary origin of Japanese wolf.

"Based on phylogenetic and geographic relationships, the dog lineage has most likely originated in East Asia, where it diverged from a common ancestor with the Japanese wolf. "

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I managed to finish writing ms for submission to one journal, due on the end of this month.

In this regard, Dr. Rui Diogo mentioned in this review article that we should not conclude the traits to be homologous only based on a single line of evidence: in other words, any other information such as morphogenesis or fossil evidence should be incorporated into analyses.