Ana Serra Silva

The omission of circular monstrosities is reason enough to add this to the ever growing list of 'new toys to try'.

Vessel tracking map for Globe40 regatta showing Cape Horn region.

If I ever drop off the map, this isn't a bad place to come looking. Weather permitting... ⛵

Do expect maniacal laughter, though.

To this day, I don't know if my skipper was more afraid of rough weather or my undisguised glee in said weather... (Beaufort up to 6/7, I do have some sense...)

Hmm, now I remember why I had stopped using Duoling (besides the gamified everything...). The bloody owl won't leave me alone! 😖

LinneSys: Systematics Research Fund LinneSys: Systematics Research Fund The Councils of The Linnean Society of London and The Systematics Association jointly administer this fund for the benefit of systematics research. The Fund has …

The 2026 LinneSys call is open!

Looking for a small grant for systematics work? Check us out! systass.org/linnesys/

All you need is to be a member of the @systassn.bsky.social or the @linneansociety.bsky.social

Caveat, legally, we cannot fund anyone in a country listed here: tinyurl.com/wemwtfrz

Something tells me you might enjoy this room. Well contents at least, from a curatorial point of view there might be plenty of silent screaming. (I know I had some with the fish and bird collections...)

Photo belongs to the Aquario Vasco da Gama, Dafundo PT

Indeed, they have. Rather baffling how our closing paragraphs were reintrepreted.

Thank you! It was quite interesting to see the results taking shape.

Ah, I might appreciate the quote more if some creationists hadn't latched on already....

And thanks!

Not extensively but we did look at quartet scores in Astral and most interphylum scores were close to a 1:1:1 ratio.

Unrooted phylogenetic tree showing (Brachiopoda,Mollusca,(Annelida,(Platyhelminthes,Nemertea)))

TLDR: We found very weak support for the (Brachiopoda,Mollusca,(Annelida,(Platyhelminthes,Nemertea))) tree. We do not know where the root of Spiralia goes. The spiralian phyla appeared in a very hard to resolve rapid radiation.

(7/7)

15-unrooted topologies showing Spiralian relationships with coloured barplots for the proportion of bootstrap and jackknife replicates supporting each unrooted tree.

This still left the question of the internal spiralian relationships.

A combination of bootstrapping, jackknifing and simulations generally preferred one tree (Brachiopoda,Mollusca,(Annelida,(Platyhelminthes,Nemertea))).

BUT this tree was NOT significantly preferred over alternatives.

(6/7)

Boxplots showing median per topology log-likelihoods. Top two plots show sloping distribution with all Platyhelminth-rooted topologies with the 15 top-scored topologies. Bottom two plots show all values near y = 0.

This suggests an LBA involving Platyhelminthes that affects the position of the root. Simulation confirmed misspecified models favour a platyhelminth root.

(5/7)

Under a site homogeneous LG model, taxon jackknife analyses strongly preferred trees rooted on Platyhelminthes. This preference was absent under a complex site-heterogeneous model.

(4/7)

Scatterplots showing branch lengths of interest. Platyhelminthes branch always above y-axis break and interphylum branches are the cluster of points closest to y = 0.

For all 15 possible trees, the internal branches (orange) were even shorter than the (maybe inexistent) Deuterostome branch.

The branch leading to Platyhelminthes was always considerably longer than branches leading to other phyla (blue).

(3/7)

15 possible 5-taxon spiralian phylogenetic trees with list of publications supporting each tree

We restricted our sample of spiralian taxa to its five largest phyla (Annelida, Brachiopoda, Mollusca, Nemertea and Platyhelminthes).

We found published studies supporting all 15 possible trees connecting these groups.

(2/7)

New paper on @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social: Are interphylum spiralian relationships resolvable? doi.org/10.64898/202...

@maxjtelford.bsky.social and I tried answering this question with two independent phylogenomic datasets.

(1/7) 🧪

a dirt road going through a desert landscape with mountains in the background ALT: a dirt road going through a desert landscape with mountains in the background

If anyone spots a brain skittering about between Woburn Place and Gower St, please let me know.

I seem to have misplaced mine post lecture.

As someone who used to be in charge of the spinnaker, I confess to some unhealthy curiosity of how the all-spinnaker rig would behave (wind angle constraints aside).

Add to that, are they all symmetric, asymmetric, a combination? 🤔

I do doubt that a single bowman would suffice...

‘The Tree of Life’ Review: The Ancestor at the Root of It All Properly deciphering the branching pathways of evolution could unlock the history of every component of natural biology.

Lovely review by @adrianwoolfson.bsky.social of my book ‘The Tree of Life’ in the Wall Street Journal today. Free guest link if you’re interested. www.wsj.com/arts-culture...

Who? Us?! Never! 😉

Interested in the @evojlinnsoc.bsky.social
special issue on phylogenomic discordance? tinyurl.com/v2eces3s 🧪

One more summary added, just in time for some holiday travel chaos! ☃️

We'll return as more articles come live.

Again, all and any oversimplications are entirely my fault!

Rapid divergence with gene flow creates intractable nodes in the tree of life: An empirical demonstration in the Buzzing Flowerpecker (Dicaeum hypoleucum) Abstract. The avian tree of life contains a series of famously intractable nodes and controversial relationships whose resolution varies between studies de

And now an empirical example: @devonderaad.bsky.social, @lhdecicco.bsky.social, @peterhosner.bsky.social and colleagues show how rapid divergence, gene-flow and stepping-stone island colonisation obscure phylogenetic relationships of buzzing flowerpeckers.

(8/n)

doi.org/10.1093/evol...

Dang it! X-mas music has finally caught up with me. 🥴

Huh, apparently it's been nine years since I got these feathery 'office' mates.

Yes, this was a taxidermy room.

Yes, I used a marble topped 19th lab bench as a desk for over half a year.

No, I was not the person that bubble/plastic wrapped the albatross(es).

Word cloud visualization for 2025 showing your 50 most-used words, sized by frequency. Top 10: "support" (10×), "model" (8×), "deuterostome" (7×), "heterogeneity" (7×), "articles" (6×), "deuterostomia" (6×), "inference" (5×), "variation" (5×), "tree" (5×), "trees" (4×) (from Anisota's Annual Bluesky Harvest)

Can't say I'm surprised these were my most used words here. I do wonder if I should be worried... 🤔

It is slightly less odd than randomly shouting 'paedomorphy' half and hour after blanking on it during a lecture... 🦎(imagine this is a salamander)

From: anisota.net/harvest

a man wearing a hat and ear muffs is making a face ALT: a man wearing a hat and ear muffs is making a face

I didn't have 'freeze at my desk' on my bingo card for today...

Especially when the office was nice and toasty yesterday...

Our website is back!!! 🎉🎉🎉

Also, if you have yet to register for this Wednesday's Joy of Discovery lecture (online at 3PM GMT+0), do so here: tinyurl.com/bdu5xans

Prof. Mike Benton, University of Bristol, will be giving a talk on the origin of feathers.

Poster with details about the Joy of Discovery event. Including title and abstract for Mike Benton's talk.

The online Joy of Discovery event is back! 🎉

This year the event is going to be a smidge different, with a single speaker. But what a speaker!

Prof. Mike Benton, University of Bristol, will be giving us a talk on the origin of feathers.

Join us NOV 26 AT 3PM GMT+0

REGISTER: tinyurl.com/bdu5xans

kermit the frog from the muppet show is standing in front of a red curtain ALT: kermit the frog from the muppet show is standing in front of a red curtain

I give up...

I send out an email with detailed instructions about 'how to do X'

Just over 24hrs before deadline, bunch of emails asking 'how do I do X?'

Read the MFing instructions!

I'm going back to my trees, at least when they piss me off it's not their fault.

Only wish this had been on the required reading list when I took molecular evolution as an undergrad... fairly sure that phylogenetics would have made a hell of a lot more sense (and I wouldn't have wasted time and money on MCATs, UKCATs and med schools applications...)