Laurent Formery

Congrats Nikos! Beautiful comparative work 🥹

Sadly this great journal would benefit from a rebranding 😔
(Unlike evodevo)

xmas Patiria 🥹❤️

@lowelab.bsky.social lab retreat in #Tahoe for my last week in the US. It's very sad to say goodbye to such a great group of people, and to an amazing mentor 🥹🥹

But there are new exciting adventures ahead!!

Huge thanks to Sandie and Bernie for organizing this field trip, following a great #WPMBN symposium in Brisbane 🇦🇺

Back from a fantastic field trip at #HeronIsland Research Station. Such a great place for echinoderm enthusiasts
(I counted 15 different species of sea cucumbers on the reef 🤩)

Acanthaster picture taken by @Caleb Trimble

Sea cucumbers are beautiful! 🥒

This image shows the skeleton of a baby sea cucumber. Very happy that it got awarded by #NikonSmallWorld 😊

👇 Check the preprint by @PranavVyas and @prakashlab.bsky.social if you want to learn more about skeleton development in these animals:
shorturl.at/J3g1h

✴️Sea urchins have illuminated fertilization 🧫, early cleavage divisions 🔬, and gene regulation in embryonic patterning 🧬. A classic marine model that shaped our understanding of cell fate and axis formation. 📸 Image by Laurent Formery #ModelMonday #DevBio

A newborn sea urchin walking along the seabed | 2025 Nikon Small World YouTube video by Nikon Microscope Solutions

Also I have to share this winning video of an absolutely adorable sea urchin juvenile. Amazing imaging work by Alvaro Migotto 🤩

www.youtube.com/watch?si=aFi...

Sea urchin metamorphosis is maybe one of the most radical event in developmental biology. In just about an hour, these little pluteus larvae completely reorganize their entire body plan.

Very happy that this video got awarded an honorable mention by #NikonSmallWorld 😃

Many thanks to @hector-escriva.bsky.social, @lowelab.bsky.social, #ATIP-avenir, and everybody's support who are making this possible ❤️

I am very happy to announce that the Echinox Lab will open in the BIOM unit at @obs-banyuls.fr in January 2026!! 🥳

We will use several echinoderm species to study animal body plan evolution.
🔽 Check our brand new lab website if you want to learn more about our future research
www.echinox.org

Horrifying that this received absolutely no coverage in the french medias and we are learning about it more than a month later...
Courage au personnel du MNHN 😓

Congrats Rafath! 🤩

We need more sea pigs.

Thanks Bruno!

This looks fabulous! Congrats all!

What a day for #ctenophores!!
Congrats @kei-jokura.bsky.social @pawelburkhardt.bsky.social @annaferraioli.bsky.social @jekely.biologists.social.ap.brid.gy et al !!! 🥳🥳

Congrats Pedro!! 🥳🥳

Thank you Chris 🥹❤️ It takes a great and inspiring mentor to get there!!

I am honored and beyond happy to share that I have been awarded an @inserm.fr #ATIP-Avenir fellowship to start my own lab to study body plan evolution in #echinoderms 🤩

Stay tuned for more exciting updates coming soon!!

My first steps into paleontology!! 😀
Big thanks to @imranrahman.bsky.social for having me on this cool project to look at some fascinating echinoderm fossils ⭐

Thanks Eve 😊

Congrats!! Can’t wait to read this 🤩🪱

Our brittle star patterning study is now out at EvoDevo! 🥳
doi.org/10.1186/s132...

@lowelab.bsky.social

+ Bonus baby geese 🐣🐤

Birdwatching from my desk at Hopkins Marine Station (instead of working on my paper's revisions 🥹 🥲)
#DoomscrollingBreak

Awesome data! Congrats Periklis 🤩

It was really fun to work with such a weird and fascinating animal as Amphipholis squamata! Thanks to everybody involved in this project 😀

This confirms that echinoderms are mostly head-like animals from an ectoderm patterning perspective, and helps us reconstruct axial evolution across echinoderm body plans ⭐