Brendan Lan

Figure showing a video still from a high speed video of a netcasting spider capturing a cricket with its elastic web held in the front legs. Left to the video still there are load-strain diagrams of different lines in the web showing that the upper lines are stiff and strong and the lower lines are highly extensible. Left to the diagrams there are scanning elactron microcopy images of the dfifferent lines, showing that the upper, stiffer lines are cables made of many parallal fibres, whereas the lower lines have a soft central core with adjoined looped fibres. The degree of looping correlates with how much the spiders post-process the silk after spinning. This way they can tailor the stiffness of each line in the web separately and create a vertical stiffness gradient throughout the whole web architecture from stiff and strong in the upper load bearing frame to soft and hyper-elastic in the lower part that is rapidly extended and thrown against the prey at high speed during the predatory strike.

Netcasting spiders modulate silk thread stiffness via a tailorable multi-fibre meta-structure to construct a web that is hyperelastic and high load-bearing at the same time.
Read about our discovery in PNAS: doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
🔓 & with video content!

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

This is so so sick

Two orange-brown harvestmen under a log

A closeup of one orange-brown harvestman under the log

Another closeup of one orange-brown harvestman

Funky harvestmen overwintering! Libitioides sayi/albolineata depending on who you ask lol. This suborder of harvestmen (Laniatores) is very speciose in the Neotropics but a couple families do range into the US. The yellowish striping on the body is UV-fluorescent! Better pics to come in Jan!

Very proud of this new paper from the lab! Work by the magnificent Andrea Adden and many brilliant collaborators illuminate how moth and butterfly brains have evolved in light of different ecologies. Freely available here: rdcu.be/eVR3B; @lundvision.bsky.social @biologylu.bsky.social

Hmm, might be Rilaena? I remember their pedipalps being weird like that I think

rdcu.be/eSIHs
We reported on the chemosensory toolkit of an Orb weaving spider in our PNAS paper earlier this year. Here, we report on a cursorial spider: similar, sex-specific sensory equipment and evidence for olfaction.
🧪🕷

How big is it? Reminds me of Hadrobunus or smthn similar...

Jay has been an amazing mentor for me both during my undergrad and now!! Highly recommend people apply! Feel free to reach out if you want a mentee perspective hahah :).

Do bees see nothing? Primates with damage to the visual cortex have no conscious visual experience, but display adaptive visual behaviour (a phenomenon called blindsight). Here I team up with two primate researchers to ask if bee vision could be similar to blindsight. www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

a closeup of a a sleepy green tree frog pressed up against a reed

another closeup of a different green tree frog pressed up against a reed

Getting to live in a place with green tree frogs again has increased my mood by at least 10% each day

Two Decapod Crustaceans, Panopeus herbstii and Petrolisthes armatus, Stabilize Their Gaze Using Achromatic Visual Cues, but Not the Angle of Linearly Polarized Light Synopsis. Gaze stabilization is important to animals because it allows them to visually differentiate between their own motion relative to their environmen

🚨 Using polarization vision to stabilize gaze 👀 would theoretically be helpful for animals living in visually noisy environments, but it seems two decapod crustaceans use achromatic cues instead. 🚨

From @maddy-janakis.bsky.social

Check it out! 🦀
academic.oup.com/iob/article/...

a jumping spider eating a cricket about twice its size on a mostly dark background. shot on a glass table

love how absolutely audacious larger jumping spiders are with their prey. this is Phidippus whitmani I think. look at the twinkle in her eye!!

From MRI to Ozempic: breakthroughs that show why fundamental research must be protected Nature - In these financially straitened times, funders must recognize that great discoveries often arise from work that was looking for something completely different.

Funders must recognise that great discoveries often come from studies that seeks to advance knowledge for its own sake

go.nature.com/3X5lbUg

At the edge of darkness: A framework for the evolution of visual systems in dim light Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

I've unlocked a new science badge!! 🎉🛡️🎉

This thoughtful piece by @meganlinnay.bsky.social expands beautifully on a short review I wrote, citing 'the Sumner-Rooney cost-benefit model' of eye loss 🥲 honoured!

For anyone interested in evolution in low light, have a read! 👉 doi.org/10.1111/1365...

mostly dorsal view of an iridescent blue roach on a reflective glass background eating some jelly

side view of an iridescent blue roach on a reflective glass background eating some jelly

a blue iridescent blue roach on my finger

Probably the most beautiful roach I've ever seen in real life - a flower roach (Eucorydia aenea)! This is a male, generally more iridescent than the females. Turns out, at least as adults, they love beetle jelly!

Museum of Earth could be met with possible foreclosure The PRI has until Dec. 31, 2025 to raise $1 million or the only collections based national history museum between New York City and Buffalo will be forced into foreclosure.

Local news story on why MotE/ PRI is special:
$̳1̳ ̳m̳i̳l̳l̳i̳o̳n̳ left to raise before the end of 2025 to save the Museum of the Earth at the Paleontological Research Institution in Ithaca, NY.

#SavePRI 🧪⚒️ #museums #dinosaurs #Mastodon #Ithaca
#fingerlakes

www.wbng.com/2025/10/27/m...

there is already a way to extend life and youth indefinitely
1. Be a stored-grain dermestid beetle larva (say, Trogoderma)
2. Every time food gets scarce, moult backwards into a previous instar
3. Proceed to grow as usual
4. Repeat step 2

#ABL2025 Plenary Spotlight: Dr Floria Mora-Kepfer Uy ⭐

Join us on Nov 13-14 to learn how @avispatica.bsky.social Dr Mora-Kepfer Uy’s team uncovered captivating ways in which parasites reprogram the behaviour and lifespan of insects. 🐝🪱

Learn more about the conference: ablaoc25.sciencesconf.org

A drop dead gorgeous roach! Look at that iridescence! 💙🧡

Embodied cognitive evolution and the limits of convergence | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Comparative psychology seems to be perpetually bogged down in intractable debates about which species have what cognitive capacities, which criteria to use and whether or not the capacities are domain...

Banger paper! “Perhaps we should abandon the search for ‘cognition’ in terms of representational capacities distinct from systems for sensing and moving” royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

A Moment of Awe- a night walk at Kenting National Park
by @brendanlan.bsky.social, SICB journals follower,& #PhD

iobopen.com/2025/08/11/a...

"Despite a societally ingrained fear of #bugs, #butterflies manage to enchant practically everyone. I mean how could they not? "
#science #biology

Video reveals cockatoos have 30 unique dance moves—including headbanging Researchers now know why the caged bird dances: a form of mentally enriching play

“A new study, published today in PLOS ONE, identifies and describes 30 dance moves in captive cockatoos and suggests dancing can be a form of mentally enriching play for caged birds.”

#scicomm
#animalcommunication
#playbahavior

www.science.org/content/arti...
🧪 🦜

A clam shrimp is a nearly spherical crustacean with a bivalved shell and two tiny eyes very close together

A clam shrimp is a nearly spherical crustacean with a bivalved shell and two tiny eyes very close together

A clam shrimp is a nearly spherical crustacean with a bivalved shell and two tiny eyes very close together

A clam shrimp is a nearly spherical crustacean with a bivalved shell and two tiny eyes very close together

do you think maybe, if I just take and upload enough shrimp portraits, then somehow everything will turn out okay and museums won't have to run out of money and close anymore

A live imperial moth perched on a black metal fence. The moth has a yellow base with brownish patterning and blackish specks. Looks a lot like a yellowed leaf

A dead luna moth male ventral side up in my hand. The moth is pale green with a fuzzy white body

A selfie with the imperial moth on my finger as I moved it from the fence to a tree.

National Moth Week starting off with a bang!! Found a live female imperial moth on the way into work and a dead male luna moth when I got there! First saturniids of the year for me :)

A closeup of a golden birdwing butterfly wings showing contrasting yellows, whites, and blacks

A closeup of the head of a golden birdwing butterfly showing some red coloration on the head

A closeup of a golden birdwing chrysalis showing some wicked spinature

An endangered golden birdwing 黃裳鳳蝶 (Troides aeacus kaguya) along with a nearby chrysalis from southern Taiwan!

This one looked to me like it had just emerged and was finishing up drying its wings. Beautiful and huge in person!

Very floofy salticid boy peering set you from his lichen-covered oak branch. He's showing off the red stripes on his "cheeks", and the silly-looking "teeth" markings on his chelicerae - alternating red and white vertical stripes across them. His 1st leg pair have extremely long white floof which meshes with white whisker-like floof on the sides of his face

Portrait of the fancy lad, looking pensively to right of frame

Side view of the little man on his lichen-covered branch. He's very floofy, mostly black and white. Black head, with a white arrowhead patch on top pointing forward.

For the past few years in late June/July I've spotted a fancy Phidippus richmani lad hanging out on a particular oak sapling, and today there was another. I don't know why that little oak is so attractive, but I'm not complaining.🖤
They're relatively rare--and welcome--sights.
#EmotionalSupportSpood

Cataract induction in an arthropod reveals how lens crystallins contribute to the formation of biological glass Lenses are vital components of well-functioning eyes and are crafted through the precise arrangement of proteins to achieve transparency and refractive ability. In addition to optical clarity for mini...

Highlight of this week:
One of many collaborations effort with @binturong98.bsky.social that started ~ 2022 finally got published!
We induced cataracts in the camera-type eyes of diving beetle larvae!

journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Proud to share our newest gecko paper published @ecol-evol.bsky.social! We raised geckos either with or without their parents and found some effects on the development of behaviour and cognition! Read the rest here:
doi.org/10.1002/ece3...

A plea for academic decency - Journal of Comparative Physiology A In an internet age when a viral sensationalist story gains far more traction than a nuanced and balanced discussion, we have become used to some politicians, media and web-based influencers bending th...

🚨 In our world riddled with misinformation and sensationalization, we must be cautious about handling accusations of scientific misconduct in our community. Weaponizing a public internet campaign is not the way.

📖 Read "A plea for academic decency"
link.springer.com/article/10.1...