Anna Klompen, PhD

Close up image through microscope of the mouth and surrounding tentacles of an adult starlet sea anemone. The green spots all around the animal are developing or mature stinging cells. The green is most dense around the mouth.

This sea anemone holds some serious stinging power around their mouth!

📷 Transgenic Nematostella where green marks developing and mature stinging cells, which are densely packed around the mouth.

🪸🧪🪸

#StunningStella #ToxinTuesday @stowersinstitute.bsky.social

Hey everyone! @sicb-diz.bsky.social is now here! Follow them for all your invertebrate science needs! 🧪🦑🌎

#ToxinTuesday

A single-cell ATACseq atlas of our favourite sea anemone, Nematostella vectensis! By @aelek.bsky.social @martaig.bsky.social

A red flower on a green stem withe the words: BHL Call for support now open overlayed.

📢 The #BiodiversityHeritageLibrary is entering a bold new chapter – and we need your help! Today we release our official Call for Support. We’re seeking new hosts for BHL’s staff, infrastructure, and services. Learn more: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2025/06/tran... #BHLTransition #ILoveBHL

United States of Science 2025 By Skype a Scientist

States that need $50 or less to close:
Utah
Nebraska
Maine
Alaska
Louisiana
North Carolina
Rhode Island

Fill those bubbles! givebutter.com/USS2025

Small hydrozoan jelly without a mouth. It has four radial canals covered in relatively large pale pink eggs

When I caught this itty bitty jelly last night, I knew I had something weird. What I didn't realize was that this little medusa is believed to only live for minutes, just long enough to pop off and spawn. I put it aside and texted Claudia Mills. Minutes later, I was bolting back to lab... 🐙🦑🪼

What is animal venom? Rethinking a manipulative weapon The scientific study of animal venoms covers a broad phylogenetic domain. We argue that the true extent of this domain has been obscured by researchers having overlooked the biological essence of venom. Venoms manipulate the physiological functioning of recipients to produce extended phenotypes that are beneficial to the venom producer and detrimental to its victim. The ability to produce extended phenotypes in living victims, such as prey paralysis, distinguishes venom from saliva. Understanding venom from this perspective substantially broadens the phylogenetic domain of venom to include taxa that use toxic secretions to feed on plants and manipulate sexual partners, and it paves the way for unifying the field of venomics with the fields that study invertebrate–plant interactions and sexual conflict.

Online now: What is animal venom? Rethinking a manipulative weapon

Calling all lovers of Non-bilaterian EvoDevo!!💙

Our incredible invited speaker for the Non-Bilaterian Satellite symposia at the #PASEDB2025

Paulyn Cartwright @pcart.bsky.social
University of Kansas

Organizers: Athula Wikramanayake, Bill Browne & @natclarke.bsky.social

I am looking for a new postdoc to join the lab. Interested in pluripotency, germ cells, and in investigating these in a genetically tractable cnidarian? Get in touch! We offer a long-term contract, excellent research environment, and a lovely city #Galway. www.urifranklab.org

New Nematostella transgenic slowly but surely on the way! Any guesses?

#StunningStella
@stowersinstitute.bsky.social

Meet @stoilovamarina.bsky.social
(eeb.ku.edu/people/stoil... )
ICB submitting author
Have you ever seen #jellyfish eyes?
Here we have to two #Cladonema sp. medusae full of orange brine shrimp after feeding. If you look closely at the base of their tentacle bulb, you can see their tiny eye spots.

🎆🧬 Fireworks in the making!
At 3 days, Nematostella vectensis is already producing stinging cells across its body. These genes (🩷💛💙) cluster in the tentacle tips and across the sea anemone juvenile body 🪼✨ image provided by @gelatinoussting.bsky.social #FluorescenceFriday #DevBio

I was lucky to also have an opportunity to talk about my research on jellyfish venoms 🪼and sea anemone stinging cells 🪸 for “Science over Spirits” with a wonderful group, sharing how my basic research has lead to unexpected discoveries.

#Hype4Hydrozoa #StunningStella
@stowersinstitute.bsky.social

Stowers Fellow Nelson Hall gave an engaging talk at Baldwin City Distillery, sharing his #research with curious minds outside the lab at 'Science Over Spirits', an event organized by @planaria1.bsky.social Lab postdoc Anand Sasidharan. 🔬 🥃

(2/2) Hear more. 🪸⬇️

Round circular blobs with dots that are presumably cells

Hand holding microscope slide that has some round circular brownish blobs on it

Close up (10x magnification) of the dots lining the circular blobs

iPhone digital zoom of said dots, showing MORE dots surrounding the dots

Long shot, but do I know any folks specializing in weird ocean non-animal blobs? What are these? 🌊🧪

Baby silver fish hiding among the tentacles of a large white jellyfish

And in an unlikely turn of events, jellyfish are just floating underwater bird feeders

In the Arctic, baby fish seek cover inside the stinging tentacles of jellyfish, but birds, having figured out the bit, now swim underwater, through the tentacles, & eat them 🧪

www.science.org/content/arti...

a promo image showing various pages from the book, each page showcasing different animals like a bristle worm, octopus, butterfly, and so on.

IT'S FINISHED!
The Art of #InverteFest April 2025 Edition
A digital art book showcasing the work of 86 artists from around the world, in celebration of overlooked invertebrate fauna.

Thank you to the human artists who contributed to our art book!

Download here drive.google.com/file/d/1JvEx...

Rapid Response Bridge Funding Program In the face of recent abrupt shifts in federal funding for education research, including large-scale terminations of National Science Foundation (NSF) research grant awards, we have developed a rap...

The Spencer Foundation is offering rapid response bridge funding for those who lost NSF research grants.

www.spencer.org/grant_types/...

This is one of the most urgent concerns with money stopping from NSF. Universities get reimbursed for grant expenditures, but the money from NSF directly pays NSF postdoc fellows, so they have to deal directly with these even as vulnerable as they are already.

A small blue cannonball jelly being held for the camera, photo by bajapelagica and copyrighted to the creative commons: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/238784926

Blue jellyfish being held with upside down view of mouth. Photo by lisabg and copyright to the creative commons: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/107412983

A cannonball jelly swimming under the surface. Photo by claudia_jeannette of iNaturalist https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/87473377

Photo of a cannonball jelly swimming under the surface, by cgajonb of iNaturalist: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/91674620

Mexican cannonball jellies is so surreal they look almost fake, with a chandelier-like mouth and deep blue color. But this species is also the target of an active & largely unregulated fishery, which collapsed around 2017. But recent posts from citizen scientists provide hope of a blueberry comeback

#Hype4Hydrozoa

Why is the U.S. National Science Foundation important?

Please share your stories!

Use the hashtags #WithoutNSF or #WithoutScience

#Hype4Hydrozoa

#Hype4Hydrozoa

The deadline to Register for the 8th International Cassiopea Workshop (6/6-6/8) is one week away (5/1)!
We have many exciting talks, tutorials, and events planned!
Find out more information at: Cassiopeabase.org/2025-workshop/

yellow jelly with red bits within

A lovely hydrozoan jelly, Crossota millsae seen today on teh wreck of the USS Yorktown #okeanos #saveNOAA >4000 m I think?

From conservation to adaptation: understanding the synaptonemal complex’s evolutionary dynamics The synaptonemal complex (SC) is structurally conserved across eukaryotes and is essential for a proper progression of meiosis. Despite this conservat…

In this review, I write about why it is important to study synaptonemal complex protein evolution and highlight this with a few key examples of conserved features and unique adaptations.

deep red jelly living on sea bottom with tentacles

A #deepsea bottom living jelly, Ptychogastria likely 1215 m #okeanos #saveNOAA Solide seamount!