MultiplEye Lab

I am looking for a postdoc! Please share with Evo-devo-neuro-sensory people who might be interested.

We have multiple projects available so don't feel like you are not qualified to apply if you don't check every single box on the job ad!

Apply here: explore.jobs.ufl.edu/en-us/job/53...

Systems and circuit neuroscience need an evolutionary perspective To identify fundamental neuroscientific principles that generalize across species, neuroscientists must frame their research through an evolutionary lens.

To identify fundamental neuroscientific principles that generalize across species, systems and circuits, neuroscientists must embrace an evolutionary perspective, argue Karl Farrow and @katjareinhard.bsky.social.

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/systems-neur...

Mutualisms within light microhabitats are associated with sensory convergence in a mimetic #butterfly community: www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

The call for a fellowship at the College for Life Sciences @wiko-berlin.bsky.social is now open. That's an academic paradise! Apply: call.wiko-berlin.de/procedure/52...

Three members of the group stand on a bridge over the ring at the BESSY II synchrotron

Fresh(ish) from the week at BESSY II @helmholtz.de looking at the changes associated with eye loss in spiders! Not pictured: our valiant night shifters, @mikebok.bsky.social, Karla Lopez Reyes, and Constance Coubris 💪🏼🌃

Biological point-light displays scanning by the principal eyes of a jumping spider The semi-rigid structure of bodies forces animals to move in rhythmic patterns shared by all creatures with skeletons, exoskeletons, or limb connections. This pattern, known as biological motion, is i...

Can jumping spiders extract implied object shape from motion? Check out our new preprint to find out. Collab with Massimo De Agrò @neuroethology.org

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Very cool brief visit with the @multipleye-lab.bsky.social 🕷️👁️ forgot to take a spider photo but the fish collection was quite cool 🐟

Early-bird registrations closes TODAY!! Sign up now to join us for #DZG2025 in beautiful Berlin this September - includes the conference dinner and icebreaker under the dinosaurs here at @mfnberlin.bsky.social 😍🦕

Gentle reminder: #DZG2025 in Berlin!

The extended Early Bird registration is ending soon. Nab the reduced rate NOW and join us in Berlin. 🤩

dzg-meeting.de

(updated to share the PDF only and not our entire lab Google Drive 🥲 thank you @emmadnn.bsky.social !!)

We've just added our shiny new lab handbook to our website! Adapted from the Aly Lab at Columbia and developed with the group, we hope this will be useful to prospective group members and collaborators, or to other new PIs! drive.google.com/file/d/1rvBX...
(feedback and additions welcome!)

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN 👋
Join us in Berlin for the Annual Meeting of the German Zoological Society! Visit our website for all the details: dzg-meeting.de
Early Bird offers are available—register now to secure your spot!
We look forward to seeing you in Berlin.
#share #like

Registration NOW OPEN.
Join us in Berlin!
#DZG2025

Why join #DZG2025 in Berlin? Reason #1: Outstanding plenary speakers!
For example…
#share #like

dzg-meeting.de
www.nwg-info.de/de/council/e...

ECR Visiting Fellowships About ECR Visiting Fellowships To celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2023, Journal of Experimental Biology launched two new grants to support junior faculty staff working in the fields covered by the ...

Are you an ECR interested in animals that have eyes (preferably, lots of them)? Would you like to come and conduct a research project in our group for 1-3 months? Get in touch about applying for the excellent @biologists.bsky.social ECR visiting fellowship scheme!
www.biologists.com/grants/ecr-v...

This will be a fun and interesting meeting across the different fields of zoology - and it's in Berlin!

Really excited to announce that I have been selected as one of eight PI fellows for this year. 😌 This will be fun and incredibly helpful in the journey ahead, especially when you have Cassandra Extavour as a mentor 😎

Congratulations Max!!

Heading home after a busy weekend @diamondlightsource.bsky.social with @maikekittelmann.bsky.social, @atal-pande.bsky.social and @samjakeengland.bsky.social @multipleye-lab.bsky.social ✨🕷️🪰 it's always a pleasure scanning and snacking through the days and nights!

Hooray!! Congratulations to freshly minted Alexander von Humboldt fellow Dr @samjakeengland.bsky.social 🥳we're delighted to have you here and can't wait to see all your weirdo arthropods doing their thing 💃

There may be a non-model organism “renaissance”, but these fields also need experimental tools.

Our new blog describes our work building brain atlases for novel species.

Get in touch if you're interested in making an atlas for the species you study!

brainglobe.info/blog/unchart...

a cartoon skunk is standing in a field of flowers with its mouth open . ALT: a cartoon skunk is standing in a field of flowers with its mouth open .

Thanks Shubham!

This work was led by Luis Baudouin Gonzalez, @laurensr.bsky.social and @mcgregorlab.bsky.social, with coauthors Anna Schoenauer, Amber Harper, @saadarif.bsky.social, Daniel Leite, Philip Steinhoff, Madda Aase-Remedios, Zoe Schultz, Matthias Pechmann, Atal Pande, Lera Telizhenko, and Carolin Kosiol 🥰

a drawing of a person playing drums with the words `` ba dum tsss '' . ALT: a drawing of a person playing drums with the words `` ba dum tsss '' .

🥰 thanks Max!

Armed with data from the major clades, we can finally start to identify phylogenetic patterns of RDG expression!

As ever, new questions spring up as we attempt to answer old ones, but hopefully this is one more step to understanding how spider eyes have achieved such diversity of form and function!

Colorimetric in situ of Six3 expression in Marpissa muscosa and Pardosa amentata embryos

Many of the retinal determination genes are present in duplicate, thanks to an ancient whole-genome duplication in arachnopulmonates. In the case of Six3, it appear that one copy is expressed at the centre of the secondary eyes, and the other surrounds it. Why? We don't know! But watch this space...

Colorimetric in situ hybridisation of sine oculis expression in Segestria senoculata embryos

We also detected early gene expression in the principal eye primordia of Segestria senoculata, which *lack* AMEs and probably lost them 100s Ma...

Fun fact! The very small eye pair in salticids, historically called the posterior median eyes, in fact appears to be homologous to the posterior *lateral* eyes of other spiders!
The salticid PMEs are dead, long live the salticid PMEs!
(Cue lots of annoying nomenclature confusion, sorry)

For example, extreme eye sizes are already established by stage 10-11 in salticids and lycosids, and the early division of the secondary eye primordium seems to contribute to their eventual positions on the cephalothorax, particularly the posterior lateral eyes.
3/n

A phylogeny of seven spiders with their eye arrangements and retinal determination gene repertoires

Although the retinal determination gene (RDG) repertoires are pretty conserved across the order, their spatial and temporal expression patterns provide clues about how important features such as eye size, function, and location might be determined, and how these have evolved over time
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