Braasch Lab @ Michigan State University

Cambrian Carnival

Yes and this is the right way to do laundry:

Based on available data for living species, there are 37,520 species of non-tetrapod fishes vs. 33,281 tetrapod species. 🤓 #TheMoreYouKnow

Source for non-tetrapod fish species data: researcharchive.calacademy.org/research/ich...

Source for tetrapod species data:
zenodo.org/records/1053...

Is recently was in a jewelers store in Breckenridge, CO that also sold fossil. I naively asked about the price for a paddlefish fossil. Just $19K. How silly of me to even ask…

@tonygamble.bsky.social ?

Thanks @patyschneider22.bsky.social for a wonderful visit to @michiganstateu.bsky.social and a great talk in our #EEB seminar series! Check out her lab’s recent preprint on the four-eyed fish retina: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

#EndlessFishMostBeautiful

How Lincoln and Darwin Shaped the Modern World Born on the same day, Lincoln and Darwin would forever influence how people think about the modern world

Happy Birthday to Abe and Chuck!
#OTD

Why teach evolution? | National Center for Science Education Biology is the science of life, and it is arguably the most challenging of all the sciences. Not only does biology build upon the principles of chemistry and physics, it also adds new layers of complexity requiring an entirely different form of scientific analysis.

As we count down to #DarwinDay, we're re-visiting some great pieces on why we teach evolution! "Evolution isn't just a story about where we came from. It's an epic at the center of life itself." https://ncse.ngo/why-teach-evolution-1

Midwest: the best!

Congrats @jeffreyafarrell.bsky.social !!! He is doing some of the most important work bringing Dev Bio to the 21st century...
(the other winners are pretty good too I hear)

Stickers featuring a gar fish wearing a red knitted cap, clearly indicating gars are against the current ICE occupation of the Twin Cities in Minnesota (or anywhere!)

I just learned the history, and current significance, of red knitted hats to resistance movements: www.npr.org/2026/01/31/n...

Makes these gar stickers I received (years ago) from @drandrewthaler.bsky.social even more relevant today, especially here in Minnesota!

❤️

Why would Switzerland dissolve its Science Council? Saving no money and losing expertise which Swiss education, research and innovation need.
swr-web.vercel.app/en/blog/stel...

And of course, the gang had to check out the new @msumuseum.bsky.social exhibit on fish X-ray vision diversity. All three main lineages of “fishes” on one wall, what more can you ask for? Ray, coelacanth, and yours garly represent. 🐟🐠🐡

#EndlessFishMostBeautiful

1st German Fish Model Research Meeting | German Fish Model Research Meeting Discover the 1st German Fish Model Research Meeting—uniting global experts on zebrafish, cavefish, killifish, medaka & more. Join us to collaborate, share breakthroughs, and advance fish biology resea...

#Zebrafish 🐟 meeting klaxon🧨 The registration period for the 1st German Zebrafish Meeting (16-18 Sept) is open www.germanfishmeeting.org with Sessions on Development, Pharma, Behavior, Omics, and more. Deadline for Abstracts at the end of April. Hope to see y'all there! 🧪 (1/n)

Our project on molecular convergence in teleosts is published in MBE. This study involved analysing over 2 million genes, and combining multiple data modalities to uncover some surprising insights behind the evolution of adaptations in teleosts. Thank you @hfspo.bsky.social for the funding!

Our Fish EvoDevoGeno Lab @michiganstateu.bsky.social has its 10th anniversary today! 🐠🐟🧪🧬🔬

Thanks to all lab members - present & past, pictured or not - for making the last decade a success!

& thanks to our partners in crime of the @brainyfishguts.bsky.social Lab, too!

#EndlessFishMostBeautiful

#ImmigrantStoryoftheWeek 🔬 Meet Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado, a Venezuelan molecular biologist whose curiosity was sparked by his grandfather’s ranch. His research reveals how organisms regenerate themselves, offering insight into treating human disease. Watch the full video: https://vilcek.co/3YPdH8W

It’s out! 🐟 We compared three regeneration superstars—axolotl, zebrafish, and Polypterus—to ask how animals regrow limbs and fins. We find shared core processes, and other programs fine-tuned by evolution in surprising, lineage-specific ways. tinyurl.com/mpftkn7y

A distinguished visitor in our Ancient Fish Facility today: @fishguy.bsky.social in da house!

I need to wash my car…

So 80 sticks or 8 binds:

bsky.app/profile/gree...

It’s hard to get even get half a stick of American eel for research these days…

Photo of Weinberg. Photographer unknown.

OTD 1908 Willhelm Weinberg gave a talk to the Society for the Natural History of the Fatherland in Württemberg giving the population genetics equations GH Hardy would independently publish 5 months later. It was 35 years before his work was recognized in the Anglophone world.

🐋🌱🥢🧪 #EvoBio #HistSTM

Exciting genome news! For those interested, there is a prerelease of the Ensembl gene models for the new reference genomes GRCz12tu (GCA_049306965.1) and GRCz12ab (GCA_05204075.1) at ftp.ebi.ac.uk/pub/database...
You can download gff and gtf files there as well as softmasked genomes.

When you meet your scientific nemesis at a conference...

Photograph of eels hanging on a stick for drying. The els are orange in color, and have been gutted. The stick passes through each eel at or near the head. There are 11 eels on the first rack, and another rack is behind them. The dark of the drying oven is like dusk in a cavern. There are 11 eels on this stick, not 25, and it is a certainty that someone will point this out in the replies. The only logical assumption, then, is that medieval sticks were simply larger than sticks today, and that the historical processes of industrialization have made sticks a shadow of their former selves. Marx might say they've been alienated from their true selves since their value has been tied to capital enterprise. Any small boy will disagree, though. Sticks still retain their magic. Perhaps in distant lands, untouched by modernity, there are free-roaming herds of sticks capable of holding the right amount of eels. Sadly, we here today must deal with the sticks that late-stage capitalism allows us. The enshittification of sticks is upon us.

So you're a medieval landlord, collecting property rent from your peasants in eels. How do you count them?

Eels were usually counted in units called sticks (25 eels) -- possibly from the number of eels you can smoke on a stick at one time.

10 sticks of eels was called a bind.
🗃️🧪

Modesty and candour: the Darwin-Wallace friendship To mark the 200th anniversary of Wallace’s birth, an article exploring the friendship between Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.

08-Jan: Born on this day in 1823, the man who independently of Darwin came up with the idea of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace. Here’s a post I wrote about Darwin’s and Wallace’s friendship…
friendsofdarwin.com/articles/dar...
#HistSci

Caricature of Wallace, including the words “After you, Mr. Darwin, kind sir.” By David Hughes for the New Yorker.

Alfred Russel Wallace born OTD in 1823.

He said he shared with Darwin “an intense interest in … the variety [of living things] that catches the eye of the observer even among those which are very much alike, but which are soon found to differ in several distinct characters.”

🌱🐋🧪 #HistSTM #EvoBio

Front cover of The Zebrafish Book. It shows images of wildtype and golden (transparent) zebrafish embryos. Text reads, "THE ZEBRAFISH BOOK, A guide for the laboratory use of zebrafish (Danio rerio)"

#ZebrafishFunFacts: Unofficially known as the Zebrafish Bible, "The Zebrafish Book" sought to standardize zfish husbandry in early days of zfish research. Originally published by Monte Westerfield, the book is now in its 5th edition. Previous editions are freely available: zfin.org/zf_info/zfbo... 🧪

New paper alert! ‼️