Vengamanaidu Modepalli

Sea-urchin spines generate electrical signals in flowing water The spines of sea urchins can generate a voltage when water moves around them — a phenomenon that could be used to design underwater flow sensors.

Sea-urchin spines generate electrical signals in flowing water www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Curious about the origin of development during the transition to multicellularity?

A very belated preprint alert: bit.ly/4rr2mHU
Reproduction emerges from ecological interactions at the onset of multicellularity.

A short 🧵 with lots of videos...

It's #InternationalWomensDay, and for the past year we've been commemorating the 80th anniversary of the election of our first women Fellows. Find out more about trailblazing women scientists and help us chart science history with our interactive map: royalsociety.org/news-resourc...

Examples of indicator species: (A) PD08 (undet. sponge), (B, C) CAO11 (Chrysogorgia sp. A), (D, E) CAO28 (Acanella sp.), (F) PH70 (Hyalonema (Corynema) sp.) and (G) CAH23 (Abyssopathes sp.). Scale bars = 10 cm (Only shown if laser points were visible in corresponding video segments). Image credit: NOAA Ocean Exploration (EX2104). Reproduced under CC0 1.0 license.

🌊🧪🦑🌏
Hotspots beyond borders: quantitative assessment of Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems on the Corner Rise seamounts with implications for conservation planning

"depth and water mass structure are key drivers of coral and sponge biogeography on the CRS. "
doi.org/10.3389/fmar...

Thrilled to share that our preprint has been accepted in Science Advances! Grateful to an incredible team & collaborators.

Link: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

👏 @annaferraioli.bsky.social @maikekittelmann.bsky.social
@msarscentre.bsky.social @erc.europa.eu @hfspo.bsky.social #ctenophores

Even more excited — our paper is featured on the cover of Science Advances!

Huge thanks to @alexandrejan.bsky.social who took this incredible photo of a ctenophore (aka comb jelly) and the editors.

Here’s the cover 👇

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Figure showing 3 panels,(A) a picture of annelid Capitella teleta on black background, (B) a cladogram with major biological model organisms showing the phylogenetic position of C. teleta and (C) schematics of the 10 chromosomes of C. teleta

New from @chemamd.bsky.social lab @qmulsbbs.bsky.social Collab with Elaine Seaver, @baxevanislab.bsky.social @neva-meyer.bsky.social @abhinavsur.bsky.social

New chromosome-level assembly for Capitella teleta 🪱

academic.oup.com/gbe/advance-...

#DevBio
#WormWednesday
@genomebiolevol.bsky.social

Efficient genome editing using CRISPR–Cas9 in reef-building corals - Nature Protocols In this protocol, the authors present straightforward and efficient methods to genetically modify corals and study gene function throughout various life-history stages using CRISPR–Cas9-based mutagene...

To increase the use of gene editing in corals, we have made a comprehensive methods paper describing the protocol. We hope this helps the field of functional genetics in corals. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Really excited to share our new paper in @nature.com! We uncovered how a physical instability of the cytoplasm coupled with the cell cycle drives cytoplasmic partitioning in early embryos #zebrafish #drosophila. Read more in this🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🤩
@poldresden.bsky.social @mpi-cbg.de

This poses an intriguing question: how is cytoplasm robustly and accurately organized in absence of physical barriers, and how is cytoplasmic partitioning achieved within the constrained time window of rapid embryonic divisions? (2/9)

Glob-glob! Absolutely magical sea anemone larva (about 7 mm) from The Lombok Strait, Indonesia 🇮🇩

New Michelin Star Jellyfish Discovered in Japanese Aquaria | Blog Malagazzia michelin is only the second species of its genus to be found in Japanese waters.

🪼🌊 A new species of ornamental jellyfish has been described from Japanese waters.

👉 Find out more through our blog: blog.pensoft.net/2026/02/25/n...

📖 Read the full study: doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1268.173354

What a week in Bristol! Highlights included our @bristolbiosci.bsky.social MSc Science Communication for a Better Planet Art+Science exhibition tackling EcoAnxiety, Sir David Attenborough's Ocean with the Welsh National Opera Orchestra, and a chat on the Career Ladder with the wonderful Max Klymenko

🚨 Thrilled to announce that I’ve been awarded a new project by Artsdatabanken, the Norwegian Biodiversity Information Centre. Project ODIN will investigate Octocoral Diversity In Norway 🌊🪸, tackling it with a synergetic combination of imaging 🔬📽️ and sequencing 🧬💻 tools. Picture: Erling Svensen.

Awesome congratulations Joan👏

One of my favourite projects to be involved with - love the combination of cool natural history and the ability to run field #experiments in natural #marine environments. Great work @sammatchette.bsky.social on leading the latest work. 🐟

#trumpetfish #colour #predation
@royalsocietypublishing.org

Clonal-aggregative multicellularity tuned by salinity in a choanoflagellate - Nature The choanoflagellate Choanoeca flexa forms motile and contractile cell monolayers purely clonally, purely aggregatively or through a combination of both processes depending on environmental condi...

Salinity tunes mode of multicellularity in a tidepool choanoflagellate www.nature.com/articles/s41... - paper in @nature.com

🚨JOB alert🚨

We have three (yes, THREE) 🌟lectureships🌟 advertised in the School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol.

Broad remit, including #AnimalBehaviour & #GlobalChangeBiology

⏱️Deadline: 8th March 2026
🙏Please circulate widely

😊Come join us!

Full #job details: tinyurl.com/y3us95rc

A crowd of marine embryos self-assembles into a living solid Nature Physics - Marine embryos are usually studied in isolation. But when starfish embryos are in a crowd, they self-assemble into living solids with unexpected dynamics, revealing how simple...

What happens when marine embryos are crowded instead of isolated?

They become materials.

Honored to write a @natphys.nature.com News & Views on excitable living solids discovered by Prof. Fakhri and colleagues at @mit.edu 😀

N&V: rdcu.be/e5gLm
Paper: nature.com/articles/s41...

ASG Sponges genome note #23. The bread-crumb sponge Halichondria panicea is an emerging experimental model. With > 4800 publications, it is the most published species in the phylum Porifera.
doi.org/10.12688/wel...

@moorefound.bsky.social @sangerinstitute.bsky.social @geomarkiel.bsky.social

Postdoc Opening! 🚨
Thrilled to (belatedly!) share that I’ve received @hfspo.bsky.social grant in collaboration with @KatherinaPetrou "Plant-like solar tracking in a photosymbiotic animal."
We are hiring a Postdoc to join the team
@bristolbiosci.bsky.social!
Apply👇
www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQO766/r...

Fantastic opportunity to work with us at Shark Bay Dolphin Research 👇🏻

🚨3 Lectureships in Biology 🚨

Come join us in Bristol @bristolbiosci.bsky.social!

We are looking for new collegues working across a broad spectum of topics in biology, including ecology & environmental change. Get in touch if you have Qs!

Apply here by 8 March: www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...

As described this is my linocut portrait of Bibha Chowdhuri, with a mountain range featuring Sandpakphu in front, sky with schematic of an extensive air shower behind her. She is a serious young Indian woman printed in purple ink with head and shoulders at a slight angle. The mountains are in a gradient of dark to light blue as we rise from the bottom of the page. The sky is a vivid gradient of colour like at dawn with a yellow umber through orange, pink, magenta and blue as it rises behind her and the mountains. Carved away in white is a near vertical line at the top branching repeatedly like a tree into straight, dashed and wiggly lines to indicate a particle cascade.

For the #PrinterSolstice2526 prompt ‘even’ -the number of quarks in a meson, a type of particle first observed & published by Bibha Chowdhuri (1913-1991) & her supervisor D.M. Bose in extensive air showers from cosmic rays. 🐡🧪👩🏾‍🔬🎢 #histsci My portrait shows her, a mountain on which she gathered her 🧵

Sleep to Repair: Sleeplessness is associated with accumulated DNA damage in neurons in sea anemones

📷 @chronoraph.bsky.social & Amir Harduf et al, Bar-Ilan University in @natcomms.nature.com

➡️ bpod.org.uk/archive/2026... with
@rooph.bsky.social

This art features 100 bees of various colors and shapes. These bees are designed in a cartoonish style, based on real species. The common name or species is written below the animals. Some bees are moving leaves, scraping plant hair, or sticking out their tongues. Some male bees have hairy faces and unusually shaped legs. There are also baby bees that have just hatched from their petal nests. Cute and colorful atmosphere. There are over 20,000 species of bees, so I only depicted a very small fraction of them!

Bees 🐝

Are pregnancy complications in humans an evolutionary hangover? Check out our new paper in Biological Reviews where we propose an evolutionary medicine framework for understanding 'placental crises'.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

stunning work by our neighbors at @fbzt.bsky.social lab

Amazing to hold the print issue of @natrevneuro.nature.com in our hands with our review highlighted on the cover.

Evolutionary connections inspired by the article & designed by Richard Tibbitts.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

@jeffcolgren.bsky.social @msarscentre.bsky.social

My collaborator at University of Copenhagen, Anders Garm, is looking for a 3 year postdoc to work on bioluminescence, neurobiology and ecology of ctenophores. More information here:
candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationI...