Door 9: Challenging the Historical Perception of Arachnid Monophyly

The arthropod subphylum of Chelicerata are made up of three classes containing extant orders: Pycnogonida (Pantopoda: the sea spiders), Merostomata (Xiphosura: the horseshoe crabs) and the diverse class of Arachnida. Although the relationships between these three have proven difficult to untangle, the historical perception of arachnid monophyly has […]

Door 8: GENESPACE tracks regions of interest and gene copy number variation across multiple genomesss multiple genomes.” Elife 11 (2022): e78526.

During this year Frontiers in Evolutionary Zoology advent calendar I have decided to briefly present you three works: a research paper, a researcher interview, and a book. The first door to which I am contributing if this quite useful method paper to whoever is currently working with whole […]

Door 7: New day, new species

One of my favourite papers this year is, logically, about two of my favourite topics: taxonomy and worms. In this paper, Lavesque et al. revise the family Terebellidae sensu stricto (a part of the spaghetti worms I presented in a previous blog post) in French waters. They review […]

Fez Advent Calendar 2022: Day 6, a stocking-filler of a phylogenetic review

For the 6th day of our Journal Review Advent Calendar, I wanted to present Jesus Lozano-Fernandez’s brilliant “A Practical Guide to Design and Assess a Phylogenetic Study”. I think reviews like this are really important – whether you’re trying to grasp a new kind of analysis for research, […]

Door 5: Immunity Genes Related to the Black Death

Published in October, startling results of natural selection in humans indicates certain immunity genes may have helped people survive the Black Death of the 1346-1350. Caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, bubonic plague has swept across the globe (as pandemics) numerous times over the centuries, resulting in untold […]

Door 4: Do you like floods?

When floods are mentioned, what first comes to mind is a disastrous catastrophe wrecking houses, devastating crops and, occasionally, even costing human lives. Yet, what may be a bad news for an average human could be a strike of luck for a beetle collector. Imagine flood water covering […]

Door 3: How stable can a genome be?

The answer to this question may lay in the paper I am presenting today and at some level genomes seem to be very stable. It was probably one of the most discussed papers at the museum this year. It was the topic of several journal clubs and shows […]

Door 2: Can distinction lead to extinction in birds?

Although I am working almost exclusively with marine invertebrates, one of my favourite papers this year was about birds. Hughes et al. (2022) set a quite ambitious goal: to test whether the loss of species threatened with extinction could lead to morphological and phylogenetic homogenization across the entire […]

Door 1: The origin of animals and fungi

Although frequently neglected, animals and fungi share a close evolutionary relationship. Despite the huge differences in morphology, ecology, life history and behaviour they represent the two major lineages within Opisthokonta, a clade that was earlier referred to as the “Fungi/Metazoa group” in the Tree of Life. You may […]

Group of the month: Spaghetti worms (Annelida, Terebellidae)

Text and pictures by Maël Grosse Among all the worm-like animals in the sea, polychaetes, or bristle worms, are probably the most diverse and striking group. This month is the opportunity to look at one of the most beautiful group of polychaetes (Fig. 1), the family Terebellidae Johnston, […]