Aaron Griffing
@aaronhgriffing.bsky.social
biologist | postdoc | evo devo | morphology | genomes | geckos | loud music & hot sauce enthusiast | he/him
https://aarongriffing.weebly.com/
#GeckoEvoDevo
https://aarongriffing.weebly.com/
#GeckoEvoDevo
Pinned
Excited to share a new #OA paper in @journalofanatomy.bsky.social detailing evolution and development of hemibacula: bizarre mineralized elements in hemipenes of croaking geckos.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
#GeckoEvoDevo #Aristelliger
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
#GeckoEvoDevo #Aristelliger
Reposted by Aaron Griffing
A study finds that chameleons have longer & more coiled optic nerves than other squamates & known tetrapods, providing slack & reduced strain during extensive eye rotation characteristic of chameleon eyes, & providing an excellent historical review of our knowledge.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
November 10, 2025 at 9:52 PM
A study finds that chameleons have longer & more coiled optic nerves than other squamates & known tetrapods, providing slack & reduced strain during extensive eye rotation characteristic of chameleon eyes, & providing an excellent historical review of our knowledge.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Aaron Griffing
Very happy that our new paper on the odd, looped optic nerves of chameleons is now out! It turns out having highly mobile eyes require some pretty specialized connections! doi.org/10.1038/s415...
November 10, 2025 at 11:50 PM
Very happy that our new paper on the odd, looped optic nerves of chameleons is now out! It turns out having highly mobile eyes require some pretty specialized connections! doi.org/10.1038/s415...
Reposted by Aaron Griffing
Our big squamate origins and early evolution review is now fully published as open access! with @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social and F. Burbrink
www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...
www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...
Origin and Early Evolution of Squamates and Their Kin: From Fossils to Genomes
Squamates (lizards, including snakes) are the most diverse group of terrestrial vertebrates on Earth today and have an evolutionary history dating back to at least the Middle Triassic (ca. 242 Mya). D...
www.annualreviews.org
November 7, 2025 at 1:48 PM
Our big squamate origins and early evolution review is now fully published as open access! with @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social and F. Burbrink
www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...
www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...
Pretty stoked that our article got the cover of the latest issue of @journalofanatomy.bsky.social!
Check it out here: doi.org/10.1111/joa....
Check it out here: doi.org/10.1111/joa....
November 5, 2025 at 7:09 PM
Pretty stoked that our article got the cover of the latest issue of @journalofanatomy.bsky.social!
Check it out here: doi.org/10.1111/joa....
Check it out here: doi.org/10.1111/joa....
Reposted by Aaron Griffing
Now in Evolution: academic.oup.com/evolut/artic...
This paper started when @3rdreviewer.bsky.social, Mike, and I had a lunch at which there was a lot of, "What do you mean when you say X?" Fun to spend time thinking about when terms get too muddy, and great work by Drew to pull it all together!
This paper started when @3rdreviewer.bsky.social, Mike, and I had a lunch at which there was a lot of, "What do you mean when you say X?" Fun to spend time thinking about when terms get too muddy, and great work by Drew to pull it all together!
November 4, 2025 at 6:06 PM
Now in Evolution: academic.oup.com/evolut/artic...
This paper started when @3rdreviewer.bsky.social, Mike, and I had a lunch at which there was a lot of, "What do you mean when you say X?" Fun to spend time thinking about when terms get too muddy, and great work by Drew to pull it all together!
This paper started when @3rdreviewer.bsky.social, Mike, and I had a lunch at which there was a lot of, "What do you mean when you say X?" Fun to spend time thinking about when terms get too muddy, and great work by Drew to pull it all together!
Reposted by Aaron Griffing
Recent paper from our lab on the puncture performance of hemipene spines in snakes! Some are like cat claws, others barely puncture. A single species can have many different spine morphologies and thousands of spines! 🧪 🐍
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....
November 3, 2025 at 12:06 PM
Recent paper from our lab on the puncture performance of hemipene spines in snakes! Some are like cat claws, others barely puncture. A single species can have many different spine morphologies and thousands of spines! 🧪 🐍
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....
Reposted by Aaron Griffing
I'll also be looking to recruit an MS student to study the functional morphology and biomechanics of adhesion, friction, and/or locomotion in sea urchins, geckos, or anoles! Please share! @sicb-dcb-dvm.bsky.social @sicb.bsky.social
November 2, 2025 at 2:28 AM
I'll also be looking to recruit an MS student to study the functional morphology and biomechanics of adhesion, friction, and/or locomotion in sea urchins, geckos, or anoles! Please share! @sicb-dcb-dvm.bsky.social @sicb.bsky.social
Reposted by Aaron Griffing
The November cover of Genome Biology and Evolution features @raularayadonoso.bsky.social @kenrokusumi.bsky.social @anthonygeneva.bsky.social et al., who studied how structural rearrangements and selection promote phenotypic evolution in Anolis.
🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf196
#genome #evolution
🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf196
#genome #evolution
October 31, 2025 at 11:48 AM
The November cover of Genome Biology and Evolution features @raularayadonoso.bsky.social @kenrokusumi.bsky.social @anthonygeneva.bsky.social et al., who studied how structural rearrangements and selection promote phenotypic evolution in Anolis.
🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf196
#genome #evolution
🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf196
#genome #evolution
Reposted by Aaron Griffing
"The project that was terminated was on this hummingbird, the white-necked jacobin....I suspect that it has something to do with studying a species that doesn’t fit the binary." Researcher @jjinsing.bsky.social interviewed by @carlzimmer.com #birds #nature #science #fundscience #nonbinary 🧪
He Studied Why Some Female Birds Look Like Males
www.nytimes.com
October 31, 2025 at 2:03 PM
"The project that was terminated was on this hummingbird, the white-necked jacobin....I suspect that it has something to do with studying a species that doesn’t fit the binary." Researcher @jjinsing.bsky.social interviewed by @carlzimmer.com #birds #nature #science #fundscience #nonbinary 🧪
Reposted by Aaron Griffing
Ever seen a clear and stained little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus)? 🦇
I love how their modified forelimbs, with elongated phalanges that support the wing membrane used for flight. Look how big those fangs are! 🧪🎃
I love how their modified forelimbs, with elongated phalanges that support the wing membrane used for flight. Look how big those fangs are! 🧪🎃
October 30, 2025 at 3:19 PM
Ever seen a clear and stained little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus)? 🦇
I love how their modified forelimbs, with elongated phalanges that support the wing membrane used for flight. Look how big those fangs are! 🧪🎃
I love how their modified forelimbs, with elongated phalanges that support the wing membrane used for flight. Look how big those fangs are! 🧪🎃
Reposted by Aaron Griffing
🥈 Second Prize – DevBio Art Contest 🎨
Hyloscirtus lynchi tadpoles captured in watercolor! 🐸 A tribute to this critically endangered Andean frog, showcasing its natural colors, unique hindlimb sacs & delicate morphology. 🌿 Painting by Sebastian Plata #DevBio #ScienceArt
October 29, 2025 at 7:13 PM
🥈 Second Prize – DevBio Art Contest 🎨
Hyloscirtus lynchi tadpoles captured in watercolor! 🐸 A tribute to this critically endangered Andean frog, showcasing its natural colors, unique hindlimb sacs & delicate morphology. 🌿 Painting by Sebastian Plata #DevBio #ScienceArt
Reposted by Aaron Griffing
Repeated gene losses have independently shaped colour diversity in marsupials. An ASIP deletion is associated with eastern quoll melanism and is convergent with the related Tassie devil, while MC1R truncation is found in the pale-yellow marsupial mole.
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
Loss-of-function mutations in ASIP and MC1R are associated with coat colour variation in marsupials | Biology Letters
Pigmentation in mammalian hair follicles is governed in part by interactions between
agouti signalling protein (ASIP) and the melanocortin 1 receptor (MC1R). The most
common coat colours in mammals re...
royalsocietypublishing.org
October 22, 2025 at 1:19 AM
Repeated gene losses have independently shaped colour diversity in marsupials. An ASIP deletion is associated with eastern quoll melanism and is convergent with the related Tassie devil, while MC1R truncation is found in the pale-yellow marsupial mole.
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
Reposted by Aaron Griffing
Paper out! We tested the ability of short-read pangenomes to capture variants for population genomics. Super excited to have been part of this project. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Short‐Read Pangenomes and Their Potential Utility in Population and Conservation Genomics
As a collection of all the genetic variants in the gene pool, the pangenome is a concept that will become fundamental to conservation genomic studies. Unfortunately, most pangenomic approaches develo...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
October 18, 2025 at 9:25 PM
Paper out! We tested the ability of short-read pangenomes to capture variants for population genomics. Super excited to have been part of this project. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Reposted by Aaron Griffing
Republican support for science paved the way for my career as a biologist. To explain this, I prepared a blog post to accompany a recent Editorial published in @sicbjournals.bsky.social.
integrativeandcomparativebiology.wordpress.com/2025/10/14/h...
integrativeandcomparativebiology.wordpress.com/2025/10/14/h...
October 14, 2025 at 6:31 PM
Republican support for science paved the way for my career as a biologist. To explain this, I prepared a blog post to accompany a recent Editorial published in @sicbjournals.bsky.social.
integrativeandcomparativebiology.wordpress.com/2025/10/14/h...
integrativeandcomparativebiology.wordpress.com/2025/10/14/h...
Reposted by Aaron Griffing
Here, we use the jerboa and mouse to understand the temporal growth dynamics that establish adult vertebral proportion, the cellular drivers of differential growth, and candidate genetic mechanisms that determine and diversify vertebral proportion.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Cellular and genetic mechanisms that shape the development and evolution of tail vertebral proportion in mice and jerboas - Nature Communications
Vertebra lengths differ from the neck to the tail tip and differ between species, evidenced by extreme differences in mouse and jerboa tails. Here, Weber and colleagues identify cellular mechanisms and candidate genes that shape vertebral proportion.
www.nature.com
October 10, 2025 at 6:46 PM
Here, we use the jerboa and mouse to understand the temporal growth dynamics that establish adult vertebral proportion, the cellular drivers of differential growth, and candidate genetic mechanisms that determine and diversify vertebral proportion.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Aaron Griffing
@a-weberling.bsky.social & I characterize oogenesis from initiation in the germinal bed to ovulatory follicles for the first time in the brown anole, a powerful reptile model for evo-devo & functional genetics!
Full preprint here:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Full preprint here:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
September 24, 2025 at 3:57 AM
@a-weberling.bsky.social & I characterize oogenesis from initiation in the germinal bed to ovulatory follicles for the first time in the brown anole, a powerful reptile model for evo-devo & functional genetics!
Full preprint here:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Full preprint here:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Aaron Griffing
1🧵
Excited to share my first PhD paper, published in @dev-journal.bsky.social
What if fish gills —often overlook —hold secrets about development, patterning, and function?
We uncovered how early patterning shapes adult gill architecture.
journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...
#DevBio #Zebrafish
Excited to share my first PhD paper, published in @dev-journal.bsky.social
What if fish gills —often overlook —hold secrets about development, patterning, and function?
We uncovered how early patterning shapes adult gill architecture.
journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...
#DevBio #Zebrafish
September 17, 2025 at 1:59 PM
1🧵
Excited to share my first PhD paper, published in @dev-journal.bsky.social
What if fish gills —often overlook —hold secrets about development, patterning, and function?
We uncovered how early patterning shapes adult gill architecture.
journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...
#DevBio #Zebrafish
Excited to share my first PhD paper, published in @dev-journal.bsky.social
What if fish gills —often overlook —hold secrets about development, patterning, and function?
We uncovered how early patterning shapes adult gill architecture.
journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...
#DevBio #Zebrafish
Reposted by Aaron Griffing
🐺 Happy to share our recent article, “The dire wolf resurrection that wasn’t”
anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Thanks to my awesome co-authors Annie Burrows, Adam Hartstone-Rose, and Mike Jensen-Seaman!
anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Thanks to my awesome co-authors Annie Burrows, Adam Hartstone-Rose, and Mike Jensen-Seaman!
September 10, 2025 at 3:46 PM
🐺 Happy to share our recent article, “The dire wolf resurrection that wasn’t”
anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Thanks to my awesome co-authors Annie Burrows, Adam Hartstone-Rose, and Mike Jensen-Seaman!
anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Thanks to my awesome co-authors Annie Burrows, Adam Hartstone-Rose, and Mike Jensen-Seaman!
Reposted by Aaron Griffing
I am one of a growing number of voices encouraging the scientific community to engage with people and policymakers outside of our typical professional circles. Our professional organizations, including @sicb.bsky.social, also need to engage with new audiences by making their science accessible.
September 10, 2025 at 3:43 PM
I am one of a growing number of voices encouraging the scientific community to engage with people and policymakers outside of our typical professional circles. Our professional organizations, including @sicb.bsky.social, also need to engage with new audiences by making their science accessible.
Reposted by Aaron Griffing
Here, the 'ballistic tongues' paper by Yu Zeng and team
www.cell.com/current-biol...
plus dispatch by Sam Van Wassenbergh
www.cell.com/current-biol...
www.cell.com/current-biol...
plus dispatch by Sam Van Wassenbergh
www.cell.com/current-biol...
Biomechanics: Squeezing power drives ballistic tongues
Chameleons and lungless salamanders independently evolved very fast projectile tongues.
In both cases, ballistic performance involves a long, blunt-ended skeletal rod that
slides freely within a power...
www.cell.com
September 8, 2025 at 9:46 PM
Here, the 'ballistic tongues' paper by Yu Zeng and team
www.cell.com/current-biol...
plus dispatch by Sam Van Wassenbergh
www.cell.com/current-biol...
www.cell.com/current-biol...
plus dispatch by Sam Van Wassenbergh
www.cell.com/current-biol...
Shifting my research program to exclusively study "Bads"
Good to know that AI image generation hasn't (yet) conquered my "draw a vertebrate phylogeny" assignment.
September 8, 2025 at 6:18 PM
Shifting my research program to exclusively study "Bads"
Reposted by Aaron Griffing
Seeking scientist volunteers for this fall! Want to practice science communication and help author a 🌟comic🌟 about your research? I need collaborators for the next cohort of SciComm & Comics art and design students. All countries and scientific fields eligible.
August 20, 2025 at 8:45 PM
Seeking scientist volunteers for this fall! Want to practice science communication and help author a 🌟comic🌟 about your research? I need collaborators for the next cohort of SciComm & Comics art and design students. All countries and scientific fields eligible.
New preprint from some of my postdoc work on lungs! Co-led with Kaleb Hill, we studied smooth muscle and epithelial development in lizard lungs. Stay tuned for more!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
September 5, 2025 at 6:12 PM
New preprint from some of my postdoc work on lungs! Co-led with Kaleb Hill, we studied smooth muscle and epithelial development in lizard lungs. Stay tuned for more!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Aaron Griffing
New paper is officially out!
Ratfish have a second jaw on their foreheads - CT + histology show they’re real teeth, built from the same tissues and signals as oral teeth.
www.washington.edu/news/2025/09...
Ratfish have a second jaw on their foreheads - CT + histology show they’re real teeth, built from the same tissues and signals as oral teeth.
www.washington.edu/news/2025/09...
This common fish has an uncommon feature: forehead teeth, used for mating
New findings call into question one of the core assumptions about teeth. Adult male spotted ratfish, a shark-like species native to the eastern Pacific Ocean, have rows of teeth on top of their heads,...
www.washington.edu
September 4, 2025 at 7:01 PM
New paper is officially out!
Ratfish have a second jaw on their foreheads - CT + histology show they’re real teeth, built from the same tissues and signals as oral teeth.
www.washington.edu/news/2025/09...
Ratfish have a second jaw on their foreheads - CT + histology show they’re real teeth, built from the same tissues and signals as oral teeth.
www.washington.edu/news/2025/09...