To test this, Prof. Don Powers @lampornis.bsky.social showed hummingbirds actively heat their beaks after flight. Turns out, the bill helps dissipate heat during perching! 🔥➡️💨

Collaborating with Prof. Zoe Migicovsky @zoemig.bsky.social , Alejandro Rico-Guevara, Felipe Garzón-Agudelo & Kevin Epperly, we used 2D & 3D shape data to show:
Beaks are getting more slender, tapered, and in males, pointier! 🐦

Building on that, co-first author Simon English showed that feeder abundance was the best predictor of Anna’s hummingbird population growth, especially in the north, where Grieg et al. showed that birds rely more on feeders.

It started with newspaper archives 📜:
Prof. Eliza Grames tracked hummingbird feeder mentions by county in California from 1860 on. She found feeder use rose rapidly, especially from southern to northern CA.

The starry sturgeon (A. stellatus) carries extra Hox genes, genes that control body plans, but not all are active! After genome duplications, some genes turned off, while others evolved new functions. #2025MMM #RIP

Gemmel et al sequence the Tuatara genome in 2020 and found the lineage diverged from snakes and lizards 250 Mya. The tuatara genome is 2.4× larger than the anole genome but 64% of it is repetitive sequences and has the highest
percentage of methylation for an amniote #2025MMM doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Sturgeons have undergone multiple whole-genome duplications, making some species octoploid (8x their original genome)! A. stellatus is a “low-ploidy” sturgeon, but its DNA still carries echoes of ancient duplications. #2025MMM doi.org/10.1038/s415...

The genomes of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi reveal they have lost some metabolic pathways relative to free-living fungi. Kobayashi et al 2018 find that thiamine, vitamin B6, and some glucose-producing polysaccharide hydrolases biosynthesis is absent in AM #2025MMM #RIP doi.org/10.1186/s128...

Glomeromycotina is a lineage of early diverging fungi that establish arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) symbiosis with land plants. Morin et al 2019 find that AM genomes contain a lot more species-specific genes than other fungi, which reflects their unique lifestyle #2025MMM doi.org/10.1111/nph....

Zhao et al in 2019 sequenced 545 genomes of ginkgos and found 3 centers of genetic diversity in China. Ginkgos grown outside China trace their ancestry to the East population, and American and European trees carry genetic variation that is rare in wild populations. doi.org/10.1038/s414... #2025MMM

A fern genome contains all the instructions for two independent multi-cellular phases: a gametophyte (prothallus) and a sporophyte (fern). Yet, Marchant et al 2023 find only 273 and 1,397 genes were specifically expressed in the gametophyte and sporophyte #2025MMM #RIP doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Ferns are the second most species-rich lineage of land plants. Fujiwara et al 2023 found that fern genome sizes have grown as fern have diversified, showing large structural complexity between different fern species due to whole genome duplications and polyploidy #2025MMM doi.org/10.1093/aob/...

The frilled shark (Chlamydoselachus anguineus) has barely changed for 80 million years! 🦈 Its DNA reveals it's one of the most ancient sharks, diverging before most modern species existed. A true relic of deep-sea evolution! 🌊 #2025MMM doi.org/10.1155/2013...