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Connie Whiting

@conniewhiting.bsky.social

51 followers 50 following 2 posts

PhD camzoology || Cichlid plasticity & evolution || loves sea creatures, knitting, cats & breakbeats 🦑 || She/They 🇵🇸🏳️‍⚧️

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Reposted by Connie Whiting

Matt Anniss @sellbydave.bsky.social · 23d

I’ve spent quite a bit of time in recent months thinking about Keith McIvor AKA JD Twitch, who passed sway on Friday. There is much more to come, but here’s a first, raw tribute. Rest in power Keith - we’ll miss you x

www.juno.co.uk/junodaily/20...

www.juno.co.uk

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Connie Whiting @conniewhiting.bsky.social · 22d

Yapped about my fish and won first prize! Had a wonderful time at #egg2025 last week @britishecologicalsociety.org

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Reposted by Connie Whiting

Martin Genner @mgenner.bsky.social · Aug 28

In crater Lake Masoko one fish species is splitting into shallow and deep-living ecotypes occupying different light environments. New research shows their visual systems are diverging, and how colours of male eggspots have changed to maximise their visibility. doi.org/10.1093/molb...

Lake Masoko in Southern Tanzania, also known as Lake Kisiba, is only ~40m deep and 600m in diameter. It was formed around 50,000 years ago, and is isolated from all nearby rivers and lakes. Genetic data suggest it was colonised by Astatotilapia calliptera around 10,000 years ago.

In Lake Masoko, Astatotilapia calliptera has two ecotypes. The shallow living "littoral" ecotype has yellowish males, while the deep living "benthic" ecotype has blueish males. Recently published research led by Madeleine Carruthers and colleagues shows how these fish occupy different light regimes, and have correspondingly different visual sensitivities. Males of these ecotypes have brightly coloured eggspots, used to signal their prowess. The colours of those spots have shifted to maximise their visibility to other fish of the same ecotype. Genetic data suggest these ecotypes are largely reproductively isolated, and started to separate only 1000 years ago. Photos are kindly provided by Ad Konings.

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Reposted by Connie Whiting

Chris Jiggins @chrisjiggins.bsky.social · Jun 30

Very excited about this paper led by Erika Castro. She has shown that Heliconius were ancestrally plastic in how they acquired their cyanogens, but some species have lost the ability to biosynthesise toxins, and have lost genes involved www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Gene loss associated with plasticity-first evolution in Heliconius butterflies

Phenotypic plasticity occurs when a genotype can produce more than one phenotype under different environmental conditions. Genetic accommodation allows plastic phenotypes to be tuned to new environmen...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Connie Whiting

Moritz Blumer @moritzblumer.bsky.social · Jun 19

Check out our new paper about chromosomal inversions in Malawi cichlids! 🐟🧬

Available here without a paywall: hdl.handle.net/10067/214834... (click on the ‘Full text (open access)’ link).

A circular phylogeny of Malawi cichlids with inversion frequencies indicated for different taxa as rings around the tree.

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Connie Whiting @conniewhiting.bsky.social · May 22

need one of this cushions!!!

Reposted by Connie Whiting

Zarah Sultana MP @zarahsultana.bsky.social · Apr 16

Solidarity with trans women after today’s Supreme Court ruling.

The rollback of LGBT rights — especially trans rights — is global, bankrolled by billionaires and the far-right.

Trans rights are human rights. We must defend the Equality Act and its protections for trans people.

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Reposted by Connie Whiting

Prem Thakker ツ @premthakker.bsky.social · Mar 24

This is how Israeli settlers and soldiers – supported by the entire Republican party & much of the Democratic party – is responding to a movie about peace:

Prem Thakker ツ @premthakker.bsky.social · Mar 24

BREAKING: Yuval Abraham, co-director of Oscar-winning documentary "No Other Land," says Israeli settlers beat his co-director Hamdan Ballal, injuring his head and stomach — and then Israeli soldiers invaded the ambulance he was in and seized him.

Ballal's whereabouts are now unknown.

Tweet from Yuval Abraham:
"A group of settlers just lynched Hamdan Ballal, co director of our film no other land. They beat him and he has injuries in his head and stomach, bleeding. Soldiers invaded the ambulance he called, and took him. No sign of him since."

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Reposted by Connie Whiting

John P. Friel, Ph.D. @friel.bsky.social · Feb 24

A fascinating paper investigating circumstantial evidence that suggests that one of the ways that some pelagic marine fish larvae avoid predation is by Batesian mimicry of noxious, unpalatable, and/or low- caloric-value invertebrates primarily cnidarians & ctenophores.🐟🧪

zenodo.org/records/1488...

Four composite images showing larval marine fishes that appear to be mimicking noxious or unpalatable invertebrates.

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Reposted by Connie Whiting

Miguel V. Almeida @migueldvalmeida.bsky.social · Jan 29

Our first deep dive into TEs and piRNAs in African cichlids is finally published!

genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

rdcu.be/d69S5

Our main findings below 🧵

#TEsky

Dynamic co-evolution of transposable elements and the piRNA pathway in African cichlid fishes - Genome Biology

Background East African cichlid fishes have diversified in an explosive fashion, but the (epi)genetic basis of the phenotypic diversity of these fishes remains largely unknown. Although transposable e...

genomebiology.biomedcentral.com

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