Quentin Martinez
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quentinwildlife.bsky.social
Quentin Martinez
@quentinwildlife.bsky.social
140 followers 100 following 66 posts
Post-doc researcher and Wildlife Photographer. Evolution of olfactory systems using integrative approaches. Frog lover 🐸 quentinmartinez.fr
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A 45-million-year-old cetacean brain exhibits prominent olfactory regions, indicating that early whales retained a sense of smell 🐳🧠
academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

@smnstuttgart.bsky.social
Reposted by Quentin Martinez
After two years of hard work, I’m proud to announce that our new special exhibition @smnstuttgart.bsky.social is now open for the public – Meet Triassic Life: Dawn of the world of reptiles (1/7).
The noise is so deafening you need earplugs, and the frogs are so frenzied that they completely ignore your presence, leaping in every direction! It was truly one of the most extraordinary naturalist events I have ever had the chance to witness.
The hypothesized evolutionary strategy behind this behavior is to overwhelm predators through sheer numbers. This photo shows only a small fraction of the actual scene—but imagine thousands of frogs all around you, covering the ground, the trees, and the pond.
Amid this chaotic night, many frogs mate with the wrong species, some even eat other frogs, and numerous predators arrive to take advantage of the abundance of prey.
This event usually lasts only a single night, during which some rare species join the frenzy—species that are often seen only on that occasion.
Explosive breeding is the name of a rare phenomenon in which frogs aggregate to reproduce in the same place at the same time. Once a year, in certain ponds, tens of thousands of frogs gather to reproduce in a spectacular concert.
Thrilled to have won the Amphibians and Reptiles category of the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year and to be able to share this fascinating frog behavior! #wpy61 #frogs #herpetology www.quentinmartinez.fr
Reposted by Quentin Martinez
🎉 PAPER OUT ! Happy to see another chapter of my PhD out in #MBE ! The African pygmy mouse flips the script on sex determination. Its multiple sex and neo-sex chromosomes 🤯 shape brain transcriptomes and drive sexual polymorphism, reflecting new evolutionary trajectories for sex-linked regions.
Heitzmann et al. compared brain transcriptomes of four sexual genotypes of the African pygmy mouse, showing how sex and neo-sex chromosomes impacted transcriptomes to reflect their transmission mode, evolutionary trajectories, and genomic conflicts.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf208

#evobio #molbio
Reposted by Quentin Martinez
🚨 We are looking for 2 PhD students! 🧠🐸👃

Join the Manzini Lab @jlugiessen.bsky.social to explore the olfactory system in #aquatic #vertebrates.

We mainly use #amphibians, combining:
🔬 Imaging
👩‍🔬 Cell biology
🐝 Behavior

👉 bit.ly/neurophd
🌍 bit.ly/manzinilab

Please share!

#PhD #neuroscience #job
Reposted by Quentin Martinez
Our paper on rodent thumbnails is out! Big team effort, powered by museum collections. Turns out, nails can reveal a lot about rodent evolution. Shoutout to Dr. Gordon Shepherd for the wild idea to study rodents thumbs!
New findings in Science suggest that rodents owe much of their evolutionary success to their thumb-nail (the first digit, D1), an adaptation that gave them dexterous hands for cracking seeds and nuts.

Learn more in this week's issue: https://scim.ag/46caVho
Reposted by Quentin Martinez
Reposted by Quentin Martinez
Huge congratulations to Isabelle Toussaint-Lardé on publishing the first paper of her PhD! 🎉

Ever wondered whether paedomorphic species change their feeding strategies from larval to adult stages? Is adulthood in axolotls just an illusion? 🧠👀
Reposted by Quentin Martinez
I am proud and grateful to present a dream project today in @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Meet #Mirasaura grauvogeli, a #wonderreptilewith skin appendages that rival feathers and hairs, challenging our view of reptile #evolution🪶🦎
You can find the accompanying models on MorphoMuseuM here: morphomuseum.com/articles/vie...
This study is the result of Elena Berger’s Bachelor’s thesis, conducted in collaboration with @eliamson.bsky.social @hesham-sallam.bsky.social @gohar.bsky.social @gsferreira.bsky.social and many other co-authors. Thanks to Tyler Stone @tylerstoneart.bsky.social for the nice reconstruction!
Regarding the sense of smell, we basically found that no part of the olfactory apparatus was significantly reduced, indicating that these amphibious cetaceans most likely had a good nose, and that the reduction of this sense most likely came later in their evolution.
Comparing the relative volume of the brain endocast, we found that this early whale was quite brainy, which is a surprise, as the first cetaceans with big brains were so far understood to be the fully aquatic basilosaurids.
We addressed two aspects of cetacean evolution: their acquisition of a relatively big brain and the evolution of their sense of smell. As other mammals secondarily adapted to the aquatic environment, cetaceans have been assumed to reduce their sense of smell.
We ct-scanned the skull of Protocetus atavus, an amphibious cetacean coming from the Mokattam Formation in Egypt. The inner anatomy of the skull was reconstructed, and we were able to reconstruct the brain imprint (endocast) as well as the different components of the nasal cavity
A 45-million-year-old cetacean brain exhibits prominent olfactory regions, indicating that early whales retained a sense of smell 🐳🧠
academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

@smnstuttgart.bsky.social
Reposted by Quentin Martinez
Fossil brain 🧠🧟 of a 45-million-year-old cetacean! We are proud to publish‪ @journal-evo.bsky.social l the result of Elena Berger’s Bachelor’s thesis @smnstuttgart.bsky.social. Thread 👇
Reposted by Quentin Martinez
🚨🚨PhD position alert!🚨🚨
Do you like 🐢🐢? Or ecomorph evolution? I am offering a 36-month PhD position funded by the DFG about ecomorphology and neuroanatomy of turtles. Check out the ad here: www.senckenberg.de/en/career/sc...

Please share and if you have questions, send me a message 😉