Mason Dean

Platypus (Platypi?) hairs have never-before-seen, hollow, meatball-shaped melanosomes that apparently serve no function in color! wild stuff from EON PhD student Jess Dobson royalsocietypublishing.org/rsbl/article/2…

A time-lapse of sleeping seals. Seals can hold their breath for up to 19 minutes and even nap underwater. As they sleep, they slowly sink, then occasionally swim up to the surface to breathe

To celebrate #InternationalWomensDay we highlight two #HFSP projects led by international teams of women pushing the frontiers of life science! 💪 🔬 Spatial translation during development 💎 Intracellular metabolic crystals 🔗zurl.co/rPPsF & zurl.co/ICmaG

Are sea urchin spines sharper than eyes? #CityUHK Professor Lu Jian's team discovered their natural structure senses water flow — over 1,000x faster than vision! 👀 Using 3D printing, they recreated this "mechanoelectrical" ability: ⚡️Biomimetic gradient design: 3x voltage output, 8x signal boost 🌊 Real-time underwater monitoring: Detects flow direction & intensity, no external power needed 🧠 Structure-driven sensing: Function comes from topology, not material Published in Nature, this breakthrough opens new frontiers in marine monitoring, biomedicine and beyond! 📚✨ 👉🏻Dive into nature-inspired innovation: go.cityu.hk/r8qimu

Now available! A new method paper utilises radiopaque contrast injected into peripheral nerves for subsequent CT scanning. The method produced excellent models of nerves leaving the specimens ready for further analysis doi.org/10.1111/joa.70…

🧪 Applying for an HFSP Postdoctoral Fellowship? Join our webinar on how to navigate the 2027 HFSP Fellowships application process! Two sessions available: 🕘 25 March, 09:00 & 16:00 CET 🔗 Register: zurl.co/fO8Ga #HFSP #ResearchFellowships #FrontierScience #sts

Narcissus pallidiflorus Pugsley #botany #Amaryllidaceae #plantsci #Lankester #PlantBlindnesss #PlantAwareness #angiosperms #biodiversity #nature #science @IndurotUniovi @OficialSebot @kewgardens @RJBOTANICO @mncn_csic @TheBotanics @smithsonian @RBGCanada @NHM_London @NYBG

Postdoc Opening! 🚨 Thrilled to (belatedly!) share that I’ve received @HFSP grant in collaboration with @KatherinaPetrou "Plant-like solar tracking in a photosymbiotic animal." We are hiring a Postdoc to join the team @BristolUni! Apply👇 jobs.ac.uk/job/DQO766/res… #Neuroscience

What happens when you add data and birds into the equation? The latest visual by @NadiehBremer is perhaps her most ambitious yet, an incredible exploration of Google Trends data and birding across America. simonrogers.net/2026/02/12/dat…

Ruscus aculeatus L. #botany #Asparagaceae #plantsci #Lankester #PlantBlindnesss #PlantAwareness #angiosperms #biodiversity #nature #science @IndurotUniovi @OficialSebot @secforestales @kewgardens @RJBOTANICO @mncn_csic @TheBotanics @smithsonian @RBGCanada @NHM_London @NYBG

Life in the ocean can be violent—and in an undersea world full of claws, sharp teeth, and stingers, snapping shrimp stand out for their ability to inflict trauma. To stun prey and fight one another for mates and territory, the tiny crustaceans shoot out high-speed jets of water that trigger supersonic shock waves with the snap of a claw. But how do the shellfish protect themselves from the force of the blasts they generate? It turns out that like professional football players, snapping shrimp shield their brains and eyes from concussive forces with protective headgear, according to a new study. Learn more: scim.ag/4kDBtPm

In our latest ‘Imaging spotlight’ we learn about ShapeSpaceExplorer, a tool for measuring cell shape of migrating cells, developed by Samuel Jefferyes, Anne Straube @AnneStraube and colleagues. focalplane.biologists.com/2026/02/05/ima…

The beautiful constellation of a whale shark’s spots are unique to each individual. This means that these shark can be identified by their spot pattern 😍 〰️〰️〰️ 📸: @annieguttridge #shark #sharks #whaleshark #ocean #saltlife

We have been busy celebrating our 100-year anniversary this year. Scroll through our timeline to view the key milestones over the years biologists.com/100-years/time… #biologists100

TRILOBITE BEETLES!😍🌿 Some of the coolest bugs in Asia’s rainforests are these female Lycid Beetles, that look like they’re from prehistoric ages! 😱🦕 They retain their larval form as adults and feed on decaying matter all day and night in the leaf litter of the forest! 🍂

A new study by De Ridder et al shows that, once size-scaled, zebras, onagers, and horses share highly comparable architecture—with subtle boosts in distal flexor strength for zebras on rough terrain! Read more at anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ar…

For a continuing jellyfish series, Jeff Streeter @croucherFDN did this nice write-up of Ben Flaum's paper w/ @ljmacek on teeth from Mola, the jelly-scourge. Who woulda thunk such oompaloompahs would have crazy throat chompers? croucher.org.hk/en/news/ocean-… anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.10…

thanks for the shout-out @PNASNexus! Jana Ciecierska-Holmes, John Nyakatura, the rest of the crew and I are thrilled this is finally out and getting attention. (Wouldn't have been possible without the support of the matters-of-activity.de/en/ and @MpiciPotsdam!)

...talk about cleaning house: @MikeMSch, @Kanmani_chandra and @VKamska from our group all won presentation awards at @CityUHongKong 's @CityUJCCVet Research Gala! (I'm even out of town at the moment, maybe I should go away more often...) Congrats to the crew and other winners!