Chris Law

Killer tortoises! I showed this in my island biology lecture yesterday and it shocked the students 😱 Here's the paper describing the behaviour: www.cell.com/current-biol... 🧪🌏

Fun to share a bit about the last 4 years of undergrad led research at the #SSB2026 meeting! @systbiol.bsky.social

Summer fish class at Friday Harbor Labs 🐟
5 weeks, field + lab, real projects.
Open to grads, postdocs, and undergrads. Financial aid available.
Apply: February 16, 2026
Reach out to @cmdonatelli.bsky.social @fishguy.bsky.social or @karlycohen.bsky.social with questions!
Details in the flyer ⬇️

Students had a blast at #SICB2026!

Come check out back-to-back Law lab talks today in the Shape and Climate session (room B112)!

10:15am - Long fuse evolution of carnivoran skeletal phenomes
13:30am - Endocranial shape variation in relation to climate in primates

#SICB2026 @sicb-dcb-dvm.bsky.social

Our reviewed preprint @elife.bsky.social: Brawn before bite in endemic Asian mammals after the end-Cretaceous extinction doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

The research team will undertake revisions based on the initial reviews to further strengthen the evidence underlying our work! #paleontology #mammals

Very excited for this incredible lineup of talks at #SSB2026!

ssb2026.github.io/talks.html

For those giving talks, more instructions will be sent shortly.

@systbiol.bsky.social

And here's a Q&A of the paper with @iampotassium.bsky.social

www.washington.edu/news/2025/12...

We are grateful to the staff and collections all these museums and support from NSF (DBI-2128146), a University of Texas Early Career Provost Fellowship, Paleontological Society, Burke Museum, & the European Research Council (ERC-2021-ADG).

We posit that climatic and environmental changes from the Eocene-Oligocene Transition facilitated skeletal diversification among carnivoran families, whereas changes from the Mid-Miocene Climate Transition 20 My later facilitated skeletal diversification within families.

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We found nearly equal support for the two release and radiate models, where the evolution of skeletal phenomes transitions from a constrained adaptive zone under a Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process to skeletal diversification under Brownian motion at the EOT 34 Ma and at the MMCT 14 Ma.

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We then tested 16 alternative hypotheses that could explain the disparity of carnivoran skeletal phenome by fitting a series of macroevolutionary models.

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DTT revealed higher subclade disparity than expected during two time intervals. The 1st occurs 39-37 Ma, right between the Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum & the Eocene-Oligocene Transition (EOT). The 2nd occurs 14-1 Ma, coinciding with the end of the Mid-Miocene Climate Transition (MMCT).

🧵 3/n

We first quantified skeletal phenomes using 103 linear measurements from 118 extant species & 81 extinct species. We measured 854 specimens held at 17 museums!

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Our manuscript is now out in @royalsocietypublishing.org! We tested hypotheses that Cenozoic climatic change influenced the evolution of the cranial, appendicular, & axial skeleton in carnivorans. @tsengzj.bsky.social @hlusko.bsky.social

🧵 1/n

royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

🧪🐠 I am hiring a postdoc! Work will be on patterns of biodiversity across phylogenetic scales using teleost fishes as a model. Apply by end of Jan 2026 for full consideration apply.interfolio.com/179070 I encourage folks to reach out with any questions. Please Share!

"NEST" logo for the Natural history Exploration Student Training Program. Logo contains a weasel inside a nest.

Finally made a logo and acronym for my mentorship program! Check it out chrisjlaw.github.io/NEST.html

Promoting the use of phylogenetic multinomial generalised mixed-effects model to understand the evolution of discrete traits Abstract. Phylogenetic comparative methods (PCMs) are fundamental tools for understanding trait evolution across species. While linear models are widely us

NEW METHODS ARTICLE: Phylogenetic GLMMs open doors to study evolution of discrete traits. We show how binary models extend to ordinal & nominal traits, using bird data, and provide tutorials to make these methods accessible to evolutionary biologists:

doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...
Mizuno et al.

Adaptive landscape and the evolution of flight in mammals

A big review of the evolution of bats:
www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...
🧪 ⚒️ #Paleobio #EvoBio

Wonder why this scene looks so familiar...
#WildlifeWednesday 🐦🐕

🚨 Recruiting 12 PhD students for a new NSF-funded program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences! This program is for U.S. students who received an Honorable Mention on the NSF GRFP within the last 3 years. @uafairbanks.bsky.social

www.uaf.edu/cfos/academi...

Collections Study Grants Collections study grants provide financial assistance for graduate students and post-doctoral researchers to study the collections of the University of Washington Burke Museum (UWBM).

New Collection Study Grants for students and postdocs to come visit the @burkemuseum.bsky.social! Applications due 12/15/25. www.burkemuseum.org/collections-...

Done

🦎THREAD: We just published something wild in @asn-amnat.bsky.social - lizards missing entire limbs not only survive, but some appear to actually thrive in the wild?!

Let me tell you about the "three-legged pirate" lizards 🏴‍☠️

[Paper: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/... ]

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Image of three brown and black fossil jaw fragments of extinct weasel relatives, Leptarctus, with short but sharp cusps. Open access paper at https://doi.org/10.5070/P9.48360

Celebrating #NationalFossilDay with a new paper describing specimens of the most whimsical of weasel relatives, leptarctine ("slender bear") mustelids, from the collections of @ucmpberkeley.bsky.social.

Their teeth are so much fun to look at! 🦷
doi.org/10.5070/P9.4...

(Cover image by P. Holroyd)

My lab is hiring a 2-yr hummingbird evolution and genomics postdoc and a 1-yr salaried research and lab tech. Both with full U. Wyoming benefits. Please spread the word! Info below. Best consideration date Nov 1, start dates early Spring 2026.

New in @science.org, meet Acronichthys maccagnoi, a new species from Late Creatacous Canada that changes what we know about the origins and evolution of one of the most successful fish groups on Earth.

Functional ecological convergence between the thylacine and small prey-focused canids - BMC Ecology and Evolution Background Morphological convergence is a fundamental aspect of evolution, allowing for inference of the biology and ecology of extinct species by comparison with the form and function of living species as analogues. The thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus), the iconic recently extinct marsupial, is considered a classic example of convergent evolution with the distantly related placental wolf or dog, though almost nothing is actually known regarding its ecology. This lack of data leads to questions regarding the degree of convergence with, and the similarity of, the functional ecology of the thylacine and the wolf/dog. Here, we examined the cranium of the thylacine using 3D geometric morphometrics and two quantitative tests of convergence to more precisely determine convergent analogues, within a phylogenetically informed dataset of 56 comparative species across 12 families of marsupial and placental faunivorous mammals. Using this dataset, we investigated patterns of correlation between cranial shape and diet, phylogeny, and relative prey size across these terrestrial faunivores. Results We find a correlation between cranial, facial, and neurocranial shape and the ratio of prey-to-predator body mass, though neurocranial shape may not correlate with prey size within marsupials. The thylacine was found to group with predators that routinely take prey smaller than 45% of their own body mass, not with predators that take subequal-sized or larger prey. Both convergence tests find significant levels of convergence between the thylacine and the African jackals and South American ‘foxes’, with lesser support for the coyote and red fox. We find little support for convergence between the thylacine and the wolf or dog. Conclusions Our study finds little support for a wolf/dog-like functional ecology in the thylacine, with it instead being most similar to mid-sized canids such as African jackals and South American ‘foxes’ that mainly take prey less than half their size. This work suggests that concepts of convergence should extend beyond superficial similarity, and broader comparisons can lead to false interpretations of functional ecology. The thylacine was a predator of small to mid-sized prey, not a big-game specialist like the placental wolf.

My final paper out of my PhD was published 5 years ago:
bmcecolevol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Let's take a 🧪🧵 look back at convergent #evolution using the #thylacine and canid #mammals

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Crates of bones

Wrapped up crates of bones

Loans of skeletal material get returned in crates. Had to work on my gift wrapping skills.

Thanks @amnh.org and the Field Museum for the loans!

The paradoxical impact of drought on West Nile virus risk: insights from long-term ecological data | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Mosquito-borne diseases are deeply embedded within ecological communities, with environmental changes—particularly climate change—shaping their dynamics. Increasingly intense droughts across the globe...

Does more H20 mean more mosquito-borne disease risk?

What about in an area that typically receives little rain? (~6 in/year)?

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...