Seth Tomchik @sethtomchik@qoto.org

Reminder for those in the US to vote today!
You can look up your polling location and sample ballot here: https://www.vote.org/ .
20 states + DC allow you to register and vote at the same time: https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/same-day-registration.aspx
Bonus! You get a sticker. My county has stickers with a cow and grapes and Dulles airport and an artichoke (I think??)!
Don't forget to bring your iD!

well, well, well, vote for your favourite Smurf fly picture https://www.concours-preuve-image.fr/

Starting off my Mastodon journey with a dataviz I made in #RStats with the #rayrender package! The Earth's submarine fiber optic cable network, visualized in #RStats with #rayrender.

Code:
https://gist.github.com/tylermorganwall/b222fcebcac3de56a6e144d73d166322…

Rayrender Github:
https://github.com/tylermorganwall/rayrender

@flypapers Above, a mind-blowing finding: vinegar flies #Drosophila can move their eyes.

Perhaps it shouldn't surprise us, given that a number of fellow arthropods can do so too. Most spectacularly, jumping #spiders–who are voracious and highly effective hunters–move their eyes too. See the fabulously titled paper "Eight-legged cats and how they see" [1], which reads:

"Six muscles attached to the outside of each principal eye tube allow the same three degrees of freedom (horizontal, vertical, and rotation) as in each of our own eyes (Land 1969b). Using these muscles, the salticid sweeps the two eyes’ fields of view in complex patterns over the scene coming into the eye from the telephoto lens system."

"Eye-tube movement enables the salticid to sample from the larger image projected by the corneal lens, and patterns of movement can be complex. This suggests that eye-tube movement patterns are intimately involved in how #salticids process visual information, serving as critical steps in the perception of shape and form (Land 1969b)."

The flies can't move their eyes as much, and compensate by moving their heads too. But its' remarkable that they can do it at all.

[1] 'Eight-legged cats' and how they see - A review of recent research on jumping spiders (Araneae: Salticidae)
Duane P Harland and Robert R. Jackson, 2000
Cimbebasia 16: 231-240 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/238671399_'Eight-legged_cats'_and_how_they_see_-_A_review_of_recent_research_on_jumping_spiders_Araneae_Salticidae

#entomology #arthropods #spider #science #vision

I see a lot of people talking about how Mastodon "Feels like the Internet I remember from 20 years ago."

That's no accident. That's Federation. That's UseNet, IRC, Email, Message Boards, etc. What do they all have in common?

Federation: Users congregating around watering holes of common interest, but still being a part of a larger whole.

THIS IS HOW THE INTERNET WAS DESIGNED TO BE. And I am HERE for it.

Despite their simple neural circuitry and lack of skeleton, tardigrades exhibit interleg coordination during walking that resembles the one of insects (more complex organisms).

Those bugs are amazing and would deserve a thread @tardigradopedia

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2107289118

Toot migrated automagically from Twitter: https://twitter.com/twitter/status/1571164863581257728

🌸 Artist: #YanouAndZoueh - in City: #CedarRapids #Iowa USA 🇺🇸 - Title: "Together we bloom" (📷 by) - #streetart #art #mastoart #mural #graffiti

A thing I plotted while trying to get all my rotations to go in the right directions.
For those interested, it is tracked points on a fruit fly, all aligned by the thorax -- the big v shape at the origin. The head of the fly is the ^ that is mostly pointing up. Most of the other lines show the flies' legs, which go all over.

“THAT’S HOW THEY ROLL!” Check out our preprint on larval rolling behavior out now on bioRxiv! https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.03.514605v1

#drosophila border #cell #migration akin to #cancer #invasion

I freaking love chromoproteins. Legit all I want to do is make new ones and share them with y'all. No IP, just vibes.

Registration for the drosophila research conference:
https://genetics-gsa.org/drosophila-2023/abstract-submission/

Thanks to @jocelyn_etienne , FlyPapers is now here:

https://drosophila.social/web/@flypapers@botsin.space