Lizard lovers, travelers, grey nomads, & sandgropers, lend me your ears:.If you’re in Western Australia and come across a dead thorny devil, we’d love to have it as part of our genetic assessment of the species across its range. *Especially* if it’s from btwn Perth and Shark Bay.

RT @PutterT: The "Spags🍝 and snags🌭" study is officially out in @journal_evo. W/ @Keogh_Lab & A. Skeels. 🩵🫰for @StephenZozaya for this amaz….

Join millions who have switched to Grok.

Timeless. 💃

An impossible decision. Have to go with the incredible shingleback 📸 on the right from @FarquharJules though!.

Now’s as good a time as any to go check out our recent paper on the evolution of Australia’s best skinks. Huge thanks to @FarquharJules for the unreal snap 📸. See thread here:.

Not on my 2024 Bingo card:.Violent incel dolphin attacks. via @NYTimes.

CROCODILE SKIIIIIINK. (no idea why it’s up in a tree).

Very important that we figure out what’s happening in Kalgoorlie. Worried the lizards may have taken over the town.

I should also say, big thanks to @Keogh_Lab , @DonnellanSteve , and @chapple_lab for coming on this journey with me. Always a supportive and enthusiastic crew.

above images:.(L) Tjakura (Liopholis kintorei) 📸 Jake Meney.(R) Night skink (Liopholis striata) 📸 Brendan Schembri. Thanks for listening to me ramble about skinks!.

Skinks generally like it warm and they spend their time being active during the day. But some Liopholis skinks have switched to being nocturnal to avoid the daytime heat of the desert. To do this they have evolved elliptical (cat-eye) pupils and a jump to much larger eyes!

There's a lot more in the paper:.But I'll end with one example I think is particularly interesting.

Without belabouring this too much, we find these jumps are relatively uncommon, happening maybe once every 10 million years. But they cause huge changes in how animals look. For example, we identify multiple changes to the body, head, limbs, and tail that give us a shingleback.

Our answer (put very simply) is that new forms evolve through periods of slow change in traits, interrupted by big jumps in change. Imagine these as evolutionary growth-spurts, like the crinkly line in the plot on the far right.

We used some complex evolutionary models to ask a very basic question:

In addition to being cool looking, they also have some very cool behaviors, like:.(a) long term monogamy in Tiliqua rugosa (sometimes 20+ years!).(b) living in family units e.g. Egernia cunninghami.(c) using communal toilets e.g. Egernia stokesii

They live in rainforest canopies and snowy mountaintops, open sandy deserts and tight rock crevices. And they're a cool system because they have very varied body types that suit their habits. see a short write-up by @JoshLukeDavis here:.

. (f) Pygmy spiny-tailed skink (Egernia depressa).(g) Mainland She-oak skink (Cyclodomorphus michaeli).(h) Crocodile skink (Tribolonotus gracilis). These lizards represent some of the extremes of the diversity we see in the 'Social Skinks' a group mostly found in Australia.

First off, let's add some names to faces:.(a) Monkey-tailed skink (Corucia zebrata).(b) Western bluetongue (Tiliqua occipitalis).(c) Shingleback lizard (Tiliqua rugosa).(d) Yakka skink (Egernia rugosa).(e) Tree skink (Egernia striolata).