Sérgio's second PhD paper on skull shape variation in extant pangolins and its implications for systematics just appeared in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society (https://doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlz096). This paper is based on geometric morphometrics analyses of 243 museum specimens from the eight extant species of pangolins. Our results shed light on the morphological diversity of the skull of these enigmatic myrmecophagous mammals and confirm the genus-level cla

Kathleen attended SVP 2019, the 79th Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in her Brisbane hometown (Australia). She presented a poster on using cribiform plate as a proxy to characterize the olfactory capacities of myrmecophagous mammals based on 3D CT-scans obtained during her Master project in the ConvergeAnt team. Reference: Garland K.*, Hautier L., Ferreira-Cardoso S., Wright M., Martinez Q., Fabre P.-H., Lebrun R. & Delsuc F. (2019). Exploring the olfactory

Sérgio and Lionel participated to ICVM 2019, the International Congress of Vertebrate Morphology in Prague (Czech Republic). Sérgio gave a presentation on patterns of phenotypic covariation in the skull of myrmecophagous placentals based on modularity analyses. Lionel talked about covariation patterns in the olfactory system of myrmecophagous mammals based on 3D CT-scans of olfactory turbinals and cribiform plates respectively obtained by Mark and Kathleen during their Master

Members of the ConvergeAnt project participated to Evolution 2018, the 2nd Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology held in this year in our home town of Montpellier, France, on August 19-22, with a total of five accepted communication abstracts. Kathleen, Mark, Rémi, and Sérgio acted as volunteers and Frédéric was part of both the Scientific and the local Organizing Committees of what was the biggest congress in Evolutionary Biology ever organized with more than 2600 attendees

Sérgio just returned from a one-week course on Integration and Modularity with Geometric Morphometrics organized by Transmitting Science in Sabadell (Spain). The course was taught by Pr. Chris Klingenberg (University of Manchester, UK). Now he has all the statistical toolkit to analyze his morphological data set collected on hundreds of skulls of myrmecophagous mammals and relatives! #Morphometrics #Collections #Museum #Anteaters #Synthesys #Aardwolf #Pangolins #Giantarmadill

Sérgio, Frédéric, and Lionel spent a week working in the amazing mammal collections of the British Natural History Museum (BMNH) in London to collect geometric morphometric data from ant-eating mammals and to study pygmy anteaters museum specimens. Many thanks again to Roberto Portela Miguez (curator) for opening us the collection under his care. We also took this opportunity to present our ongoing progresses on the ConvergeAnt project to Anjali Goswami's lab meeting who just

Mark Wright successfully defended his six-month Master project from the Erasmus Mundus Master Programme in Evolutionary Biology. His report entitled "A study of morphological convergence in the nasal cavity of ant-eating mammals" represents a great resource for the comparative anatomy of turbinal bones in mammals. We wish him good luck in his new adventures at Harvard University. #Anteaters #Armadillos #Aardwolf #Aardvark #Morphometrics #Sinuses #Collections #CTscans #Master

Rémi just returned from a week long stay in Ascona (Switzerland) to attend the WGS Assembly and Annotation Winter School 2018. He is coming back with lots of great advices to assemble and annotate our myrmecophagous mammal genomes. #Morphometrics #Collections #Museum #Anteaters #Synthesys #Aardwolf #Pangolins #Giantarmadillos

The Montpellier Ressources Imagerie platform (MRI) recently acquired a new ex-vivo X-ray microtomograph (EasyTom 150). This new facility makes it possible to study living and fossil organisms in a non-destructive manner. This is potentially game changing for the ConvergeAnt project since it allows to acquire CT-scans from complete giant anteater skulls and embryos at high resolution. Sérgio already made profit of the new tool for scanning a diversity of specimens. Thanks to

Mark Wright just joined the ConvergeAnt project for the next semester. Mark is a Master student from the Erasmus Mundus Master Programme in Evolutionary Biology. He will be working on the convergent evolution of paranasal sinuses in ant-eating mammals using 3D CT-scans of skulls from museum specimens. #Anteaters #Armadillos #Aardwolf #Aardvark #Morphometrics #Sinuses #Collections #CTscans #Master #Students

Sérgio just arrived from a 3-week long visit in the mammal and embryology collections of the Museum für Naturkunde (MfN) in Berlin to collect geometric morphometric data from anteater, aardvark, and aardwolf specimens. Lots of new data to be analyzed on our brand new Avizo station! Thanks to Frieder Mayer (mammal curator), Steffen Bock (collection manager), and Peter Giere (embryology curator) for facilitating access to their collections. #Morphometrics #Collections #Museum #

Sérgio and Lionel spent three weeks working in the anteater collections of the British Natural History Museum (BMNH) in London to collect geometric morphometric data. Thanks to a Synthesys program collection grant they were able to use the micro computed tomography (micro-CT) scanner facilities to collect 3D CT-scans of embryos and neonates. Many thanks again to Roberto Portela Miguez & Louise Tomsett (host curators), and Amin Garbout & Farah Ahmed (CT-lab facilities). #BMNH

Sérgio and Lionel took advantage of their stay at the BMNH in London to present some preliminary results of the ConvergeAnt project to the members of Anjali Goswami's lab at University College London. #Talk #Collaboration #Morphometrics

Frédéric spent two weeks in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ) at the University of California Berkeley (USA) in the context of a collaboration with Chris Emerling (Post-doc) and Michael Nachman (Director of MVZ) funded by the France-Berkeley Fund. Thanks to the curators of mammalogy Jim Patton, Eileen Lacey and Chris Conroy for authorizing the loan of specimens from ant-eating species. #Museum #Collections #Morphometrics #Pangolins #Aardvark #MVZ #Anteaters #Aardwolf

Sérgio spent a week in the collections of the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) in Tervuren (Belgium) with Guillaume Billet (MNHN) to collect geometric morphometric data on African pangolins and aardvarks. Thanks to Wim Wendelen (technician) and Emmanuel Gilissen (curator) for their welcome. #Museum #Collections #Morphometrics #Pangolins #Aardvark #RMCA #Synthesys

Sérgio and Lionel spent two weeks working in the pangolin collections of the British Natural History Museum (BMNH) in London to collect geometric morphometric data. This was joined work with Philippe Gaubert (ISEM) and Guillaume Billet (MNHN) also supported by a Synthesys program collection grant. Warmest thanks to Roberto Portela Miguez & Louise Tomsett (curators) for hosting. #BMNH #Collections #Museum #Morphometrics #Pangolins #Synthesys

Sérgio Ferreira Cardoso started his 3-year PhD project at the Université de Montpellier on the convergent evolution of skull shape and dental reduction in ant-eating mammals under the joined supervision of Lionel Hautier and Frédéric Delsuc. He was previously a Master student at the Universidade de Lisboa in Portugal. #Students #PhD #Morphometrics