🍉 CR Cardenas 🍉
@nepenthesbaphomet
Research associate/volunteer in the Toussaint Lab at the Natural History Museum of Geneva. Studying trait evolution of ground beetles using museomics. 🍉🍉🍉 Bike polo is okay ▯°
The trip is going pretty smoothly. A couple nights in Hamburg Germany, and over one third of the way to Helsinki on the ferry so far!
Another chapter of my thesis is out! We used genomic data generated from across the range of the Western Balkan highland endemic beetle Calosoma pentheri support the recognition of two distinct species. Biogeography, divergence estimates, phylo & population genetics, etc.
Sculpturing is going to be the worst of doing all this. The balance between illustration and realism is hard
Working on a poster, and I may have spent a little more time than necessary on this beetle illustration. Theres only one blurry photo of a live Calosoma (Carabophanus) gestroi on the internet.
Ok, last bit of bike polo chatter for now. Plus I've never watched myself play, so I've gotta save this clip here. Still riding the high of winning a tournament! Best viewed full screen on mobile.
So a non academic/entomology thing. I played in a Hard Court Bike Polo tournament today and our team (Brocolis) ranked 3rd and came first in the single elimination bracket! Super cool to actually be first place on the podium. Thanks a ton for hosting Lausanne! Go ride bikes with your friends
I presented the important part of my thesis work at Biology24 in Zurich yesterday. It was great and I had a ton of interesting questions. A few other museum folk were very interested in my molecular lab methods!
www.nature.com/articles/s41... XKCD comic sums up this paper pretty well.