#WomenAndGirlsInScience SPOTLIGHT DAY 1! In her PhD project, Lisa Van Linden is studying the genomic and functional effects of inbreeding on island populations of Italian wall lizards 🦎🏝️

For this, she spends a lot of time fishing for #lizards on beautiful Mediterranean #islands and rearing juveniles in the lab! #WomenInScience #WomenInScienceDay #February11

Good times! 🤩🦷

#WomenAndGirlsInScience SPOTLIGHT DAY 2! Being in the last year of her PhD, Maja Mielke is currently working through tons of #XROMM data of cute little #birds cracking seeds. 🐦 She's studying the #biomechanics of beak movement in small songbirds. #February11 #WomenInScience

#WomenAndGirlsInScience SPOTLIGHT DAY 3! Anastasia Selini has already studied a variety of topics: mosasaur #hydrodynamics, Devonian #shark teeth histology 🦈 and early tetrapod limb bone microanatomy 🦴

#WomenAndGirlsInScience SPOTLIGHT DAY 4! Eleesha Annear is researching the function of osteoderms in the Cape cliff lizard 🦎. This is quite the change from her previous research on large carnivores! 🦁

Eleesha is currently busy with analysing lots of 3D images of Cape cliff lizard osteoderms (bony plates in the skin) to better understand their shape variation across populations 🦎

Every two years, Raoul and I organize 'Herp Talks' at UAntwerpen. Exciting for the 2024 edition, as we've gathered a fantastic group of researchers presenting their work on salamanders, frogs, lizards, snakes, and other loathsome creatures! 🦎🐍🐸 #Herpetology #Research"

#WomenAndGirlsInScience SPOTLIGHT DAY 6! Merel Van Gorp is studying manoeuvrability in #boxfish 🐡 which will give us more insight into how the manoeuvrability of rigid slow-moving underwater vehicles can be improved

In practice, this means filming the boxfish with as many as 8 cameras 📹, a lot of computer work, and of course, taking care of the fishes! #WomenInScience #February11

That concludes our week of #WomenAndGirlsInScience ✨ Honourable mentions of other awesome FunMorph women are of course Ioanna Gavriilidi and Josie! We enjoyed putting our female lab members and their research in the spotlight and hopefully, you did as well! #WomenInScience

Time flies when you're doing #fieldwork 🦎🏝️ One month in the field almost completed, one more month to go!

Recently @FWOVlanderen Kennismakers Magazine featured an interview between UAntwerp Funmorph #PhD student Ioanna Gavriilidi and Sam Van Campenhout student Lauren Ottaviani. Two young female researchers discussing their respective study topics - a great read! 🦎🏝️📰👩‍🎓 kennismakers.be/over-het-muurt…

Group photo from our amazing field trip to Ponta de São Lourenço. #lizards2024 #madeira #pontadesaolourenco

New paper alert! 💥 UAntwerp Funmorph's Ioanna Gavriilidi and Lisa Van Linden explore the relationship between #inbreeding and animal #cognition, and highlight the current research gap on the effect of inbreeding on cognition in wild populations 🧬🧠

Check out their article in Oikos doi.org/10.1111/oik.10… #inbreeding #cognition

Our new preprint is out: Introgression dynamics of-sex linked chromosomal inversions shapes the Malawi cichlid adaptive radiation biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Global Women in Herpetology booth at the World Congress of Herpetology! 🐸👩🏻‍🔬🐍👩🏾‍🏫🐢🧕🏽🦎👩🏿‍🔬 We will be here all week, please stop by! #GWH #WomenInSTEM #WomenInHerpetology #WCH10 #WCH #HERper #Herpetology #WomenInScience