Category: science
Recently, I had the honor to be interviewed for the Portrait of Science. It’s a beautiful project created by Magdalena Gonciarz to get to know the people who do science (aka the scientists). Check out the project’s Facebook page!

I miss blogging. I began in 2006 and did it quite actively until 2011—when my posting frequency declined. During my PhD I was still drafting several posts, but ended up only publishing a few. I missed the sharing of ideas and the open discussion that a blog post can give. And this is why I decided to write the introduction of my PhD thesis as a series of blog posts.
Now that I have defended my PhD, I’ll post some sections of the text here. The thesis is accessible at the Bergen Open Research Archive (BORA – UiB):

Vellutini, B.C., 2016. Comparative development of spiralian larvae. The University of Bergen. Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/1956/11465.
The first section is online. I’ll post the remaining in the coming weeks. Enjoy, comment, disagree, re-use, etc 🙂
Congratulations Andreas Hejnol for debutting as a Doktorvater (doctorfather) yesterday! It is an honor to be the first of many more to come. And thank you for being the most awesome PhD supervisor I could have ever envisioned! <3

Stumbled upon this fine depiction within past bryozoan literature: Account of an Aurora Borealis (Blackader 1827)

First day of Lightsheet Z.1 demo @Sars_Centre imaging live embryos of marine worms.

Another hunt for a historical work ended successfully at @BioDivLibrary 🙂

Ok, now I understand why Arduino is cool.


I visited Japan solely for the purpose of studying the Brachiopoda of the Japanese seas, and this step led to my accepting the chair of zoology in the Imperial University at Tokyo. Gradually I was drawn away from my zoological work, into archaeological investigations, by the alluring problem of the ethnic affinities of the Japanese race. The fascinating character of Japanese art led to a study, first of the prehistoric and early pottery of the Japanese, and then to the collection and study of the fictile art of Japan. Inexorable fate finally entangled me for twenty years in a minute study of Japanese pottery. The results of this work are embodied in the Catalogue of Japanese Pottery, lately published by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. With this work off my hands, I turned back with eagerness to my early studies of the Brachiopoda (…) Japan is the home of the brachiopods.
Edward S. Morse, 1902. Observations on living Brachiopoda in Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural History, 5(8): 313-386.
Citations from page 313, 374 and plate 41.