700th Synapsida

Well, here we are again with another biennial look-back at the last 100 posts, highlighting what may have been missed and taking a brief peek at where I might go next. I can't say it's entirely gone without a hitch over the last couple of years, but I've mostly kept to the weekly schedule... although you might get more regular gaps in the summer going forward.

Evolution remained the single most common category for the past 100 posts, which is hardly surprising given how many are about extinct species, and how important it can be to understanding how the living ones got to be the way they are. However, diet and habitat, which are often linked, have overtaken animal behaviour to nab the second and third spots... although the latter has remained common. Since I pick most topics on the day, without any grand plan to even things out, that's probably just the vagaries of what I happen to have come across. 

600th Synapsida

The time has come around once again for my approximately biennial piece of navel-gazing, as I celebrate this blog reaching its 600th post, almost 12 years after it first started. Since the 500th post, the world has (mostly) emerged from the perils of COVID and now tends to have other issues on its mind that biological science is less likely to be helpful with - not that I deal with epidemiology or virology here anyway. But let's take the traditional look back at what did appear on the blog during that timeframe and, allowing for the fact that I usually pick the topic on the day the post goes up, what might be coming over the next two years.

Animal behaviour and evolution remain the two most popular topics of my posts, and it's unlikely that that's going to change too much. However, there were also several posts on sociability specifically, as well as things such as diet and habitat and a more than usual number of posts on anatomy. In terms of the types of animals covered, where posts were on a particular species and not part of an ongoing series, rodents top the list, followed by bats. These are, of course, the top two mammalian groups in terms of number of species, but, while rodents are relatively easy to study, bats are rather less so... but perhaps that just means that studies on them tend to stand out more and pique my interest.

500th Synapsida

Yes, it's been almost ten years since I started this blog and, while I don't do anniversary posts, since there are typically about 50 posts a year, this does happen to be my 500th post. Which is a fair few when you think about it. And, in general celebration of round numbers, that means it's time for another review of what's appeared in the last couple of years or so, and what might be coming next.

Even allowing for the series on Miocene animals, evolution has been one of the most common topics that I've written about in the last 100 posts, second only to animal behaviour. Which is hardly surprising, I suppose, given the number (and general popularity) of the posts I write about fossil species in general. Also common has been the perennial topic of reproduction, and there have been quite a few posts on animal communication and conservation as well.

400th Synapsida

With this being the 400th post at Synapsida, it is once again time for my biennial piece of navel-gazing, in which I see what has happened over the last 100 posts, and where I might be going next.

There's no change to the most frequently used tags over the last 100 posts, with evolution and behaviour topping the list, as might be expected, given the general theme of the blog. (I'm ignoring tags directly related to particular 'series' here, of course). Bubbling under are topics related to diet, sociability, and reproduction. Given some of the animals I have been looking at, it is unsurprising - if rather depressing - that endangered species are also mentioned quite frequently.

300th Synapsida

Here, have a marsupial. Or four.

This is, by my count, the 300th post to appear at Synapsida. Which means that, once again, it's time to look back over the last 100 posts to see what has, and has not, been covered, and where I might be going next. Which, considering that I pick the topic for over half my posts on the same day on which I write them, is likely to be a bit vague, but there you go.

The blog has been running for almost six years now, and has settled into a typical audience of between 200-300 hits per day (whatever the heck that means in terms of actual readers). The most frequently used tags over that period have been behaviour and evolution, although this may just reflect how I tag things. Biogeography, for instance, may well have cropped up in all sorts of posts that I didn't specifically note as such.

Looking back over the last 100 posts, carnivorans have probably been the most common animals covered, although there are also plenty of rodents, not to mention cetaceans, bats, primates, and all the rest. As I mentioned last time, my coverage of the main mammal families has been, if not entirely comprehensive, at least pretty broad. Since then, and ignoring posts on fossil beasts, I think I've added four more families to the list of those with a headline mention, all of them either small or obscure (or both): hyenas, degus, cheirogaleid lemurs, and echidnas.

But still no pigs.

200th Synapsida

Yes, this is the 200th post on Synapsida, and with it, time for my biennial piece of navel-gazing. If the number of hits is any measure, the blog has certainly increased in popularity over the last two years, typically getting over 200 per day now. I originally picked the title to be distinctive, and, assuming you know to look for it, that's not doing too badly - I'm on the first page of Google and Yahoo searches for the term. Although, obviously, one does need to know it's there, and not be looking for the taxonomic definition of things like pelycosaurs!

Over the last 100 posts, I have added a further 16 living families (plus some fossil ones) to the list of those I've covered, from the reasonably well known, such as armadillos, shrews, and porpoises, to the possibly slightly more obscure, such as tuco-tucos and beaked whales. That, even after four years of the blog, leaves an awful lot of families that I still haven't touched. Many of them are, unsurprisingly, small or obscure families, some of them with just a single living species (the aardvark, say, or the Asiatic linsang). But there's still some obvious gaps. I said in my 100th post that I hadn't covered pigs, for instance, and I still haven't, apart from some fossil species.

100th Synapsida

This is the 100th post on Synapsida. Granted, that's counting the introductory post, which didn't really say much, but it's far easier to keep track of that way. Synapsida started in October 2010, initially with around 2 or 3 hits a day, and currently tends to get around 80. Not the most successful blog in the history of the internet, then, or even of science blogging, but hardly a disaster, either.

In that time, I've covered a wide range of mammalian topics, although there's still a number I believe haven't yet had a fair shake. The subject I've written most about turns out to be reproduction, followed, more generally, by animal behaviour. These are topics there's a lot to say about, and there's plenty of research ongoing, as well as being easier to make interesting than, say, the diversity of nitrogen isotopes in reindeer. Still, I'd like to do a bit more on morphology - the general shapes and anatomy of animals, and how that differs between groups.

I've covered members of 33 different families of mammals in the main articles, and so far, I've generally not gone into detail on any given species more than once. Still, some types of mammals have definitely featured more frequently than others. Aside from the obvious, the most commonly mentioned family of mammals turns out to be the dogs, followed by the bears. In general, carnivorous mammals have got the most airtime, but there are also a number of posts on marsupials, bats, primates, and cetaceans, among others.