Guess what jerk got in the cat tree to steal wet food from her enfeebled sibling. Guess who would 100% do it again

Happy birthday to the Washington Metro, which opened 50 years ago today with service on 4.6 mi of Red Line between Rhode Is. Ave & Farragut N. System now serves 130 mi. The DC Metro shows that, with good planning & enough investment, the public sector can succeed & build something extraordinary.

I’m finishing my tenure as Chief Meeting Organizer for the Evolution Meetings. Apply to replace me! Without a doubt, this is my favorite service I’ve ever done. In trying times, it was a real balm to get together weekly with a group devoted to making the best meetings we can for students.

Getting two copies of the book you put on hold at the library is the literary equivalent of two yolks in your egg

Are you (or something you know) looking for a PhD? Like trait macroevolution but also yearn for an applied topic? Think plants are neat? Want to live in beautiful northeast Scotland?! 🌊🐬⛰️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 I'm advertising a PhD in my lab! Deadline April 22, email me any questions. www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Mad about cyst removal

We present TaxonMatch, a tool designed to align taxonomic names, resolve synonymy, and correct typographical and structural inconsistencies across species name databases www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #biodiversity #taxonomy #bioinformatics

Hi all. I am very excited that after 6 years I finally got my phylogenetic comparative methods book and online exercises online. Feel free to use and share. The book is here: nhcooper123.github.io/pcm-primer/. Note that it is not finished, we had to abandon it before the sunk costs fallacy broke us

This, but my kids’ teeth are great and my cat has already burned through her insurance deductible on dental care

To think, 24 hours ago I didn’t even have this image

This is a pretty cool (short) story about a Chilean copepod that we've been working on with @invertevoeco.bsky.social and her lab... turns out, after doing some sequencing, it looks a lot like a new species.

It may not feel like spring has sprung, but we’re busy busy SSBees! 🌸🐝 Due this Friday: Grad student research awards: www.systbio.org/graduate-stu... Mini-ARTS: www.systbio.org/mini-arts-aw... One month warning: Ernst Mayr: www.systbio.org/ernst-mayr-a...

🏅 This month's Editor's Choice article by Megan Barkdull and Corrie Moreau: "Phenotypic plasticity in turtle ants has opposing evolutionary consequences for genes and regulatory loci" academic.oup.com/evolut/artic... @corriemoreau.bsky.social @meganbarkdull.bsky.social

Well, we’re on the train to AwesomeCon. This is happening to me for some reason.

Finally got my reading mojo back after losing it in the snowpocalypse in January The first Murderbot was pretty fun!

Fantastic adviser doing amazing work! Apply!

See also: the Mount Vernon trail here in the DC metro

I lived in Ames during my postdoc and I’ve never lived somewhere so fiercely queer per capita. Absolute heartbreaker.

Why do you force me to sing for my supper, mother? Are you a monster?

📢 Including fossil tips in your phylogeny can double your continuous trait model fitting accuracy! Updated preprint out now on @ecoevorxiv.bsky.social. 🔗 doi.org/10.32942/X27... with @pedrolgodoy.bsky.social @macroecoevoale.bsky.social and @bethanyjallen.bsky.social

Casablanca is a movie where everyone does something unexpected that is totally in character and that is actually what life is like, especially when life is hard, uncertain, and unknowable.

You know what? I’m curious. Let’s find out.

Demetra has done a great job raising the research capacity of a small collection at a PUI. Definitely worth attending and chatting with her!

Academics often lament that hardly any master’s projects get published. The student moves on. Other research takes priority. No one has time to do the final analyses. Here I tell how one master’s project was, through persistent teamwork, finally carried over the finish line: go.nature.com/4aKs7N3

It’s the first time a frog—or any amphibian—has been observed pollinating a plant, researchers reported in 2023. Learn more on #WorldWildlifeDay: https://scim.ag/4riUU1G

We hope that our study will provide the foundations for understanding the nature of diversification rate shifts in exceptionally species-rich clades. You can read it open access in Evolution Letters: doi.org/10.1093/evle... @bjorntko.bsky.social @jclarkepaleo.bsky.social @hoehna.bsky.social

I keep telling people I recently had my first “AI-enabled” undergrad interns. It was worse than if they knew nothing. People who know nothing at least ask for help I let them work for a few months because I was curious to see if some latent desire for help and instruction might kick in, but nope

Excited to share a new paper written by a AAAS Policy Fellow I mentor, Dr. Lisa Walsh. “This review synthesizes literature on fieldwork safety across scientific disciplines, highlighting four facets of safety for leaders and researchers to address: physical, social, financial, and psychological.”

Novo artigo quentinho, recém saído do forno com @jdpardo.bsky.social . Nada menos que os primeiros "pelicossauros" do Gondwana. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... +

So I pleased to announce the conceptual spawn of FigTree: PearTree (acronym still to be finalised). If you want to dive right in it is hosted as a web app here: artic-network.github.io/peartree (click the “Example...” button for immediate candy and then click every button you can find).

Very grateful to live somewhere where I can walk the cat to the vet, but boy is walking the cat to the vet miserable

You and me both, bird.

Having published a couple living articles, they're a bit of a nightmare. Preprint + paper seems like the right balance.

Years ago our admin did a red and black report. It took salaries & how much $ each instructor made in tuition $ for classes we taught-you were in the red or black. They released numbers once & shut it down bc humanities were producing huge $ for uni & engineers, business and scientists were losing $

Maybe someone can point me in the right direction, but is there any evidence of “grade inflation” as real? Like, you take a bunch of high achievers, put ‘em together and they keep achieving. Duh. At my regional PUI, students come in bimodal and leave bimodal.

Our new paper 'A covarion model for phylogenetic estimation using discrete morphological datasets,' is out in SysBio! We introduce the "covariomorph" model in RevBayes to capture character and lineage specific rates of morphological traits. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/sysb...

The Epstein files document what many women researchers have long experienced but rarely seen laid bare so starkly: exclusion operating behind closed doors, shaping who gets funded, invited, mentored, and taken seriously. How many of these networks, norms, and gatekeepers remain in place?

Before he passed away in 2021, Tom Cavalier-Smith had drafted parts of his autobiography. It's now 'published' because Gáspár Jékely put a lot of effort in! Please enjoy and share: doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

oh no the beer is wet but it won’t freeze, just optimal chill overnight

Very proud of the @paleosoc.bsky.social for advocating a safer & more welcoming community for all paleontologists

New preprint on a new diversity-dependent biogeographic diversification model using deep learning. Joint work with my amazing advisor @landismj.bsky.social. Details of the paper in the comment section. #evobio www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Do you teach large enrollment STEM classes in higher education? Are you interested in doing more active learning in your courses? Resources and dedicated mentorship are available! Apply for the Large Class Transformation Award-link in next post. #edusky #teaching #STEM #learningisnotaspectatorsport

Registration is now open! Early-bird closes April 15. www.evolutionmeetings.org/registration...

Weird academic tick: I woke up this morning, suddenly and deeply aware that reviews are due this week on a manuscript I'm handling Brains are weird.

🚨Awards Alert 🚨 Its award season here at SSB! First up: Graduate Student Research Awards. Due March 20, these awards are for collecting data or otherwise enhancing your dissertation. Open to graduate student society members Apply here: www.systbio.org/graduate-stu...

I wrote my final book review column for the Washington Post a while back. (I didn't know it was the last one of course.) I was worried it might not even run since the book section is ending, but thanks to the heroic efforts of editor Jacob Brogan, here it is: www.washingtonpost.com/books/2026/0...

On this Valentine’s Day, I hope you all get what I got: the realization that your husband has not seen the Civil War fort in your neighborhood and the chance to Bore. Him. Senseless en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Wi...

Next week won’t be so bonkers and I’ll get some writing done. Right?

This elitist view that only rich/Ivy/private school kids should study/have access the liberal arts is so deeply ingrained in so many highly educated Democrats’ views (including tons who majored in the lib arts themselves) that they don’t even realize they hold it, let alone how ugly & elitist it is