If spending some time in the UK is of interest, my lab is advertising a PhD post presently with a deadline of Jan 8th. For MSc enquiries, email me (see link) and see 2nd post. mahansonresearch.weebly.com/blog/phd-stu... 1/2

Crown shyness in koa

My best photographs of 2025, a short thread. A tobacco hornworm on one of its favorite foods, a garden tomato plant (Texas, May 2025). This one makes the cut because it is more aesthetically pleasing than I was aiming for, somehow.

Golden Gate

GGB!

The Paradox of the Organism: Adaptation and Internal Conflict is now out! Get your copy directly from @harvardpress.bsky.social

Spittle bugs on the cover!

Something beautiful: VOCES8 performs 'The Road Home' by Stephen Paulus at the Gresham Centre in London www.youtube.com/watch?v=49Og...

I use this old recipe from the NYT, gifted to you all here : ) but I use a springform pan and half the frosting called for just to ease up on the sugar a bit: cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1018...)

Mandarins from our tree in a colander our ceramicist friend made

My yearly homage to Cinnamomum verum, native to Sri Lanka and like avocado, is from the Lauraceae!

Congrats @jeffgroh.bsky.social et al. Some avocado trees open female-phase flowers in the morning & then male in afternoon. Others show complementary pattern (m->f), to synchronize pollination of two types. Jeff show this to be a >45Mya polymorphism at a transcription factor across 100s of species.

Merry Christmas to all, from our ☠️ cone snail to yours.

They’re not perfect, but golly, public universities are one of the best engines of economic mobility we have

I’ll never look at avocados in quite the same way: The latest from UC Berkeley Miller Fellow Jeff Groh who sits in my lab and Ben Blackman’s lab. He works on balancing selection and molecular mechanisms underlying the coevolutionary phenomenon of mating type alternation (PhD with Graham Koop).

New paper from the lab! Led by PhD student Chris Carlson, with me and Matt Osmond (not on Bluesky), this study explored the effects of genotype-by-environment interactions on the maintenance of genetic variation in mutualisms

Despite their name, Crabeater Seals eat primarily krill. They have specialised teeth for filtering their prey. These two remind me of my Labrador... #saef_arc #sydney_science #aurora_expeditions #marineexplorer 🧪🦑 flic.kr/p/2rNkjek

Wishing you all peace in the darkness of this longest night and hope for brighter days ahead. “Late lies the wintry sun a-bed, A frosty, fiery sleepy-head; Blinks but an hour or two; and then, A blood-red orange, sets again.” from Winter-Time, by Robert Louis Stevenson

A Bradford pear, “known for its offensive odor…and particularly susceptible to storm damage” is finally sensing it is fall in Oakland.

Empseb is simply the best. If you're a PhD student of evolutionary biology, do go there!

Thrilled to announce a Postdoc opportunity in our group on the evolutionary genetics and ecology of colour. Wonderful system, great collaborators, and room to shape your own ideas. Apply by 7 Jan: jobs.helsinki.fi/job/13477181...

🚨 Tenure-track professorship at Goethe University of Frankfurt, Germany, with a focus on evolutionary ecology of social hymenoptera 🐝🐜 Initially for 6 years: www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/pr...

Before flowers evolved with attractive colors and scents, what did plants use to attract insect pollinators? Heat may be one ancient strategy. Valencia-Montoya and colleagues report their study of cycads in Science. Journal link in first comment. 🧪🌍🌱🐝 phys.org/news/2025-12... #pollinators

Join us on Tuesday!

The R35 Established/New Investigator MIRA RFA was issued on Dec 11 (earliest submission is Dec 27, 2025): files.simpler.grants.gov/opportunitie...

Looking for a gift for that somebody who likes food, drink, and...nature? The hardcover, paperback, and kindle editions of Most Delicious Poison are currently <$15 (and audiobook is on Audible and narrated by me): www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/noah-... Review: www.nytimes.com/2023/12/02/b...

My wonderful lab members at our holiday party. I was quite nostalgic about celebrating together this year. But my misty eyes quickly dried when someone, who shall not be named, would not let me keep banana-grams during the White Elephant gift exchange!

This is wonderful

One of our undergrads left me instructions for flipping his flies while he’s home for Thanksgiving 😂. He even left a pen. I forgot to label! Trained well, by @tarnopol.bsky.social

Happy Thanksgiving 🍁🍽 from the banana belt! There is a Black phoebe (a flycatcher) in our yard right now staring back at me 👀

How to keep in step when your (protein) partner speeds up… Here we investigated the adaptive remodeling of a protein-protein interaction surface essential for telomere protection. Congrats to whole team! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

One of my favorite preprints of the year from the great @mollyschumer.bsky.social. A foamy virus that makes things sparkle, now up on TWiEVO episode 120 for some podcast peer review www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T65...

Good news: Study shows France’s birds making tentative recovery after neonicotinoid pesticide ban UK has only just closed loophole in neonics ban (‘derogations’) so may be too soon to see recovery here? www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The Hopkins Lab (hopkins-lab.com) at the University of Florida is looking to recruit a postdoc to work on the genetics of organ function and evolution across Drosophila and beyond. Please visit tinyurl.com/vcsjpmzz or email me for more info. And please RT or send to anyone who might be interested!

What an absolute treasure Diane Keaton was. Her wit never tired, nor did her style.

Model organisms, in particular non-mammalian model organisms, such as yeast, Caenorhabditis elegans, #Drosophila and zebrafish, have long stood at the centre of biological discovery www.nature.com/articles/s41...

“If we aren't free to pursue research and teaching based on wherever the knowledge leads us, we are not truly working in the service of the public.” — Rana Jaleel, associate professor at UC Davis & Chair of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom & Tenure

Calling early career PIs. A great opportunity to start your lab at @crick.ac.uk in the heart of London.

Sign the petition to restore eligibility of 2nd year grad students to the NSF GRFP. They are being robbed of the opportunities to advance their innovative science. @chubicki.bsky.social

Job Alert! Please share widely. Tenure-track position in Plant Systematics in the Dept. of Ecology & Conservation Biology at Texas A&M @tamueccb.bsky.social. Job details here: apply.interfolio.com/171016 #plants #botany #herbaria #systematics #ecology #conservation #evolution

My book, An Intuitive Primer on Effective Functional Genomics Study Design, is published! I’d really appreciate it if you could help spread the word, and I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback. I hope people will find it useful. It’s available on Amazon: tinyurl.com/mx2hewen

"Declining international student enrollment is a piece of the larger puzzle undermining the financial health of higher ed. [We see] programs shut down, campuses shut down, smaller public or private institutions closing & a curtailment of opportunities for students." — Todd Wolfson, AAUP President

This is pretty crazy, study models millions of indirect hurricane deaths potentially driving/contributing to the life expectancy disparity in the US: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Say hello to my little friend

📣 Our department is hiring an Assistant Professor in Evolutionary Cell and Molecular Biology to join the @weillinstitute.bsky.social PLS spread the word! academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/30607

Very important paper and resource. Bryophyte genomes expanded by one order of magnitude. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Matsunaga, @nkwhiteman.bsky.social et al. investigated odorant receptor evolution in drosophilids in response to plant toxins in herbivorous and generalist species. insect-plant interactions 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf164 #evobio #molbio #drosophila

Get the answers to some of life’s biggest questions with our curated selection of books for Science September!🔬 buff.ly/pCrm99i