"This is why I counsel against the danger of thesis-gazing, which is when an inordinate of time is spent on trying to craft the perfect thesis for your own satisfaction rather than directing effort towards the parts that will actually count." treesinspace.com/2025/09/22/h...

As with all advice, ymmv, but these takes on success in grad school resonate a lot with my experiences: dorsaamir.medium.com/modest-advic...

If this happens, it will tear apart families, and destroy the UK. Immigration is fundamental to our existence, our universities, health care system, creative arts & more would be destroyed. Reform are the biggest danger this country has faced in my lifetime www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Americans vastly overestimate the size of different minority groups! For example, Americans estimated 21% of the country is transgender, but the true proportion is just 1%.

What the actual fuck?

Uni HR training: "It's difficult for sexual harassers to know that they're being inappropriate if nobody calls them out on it." Ummmmm, nope, it's 2025 and we're talking about adults. People do in fact know they should be keeping their hands to themselves at work???

🐋 🐻‍❄️ 🦭 MASSIVE NEW FOSSIL DATABASE 🐋 🐻‍❄️ 🦭 Our FAMM (Fossil Arctic Marine Mammal) database has now been published #OpenAccess in Global Ecology and Biogeography! Come learn about the cool stuff you can do with #Arctic #fossil material and bio-molecular archives! ☢️ ⚛️ 🧬 Link and thread below! 🧵 1/🦴

The Naturhistoriska riksmuseet seeks a Tenure-Track group Leader (DDLS fellow). Deadline: Nov 15. Benefits include 17 M SEK in start-up funds. More info: https://www.scilifelab.se/career/research-fellowship-in-data-driven-evolution-and-biodiversity/ #job

SUPER has opened a call for (home) student-led marine/freshwater ecology PhD projects, to be hosted at one of the seven Scottish partners. If anyone knows anyone interested in something like this, the applicants should approach potential supervisors ASAP! superdtp.st-andrews.ac.uk/how-to-apply/

Today I have both asserted that it's 2023 and that it's 2028, so, y'know, my chronoception is going great over here. 😅

Are you tired of people constantly overestimating body size of marine reptiles? No longer! We provide equations to estimate body size in ichthyosaurians, mosasaurids, and thalattosuchians. 1/4

🚨 Open PhD position in sign language #linguistics 🚨 The focus should be on the structure of signed languages, or connect to other research profiles at the department (e.g. computational linguistics, acquisition, typology, multilingualism) su.varbi.com/en/what:job/... Deadline: 15 October 2025

This one's maybe a little on the ling side, but trust me, it's worth it. I've cried reading it multiple times. (1/3)

Pierre was an incredibly talented young scientist and all-around great human, and his death shocked those of us who knew him. Scroll up on this thread for a link of his posthumous paper on fossil feathers, and down in this thread for info on how to donate.

Incredibly proud and also very emotional to see this new paper published in @systbiol.bsky.social. The study was lead by Pierre Cockx, who sadly passed away in July. academic.oup.com/sysbio/advan...

Oxford Biology is growing 📢 We’re appointing 3 Associate Professors in: 🌱 Plant Sciences 🦉 Animal Behaviour 🔬 Molecular Cell Biology 3 fields. 3 opportunities. One new home for Oxford Biology. Learn more 👉 bit.ly/41S2Tc7 Apply now 👉 bit.ly/488CNW3

🚨 NEW PAPER ALERT We got a new paper finally published @funecology.bsky.social, lead by @felixpleiva.bsky.social, and presenting Share Trait platform for interoperable and reusable use of individual-level trait data in ectotherms. besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

I've finally started playing Blue Prince, and *man* this game is weird in the beginning. Super intriguing, though. (Shout-out to @ineslauradawson.bsky.social , whose stream got me into this game, and who and whose partner in general have great gaming taste.)

The count down starts for #CESRabat! Follow @ces2026.bsky.social and join us May 11-13 next year for an exciting meeting in Rabat, Morocco. Massive thanks to the #CESRabat organising committee: Sarah Alami (co-chair) Mathieu Charbonneau (co-chair) Zachary Garfield Edmond Seabright

Do you like cichlids? Fossils? Fossil cichlids? Would you like to study them as part of a graduate degree at the University of Michigan, joining an NSF-funded project? Get in touch.

DPD: "Sorry, there's a delay with your parcel; this is normally resolved within 24 hours, and we will update you here shortly" Reddit, after I googled this: "The unexpected issue is usually that Aberdeen is far away." 😂

This child was infected with measles before they were able to be vaccinated (under 12 months), likely from someone unvaccinated. They survived the infection but years later they’re dead. The risk of SSPE for an infant infected with measles is 1 in 600, & it’s 95% fatal. Your vaccine protects others

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Super awesome new paper in #MEE describing #causal #detection of shifts in #biodiversity! So many great insights here—a must read for those interested in #causalinference And love Fig 3! Congrats team! @lsantinieco.bsky.social doi.org/10.1111/2041...

Glad to share our latest article on the "co-coordinated stasis of large mammal diversity with the environments". Long in reviews it is finally out--a work done during the post-doc of Simona Bekeraitė app.pan.pl/article/item... 1/4 🧪 ⚒️ #Paleobio #EvoBio #Geology #Macroecology

Excited to share our new paper on flight morphology and migration in North American wood warblers. Surprisingly, ground-dwelling warblers may be better adapted for migration than aerial ones!!! link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Same thing with acid rain (granted, still exists, just not as bad). We solved that through annoyingly drilling it through everyone's heads to the point of people now thinking it was overblown. The inconvenient reality to proactively solving a problem is you don't see the problem anymore.

Human impacts on large mammals went well beyond triggering late Quaternary mass extinctions. A new paper by Brook et al. showing that biogeographic patterns were erased by the spread of domesticated species: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... A related paper is in press. Stay tuned.

🐦🔬 Recruiting PhD students! 🌎🧬 I’m looking for 1–2 PhD students to join our team starting Fall 2026 at the Sam Noble Museum & University of Oklahoma. Our research: 🐦 birds • 🌍 biogeography • 🌴 Neotropics • 🧬 population genomics • 🌱 speciation 👉 Learn more: www.moncriefflab.org Please share!

*Job alert* We have a 5-year postdoc position on #mountain non-native species & #macroecology in our group @unibas.ch. Great opportunity to join us! Details here: jobs.unibas.ch/offene-stellen/postdoc-position-in-mountain-macroecology/6c5a8906-354f-43c6-bc9b-1156d21725a5 Please share!

Light pollution prolongs avian activity | Pease & Gilbert | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Here we review causal inference in ecology to attribute change in biodiversity research. We identify common challenges and provide an overview of different approaches. By Franziska Shrodt and many others besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Good to know that AI image generation hasn't (yet) conquered my "draw a vertebrate phylogeny" assignment.

Current REX complaint: it's very difficult to distinguish on the editor end the manuscripts that have been returned to the authors for revisions and the manuscripts where one but not two reviewers have agreed so far. WHY ARE THESE THE SAME CATEGORIES.

I have twice in my life missed a flight -- both times when public transit catastrophically broke down. It was expensive to fix both times. Plus airports are stressful enough, who wants to be *more* stressed?! Nope nope nope.

🐜 Insects in trouble at high altitudes A 20-year study in a pristine Colorado meadow found flying insects dropped 72%, linked to warmer summers and rising night temperatures. Even untouched ecosystems are vulnerable. 🔗 doi.org/10.1002/ecy.... #SciComm #Ecology 🧪

The umbral shadow slipping away as the Moon rises during tonight’s lunar eclipse. Photographed from Teignmouth, Devon. #lunareclipse

Only a pre-print for now, but after 4 years of hard work I couldn't resist sharing this! The Global Canopy Atlas: analysis-ready maps of 3D structure for the world's woody ecosystems 📜: doi.org/10.1101/2025... Huge team effort led by the brilliant Fabian Fischer!

3pm Sunday. If you need to avoid this for any reason, the quickest solution is to put your phone in airplane mode.

Reminded of this as an academic told me the other day that they were off to a country in South America, then one in Africa & then one in Asia, in rapid succession I really didn’t know what to say… www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I have people saved in my phone like “Mary Landlord” and “Jim Maintenance” and it occurs to me that’s the way that Anglo surnames have always worked

You learn something new every day: apparently rodent thumbs are super cool! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Hot take on a Friday night: having a professional interest in a single academic discipline that happens to be interdisciplinary does not mean that one is inherently interested in all interdisciplinary topics.

Faculty and admins should play Freaky Friday at least once in their careers. It’s not easy either way

Pick an idiom: "more than meets the eye", "beauty more than skin [feather] deep" etc. In work led by Rosalyn Price-Waldman, we describe a hidden (and ignored!) black or white layer found below the visible surface of bird feathers which helps make bird colours so striking! 🧪 🪶 #colsci

Mechanical adventures with flight #2: we can't de-plane because the jetbridge is broken 😅 (Also, Delta was somehow stymied by a UK citizen wanting to fly to the UK because she lives in the UK. We had about five iterations of "you need a visa" / No ma'am I actually don't.)

October 1 deadline for @nhm.org Student Collections Study Award. Get some $$ to spend time collecting data in our collections, including @tarpits.org Open to: - current undergraduate and grad students - *not* local to Los Angeles (international applicants welcome) More: nhm.org/student-coll... 🧪

The WHO has confirmed and officially declared an Ebola outbreak is unfolding in the Kasai province of the DRC. Thankfully this time there is stockpile of 2000 vaccines readily available to be deployed to respond to this outbreak. Following this closely. www.afro.who.int/countries/de...

Current reason for plane delay: the plane won't start. 🫠

In our new article just out we examine the current extinction event in the context of the longer fossil record. We conclude it is likely the greatest event in the last 66 million years doi.org/10.1111/gcb....