Read this whole thread! Good for informative content and entertaining.

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.

After closing the bedroom window, I have determined that the cricket is in fact under the dresser, not outside.

The deadline for our NHMLA Student Collections Study Award is coming up really soon. There are still a few more days to apply!

🔬 Final weeks! Are you an undergraduate or graduate student interested in studying the #NHMLAC Collections? If you’re currently enrolled in an accredited degree-granting program, apply for our Student Collections Study Awards now through April 1—details: go.nhm.org/study-award

🦫 Look into the real-life ecosystems of beavers as National Geographic and Dr. Christine Wilkinson (Assistant Curator, Community Science) show Host Michelle Khare and the star of Pixar’s “Hoppers”, Piper Curda, how this incredible species shapes its environment! www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9GX...

Semi-regular reminder: Baby open-ocean octopuses sometimes ride on jellyfish like little hats. 📸 Songda Cai bit.ly/2ZmNZZH 🧪🪼🐙🦑🌿

🏅 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

Undergrad and graduate students! Could your work benefit from visiting one of the NHMLAC’s collections? Apply for our Collections Study Award, due Apr. 1. I’d love to have students make use of our Entomology collection! Details here: tinyurl.com/bdduefsy

Looking for an MSc student to start in Sept 2026 with possible summer employment this May. We're looking for a student to apply stable isotopes to a small mammal community to test hypotheses related to variation in diet among species and habitats. Please DM if you or anyone you know are interested.

Are you a student who wants to visit the NHMLA for your research? Do you advise or know a student who would benefit from visiting our collections? Well, there are three weeks left to apply for the NHMLA Student Collections Award. Help spread the word!

April 1 deadline for @nhm.org Student Collections Study Award. Get $$ 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 2026 Ernst Mayr Award Competition is open! This is SSB's student talk award. Students selected to compete will deliver their talk during the virtual Evolution meetings May 20-22, 2026. Applications close April 15, 2026. For information on registration, see: www.systbio.org/ernst-mayr-a...

Last call for applications!

🎉 Huge news for BHL: The Field Museum is taking over the hosting of BHL’s website, servers & infrastructure, ensuring long-term stability and access for its 63+ million pages of open biodiversity literature. Learn more: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2026/02/tran... #BHLTransition #ILoveBHL 🌍 📚 🧪

Yes. Thank you, @theoatmeal.bsky.social. It's about time someone created something new, worthy of the naked mole rat. It's been a minute since The Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed, and this take is both scientifically accurate and appropriately deranged. theoatmeal.com/comics/naked...

Excited that our work was featured on the local (Bay Area) news for their Black History month series. Interview with Noah and clips from my interview with @dornsife.usc.edu and CGSI talk in the article below www.nbcbayarea.com/discover-bla...

SSE is pleased to offer free virtual #Evol2026 registration to all SSE members residing in 152 countries and territories around the world including India, Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. Request your free registration code today! www.evolutionsociety.org/index.php?mo...

Today we’re excited to announce a new product: COI Pond is a tool for faculty and grant staff that converts an academic CV into a draft NSF Collaborators and Other Affiliations (COA) Form. COA forms are tedious work, and COI Pond makes it a snap. Try it for free, here cevianlabs.io/coipond/start/ /1

Come join me and other great colleagues at @ib_unam !! We’re searching for a new orno 🦅 🦢 🦉 systematics researcher/prof. for the largest bird collection in Mexico. See details herein www.ib.unam.mx/ibunam/Convo... Amigxs ornitólogxs! Habemus búsqueda de nuevx investigadorx! Apliquen!

My department at CSU Northridge is hiring a vertebrate functional morphologist! We've got a great EEB group, and we're looking for someone to carry forward a tradition of enriching organismal courses and community-engaged research. App review starts March 15 csucareers.calstate.edu/mob/cw/en-us...

Well, the octopus was popular, here is another video of a mollusk from that adventure, this time an adorable sea hare that appears to be grazing on coralline algae

Went tidepooling today. Saw the best octopus.

In case anyone wants a little break, here are a few of my favorite facts that I learned in 2025, in no particular order. Some trees benefit from, and may even encourage, getting struck by lightning because it kills their nearby competitors nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Seeking scientist volunteers for the 2026 spring semester! Want to practice science communication and help author a 🌟comic🌟 about your research? Apply by 1/25. Please share widely. bit.ly/comicscollabspring2026

LSU Museum of Natural Sciences is hiring a postdoc! Come join our very active and supportive museum community. Applicants can work with any of the major divisions: 🐀🦜🦎🐸🐠 Review begins February 15th, please share! lsu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/LSU/job/0119...

If you are a resident of California, the state now has a portal where you can demand deletion of your personal data from 500+ registered data brokers with a single request form, for free. consumer.drop.privacy.ca.gov

Very excited for this incredible lineup of talks at #SSB2026! ssb2026.github.io/talks.html For those giving talks, more instructions will be sent shortly. @systbiol.bsky.social

We have 526 scientists signed up for spring semester. We try to get that to about 1000 scientists before unleashing the teachers on the database. Wanna connect a class of kids with science this spring? Sign up!

We're editing a special issue of Ibis and are after the best in collections-based research and commentary! All the usual Ibis paper formats are welcome (reviews, viewpoints, research articles, short communications). #ornithology #museums #birds

I started getting reports of an unseasonal Joshua tree bloom in the last few weeks, and looking over records on @inaturalist.bsky.social it's pretty widespread! So we're putting out the call for folks to record this "bonus bloom" and help us study it 🌿 lab.jbyoder.org/2025/12/10/w...

Looking for an *L.A. based* artist who (against all odds) has time for a poster gig before the end of the year. It's for a science + art event. We can offer $500 for the gig. Dreadfully sorry about the timeline. Link a portfolio if you're interested, I'll delete this post when we found someone.

Thrilled to share that @corriemoreau.bsky.social and I have a new paper out in Evolution, digging into the varied ways that extreme worker plasticity impacts genome evolution in turtle ants! Paper 📃: doi.org/10.1093/evol... Image 📸: Steven Wang, tinyurl.com/2rbjbyjh

For this month’s @outsidemag.bsky.social column, I took a rat taxidermy class, and it was… surprisingly sweet? As the teacher said, “We’re reclaiming what’s beautiful and interesting about the things we’ve been told are bad or gross.” I love my rat. His name is Meatball.

Check out our review/perspective piece on phylogenetic diversification analysis, intended for the 75th anniversary of @systbiol.bsky.social. I had the privilege of working with great coauthors, @fhenaodiaz.bsky.social, @tvasconcelos.bsky.social and @roszenil.bsky.social! doi.org/10.1093/sysb...

This is such a neat story!

Please apply to the ASN student research awards! This is such an amazing opportunity to get experience grant writing as a grad student, and the $$$ has funded some really fantastic research!!!

I know there are many worthy places to give, but if you're looking for a place to donate, @mammalogists.bsky.social is fundraising for a new award that honors Dr. Ralph Eckerlin to support students studying mammal parasites. You can donate to that fund (and others) here: asm.wildapricot.org/Donate

Looking for input on rodenticide testing . . . Colleagues are using a lab that needs 1 gram of liver sample to test, but often has specimens with less than that. Does anyone know if that amount of sample is really needed and/or have leads on labs that might be able to work with less? 🧪

The darkest fabric ever made is now a dress www.popsci.com/science/dark...

🚨🚨 WeeooWeeoo 🚨🚨 Black Friday deals at the Squid facts shop are LIVE! Here's the deal: When you buy calendars, stickers, and posters, you get the satisfaction of supporting science education FREE! Wow! What a deal! Who could pass this opportunity up? not me! That's for sure. SquidFacts.net

Please apply to join the Diversity Committee of the American Society of Naturalists! www.amnat.org/announcement...

If you'd like to celebrate the biology of viruses - or the fight against viral diseases - this winter, try out our free and updated #VirusSnowflake designs. Please share, and if you have any photos of Virus Snowflakes in your area it would be lovely to see them! cvr-engagement.co.uk/virus-snowfl...

The SSB Bulletin just published a detailed monograph about Halichondria sponges written by Thomas Turner and colleagues. See more at ssbbulletin.org/article/id/5.... @systbiol.bsky.social @systassn.bsky.social @journalsysevo.bsky.social

Pavan 𝘦𝘵 𝘢𝘭. (2024) look at mammalian diversity in the eastern Andean slopes, a biodiversity hotspot with high conservation priority, with high endemicity and new species of mammals revealed through DNA barcoding. Read the full study here: buff.ly/GLwWblD #Didelphimorphia #Peru #Rodentia #Yungas

NSF is open again! A few comments: *Please be patient. During a shutdown NSF employees cannot open computers or respond to emails. *Merit review will continue. However panels won’t resume until after Dec 8th. *POs remain excited and committed to advancing science and the scientific workforce.

Submit them to Aurorasaurus!!! They're an NSF funded project out of University of New Mexico that takes crowdsourced aurora observations for research purposes: www.aurorasaurus.org

Very happy that our new paper on the odd, looped optic nerves of chameleons is now out! It turns out having highly mobile eyes require some pretty specialized connections! doi.org/10.1038/s415...

The Undergraduate Community at Evolution program provides travel funding, mentoring, and a presentation opportunity at #Evol2026. Please share with undergrads in your lab! www.evolutionsociety.org/content/educ... @asn-amnat.bsky.social @systbiol.bsky.social @evolmtg.bsky.social

I LEARNED THE ANSWER TO THIS Chris's Steakhouse was a New Orleans landmark Chris Matulich periodically got bored, sold it, waited for the new owner to fail, and bought it back cheap The sale conditions: Can't move it, can't change the name He did this six times Then he sold it to Ruth Fertel