NSF LTER program “archived”. LTER=“Long Term Ecological Research”. This program has been incredibly successful, incredibly frugal for what they accomplish, and…of course…targeted by evil know-nothings. My heart is breaking.

TOMORROW we'll be hosting the first episode of a brand-new mini-campaign with brand-new guest DM Phil! See you at 2pm Eastern on Twitch 🙂

Becoming a parent is much more detrimental to women’s academic careers than it is to men’s Read the full story: go.nature.com/4v4rxmQ

🐝 New paper alert! 🐝 It took longer than I hoped, but the cucumber paper from my dissertation is finally out in the world! Surprisingly we found that cucumber pollination was negatively related to total bee abundance. Bees do not all pollinate with equal quality! link.springer.com/article/10.1...

"Science" as a concept can never be totally infallible, because science does not exist in a vacuum. Belief that science is inherently apolitical is naivety, and that naivety goes well beyond popsci and into the vast majority of academia (where bad actors then weaponise it to exert their influence).

These are the airports where ICE is currently present: - Chicago-O'Hare International Airport - Cleveland Hopkins International Airport - Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport - Houston's William P. Hobby Airport - Houston's Bush intercontential

Strong recommendation to teaching faculty to just say no to this stuff, even if you are AI curious/enthusiastic. This is meant to reduce faculty autonomy and capture human labor with automation. You're selling out your future self and the profession as a whole. www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...

How long until this reduces the prep time we're allotted for each class? How long until it's used as a reason to increase class sizes because we are no longer grading? I worry that admin will use this to overload faculty with classes whether we use it or not.

Started to celebrate finishing the last step in getting a paper published today, when I had to stop to explain the Publication Agreement to my (non-academic) husband. Can someone PLEASE do something to fix the way research publication works?!? We all keep yelling about it and nothing is changing 😫

New Discord server is up and running! Come join us: discord.gg/gdUn7vbRn

New paper alert! I'm so excited and proud to announce that the first paper from the TERA Working Group has been published in Ecological Applications! We write here about how functional trait-informed methods may be able to improve restoration approaches: share.google/mgeTd2Twkr4W...

If you're connected with me on Discord, be warned that my account was hacked this morning

@discord.com My account was hacked this morning but your Help Center won't let me send a help request without being able to log in. Please help!!!

In his confirmation hearings, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told U.S. senators that he would not cut funding for vaccine research or change the nation's official vaccine recommendations. He did both. n.pr/46QDn9p

I feel this way about pretty much all vaccine-preventable infectious diseases. You shouldn't be allowed to dump cyanide into municipal drinking water and you shouldn't be allowed to recreationally spread viruses around shared public spaces.

Happy International Day of Women and Girls in Science! Follow these awesome women ocean scientists, many of whom I'm proud to call colleagues and delighted to call friends. 🧪🦑🌍🐟 go.bsky.app/7MdiLgo

We are on faculty job application #27 of this cycle, fam. No interviews yet. Please tell me it gets better?

Yesterday we kicked off NYC’s Free Tax Prep season. That means filing your taxes at zero cost, keeping every dollar of your refund, and not getting ripped off by for-profit companies.    Nearly half of all New Yorkers qualify. Get help—virtually or in person—at nyc.gov/TaxPrep

🧩Human modification does not always lead to a biotic homogenisation. Using a scenario-based approach, we found that beta diversity increased despite reductions in local alpha diversity, thereby maintaining gamma diversity, when relatively natural landscapes were modified into mixed landscapes.

Epstein’s economic power among academics was made possible by a capitalist system that makes higher education dependent on the charity economy rather than a public good supported by taxing the rich

ICE now confirming that there is a measles outbreak at the Texas concentration camp where young Liam was held.

So it's a small point in the *everything* that's going on right now. But the MN DNR dudes protecting ICE? A supremely bad look, friends. Those of us who love and protect the green and growing places MUST love and protect our neighbors with just as much passion.

Ever played the board game Pandemic? I think it contains a surprisingly good lesson for tackling the #climate crisis, especially in a moment of rising far-right politics. Here's why🧵

Species shift their ranges in response to climate change, but many can't keep up. The resulting "community-climate disequilibrium" can impair ecosystem function and cause counterintuitive dynamics, like short-term gain but long-term loss onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Okay, so, I've never had the dream where there's like a math test I forgot to study for. But it's the 2nd week of the semester, and last night I had a dream that the class I'm *teaching* has an exam scheduled that I forgot to write 😅 Is this a common professor experience?!?

In Arda episode 64, the party deals with two ships, both scary, but for very different reasons. YouTube: youtu.be/BpJyqwKlbfQ Podcast: www.podbean.com/eas/pb-7f5rh...

PLEASE do this. Folks don't always want to speak up in a crowded room to ask for reasonable accommodations.

👀 “If you are a 75-year-old professor reading this, now would be a good time to take emeritus status. It’s something that a lot of people could do that would contribute enormously. The job market for young people would be in much better shape if most people over 75 retired.”

Our first livestream of 2026 will be starting in 1hr! Come see @lucaszellers.bsky.social and 4 amazing players in the first part of a 3-part journey in the wilderness 🐻🦉 Join us on twitch.tv/naturecheckdnd

The way the press is treating chatbots, like they have agency and they “know” things all of a sudden, crossed the line recently from dumb and obsequious to something else entirely. Treating them as alive and making conscious decisions is an almost religious belief. It won’t age well.

We're back and publishing content weekly in 2026! To start us off right, here's Episode 63 of our Arda campaign. Catch the Arda campaign LIVE on Jan 11th starting at 2pm Eastern! YouTube: youtu.be/raliRpQWkbs Podcast: www.podbean.com/eas/pb-2kgqu...

I don't know who needs to hear this, but opposing GenAI is not about opposing technology, it's about opposing capitalists. GenAI is not a technology: it's a massive automation of theft, masquerading as an industry, run by grifters. Don't hate computers, hate the capitalists behind the curtain.

If you can't be bothered to actually write the peer review yourself why should the reviewee have to listen to it? Why write anything at all, ever? If you don't have enough time, fight for better working conditions instead of faking your work

Statement Re: OU Discrimination Investigation Today, my client, Mel Curth, submitted her appeal of the University's Institutional Equity Office finding that she engaged in arbitrary and capricious grading of a student's assignment in violation of that student's religious liberty.

This has been a tough year for early career scientists including grad students. If you had a professional success this year, no matter how small, share it with us so we can celebrate with you! 🧪

...ecologist? Interdisciplinary ecologist? I've been enjoying "The Invention of Nature" telling the story of Humboldt 😁

The post office changed their postmark rules, potentially disqualifying votes in upcoming elections. Postmarks indicate when the USPS processed mail now, not when you dropped it off. To ensure a same-day postmark, you must visit a post office and ask for a manual stamp.

I promise I'll talk about something else soon but I'm so deeply deeply furious to see scientists playing around with genAI like it's no big deal, as if they do not know better than anyone else in the world how dire the climate situation is. I wish them a lifetime of shame.

I am not sorry. This is simply true. Academics should be able to write fluently and express themselves clearly and academics should do their own work. It’s literally our job. It’s what we trained until 22nd grade to do. This is a simple observation that should require no explanation or defense.

#BES2025 come talk to us about how to make grey literature more accessible at lunch today :)

this field biologist does a great job highlighting the insidiousness of AI editing these one-click AI edit buttons are incredibly appealing to many photographers, amateurs and professionals alike, and are framed as innocuous this is worth sharing and educating people about

Penn State admin continues to engage in union busting against its own grad workers. The university couldn’t function without these instructors and researchers, and admin needs to recognize their union

What do ground covers do to protect and nourish soil, support the soil sponge, maintain the food web, and generally increase biomass on the land? Quite a bit, actually... #covercrops #climate #agroecology #agriculture globalearthrepairfoundation.org/restore-soil...

As promised, we're working on getting ourselves back on track! To celebrate, here's the podcast version of the amazing one-shot we did with @lucaszellers.bsky.social www.podbean.com/eas/pb-wqrhn... And new video and podcast backlog episodes will start posting every week starting Dec 31!

Framing GenAI as a battle between teachers and students is a red herring. Students and educators are on the same side. The real opposition are the data extraction firms and brokerages and their allies among the managerial class.

Nerrrrrrrrrrrds! To celebrate getting 100,000 followers on Bluesky, I am offering some of you fine folks the chance to join me on a 2026 shark research expedition. Really! Enter here: forms.gle/iq3YQG31kbAC... Terms and conditions in thread below:

Every day:

If a politician: -Has never cared at all about whales before; -Is in the pocket of big oil, an industry which has a financial incentive to oppose alternative energy; and -is a well-documented liar, You don't have to take their "we have to stop offshore wind to save whales" claims seriously.

🚨🚨🚨 Science will be much more efficient without scientists. Universities are being destroyed because we don't NEED them anymore. Instead, all existing data will be fed to AI "agents" who will mine them to "test new hypotheses" and "generate scientific breakthroughs". 🤨🤢🤮 #academicsky #edusky 🟦🧠

@graftbound.bsky.social spotted at #PAXU! Find Bonds Between and The Peddler's Prize at the @ipr.bsky.social booth this weekend