NSF's grantmaking is miserly when compared to recent years, but when compared it to the historical record, we see it's a radical break from the long-term consensus of investing in scientific innovation. grant-witness.us/posts/2026-0... #NSF 🧪

Incredible Goodwill find from yesterday. Only $2! Little outdated (2007) but still fun

Of all the harm this administration has done to US science, today's proposed changes to the way federal grants are awarded and administered is the most damaging yet. The text of the federal register document is impenetrably tedious by design, so here's an excellent summary of what it says.

Mormon crickets destroyed my emerging insect traps 😬. They try to cross the stream then get swept down current and stuck under the mesh, where they quickly decide they need to eat each other and my net

Rivers of Michigan. #rayshader adventures, an #rstats tale

Rivers and subbasins of the Great Lakes. #rayshader adventures, an #rstats tale

Big week of sampling emerging and benthic aquatic insects (plus crayfish!) in Wall Creek, NV! As an aside, I've really developed a beef with cows after they destroyed several of my sticky traps

New-ish ecosystem metabolism paper out with coauthors including @connorbrown.bsky.social ! We looked at metab in a hypereutrophic reservoir in Kansas and found some interesting things (link: doi.org/10.1080/2044... )

Breaking news: Multiple scientists who serve on an independent board established to guide the nation’s nearly $9 billion basic science funding agency were terminated from their positions Friday by President Trump.

Republicans just handed the Boundary Waters to a foreign corporation. For the GOP, it’s foreign billionaires first, America last.

With the GRFP awards announcement, I thought it'd be fun to look at how this year stacks up against the history of the award (mostly prompted by the context of last year's cycle being relatively thin):

Massive and important positive news... #NSF #GRFP awards are out. 2,599 awards! + 1,440 Honorable Mentions. A significant boost from last year. Congratulations to the winners (and HM-s)! & many thanks to the reviewers & program officers who made this possible. www.research.gov/grfp/Awardee...

New 🦐 paper out in Hydrobiologia (with one of my faves @bugginbusch.bsky.social )! We asked: how do resistant ephemeral wetland communities change when insects can't colonize? Short answer is: the species list stays the same, but the populations look different!

The National Science Foundation’s entire budget is $10 billion.

Covers of the 2 leading science journals this week @science.org and @nature.com www.science.org/content/arti... www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

🗣️ MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT: Over 80% of our nation’s 4.4M miles of rivers aren’t adequately protected! Our brand new peer-reviewed research with Conservation Science Partners published in Nature Sustainability shows just how vulnerable our rivers are. ➡️ Learn more: www.americanrivers.org/npra-explore...

Over the holidays, every single national wildlife refuge, plus some fish hatcheries and marine monuments were directed to conduct a system-wide review. Outrageous deadline of Jan 5 functionally eliminates public input & tribal consultation. news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-...

My statement on President Trump’s actions in Venezuela.

The EPA has announced changes to the definition of Waters of the U.S. that leave critical systems supporting drinking water, floodwater storage, and biodiversity unprotected. Public comments on the changes are open until January 5, 2026. Read SFS's response: freshwater-science.org/news/sfs-res...

The Trump administration just unveiled a plan to significantly narrow which bodies of water qualify for protection under the Clean Water Act. They proposed a new definition of what counts as a “water of the United States,” a change that would

dramatically reduce which waterways fall under federal pollution safeguards. Under the proposal, groundwater would be excluded entirely, and interstate waters would no longer receive automatic protection.

The rule also removes protections for ephemeral streams (waterways that flow only after rain or snow) despite their importance to downstream water quality. In short, this proposal rolls back long-standing protections and leaves millions of acres of waterways more vulnerable to pollution.

Often overlooked, small water bodies - streams, damp ditches, small bogs, ponds - support more rare species compared with larger habitats while high-quality ponds support about 2/3 of all freshwater plant + animal species in a landscape. 🧵 1/4 freshwaterhabitats.org.uk/news/start-w...

Alpine lakes among the dramatic peaks of Kings Canyon Nat'l Park grace Ecosphere's October cover. New research shows how introduced trout have impacts that ripple through the food web and reshape bird communities Browse the full #OpenAccess issue: esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/21508925...

Our peer review system for scientific publishing -we pay to publish our MSs -pay to read other’s MSs -and donate our time to review MSs is bad enough without passive aggressive review reminders, touting the “quality” journal’s rapid turnaround time and asking why you are setting back science.

New from #SCIMaP - analysis of the White House’s Proposed FY 2026 National Science Foundation Budget. Take-home: Slashing NSF by >50% will lead to ~$11 billion in economic loss and extensive job loss and reduced training opportunities in communities nationwide. Report: osf.io/e8rnc a 🧵

More than 1800 detainees are missing after the closure of Alligator Alcatraz. Their families and lawyers can’t find them and they’ve vanished from the ICE database. Feels like this should be a much bigger story www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...

Nine former CDC directors, from Bill Foege onward, speak out about the incalculable harm that RFK, Jr. is doing to public health in the US and around the world. Gift link.

How do i explain germ theory to my 4 month old so he knows to only put clean toys in his mouth

Love that Reno has this diatom themed facade on a highway underpass

The lesser prairie chicken, a dancing grouse that has long teetered between threatened and endangered classifications, lost its federal protections in court in a victory for Great Plains petroleum and cattle industries. Via @kansasreflector.com: lawrenceks.news/4mm6mrB

The Trump administration has deleted all previous National #Climate Assessments from government websites and fired the scientists working on the next report. Now they say they're going to rewrite the previous ones. This is scientific sabotage and a rewriting of history. www.cnn.com/2025/08/07/c...

A quick clip from my Dragonfly Life Cycle video - a timelapse of the metamorphosis of a Willow Emerald nymph into an adult Watch in 4K here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy7V... #bugsky #pondlife #ukwildlife @odonataamericas.bsky.social @riverflies.bsky.social @britishdragonflies.bsky.social

With this vote, Congress makes ICE the highest-funded federal law enforcement agency in history, with more money per year at its disposal over the next four years than the budgets of the FBI, DEA, ATF, US Marshals, and Bureau of Prisons combined.

The Ecosystems Mission Area helps researchers track everything from birds and bees to floods and fires. Trump wants to cut it by about 90%, gutting a key federal ecological program.

NONE in Life science?! NONE?!

In what may be one of Earth’s craziest forms of mimicry, researchers in 2023 reported a species of rove beetle that grows a termite puppet on its back to fool real termites into feeding it. Learn more during #InsectWeek: scim.ag/40mj1S8

4 Democrats didn’t vote and another 3 Democratic seats are vacant due to member deaths Four Democratic absences (Correa, Beatty, Randall and Norcross) and the deaths of Grijalva, Turner and Connelly left the Democrats down 7 votes as the bill passed by 2. Two Republicans also didn’t vote.

The Trump administration has proposed cutting funding for tribal colleges & universities by nearly 90%, a move that would likely shut down institutions created to serve students disadvantaged by the nation’s historic mistreatment of Indigenous communities. Via @propublica.org lawrenceks.news/4kVtKeu

I've seen folks talk about how "in four years" they'll be able to get back to their planned projects and I really don't think that's going to work out. People & projects losing funding now will not be able to hit pause and come back once funding is restored. Hard-won progress & capacity will be lost

How bad will it be? Catastrophic. Proposed cuts to #NSF, #NIH, and #NASA will set the US R&D landscape back 25 yrs+, cause economic and job loss now, and undermine innovations to come. But, this is the WH's *proposed* budget. Speak up now before it is too late. (inflation adjusted $-s below)

Sign up now to be part of our Michigan-wide Aquatic Invasive Species bioblitz! Help build the biggest-ever snapshot of invasions statewide to support research and management. www.micorps.net/events/micor...

"We are already losing vital data...without them, municipalities and organizations can't access real-time alerts about water toxicity from algal blooms." ~ Jérôme Marty, IAGLR executive director To read more: https://bit.ly/3SkT69k

USGS’ biological research arm could vanish next week www.hcn.org/articles/usg... via @highcountrynews.org

Glyphosate has been shown to alter methane dynamics in aquatic habitats, but often only under extreme contamination levels and typically under P-limitation.

This is insane. Republicans have inserted language into the budget reconciliation bill that would ban states from regulating AI in any capacity for 10 years. from @404media.co www.404media.co/republicans-...

I've been a little too busy to post, but Alyssa and I welcomed our handsome little boy Jonathan at the end of April! Both he and mom are doing awesome and he's growing like crazy. Soon enough he'll be catching bugs with me!

In the 1980s, the US experienced one billion-plus dollar extreme weather disaster on average every 4 months. Today? There’s one every 2 weeks, and 9 in 10 Americans say they’ve felt the impacts. Clearly, this is the record to cut—if you don’t want to show how climate change is hitting home.

Most Americans frequently use federal science information. But few are concerned that cuts to federal science spending could affect their access to such information, a new poll finds.

The proposed Trump budget is brutal, unless you’re the military or Homeland Security. Here’s what gets cut: - State Department: -84% - National Science Foundation: -56% - EPA: -54% - HUD (housing): -44% - Labor: -35% - Interior: -30% - Health & Human Services: -26% - NASA: -24% - Education: -15%