First paper from the Kasimatis Lab is now online! We investigate of the maintenance of mate plugging in C. elegans along with its function www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Spent afternoon with kids watching baby #birds out and about. 10 year-old started humming Jurassic park wonder music every time we saw a new baby.

Ecological genomics of a novel host-parasitoid arms-race in nature https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.30.735478v1

I talked about this at PEQG a few weeks ago. In addition to github.com/RILAB/argprep (preps your genome assemblies for SINGER), argtest github.com/RILAB/argtest does some QC to clean up an ARG estimated with SINGER.

An amazing program, please RT and share with undergrads you know.

Please follow our account: @ucdaviseeprogram.bsky.social and follow the link to apply: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... . Feel free to reach out with questions!

UC Davis Ecology & Evolution Grad Preview Program is accepting applications until July 20th! It's a fully virtual program where you are paired with a grad student mentor and learn about what grad school entails, how to apply, and what student life is like! Please share widely!

Purple coneflower blooming now here 🌿

🧪 New from @dataforprogress.org: Federal research grants are awarded on scientific merit judged by panels of scientists and outside experts. Trump has moved to change that. Voters don't approve. www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2026/7/...

I've been documenting a pair of black-capped chickadees nesting in our garden as they fly back & forth every few minutes, hunting meals. An avg clutch of 6 to 8 chickadees requires 3,000 to 5,000 feedings over the ~16 days from hatching to fledging. Most popular foods: caterpillars, moths, spiders.

In addition to producing hazardous air pollution and endangering pets and wildlife, fireworks make the 4th of July the most common day for human-started wildfires in the US. The West is a tinderbox - maybe it’s time to consider alternatives without catastrophic consequences.

Big news this week from The Rogers Lab. We will be moving to GW University in Washington DC, starting August 1st. We will be hiring postdocs and recruiting new students! Email me if interested or come find me at SMBE!

Thoroughly enjoyed @stevebrusatte.bsky.social‬'s "Story of birds" very enjoyably written and learnt a tonne about fossil record of birds.

"public trust in science and scientists is high...The idea that there’s a pervasive lack of trust is completely unfounded...But trust has dropped in certain groups...politically right-leaning groups" Maybe it's not science/scientists that's to blame... 1/2 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I understand the need to be very careful about protecting research participants, but the slow timeline for reopening UK Biobank access seems like it will have big impacts on research and research careers.

What if an embryo made immune cells before it finished building the tissue they usually come from? In our new preprint, we show that annual killifish embryos specify neutrophils before germ layers are fully resolved. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Huge thanks to my PI, @ohnolog.bsky.social ! 🧵

Our 3 year old might be Dr who. She wandered past talking to herself and was saying that she wanted to live in a blue house, that is bigger on the inside than the outside.

It's as official as it can be: The Yoder Lab has been very lucky to receive NSF funding to develop our TARDIS method of modeling plants' flowering activity in varying environments. Watch for grad (MSci) opportunities in Fall 2027, and a postdoc position sooner than that 🌿 buff.ly/OHpbfB0

Northern californian #Bloomscrolling ~7k feet in sierras.

Seven years ago today 🌿 Corallorhiza maculata, our Spotted Coralroot, blooming above the East Portal #nativeplants #orchids

Interested in applying to a PhD program in ecology or evolution? Don't know where to start, how to apply, and/or how to find your best program or lab fit? Join our free and virtual program August 10th, 13th, 17th, & 20th to get all the help you need! Link in bio! !!!APPLICATIONS OPEN THIS WEEK!!!

Publish your science in journals that publish science reported by humans, evaluated by humans, to be read by humans — which apparently do not include Springer Nature journals

Congratulations to Prof Richard Durbin, winner of the 2026 Genetics Society Medal! His pioneering work in computational genomics has transformed how we analyse and understand genome sequences.

You’d think after a half century of knowing some dude you’d hear it all but my dad (in his 80s) had a new Dad joke at dinner tonight. “So Jeff did you hear the most recent plant breeding advance? They’ve been trying to breed plants for their effect on human emotion….

One of the many Barn Owl nestlings growing up in & fledging from the City of Davis’s urban nest box network…

Lifetime fitness (lifetime reproductive success) and annual survival are heritable and genetically correlated in wild female baboons! Moreover, nearly all of the genetic variance in LRS can be attributable to survival to first reproduction. Out at Evolution now: academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

The strong quake was reported shortly after 8 a.m.

I’m starting at Oregon State University this September as Herbarium Director and Assistant Professor in the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology. An absolute dream job and I am so grateful! Looking to grow the lab soon and will update here. In the meantime please don’t hesitate to reach out!

It’s #TautonymTuesday! Meet 𝐶𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑒𝑡𝑢𝑠 𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑒𝑡𝑢𝑠, the European hamster. Native to grasslands and agricultural regions of Central & Eastern Europe, this burrowing rodent is known for its bold coloration: black belly, reddish flanks, and white patches. #TaxonomyTuesday #Systematics Photo: Charles J Sharp

I’m recruiting a PhD student to join our lab in the fall of 2027. If you’re excited about phylogenetics, comp bio, paleobiology, stats theory, macroevolution, etc. please get in touch! Folks at #Evol2026, you can talk to @brpetrucci.bsky.social & @sigournie.bsky.social to learn more about our lab

Northern California #bloomscrolling at mount Shasta and modoc county this weekend

🎉 PUBLISHED!!!! Out now in @newphyt.bsky.social 🎉 We found positive selection on leaf shape plasticity in a Monkeyflower species. This experiment used two big field transplants, greenhouse, AND growth chamber work. It was hard, but awesome. With @ferrisifolius.bsky.social doi.org/10.1111/nph....

🚨 #Evol2026 attendees - our team at @arcadiascience.com is hiring! We're looking to hire a computational evolutionary biologist interested in asking how and why protein sequences/structures/functions differ across the tree of life 🧬 jobs.lever.co/arcadiascien... Please share widely!

Been wondering why NSF isn't spending most of its FY26 appropriation? A $1.5B tech initiative may be the reason. And big cuts to hundreds of research programs could be just the beginning of the bad news. www.science.org/content/arti...

Still some time to apply to our postdoc position - deadline 3rd July. I'll be at #SMBE2026 if anyone would like to chat about it 😊

Dichelostemma ida-maia (Firecracker flower) One of my favorite flowers of Northern California. I thought I had missed it this year, but randomly saw it on the side of the road while coming back from Mendocino last week. #flower #CaliforniaNative #mendocino

Awesome fathers day camping trip exploring lava tubes

Spent the last two years developing a new Intro to Physics course for undergrad biology majors. It features tons of examples from biology (especially Ecology & Evolution!) and requires only middle school-level math. Lecture note here shorturl.at/0PiVp Any comments or feedback are highly welcome!

1/n Check out our new paper, spearheaded by @fborne.bsky.social, just out in PLoS Genetics doi.org/10.1371/jour....

People. @ksamuk.bsky.social and others have made this argument before. There’s good software to do this right. Here’s the argument again: Invariant sites matter! They’re not in your standard vcf and many programs pretend they are anyway. academic.oup.com/gbe/article/...

I first met Neil Shubin 30 years ago when he was digging for fossils of our fishy ancestors in Pennsylvania road cuts. Now he's becoming president of the National Academy of Sciences. We talked about taking the helm of the 163-year-old organization at this fraught moment. Gift link: nyti.ms/4giD3FX

My @ucdavis.bsky.social colleague Laci Gerhart is doing extraordinary work: teaching natural history and participatory science in CA prisons, with a new $1.9M NSF grant to scale it statewide. The participants' curiosity and engagement shine through in this piece. biology.ucdavis.edu/news/trainin...

My recent chat with @carlzimmer www.nytimes.com/2026/06/12/s... 🧪

Reminder that the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) is asking members to sign letters regarding the OMB rule (by 6/15) and to submit individual responses (by 7/13!!). We have >250 signatories right now, GREAT!, but we have ~4k members, give or take, so pls get those signatures in!

This is a very nice review of several of my favorite topics to cover in plant diversity

California law has prohibited race in college admissions for years. UC Davis has worked hard to devise admissions so that its graduates serve the people of Calif, which includes rural and urban communities that need primary care

California #Bloomscrolling near emigrant gap in Sierras.

Blue lobsters are very rare: 1 in 2 million by some estimates. But SPLIT COLOR LOBSTERS are 1 in *50* million. This lobster is a chimera of two fertilized eggs that fused together, with two distinct genomes: male on one side, female on the other. (📷: Woods Hole Science Aquarium/NOAA Fisheries)