Enjoying our Saturday morning!

Evening at home with a stream level high.

Got some extra stone bricks or sidewalk pavers? That’s free bug real estate! 🪨🐝 Plenty of bees, fireflies, & other bugs love to make their home under rocks. The housing market is tough, so learn how to help your local bugs by adding a rock feature to your space ⤵️

We’ve been talking in our lab meetings about sexual conflict and sexual dimorphism, and have some thoughts. What if animal genomes are far more sex-specific and less cosntrained than we assume? @linley-sherin.bsky.social pulled it all together here www.zoology.ubc.ca/mank-lab/pdf... 1/n

Take your study abroad course to Ecuador, they said. It will be fun, they said…

This looks very cool 😎 🔗 to download: github.com/RegenImm-Lab...

Fishes of the Conambo River Basin, an unexplored area in the Ecuadorian Amazon: first annotated checklist peerj.com/articles/210...

Andean cock-of-the-rock at Finca Palmonte, Tungurahua, Ecuador.

It’s me!

Aging may feel gradual… but what if it’s not? In our recent paper, we tracked fish continuously from puberty until death. This gave us a unique view of how aging unfolds across the adult lifespan. 🧵

Webinar today at 2 PM ET: Long-term and regional-scale data reveal divergent trends of different climate variables on fish body size over 75 years. Presented by Peter Flood, University of Michigan. Host: Midwest Glacial Lakes Partnership. midwestglaciallakes.org/resources/we...

Current state. 🥶🥶🥶

It’s the weekend and on weekends we get pup cups! Mac and Scout on their weekend drive.

And so the weekend begins…

Interested in joining my lab and the Tulane University Biodiversity Research Institute? Guillaume Rieucau (LUMCON) and I have incoming funding to support a masters student who will use imaging sonar and traditional sampling to study how fishes utilize artificial reefs in Lake Pontchartrain.

How the workday started. How it is ending. Happy Friday everyone!

Earth's ice is melting: Where and how fast? phys.org/news/2026-03...

I’m quoted in this important Guardian article by @whatsitlike.me about colon cancer. I got the bad news today that chemo didn’t do the trick after 24 treatments. I start immunotherapy next week. Get tested folks; don’t ignore your health. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Who should be an author on a scientific paper—and why? A new PNAS Perspective argues that responsible authorship should rest on three principles: transparency, credit, and accountability. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/BSYP50YsT0f

How does development shape the variation evolution can act on? In our new paper in @pnas.org , we bridge developmental dynamics and quantitative genetics, linking dynamical models of phenotype formation with the statistical parameters used to study evolutionary change www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

A Cedar Waxwing taking a sip of water

Visual pigments reveal fish history. Ancestral reconstructions support shallow marine origins and parallel visual adaptations during moves to freshwater habitats. doi.org/10.1093/evle... image credit Sam Stukel at Wikimedia

Marsh in the mist.

Our Galapagos program this summer officially got the green light. Looking forward to it. A picture in Puerto Ayora from a few years ago. Man, I miss the tropical sun and ocean!

Been a while, old friend.

Applications now open for the Graduate Research Excellence Grants! These provide evolutionary biology research funds for early and advanced Master’s and PhD students. Proposals due May 18. www.evolutionsociety.org/content/soci...

Our camera trap caught some sketchy characters in the backyard. Scout, Mac and I enjoying the spring like weather today.😎

The Null Hypothesis is Always Wrong! New blog post - check it out. ecoevoevoeco.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-...

RIP to Jesse Jackson. His funeral is today. I wanted to share this clip from his appearance on Sesame Street in 1971. His important words ring just as true today as they did back then.

That’s my cohort-mate!!!! 🥳

Limited thermal tolerance in tropical insects and its genomic signature www.nature.com/articles/s41...

David Attenborough [whispering]: “As the predators close in on their helpless prey, we can only watch in silent horror, for it is not man’s role to interfere in the hierarchy of nature.”

Researchers in the US might be having feelings about writing grants atm-I know I am! We still need to write them. In this Evolution Exchange, I again chat with Sam Scheiner, who summarizes how to write a competitive proposal. His advice is gold, and helpful regardless of funder. Pls RT!

The solar panel that "blooms" every morning. www.cnn.com/2026/03/02/b...

Portrait of a good boy. Scout soaking in some rays on “his” armchair in my office this morning.

David Marques was an amazing speciation genomics researcher, a passionate birder, and a wonderful friend, husband, and father. May he rest in peace. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

“Can we get some salad on the side?” Five deer, one little bird feeder. :/

Some distraction form the horror that is our lives for the last year... The birds are back in town. Red-winged blackbirds and robins in multitudes today.

The 2026 Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists #JMIH26 website and abstract submission is online! This year it will be in New Orleans! Join us July 8-12! jmih.net

Ever since I was a little girl, I knew that I wanted to answer 275 emails per day and argue with administrators. That’s why I chose a career in academia.

1. Kevin Gross and I have a new paper out today PLOS Biology. We used economic models based around screening games and the market for unpaid labor to highlight a meltdown cycle threatening peer review.

Rapid and repeated evolution of pigmentation patterns in reef fishes #ichthyology link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Applications due March 1 for the T. H. Huxley Award, which recognizes high-quality evolution education resources! The recipient will have the opportunity to attend and present their work at the NABT meeting in October or #Evol2026 in June. Apply today! bit.ly/2kP2pPM

Another herd or the same herd caught at a different time by our camera trap.

A week ago I found out that the grant I was confident would fund our spring mural will not, bc we're 2 blocks too deep into Kensington. This STINKS. This project rocks bc it's community driven, biodiversity-focused (& more! read on!) We're raising money to make it happen givebutter.com/KenzoMural

Picture that my two-year-old took of me at dinner Friday. It’s nice to see that I look as happy as he makes me feel. Happy Sunday, everyone!

Total mercury contamination in fish species of Northwestern Ecuador and potential human health risks journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Apply now for the SSE Caregiver Award for up to $500 USD to help cover caregiving costs while attending virtual or in-person #Evol2026. Deadline March 15! www.evolutionsociety.org/content/soci... @evolmtg.bsky.social

I restocked the bird feeder yesterday. I think word is out! :/

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...