Congratulations Arun!!

Pls RT: We are recruiting a postdoc (and potentially an RA or staff scientist) to work on the evolution of stage-structured immune systems! Experimental evolution, natural variation in immunity, and/or evo genomics in flour beetles (Tribolium). See ad here: my.vanderbilt.edu/tatelab/join...

Not sure how many scientists here have tried Claude Code or similar command line coding assistants. I had a complicated family property tax problem that was best solved by a brute force Monte Carlo simulation approach, so I spent a few days coding up and analyzing a model with Claude Code.

Ever wonder whether older genes contribute to more processes than younger ones, or whether gene duplication might break up pleiotropy over evolutionary time? Does it matter if we're talking about dev. vs. immune genes? Check out our new paper, headed by postdoc Reese Martin: doi.org/10.1093/evle...

A very cool technology that allows students to interact with John Maynard Keynes’ ideas as he develops them is called a book

Sometimes authors summarize their responses to 3-6 major points raised by the reviewers in their resub cover letters or at the top of their rebuttal letters. This is so super helpful to editors, because it brings us right up to speed after not having read the paper/reviews for months. THANKS!!

Get the word out far and wide. New opportunity from the Simons Foundation in the Eco-Evo space. 2026 Simons Graduate Fellowship in Ecology and Evolution Awards, due July 31, 2025, only for incoming PhD students who plan to start their PhDs in Fall 2026. www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/simons...

If you use AI to write/assist your manuscript reviews, please know that whatever time it saves on your end may well be spent manifold by the authors trying to sort legitimate human criticism from AI nonsense, emailing the journal office about their AI policy and asking for guidance, etc.

Asgari & @annttate.bsky.social uncover the evolutionary forces shaping the multilayered regulation of signaling pathways by negative feedback loops. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf104 #evobio #molbio #regulation

THIS IS HUGE! TWO Phase I HIV vaccine clinical trials have demonstrated that a stepwise mRNA-based vaccination strategy can SUCCESSFULLY activate AND advance immune responses toward producing broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs), a CRITICAL milestone in HIV prevention. Let’s talk about that! 🧪🧵⬇️

"For me, the answer now lies in refusal, the withdrawal of participation from systems that require dishonesty as the price of belonging." Today I am resigning from the National Science Board and the Library of Congress Scholars Council. I wrote about my decision in TIME. time.com/7285045/resi...

Ever wondered why your favorite immune signaling pathway is regulated by a simple (or complex) set of feedback loops, and how they might have gotten there? Check out our new paper on the evolution of signaling network topology in MBE, headed by postdoc Danial Asgari: doi.org/10.1093/molb...

Teachers, we've partnered with Evolutionary Studies at Vanderbilt (@evolutionvu.bsky.social) to offer a workshop on evolution in celebration of the Scopes Trial 100th Anniversary. Please join us in Nashville on July 11! forms.gle/wECR4X2q5KCQ... #ScopesSymposium #iteachbio #EduSky #edchat

This is bad. Read the updates. www.nsf.gov/updates-on-p...

james surowiecki has discovered where the completely fabricated trump tariff rate has come from for each country "...for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country's exports to us."

This is excellent; a very clear explanation of what’s at stake at Columbia.

Attention scientists! Wondering what else can you can do to advocate for research funding? Let's all submit Programmatic Requests to Members of Congress next month, and flood the zone in a show of public support for #NIH and #NSF! ! #SciComm #Science #Medicine #MedSky 🧬🔬🧪 Details below⤵️ 🧵 1/n

🧵"So this is how liberty dies..." Trump’s first 3 weeks have been a relentless flood of actions. It's incredibly hard to keep up. I’ve gone through 69 actions & mapped out the pattern - showing how they fall within 5 broad domains consistent with authoritarian states 1/9

This is the end of science as we know it if it stands—15% IDCs for all NIH Grants. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

I usually reserve this account for my personal views; but today I want to represent my position as President of @asn-amnat.bsky.social to post a message that will shortly go out to the membership of the American Society of Naturalists from the ASN Executive Council

Hello All, plz share. Last call for applications for a post-doc position in our lab to study immune function in frogs infected with the fungal pathogen Bd. Deadline is Feb 1, reviews will begin soon after. zamudiolab.org/2024/12/17/p...

The Abstract deadline is Feb 3 for the 10th annual meeting of the International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health in Nashville. All welcome, esp. students and clinicians. Full info at iemph.org Please repost #EvMed 🧪 @evmed.bsky.social @sse-evolution.bsky.social @eseb.bsky.social

1/n Some time ago my colleague, excellent cook, and friend Ivan told me: "Cacio e pepe is the recipe that I screw up more often. Let's make a project studying systematically the physics of that sauce". Prepare to get cheesy, I'm glad to share the Cacio e paper preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2501.00536

Hey All, plz repost, and share with grads, post-docs and disease folks! We are hiring a post-doc to work on mechanisms of immune responses of frog hosts to Bd infections. Deadline is February 1, 2025. Details for the position can be found at the link below. 🐸🐸🐸 zamudiolab.org/2024/12/17/p...

I love these #PlantsGiving resources, and think that a cool extension for my current EEID course would be to ID the pathogens that most threaten their cultivation or trip to your table; chime in with your faves!

Ecoimmunologists/Disease Ecologists of Bluesky please help spread the word that SICB DEDE is accepting applications for our Lochmiller Early Career Award, awarded to exceptional scientists in the field within 10 years of their PhD award date. Apply here by 12/1: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Congratulations to Dr. Reese Martin on an amazing Ph.D. defense! 🎉 Reese's dissertation explored the impact of genetic pleiotropy on immune system evolution... (🧵 1/4)

I am so excited to share the cover of my forthcoming @PrincetonUPress book on how animals use medicine and what we can learn from them! The book will come out on 4 March 2025, and can be pre-ordered here: hubs.ly/Q02SZyF-0

Danial graduated last year and has continued on to a postdoc with @annttate.bsky.social where he's continuing to work on the evolution of immunity. And he's already got a preprint from work he's done in the Tate lab! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We are looking for a new colleague to join our EEB group at IU.

I am looking for students (postdocs welcome too) interested in serving on American Society of Naturalists committees (eg student research grants, DEI, etc). Please contact me if you are interested or have a student who might be!!

Tenured! Thankful for my amazing lab members past and present, supportive colleagues, and patient family for helping me get this far!

📄 New publication from the lab! Are you interested in subfunctionalization of gene duplications? Immune gene evolution? Blood sucking insects? Then check this out! academic.oup.com/icb/advance-...

🧪 Our new paper on estimating the shape of the trade-off between investment in immunity and other fitness-related traits! Justin Critchlow, Arun Prakash, and K. Zhong used dose-dependent RNAi to dysregulate the brakes on beetle immune signaling. Check it out: journals.plos.org/plospathogen...

Please share with the soon to be and recent college grads in your life! We're taking applications for our PAID postbacc research program in evolutionary genetics! uh.edu/nsm/stegg-in...

AmNat fact 2: I learned that some of you think you need math in your paper to be published in The American Naturalist. That is incorrect. We love purely empirical papers just as much as pure theory & those that combine both. No bias here! (4/5)

LIFE - Leveraging Innovations From Evolution Yay! The DCL is finally out! NSF BIO seeks to catalyze research around convergent evolution to speed discoveries of nature-based solutions. Proposals to IntBIO (& more) are welcome. www.nsf.gov/pubs/2024/ns...

If you want to keep that lovely buzz after finishing a good book, don't go and look at its reviews on goodreads.

Congratulations to the new Dr. Justin Critchlow! It was a great defense, we are proud of you, and we'll miss you!

We are looking for a new Data Editor AmNat @asn-amnat.bsky.social to start in 2024. In 2021, we pioneered the use of a data editor to greatly improve the quality of data repositories for all published papers. More details are here: amnat.org/announcements/… Please repost to help spread the word