Professor Evans … said he hoped the university’s leadership “will recognise the gravity of my concerns, which I know are shared by many others in the University community and am equally sure will be by the Minister for Education ...” www.canberratimes.com.au/story/902083...

Why did bees become haplodiploid & birds didn't? And why are stick insects perfect just the way they are? This is probably the coolest paper from @koraklein.bsky.social‬ 's PhD thesis (though there's Colias butterfly work in the pipeline which I shouldn't diss...) academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

Interested in Postdoc Research here in Oxford? Many projects possible using long-term population studies of birds, field & lab experiments with insect consumers, phenology of trees all in Wytham woods & based in new Biology building marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/calls/msca-p...

It's publication day of my first book: The Tree of Life. The tree of life is a time machine that can take us back 4 billion years to meet our most distant ancestor. It is the magic that lets us tell the origin stories, beginning with this ancient relative, of everything from mushrooms to man.

Nature reports that the National Science Foundation has stopped awarding new grants and allotting funds to existing ones. All of them. @colincarlson.bsky.social says that unless the freeze is lifted, it “is going to destroy people's labs.” 2/10 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Great news! I will definitely do this course out when I have time. I’ve already watched one video* and found it useful. * a discussion of the dangers of using LLMs to create lecture content.

Very happy and humbled to have received this award. A huge thanks to all my wonderful colleagues @scienceanu.bsky.social and abroad who made this possible!

And that’s a wrap! My last PhD research is now published 💪💪 Over 9 weeks we made males consistently experience winning or losing fights, with some winners/losers also able to mate, to test the impacts of contest outcome and reproductive investment on reproduction, growth and telomere length.

Hi. Thank you to everyone - all 161 people - who signed the letter in support of nominating @arc-tracker.bsky.social for a Eureka Prize for Leadership in Science. The nomination was lodged last night. Keep your fingers crossed for a good outcome for our masked hero.

In case you’re trying to submit your response to the review of ARC grants, the Education Department’s portal is/was borked. Email instead👇

Guardian Australia @australia.theguardian.com reporting on the proposed changes to the ARC grants system. There’s concern that getting rid of standalone fellowships will have lots of unintended consequences, especially for Early-Career Researchers. By @donnadlu.bsky.social

Great to see @nteuact.bsky.social coming right at this to make it crystal clear that academic freedom is not up for grabs in Australia and at ANU. Happy to talk with anyone about the issue who wants to know more.

CONVERGENT EVOLUTION is the independent development of similar traits or features in distantly related or unrelated organisms, often occurring when they occupy similar ecological niches or face similar environmental pressures 🦉 🍏

This year I’m teaching a science writing course. When the course started, I had this exact conversation with the students - Your thoughts are fuzzy phantoms that ping around in your brain. If you want to catch and share those thoughts you need to pin them to the page.

Meanwhile, in Europe👇

No budget increase for the Australian Research Council 😡

The loss of a legend- Kanzi, the language-competent bonobo, has died age 44. Kanzi was exceptional in so many ways and offered us profound insights into the linguistic & cognitive capacities of great apes. He has taught us so much and will be hugely missed. www.apeinitiative.org/remembering-...

I’ve long used FiveThirtyEight’s interactive “Hack Your Way To Scientific Glory” to illustrate the idea of p-hacking when I teach statistics. But ABC/Disney killed the site earlier this month :( So I made my own with #rstats and Observable and #QuartoPub ! stats.andrewheiss.com/hack-your-way/

Come on folk, get off your butts! Let's thank @arc-tracker.bsky.social. 3500+ of you follow their posts about proposed changes in ARC funding & which schemes remain open for now. But only 135 of you have signed up to support their nomination for a Eureka prize. Sign! forms.gle/ie7b32rWcZKK...

@nature.com has just published online our new paper!🎉🐸🌡️Lead by @patricepottier.bsky.social and supervised by myself and @itchyshin.bsky.social: in this massive research effort we overcome several common convictions related to the topics we studied. www.nature.com/articles/s41... Here are take-homes.

We now have 125+ signatures to nominate @arc-tracker.bsky.social for a Eureka Prize. But there should be many more. ARC Tracker has 3000+ followers. Please repost & spread the word. Most signatures are from biologists. Please alert those in the humanities, social sciences, etc to sign. Thank you!

A read today’s e-newsletter from our central administration and the heading of one section was ‘Leave management’. I thought ‘Yes, a few of you really should’ but it turns out it was a noun not a verb. My mistake. @frankbongiorno.bsky.social @nteuact.bsky.social

A global research team, including ANU scientists, discovered that an enzyme known as a ‘NUDIX hydrolase’ is used by many fungal pathogens as a weapon to cause disease in plants. The findings are published in Science. science.anu.edu.au/news-events/...

Job alert! We seek to appoint a new Lecturer in Evolutionary Biology in the School of Biological Sciences, find out more at the link below! www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...

A popular account by @cogniivan.bsky.social of our study on sexual selection and intelligence in fish that is now out in Nature Ecology & Evolution. The journal link is in the article. theconversation.com/smart-is-sex...

Our paper on #sexualselection and #intelligence / #cognition is now out in Nature Ecology & Evolution. Congrats to @cogniivan.bsky.social, Bec Fox & @kirindy.bsky.social for all their hard work to make this happen. www.anu.edu.au/news/all-new...

Good news we have now passed the 100 signature mark. But we should have as many signatures as people that follow @arc-tracker.bsky.social (over 3000!) So please keep sending the link to colleagues, spread the word and encourage others to sign. Thank you.

Excited to announce our symposium on the 'maintenance of trait variation under sexual selection' as a part of the Behaviour 2025 conference scheduled August 25-30 in Kolkata, India. Send in your abstracts! 1/2

Australian Researchers, If you want to support @arc-tracker.bsky.social being awarded a Eureka Prize for Leadership in Science, sign this letter of support. forms.gle/WxfVjk9JaGpn... Q: "Are they eligible?", A: "Let's find out" Sign, repost & send the link to colleagues. Word of mouth. Do it!

Aussie Researchers, we need your support if you want this nomination to happen. I’m not tech savvy but I’ll work with colleagues to generate an online letter of support for @arc-tracker.bsky.social being nominated for a Eureka award that you can then sign. Details soon(ish).

@cosmicpinot.bsky.social any chance you can boost the signal on this? The one thing I do know is that you are not ARC Tracker!

Hi Australian Researchers. I have a plan. Let's thank the amazing @arc-tracker.bsky.social for a decade of selfless work by nominating them for a Eureka Prize (Leadership in science). Are you with me? If so, repost this. Please also reply and state your support for this quest. We can do this people.

We're launching our new #UZH funded citizen science project using exciting #AI powered smart bird feeders to learn more about common European garden birds and how they survive the winter. This is the start of something *BIG* Sign up if you are interested! www.citizenscience.uzh.ch/en/projects/...

Some people lobby that scientific figures should always be readable by the colour blind. Is this really a big issue? I just don’t see the problem.

Nature is art.

Some people envision that biology will become engineering. We will all be using robots to screen millions of computer-generated molecules. If science stops being about playing, breaking things, brainstorming, and chance favoring the prepared mind, I think no one will want to do it. It won't be fun.

@puttert.bsky.social and I are organising the ANU Research School of Biology's Ecology and Evolution seminar series for 2025 🌏🗣. Any researchers based in Oz 🇦🇺 and keen to connect with #TeamCanberra should reach out! We have also budget for travel 🛩

Time to move. I don’t think I can handle another day of reading Elon’s endless childish taunting on X. If you are interested in: Evol Biol; sexual selection, behavioural ecology, Southern Africa; University politics then please follow me so I can follow you back and build a new timeline. Thanks!