Well today in “bullshit I definitely don’t have time for”… PubMed is tweaking out and deleted 50% of my pubs from my bibliography AND refuses to add them back unless I do it manually. So if I want to tweak my bio sketch I now have to manually enter all the missing ones.

Ummm why did no one tell me how much Evolutionary Biology plays into the plot of Project Hail Mary???? Anyways.. now that I’ve finished the book its my whole personality and of course I had to drag my husband to see it in IMAX tonight. (Also they’re playing Pixar scores before the movie and 🥰)

Hi folks, there is a high likelihood I will be recruiting 1-2 PhD students to start in Spring 2027. Trying to get the word out early; please share broadly with your networks and encourage your students to reach out early. Info can be found on my webpage. fuesslab.wp.txstate.edu/opportunities/

I have been living a lie. For 36 years I was certain I did not like red meat (except for all beef hotdogs). Heck I had brisket like a year ago accidentally and hated it. Turns out there are actually 2 exceptions to this rule cause this steak was damn delicious.

Go. See. Hoppers. Seriously.. best Pixar film since Coco. You could make an argument since Soul, but this was the first to make me ugly cry since Coco. My only complaint: where was my trademark Pixar short before the film!?!? Lame.

Happy birthday to me!

Ooops…. Already binged all three new episodes of Paradise season 2. But honestly can we talk about how darn refreshing it is in this day and age to have just 1 year between seasons of an excellent tv show. (Also if you haven’t watched it yet… go now. S1E7 is one of the greatest tv eps ever!)

Happy 77 pt.2 day to all my fellow Colony House fans. Burn in the Rain and Taking a Fall are masterpieces and will be on repeat in my office today for sure.

Me watching this season of Next Level Chef: “Wow.. that girl is the spitting image of Nora from Upload… even sounds like her”. Dear reader- it is indeed Andy Allo who plays Nora in Upload. 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

Ok, rant aside I really do have SO MUCH data that needs to be analyzed and would really benefit from machine learning type approaches. So if you want to work to develop innovative approaches to study cnidarian holobionts/immunity, let’s write something up!

Hot take: folks are too focused on the AI emphasis of the PRFB & missing the most concerning part of the solicitation. The heavy emphasis on bio-AI integration for “technological advances” is a concerning degradation of NSFs mission to fund basic biological research.

Last postdoc pub finally out!! This one was a doozy, but really enjoyable to work on. Involved some creative problem solving in regards to analysis of transcriptomic data from complex experimental designs. In the end I learned A LOT from this team and think the final product is pretty cool.

Tell me five classes you took in college: Intermediate Horseback Riding Advanced Literature- Harry Potter Political Ecology The Science in Science Fiction Biology of Fishes

I don’t really watch football so maybe I’m just easily impressed but holy hell that was insane!!! I was full on curled up under my blanket cause I couldn’t watch.. peeked out cause I thought it was over just in time to see the throw and catch. The way my jaw dropped.

You mean my hours spent as a chronically online teenager are finally going to benefit me 20 years later!?!?

Also I have to make a shameless lab promotion talk for today @ #SICB2026! 9:45am in B115 PhD student Issy Changsut will be discussing her work on immunity in Astrangia poculata! Then at today’s poster session, postbac Sydney Dutton will be discussing environmental predictors of SCTLD (P88)!

Good morning #SICB2026!! If you’re interested in ecoimmunology/disease ecology please come join us this morning in B115 for the Division of Ecoimmunology and Disease Ecology Best Student Presentation Competition! 8-8:45am!

Great talk this morning from @ambonacolta.bsky.social on apicomplexans in marine holobionts including Anthozoans. Really enjoying this lovely microbiome symposium by @ryanehulett.bsky.social and @wrong-whale.bsky.social! Great way to start SICB 2026!

It is January 2nd and I am headed to the barn in the northern hemisphere to give my horse a long cold bath. Why?? Oh because the high is /only/ 87 today.. only 25 or so degrees hotter than usual. And he has a full winter coat.

IYKYK

Flight update… more mimosas and editing response to reviewers for our upcoming manuscript. Not a bad way to spend a morning!

When the first class upgrade is only $25 more than it would cost to fly economy with a checked bag. Mimosas to celebrate a little Christmas break were definitely in order!

Spent my afternoon rage eating pie through that mess of an NSF webinar. 10/10 recommend this coping mechanism. Now back to trying to be productive in this hellscape

Also please note that 1) that is not our camp chair and 2) no one put him in it. He just invited himself to that seat when the owner got up for a moment. (He spent the night stealing spots on any comfy camp chair he could find before settling in this one)

Lab Christmas party last night had a surprising star… Motsenbocker was the life of the party. Made sure to supervise the white elephant exchange as well.

Adding “fought for a Tokyo Disney vacation package” to my list of great wars along with the great Eras Tour fight of 2022..

Also if anyone knows of a good review/opinion piece to cite to refute this claim please LMK. The interesting part is we discuss probably 100 genes and they picked one set they wanted “validated”. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Good morning to everyone except reviewers who, in the year of our lord 2025, are STILL finding it necessary to ask for qPCR/western blot validation of RNAseq results

Playing fishbowl with a bunch of college kids… you know I had to cause chaos by putting in the most dated nouns I could think of on the spot.. They handled “dial up” and “parachute pants” better than expected.. but “John Cusack”… pure chaos.

Crazy to think all my non-equestrian friends are out there just having a normal week while my horsey bubble is imploding over this. I honestly can’t overstate how bad it is. Maybe we’ll look back and think we’ve overreacted but I’d rather that than the alternative. www.kwtx.com/2025/11/19/e...

If anyone was still on the fence over whether American tipping culture has gotten out of hand… Went to grab takeout today, no one taking orders, just a kiosk.. but the tip options were still 20-30%. How about these companies just pay their cooks a working wage!?!?

Follow up: I still can’t get over the fact that this man sold out Dickies arena and then showed up looking like he belongs in a Progressive commercial. Fully embracing the “Dad rock” vibes and honestly, I’m here for it.

So I scrambled to submit my MIRA Oct 3rd for nothing and will now have to complete rethink my existing strategy for grant submissions over the next year…

Back in the town where I got my PhD tonight, seeing two of the musicians who defined that period of my life. One of them I haven’t seen live since I was a newly minted PhD, 4 days post defense and a week out from getting engaged. You could say I’m feeling just a little nostalgic

Dear SICB: charging postbac technicians for full price membership and registration is really really not cool. There is no reason this group of early career researcher should be paying over double what students pay for registration. Let’s fix this moving forward.

This was such a fun project and I’m so glad to see it out officially!!

Not the headline anyone wants to see but this hits particularly close to home… I lived through a cat 1 (Sandy) hit just outside of Kingston and that was rough.. I can’t even fathom this. Thinking of all the friends and colleagues I made during my time in Jamaica and hoping for safety for all.

Alright bioinformaticians of Blue Sky… I need your help. We’ve been aligning TagSeq data to a new reference genome using STAR. I get decent mapping rates to the gff3 file from STAR for unique mappers. But when I go to assemble a count matrix using feature counts it plummets (lots of multi mappers)

This feels appropriate

Reminder, we’re hiring 2 PhD students for next year!! I’m extending the deadline to Nov 1, but please get your app in soon if you’re interested in joining us! More info is on our webpage. 🦠🦑 Please share with ECRs you know as well and check out our other open positio. (Postdoc!)

It’s a wallow on the couch eating spicy noodles and binge watching ER kind of night. Have a feeling many of my colleagues are doing similar things. #IYKYK

In person guests are also more than welcome if you’re in the central TX area. Reach out if you need any info!

Science friends and collaborators!! This week I will be giving my tenure review seminar! It will be available via zoom to accommodate some folks travel schedules. So, if you’d like to hear more about what the labs been up to over the past five years please reach out and I will give you the link

5 years of hard work on this guys brain at shows has really paid off. He’s starting to feel like an old pro. Did he try to kill himself in the trailer on the way over? Yeah. But did that bother him when he got there? Nope. Set a first level PB & exceeded our 2nd level debut goal by 4 points!

Guess I need to go through and swap genetic diversity for genetic variation in my proposal… ugh

One year ago today I pretty dramatically broke my wrist… and unofficially dislocated my elbow. I still can’t fully lock that elbow; nor can I touch my thumb to my shoulder on that side… but 95% functionality gets you pretty far day to day and I’m lifting heavier than ever so I’ll take it!

Super behind on this but so excited to see this preprint out. Dan did an excellent job summarizing the science; I won’t duplicate efforts. But on a personal note- I set out this summer with a goal to get my last postdoc MS done before submitting my tenure packet… mission accomplished!!

Currently unclaimed taxa (mostly inverts): - ctenophores or sponges - platyhelminths - annelids - crustaceans - insects/arachnids - chitons/gastropods/bivalves - cephalopods - amphioxus - tunicates - jawless fish - birds

🚨🚨We’re hiring graduate students!🚨🚨 We are hiring 1-2 PhD students to start sometime in 2026 (Fall start dates preferred). Opportunities to work on a diversity of eco-evo-immuno and symbiosis projects! Deadline Oct 15! Please share broadly! Info here: tinyurl.com/y2abjsem

Been thinking a lot about the many grant programs with institutional gate keeping (HHMI, Packard, etc). In a world of reduced funding opportunities, those of us at “lesser than” unis will be increasingly boxed out. This plan would not help… Good science can be done at all kinds of places!