❄️🧬 Can we generate high-quality reference genomes without the cold chain? A new study suggests the answer is yes. DNA preserved at room temperature for up to one week produced chromosome-scale reference genomes. 📖 tinyurl.com/3zwtj9ka #Genomes @gigascience.bsky.social @sangerinstitute.bsky.social

Did you know you can find all the Variant Effects Seminars on the AVE YouTube channel? Established in 2021, the seminar series reached its 100 speaker milestone last month. So, there are plenty of great talks to choose from. Find your next watch: tinyurl.com/AVE-VESS #AtlasOfVariantEffects

Hey team - it’s looking very likely that I’ll be hiring not one but two four year postdocs! We’re a fun lab with tons of theoretical and applied pop gen projects - broadly in polyploid, conservation, and human evo. Competitive salary, sunny San Diego! Do share with your about to defend grads!

Cool Sankey diagram of the ranked choice voting results of Maine’s Democratic gubernatorial primary. Think how transformative this could be if more states adopted it.

A big congratulations to @littlemuseums.bsky.social for successfully defending her dissertation: Disentangling Evolutionary Signals to Diagnose and Address Conservation Need in Bears. #proudadvisor

Oh to be the Squirrel of the Day for June 16, 2026, living her best life in a tree full of ripe mulberries #sqrlpix

I am recruiting a PhD student (fully funded, 4yrs) to analyze modern 🧬 and ancient 🦴 genomic data from humans and domestic animals 🐑 Please share, I am happy to chat at #ICP2026 or #SMBE2026 this summer www.uu.se/en/about-uu/...

It's so wild to me that ThermoFisher advertises to me via YouTube ads while I watch absolute pop culture garbage junk. Like Fisher, we're good, I promise I will get cell culture plates from you, literally ordered them last week

Congratulations to @jrossibarra.bsky.social on being elected to the National Academy of Sciences! We'll be popping some corn in his honor www.ucdavis.edu/news/nationa...

Thanks to @eepuckett.bsky.social , faculty and grad students in the Department of Biology at University of Memphis for an awesome visit! It was an absolute blast thinking about cool new synergies to complement research ideas. Fantastic visit to reinvigorate creativity!! With homage to Tiger Elvis ❤️

"We're in the Economist?"

New preprint! We sequenced 175 'Alalā (Hawaiian crow) genomes to understand why >50% of eggs fail to hatch in a species recovered from just 9 individuals. What we found was a both exciting and surprising. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Male biased gene flow from N to S genetically rescued the S-Scandinavian brown bear population after a bottleneck caused by human persecution. 🦊 #Consgen

It's World Bear Day (every day) around here. 🐻 🐻 From their floofy beginnings to their current state of affairs (fiercely floofy) brown bears Fern and Juniper are simply the best. #worldbearday

On #WorldBearDay, our 5-year-old polar bear Laerke is making a splash! From playful swims to floating on her back with a massive stick. Enrichment like this helps keep Lærke active, engaged, and mentally stimulated. 🐻‍❄️ 📹: Animal care staff Russell

Scientists capture rare footage of baby polar bears emerging from their dens, offering a powerful tool to look at the early lives of these elusive animals. Learn more on #WorldBearDay: scim.ag/4bjOEQC

Happy #WorldBearDay 🐻 This ⁠image is the winner of the Instagram category of our 2025 Northwest Exposure photo contest. Hiker Jolena Tagg was in search of wildflowers near Lake Eleanor when she came across this black bear.

Resharing for #WorldBearDay 🐻

Andean Bear Cub #WorldBearDay #SciArt #sketchbook

Happy World Bear Day! Today we celebrate the important part that bears play in our ecosystems and highlight the challenges they face. Learn about how climate change impacts polar bears and conservation concerns for the world's largest bear species. pbears.org/conservation-concerns

Happy World Bear Day! 🐻 Say hello to one of California's most iconic — and occasionally uninvited — park guests. Help us protect California's wild spaces, learn more about our work at calparks.org 🌿 #WorldBearDay #CaliforniaBlackBear #LakeTahoe #CaliforniaStateParks #ProtectOurParks

March 23rd is #WorldBearDay! 🐻‍❄️ 🐻 🐼 Six of the eight bear species are classified “vulnerable” by the IUCN. This means they are at risk of becoming endangered or extinct in the wild if threats to its survival persist. Follow IBA or donate to help us conserve #bears 👉🏼 bearbiology.org

Today on #WorldBearDay, we celebrate Colorado’s bears—resilient, intelligent, and vital to our ecosystems. By working closely with local communities, we’re reducing bear-human conflicts and helping wildlife and people coexist safely.

Happy #WorldBearDay. Manitoba is home to all 3 North American bear species, but I've only seen two. Black bears are common throughout the province, while polar bears roam the Hudson Bay coast. Barren ground grizzlies also show up occasionally on the coast. It would be amazing to see one. #mammals

(1/7) Hopping on the #WorldBearDay hype to share some of my dissertation work with @eepuckett.bsky.social. Here’s the dirt on Louisiana bears (the only Ursus americanus subspecies thats been federally listed through the ESA) doi.org/10.64898/202...

Are female polar bears homebodies or wanderers? Do adult females stay close to their mother's home range? This study sheds new light on individual bears' space use and familial relationships. https://pbears.org/43D4imf

Can you spot the polar bear? They often dig 'day beds' by scooping out gravel and sand, making them even harder to spot when hiking along the coast. #InternationalPolarBearDay

Heather is right, meeting our @uofmemphis.bsky.social colleagues who are experts in lower Miss. River fluvial geomorphology (Randy Cox) and Late Woodland cultures (David Dye) was a highlight of writing this paper.

I was not consulted and as such cannot verify the quality of this article.

🐻Excited that my and @littlemuseums.bsky.social 's paper on the demographic history of American black bears across the eastern range is up! While I think the phylogeography aspects are interesting, our key point is that named subspecies are unsupported. doi.org/10.64898/202...

Nothing like a condescending email from the President of the volunteer org you're apart of to make you question those membership dues.

Population specific bottlenecks inflated differentiation measures of Louisiana black bear and negate subspecific status https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.18.706691v1

Developing this course from scratch, incorporating several new recent developments from my lab, including tests of ghost introgression, model development and testing, and inference from Ks histograms. Do sign up! Feel free to DM me with queries.

We are thrilled to announce the first official release (v0.1.8) of #𝗯𝗲𝗱𝗱𝗲𝗿, the successor to one of our flagship tool, #𝗯𝗲𝗱𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗹𝘀! Based on ideas we conceived of long ago (!), this was achieved thanks to the dedication of Brent Pedersen. 1/n

Like, spaces in a lot of places are just totally empty because everyone works from home a lot. And this really sucks! Students are not senior employees who benefit from that flexibility

You too can 'turn your student evaluation results around' by simply changing your gender, ethnicity, or socio-economic background! Students will generously increase their scores if you switch to being a middle-class, white, male. No additional work needed!

I have some more bad news. If an admissions committee even suspects you used ChatGPT for your application letter, they'll almost certainly decide not to waste a precious admissions spot on you. Instead they'll give it to, you know, someone who actually likes to write and knows how to do it.

“Restoring real habitat would mean shutting down industries. We aren’t allowed to propose that.” Someone asked about rewilding. Someone else replied: “We talk about it because it sounds hopeful, not because we think it will happen.”

www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/h... So cool @bsbibotany.bsky.social !!

In a new GBE Review, @david-peede.bsky.social et al. overview the SMC model and extensions, discuss examples of discoveries made with the help of SMC-based inference, and comment on the assumptions, benefits, and drawbacks of various methods. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/... #genome #evolution #compbio

I drew my friend’s cats as a Christmas gift. That is her son she is holding

No one says to legit business owners, "hey I see there's an underground market selling toxic knock-offs of your product: how will you incorporate the toxic product AND protect your customers against its harms?" But apparently it's fine to make this suggestion to educators with respect to AI.

It is EXHAUSTING not only being made responsible for coming up with new kinds of assignments for our students; it's also tedious reading op-eds that suggest the core problem is a crisis in teaching. But, as Chris and I lay out here, this isn't a crisis in teaching; it's an attack on learning.

Andean bears have unique facial markings, much like human fingerprints. These markings may change in shape and colour with age, and in some individuals may be absent altogether. Check out our species pages to learn more about bears: www.bearbiology.org/the-eight-be... REFERENCE: Peyton, B. 1980.

Long ago, the people of Chicago carelessly incurred the wrath of the god of electricity & loincloths. Our ancestors left this record of the events that followed so that we might reflect on our past misdeeds & take care to not repeat them.

You can't see me! Polar bear in willows, Churchill Wildlife Management Area.

Excited to recruit a new PhD student for Fall 2026 in my lab at Cornell! Looking for someone interested in evolutionary genomics + fisheries/conservation applications. Quick timeline this year—reach out soon. More details: www.therkildsenlab.org/join-us.html

I am so excited to share new work on a TE insertion that regulates iridescence in swordtails, led by fantastic grad student @nadiahaghani.bsky.social and with help from many coauthors! In a time that has been so difficult to navigate, this & other projects have kept my spirits up: shorturl.at/NE65A

Great new postdoc fellowship for foundational plant research. If you’re into genetics and genomics of plant reproductive evolution or adaptive convergence (incl in the cool and charismatic nightshades!) I’d be happy to talk about possible projects! www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/simons...