The Miseq i100 has a baby now

The Dept. of BioSciences at #RiceUniversity, in Houston, Texas, invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professor position in Evolutionary Biology, with a preferred focus on organismal responses to environmental change. Please RT! Apply: apply.interfolio.com/173889

Full comic here: www.smbc-comics.com/comic/theodi... #smbc

If you are upset that I am shitposting, please understand: I am on a visa, I cannot not shitpost. I CAN not post, but once I do post, I cannot not shitpost. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

I had a nightmare where I had to correctly identify 2 juvenile winter gulls in the PNW or my eBird lists would be all invalidated. 🦅 #birding

Define evil you said?👺 Article Publishing Charge (APC): USD 4,200 (excluding taxes) (Mandatory) 🤡

An Intergeneric Hybrid Between Historically Isolated Temperate and Tropical Jays Following Recent Range Expansion | doi.org/10.1002/ece3... | Ecology and Evolution | #ornithology 🪶

My new favorite icebreaker: I have, in fact, sampled #eDNA just next to the (in)famous Epstein Island, near Saint Thomas at the USVI (Christmas cove. Great St. James) It was back in 2019 for a project looking for invasive seagrass. 🌾🐢 I also had a pizza from a boat pizzeria at the same ocasion.

Fresh Battus 🦋 #rarepuns #punintended

A metal scene to start #birding sunday🦅🐀

This spaghetti squash thing is kinda magic y'all. I am not gonna lie. The way it just falls apart in little al-dente spaghetti-like strings is so awesome. I wanna make micro slices of this thing and put it under a microscope like good old plant anatomy classes back in undergrad.

embarrassing myself

There are secrets under the dock! Plumose /Cauliflower Anemone (Metridium senile)

Reading #eDNA papers is also about learning animal names in English. Today I discovered Mummichog and Muskellunge. Real fish. Not Pokémon.

Lots of field work, lab work, and bioinformatics going on here at the @ednacollab.bsky.social #eDNA workshop. What an amazing group of enthusiatic, diverse, and hard working people! 15 instruments built, 84 samples collected and over 60 millions reads sequenced. Lots to harvest from this effort.

Pacific blood star (on a California mussel shell) ⭐️🌊 #seastar

Got some tidepool fun today. Pisaster ochraceus and its many feet!

I now have the perfect video for the intro slide on #eDNA presentations where I say "things shed DNA as they swim around". #polychaetes #epitoke

Shrimp night at the lamp! 🦐🦐🦐Very different from pre-Tsunami.🌊 We suspect it may have caused some interesting changes that triggered the shrimp to spawn. Good thing we had a time series running before the tsunami 😈. That paper just got a bit more interesting

Behold Aequorea victoria, best known for its fluorescent protein: GFP!🟢 Awesome to see this thing, specially in the very place GFP was first discovered! This very jellyfish individual is probably related to those who had their GFP isolated at FHL, which ultimately led to the 2008 Nobel prize.

Night sampling: canceled due to... checks notes... tsunami warning!? Not exactly what I had on my fieldwork bingo card, but sure, why not. Nature: 1 Our day/night time series: 0 🌊📉 Good think our housing is up a hill.

The ocean is a terrifying yet fascinating place. That eDNA sample will get swamped by #polychaete sperm.

If this made any sound, what would it sound like?

We are here at Friday Harbor Labs getting ready to receive 14 students from 12 countries for the @ednacollab.bsky.social eDNA 🧬workshop! It will be a fun but intense 3 weeks of eDNAing around and learning from a very diverse group. #eDNA #FHL #UW

I went to my local coin store and got $9,50 of collection supplies. I was handed this + a wink 😉 as change. Straight into the flip it went. As a visa holder in the land of the free🗽, I am advised against posting political opinions. But I am allowed to post #coins minted by the US itself, I think.

A Brazilian birding youtuber #PlanetaAves makes a video about top 10 weirdest woodpeckers of the world.🐦 My first thought: "He better have Lewis' Woodpecker and the Wryneck on that list". He did!! Top 2. Most random thing to be right about, ever. There really is every niche of content out there.

Sometimes we make friends when birding. 🦆 I suspect someone is feeding these ducks, or they were seeking some protection from the nearby bald eagle🦅

New toys out here in the Kelly lab! #ednacollab. Miseq i100. Cheaper runs, higuer output, and no instrument fluidics! So no risk of carryover and no maintenamce washes. Are the 2x500 cycle kits that are coming up going to live up to the hype? We shall see #eDNA #metabarcoding

Cool! Fun fact, the (now its own species) Saimaa Ringed Seal was featured in the 5 Markka coin of Finland until 2001, just before Finland adopted the Euro

🚨Paper published! Our manuscript on the differential decay rate of eDNA, erRNA and emRNA of Dolphin🐬 #eDNA is out! Is this the fastest turnaround for a manuscript ever? It certainly is for me. + Received 22 May 2025 Accepted 21 July 2025 Published 23 July 2025 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Y`all, this is serious and really shouldn’t need saying: 18S/16S/12S ribosomal RNA ≠≠≠ messenger RNA from any protein-coding gene. Stop lumping them together as "eRNA" and acting surprised when they behave differently. They are fundamentally different molecules. 🚫🧬 #eDNA #eRNA #StopTheConfusion

Not my run, but it is always fun to see this tiny thing rocking #ONT #Nanopore This flowcell had 1516 pores, which, according to Aden who has run 50+ of thesez is the most he has ever seen

I am cracking up... doing a literature search on eDNA and this came up: "The platypus: evolutionary history, biology, and an uncertain future." I’m sure it’s a great paper—but how it snuck into my search results without having any of the keywords is an evolutionary mystery of its own. 🦆🦫🔍

This morning I am banging my head against R and STAN as usual. Then I hear knocking on the window - A crow 🐦wants to help, I think! Adrian Tchaikovsky or Portia need to come here so we can get some translations going. I am certain they will be better at STAN than me. (Children of time reference)

Actually, they were American Minks!! I clearly don't know my mustelids well

Two curious weasels joined me for birding today! Kinda crazy these things hang out in an urban setting

This is as ambiguous as weather forecast can possibly get. Is it going to rain? It might! When might it rain? Sometime. Where? Yes ...what is the purpose of weather forecast again? Can't you just admit and say: "We don't know! Our models suck! It is a chaotic system!" It would be more credible.

I would like to post that "Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia", but I can't.

Wondering if I peer reviewed your paper? Did it have a page-long paragraph full of disconnected ideas, and I didn't tell you to break that paragraph up? Then it definitely wasn't me

I had an idea—just a hunch, really— on how to link #Popgen and #eDNA. I was lucky to be in a lab that embraced curiosity, open discussion, and let me run with it. One year, many equations, and a few too many simulations later, here’s the result: 🧬 Preprint now live: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Update: it WAS NOT an omen. 3 weeks after submission and We already have reviews back!? That's crazy

Sunrise birding 🦆 for a project integrating/comparing #eDNA 🧬in the air with audio recording and traditional sampling. 1 hour stationary birding = 28 species on and around the lagoon. Highlight: Saw an osprey catch a carp! I am an eDNA person and enthusiast, but there is no way it can beat that 😜

Hiking in the pacific northwest at this time comes with treats: Salmon berries Surprisingly, orange and red berries are varieties of the same species Rubus spectabilis. The plants look different, and the fruit taste is also quite distinct. Someone has to study the eco-evo of this. Can't be simple

This is the most boring apocalypse

A Tale of Two Birds 𝘍𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘢 𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢 (L) & 𝘈𝘭𝘤𝘢 𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘢 (R) The puffin got spooked by the razorbill who also wanted some of the limelight, looked at me, & said "hi :))" I love their little personalities 🪶 #puffin #razorbill #birds #wildlife #photography #coast #cliffs #Scotland #fujifilm

🔬 Our new preprint is out! We tracked the decay of multiple #eDNA 🧬& #eRNA molecules from bottlenose dolphins🐬 in seawater. It may seem like I have caved in for charismatic megafauna. But do not worry. in reality, I am still only interested in their molecules. + www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Posting my first-ever preprint 🧑‍🔬 It's been stuck in "Undergoing Screening" for 5 days now (!). I was told this usually takes ~2 days. Anyone else seen this? Starting to think this might be an omen for how long peer review will take 💀. Still traumatized by my year long review for the last one

I can`t wait to see the grocery store's cashier face when I show them I have 21(!) coupons ready to go for the weekly shopping . It turns out checking through junk mail pays off occasionally

Our review is finally here! We include all the terrestrial and semi-aquatic mammal-focused #eDNA and #iDNA studies available up to Jan 2025! It's amazing to see how far this field has come 🧬🦦

Raise your hand if you had an idea 3 years ago, wrote several grants to do it but never got funded, and now someone else big in your field published it and it gets treated as "a great idea!" O/