I am the most recent white male evolutionary biologist hired at Cornell. I’d like to provide essential context for readers mulling over Colin Wright’s commentary, “Cornell University discriminated against me.” 🧵

I say we start by making it less financially appealing. We need a ruthless anti-scam administration. A total crackdown on robocalls, MLMs, crytpo scams, get rich quick influencers, and fake supplement companies. Steep penalties and enforcement structures with teeth.

Published an op-ed in my hometown paper, advocating for the continued funding of American Science. johnbenning.net/2025/08/01/a...

Very stoked to tell y'all that I just started as an assistant prof in Cornell EEB! More to come later, but for now, if you know folks looking to do a PhD in evolutionary ecology, they can chat with me about this awesome fellowship. 2-pg LOI is due July 31! www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/simons...

They are not. We have maybe the worst political system in the developed world, one that makes an unrepresentative sliver of voters with no principles who aren't really paying attention decisive. Every few months, they get profiled like a set of jangling keys and folks want to throw democracy away.

We begin reviewing applications next week!

hey hope you were having a good day before you read this

The Kreiner and Carley Labs at @UChicago E&E are co-hiring a Lab Manager/Research Technician position in Plant Evolutionary Ecology & Genomics! Please see the link for more details and instructions on how to apply: bit.ly/UChiPlantTec...

I have been following the discussion around how best to represent and label human genetic variation, and thought it might also be worth discussing an aspect of the broader context. 1/n

New from @jedidiahcarlson.com and I, and with a personal guarantee that there are no AI images. We discuss conceptual and methodological practices in mainstream human genetics that contribute to misappropriation by scientific racists through their own fringe counter-research & online memes.

PSA for ppl sympathetic to hereditarian arguments: it should give you pause that of the academics ascribing to genetic determinism, few are biologists. Exceedingly few are experimental biologists. It's v hard to believe simplistic genetic narratives once you actually... 1/

excited to see this out! Haoran put in a *ton* of work on this really cool, classic system

Please help spread the word! I made a feed for ecology evolution ECR on all things career-related :) Feed + more details here: bsky.app/profile/did:... 🌏🧪 #AcademicSky #ScienceSky #PhDChat

The Kern-Ralph CoLab is looking for postdocs to join us in Oregon!

Defining fitness in evolutionary ecology A primer we hope will be of use to all learners! #evolution #plantscience 🧪🌍🌎🌏

made a few updates to the EcoEvo Jobs app -- a lil more data, marginal histograms and, for the masochists, the ability to plot your own stats for comparison 🙃 Check it out here: john-benning.shinyapps.io/shiny/

I write about why and how should we talk about behavioral heritability [ gusevlab.org/projects/hsq... ]. A partial response to the Hastings Report [ pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37078667/ ], which I found to be important but also fundamentally flawed in it's proposed solutions. Key points 🧵 :

trying to think more about how genetic architecture of a trait in a population can change between environments. eg, mainly additive effects in env_1, mainly cytonuclear effects in env_2. anyone have favorite papers touching on this idea? #evolution #genetics

Do you think about range expansions, dispersal evolution, invasions?? Check out our new preprint: "Environmental gradients mediate dispersal evolution during biological invasions" doi.org/10.1101/2023...

Really excited for Sasha Bishop's defense tomorrow! If you are interested in global change, resurrection experiments, and multivariate trait evolution, you will enjoy this talk!!

Anyone have any experience with Bayesian hurdle models where there are *two* sequential Bernoulli processes, followed by a Poisson?

New record: 24 referee invitations on a single ms, with only one accepted. And this is for a "big name journal". If you submit manuscripts, you must review manuscripts. How many? See formula below. (Yes, resubmissions and revisions count in the number of submissions.)

If you have two or more bug species in one shot, let's see em (you have to look carefully to find #2 here 😉)

Siegmund, Moeller, Eckhart, & Geber leverage long-term demographic observations and experiments in the winter annual Clarkia xantiana to test if bet hedging explains germination patterns in the California winter annual plant. Read now ahead of print! www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

A few excellent recent papers on important and often misunderstood population parameters in genetics. A short 🧵:

Clark, PNAS 2023 (C23) argued that people’s social status is largely determined by genetic variation. Here, we show these claims are unsubstantiated & that C23 tells us nothing about the contribution of genetics to status @jedidiahcarlson.com @arbelharpak.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New postdoc position available! Evolution of mutation rates! 🚨🚨🚨 Please apply, but also feel free to get in touch with me--or past and present members of the lab--directly. (RTs [or whatevs] appreciated) https://indiana.peopleadmin.com/postings/19856

Read now ahead of print: Dittmar and Schemske conducted a multi-year reciprocal transplant study over a microgeographic edaphic gradient, showing that local adaptation varies among years due to variability in annual rainfall. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Wide-footed Treehopper looking cute as hell. A beautifully diverse group, treehoppers feed on plant sap, with many producing honeydew that's eaten by their ant mutualist pals. #insects #BackyardNaturalHistory 🌿

damn UT Austin has a pretty sick faculty roster

Theo's first camping trip (in the backyard 😂)

A new wasp species for the yard today -- the Beewolf 🐺 (Philanthus gibbosus most likely), foraging on Ontario Aster. Females hunt bees, which they paralyze with venom before dragging back to their tunnel for their young to (eventually) feast on. #backyardNaturalHistory #insects #phonemacro

been doing a bit of epistemic trespassing recently, and ran across this incisive quote from Lancelot Hogben in 1938: "eugenics became identified with a system of ingenious excuses for combating the amelioration of working-class conditions" 🔥

Gonna try to post (near) daily #backyardNaturalHistory from our 1/10th acre lot in Minneapolis. A combination of sci-comm, cultivating a daily nature practice, and advertising for lawn --> habitat conversion

A classic autumnal scene: Bombus impatiens snoozing on Smooth Blue Aster. Unlike almost all other insects, Bombus are heterothermic -- tho usually functioning as ectotherms, they can elevate their body temperature endogenously when needed. #backyardNaturalHistory

My little mariposa at the Monarch festival yesterday in Minneapolis

When folks ask me to recommend sci-fi, the Three Body Problem trilogy is what I tell them will be most assuredly mind-blowing. Incredible stuff

Oh to be the first bee on the flower in the morning, getting that fresh nectar and pollen

Not sure who needs to see this but I just realized GOOGLE DOCS HAS LINE NUMBERS NOW

Parker's Thread-waisted Wasp (Prionyx parkeri) waiting for the sun's warmth this morning in the backyard prairie. Females paralyze grasshoppers and bury them in burrows to feed their developing young 🤘 🌍🧪

Throwback to when I worked with birds 😂 #ecology 🌍🧪

Pretty cool how Zootopia confronts the hereditarian narrative so cleverly. Obviously lots of kids movies have morals, but is this the only one that addresses genetics?

You can find so many different insects sipping from the extra-floral nectaries on Partridge Pea (Chamaecrista fasciculata). Watching my Cf patch while drinking my coffee in the morning is prime natural history entertainment

Monarch migration is in full swing here in Minneapolis. They love taking long drinks at the Liatris bar

Re-upping this bc you should totally work with Seema. She is awesome!

very cool work from Peschel and Shaw in AmNat, testing Fisher's Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection *in the field*! turns out, intergenerational environmental variation matters a lot... www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1...