Was reading a paper and recalled how after giving a plenary at my home society, career high point, an NAS fellow said something to the effect of ”I had low expectations but that was actually interesting”. Thanks! 🤣 Those are the kinds of expectations I can hopefully continue to meet!

Science is dominated by male native-English-speakers with elevated affluence. It's a demographic that makes up less than 3% of the total global population. If someone wants to keep politics out of science, they are comfortable enforcing the status quo that benefits them (a small privileged group).

SquidSim is the coolest package - it let's you build complex hierarchical data structures and then simulate data from the world you create. The best tool for doing proper power analyses and testing how well your models can uncover the 'truth'. I've been recommending it to everyone!

Interested in simulating the kind of data that you might commonly find in evolutionary and ecological studies? Then we have the R package for you - squidSim!! Check our new preprint: ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

As a final addition, my departmental colleague (@batsrkul.bsky.social) Prof. Erin Gillam and I finally got our poster presentation recorded and up. Just a couple of months late! We looked at average explanatory power across studies in animal behavior. youtu.be/nXZ7yIARokE #ABS2025 #evolution

New preprint out from the lab, including @rroyaute.bsky.social: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... In this we test what we refer to as the "standard model" of behavioral variation. This was inspired by recent work identifying intra-genotypic variation as a major contributor to "individuality". 1/

Following up on the #ABS2025 meeting, our lab's presentations are now available on youtube: www.youtube.com/@Dochtermann...

How do overlapping identities shape access and inclusion in ecology? 🌍 Our new report highlights why intersectionality matters and how it helps build a fairer, more inclusive discipline. Read the BES report: https://f.mtr.cool/xjqiwpgdtp 🌎🧪

Wonderful recognition for a great group of people!

What are folks preferred languages for agent/individually based models? I had a grant criticized for proposing to use R. I know how to use R and could brute force on our cluster. A reviewer didn't think this was "real programming" (minor point but annoying). 1/3 #evobio #evolution 🧪

Sticking with the classics this weekend… but, also, maybe they forgot?

Huge thank you @aeastephens.bsky.social‬ for initiating the TrendsTalk series 'Disability in ecology and evolution' in T.R.E.E. providing visibility for disabled researchers in #Ecology & #Evolution to make our field more #inclusive www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

Something else I mentioned in my workshop this morning on how to develop a sustainable academic writing practice: YOU NEED TO READ. A LOT. And not only read, but ABSORB the knowledge and insights derived from others' scholarship. This will help you find YOUR OWN contribution.

Still buzzing from the society meeting! 🧠💬 From cool talks & social mixers to winning 1st poster 🏆 AND becoming grad rep for my home society, what a ride! Upward & onward🚀 #AcademicTwitter #ABS2025

Wonderful #ABS2025 meeting! Great to see really exciting science & catch up with great people. Four members of the lab came to the meeting this year: one new attendee (Zach Sweep), two-time attendee (Katy Takumi), many-time attendee (MA Sekhar), and me. We all had a great time, thank you ABS!

This was a very nice talk and a lot of turtle rearing!

Concerned about the potential impacts of how taxonomic biases in our research affect the broader generalizations we draw? If not, maybe we should be. If you saw @sekharma.bsky.social 's poster at ABS, you can find the pre-print here: doi.org/10.32942/X2X... w/ @itchyshin.bsky.social #ABS2025

Every single time: Email from European colleagues: Hey, lets talk about project blah-blah. Response a couple of hours later due to time zones: Sounds great, here's where we left it. Automatic response: I'm on holiday for the next 23.7 weeks and won't be checking my email during this time. Cheers!

A coauthor advised I take out em dashes from a manuscript we're about to submit because he doesn't want reviewers to think we used an LLM. Boo. (but I did it)

Our paper on disentangling assortative mating and indirect genetic effects in empirical datasets has just been accepted in @jevbio.bsky.social ! It has been a long process (5 years in the making!) and I am very proud of the result 🥳 academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-...

🧪 National Science Foundation update alert ⚠️⚠️ NSF just made a **lot** of updates to its "priorities" page. It's mixed news. Some good. Some bad. ❌ Not welcome: NSF is now also terminating "environmental justice" awards. The highlighted text here is new: www.nsf.gov/updates-on-p... 1/8... 🧵

Really amazing paper showing a phenomenon that we knew had to be the case mathematically but which hadn't, until now, been clearly empirically demonstrated. This is one for the textbooks. (we read the preprint in a lab meeting awhile back so I'm excited to see it out)

I wonder… I think I can pull it off.

Well done Juliette Frappier-Lecomte for this great article which concludes your MSc with the chipmunk team!

I use AutoHotKey to do some very minimal keyboard remapping for specific programs in windows (e.g. my caps lock key would fill in "<-" while in RStudio). I just got a mac for the first time and found some AHK alternatives but does anyone have a favorite? Thanks!

What a fantastic project and opportunity!

I’ve written over 60 peer reviewed scientific journal articles. I’ve written over 300 news stories and op-Ed’s for media outlets all over the world. I’m working on my second and third book. Here’s how I use AI like ChatGPT to become a better writer: 🧵

Just found out a common sign of LLM "writing" is the use of em dashes. My earliest published use was in 2009. Apparently, I'm an LLM.

My PhD Adviser, Steve Jenkins, passed away in October. Steve was an amazing mentor who was exceptionally conscientious in how he conducted his research. He was honestly humble and always curious. He was also just a very kind person. He is missed. In memoriam: academic.oup.com/jmammal/adva... 1/4

I'm having to write a self-inflating 300 word biography. So gross. I'm at 130 words and I think I'm done for the day.

1/35 New paper out! @jamesTstroud and I dive into why long-term studies are crucial for understanding evolution. They reveal processes impossible to detect in short timescales and capture rare events that transform our understanding of evolutionary dynamics. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1. For the past thirty years I've had the best job in the world. 
I've had the opportunity to follow my curiosity; explore the workings of nature and society; mentor students and junior colleagues in the same process; and teach generations of students about it all.

🧪 Do folks have recommendations for peer review training resources? I'm having an assignment in a grad class be to do a review but, in putting that together, I realized it is something I fumbled through until comfortable. Do you have materials you give students and postdocs? 1/2 #ecology #evolution

I'm teaching, for the 1st time, a course on meta-analyses. While, hopefully, good for the students, this has also been very useful for me since my work in meta-analyses has largely been ad hoc. In case it is useful to others, all course materials are available at: osf.io/y7xzv/ go to "Files" 1/2

A proxy for how silly our approach to science is: I often include a clear "limitations" section in papers (on the FIRST draft). On multiple occasions, people have commented: "Nice paper, I see where you were responding to reviewers." Nope. It's called being a responsible scientist. Good grief.

Speed running to (failed) pariah state status.

Firings happening right now at the NSF.

The bigots in charge are using this as their chance to push out every queer (esp trans), non-white, and disabled person in science that they can. White cis women shouldn't hold their breath either.

Quislings.

Check out the new preprint from @sekharma.bsky.social! Also with @batsrkul.bsky.social (new to Bluesky!). Sekhar did a deep dive into which parts of an agonistic interaction are influenced by direct and indirect effects, from the physical to acoustic components.

these people are segregationists and their position is that no one who isn’t a white man is qualified to do skilled work of any kind

I will say this: if you use the toys of rent-seeking billionaires to do your writing for you, I promise I will never care about a single thing you write or think, ever

@sekharma.bsky.social and I have a new preprint up about the use of mixed-effects models to examine social buffering. Check it out!

Passive aggressive comments between authors on a many-author paper are a treat for third parties. Thanks folks, I laughed.

I've posted it several times but the deadline is this Friday: encourage undergraduate students you're working with to apply to this fantastic program! We've got amazing researchers and opportunities in organismal biology, biology education, applied ecology, evolutionary ecology and more!

I've been compulsively checking research.gov for the last two weeks. That's healthy, right?

I was honored to be asked and give a plenary at the 2024 ABS meeting. This talk was a lot of fun: it let me reflect on my career, where some neat recent work fits in, and where I think we're going. Hope some of you find it interesting! youtu.be/vElss6p7SSM #Evolution #evobio #evolsky #Ecology 🧪

Each January, @asab.org journal Animal Behaviour publishes its 'Guidelines for the ethical treatment of nonhuman animals in behavioural research and teaching': www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Please read and implement. #AnimalEthics #AnimalBehaviour

I have a PhD position open to start fall semester 2025! The position will include investigations of the structure of both phenotypic (behavioral) plasticity and genetic variation in behavior as well as lots of opportunity to develop your own project. #Evolution #evobio #evolsky #Ecology 🧪