Roll call on Simons Foundation Ecology & Evolution LOIs. Anyone get the nod? Here's an overview of our declined LOI on detecting repeated adaptation across 110,000 sequenced samples from >300 species of plants, animals, and fungi

Glad we have this kind of leader in Canada...sobering and realistic take on where we're at.

Just bumping this up again -- I'll be making a decision on who to nominate for the internal competition on Jan 21st, so please get in touch ASAP if you're interested.

Want to study the genomics of repeated adaptation with data from hundreds of species? New funding for non-Canadians @ grad or postdoc level. Internal competition at UCalgary with very short deadline so please get in touch ASAP!! sshrc-crsh.canada.ca/en/funding/o...

I actually tell them this -- use it as a study aid, and if you're not confident you can assess what AI is saying as correct/incorrect, that's a sign you need to study that more

Will it go away if we ignore it? We need to train them to think critically alongside it. Still trying to figure out how, but I don't see any viable alternative. Unfortunately, training them to use AI effectively requires small class sizes and lots of interaction, which nobody wants to pay for

I think we want to push students to use AI competently. So if they're presenting, reduce the presentation time and increase the time where we ask questions and the students need to demonstrate comprehension and synthesis.

I'm doing regular practice writing assignments (minor participation marks for completion) throughout the term where AI can be used, and then an in-class writing assignment towards the end of the year, where AI will not be available.

I'm declining to review for Nature Communications Biology. This is for-profit publishing attempting to control too much of the "market" and I'm not supporting it.

I recently moved my lab to Purdue University and am looking for graduate students. We are working at the interface of population genomics, quantitative genetics and functional genomics to understand how plants adapt to extreme environments. Reach out if you would like to discuss potential projects.

Wait, we're supposed to be reading them?

We're excited to be recruiting an NIH funded postdoc to work in the Coop lab at UC Davis. We're specifically interested in candidates who are want to work at the intersection of human genetics, GWAS, and population genetics modeling. Please RT

I'll be reviewing applications for this in a few days, so there's still time to get touch if you're interested.

It's always fun to work with Tom! In this one, we ponder how the answer to this question can tells us something about the kind of architecture underlying adaptation

We are searching for a Forest Ecophysiologist (tenure track Assistant or Associate Professor) to join the Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences, University of British Columbia Faculty of Forestry. Please share! Details are here: ubc.wd10.myworkdayjobs.com/ubcfacultyjobs

I'll start reviewing applications in a little over 3 weeks for this PhD position. You could be doing fieldwork here! (or focus only on dry lab work if that floats your boat)

University of Calgary is hiring a tier I CRC professorship in crop genomics. Come work in one of the most beautiful corners of the world! careers.ucalgary.ca/jobs/1668764...

Today 14 scientific societies in #ecology #evolution and #marineScience are publishing the results of a survey that finds negative impacts of federal policies on food security, flood mitigation, infectious disease preparedness, and wildlife conservation: 🧪👩‍🔬 www.firsthandaccounts.org/impacts/2025...

Field work is so tiresome. I have to climb up every time to ski back down.

I'm looking to recruit a PhD student to study patterns of local adaptation and introgression across the spruce hybrid zone in the Rockies near Calgary. Projects can include field work, bioinformatics, pop gen theory, or comparison to plant/ conifer species yeamanlab.weebly.com/uploads/5/7/...

Really great to see this out -- and so interesting to see strong signals of adaptation to North vs. South facing slopes across a single valley in spruce!

Miles gave a fantastic talk about this last year at SSE, I'm looking forward to reading the published version!

Temperatures are soaring, and there's a limit to what plants can handle. Scientists are figuring out how to engineer crops to take the heat so they can get into the kitchen. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/12/c...

If your grant application needs some justification on why we should study adaptation in wild plant species... www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

🧪 “There’s just no moths on that sheet.” @tessairini.bsky.social writes in the @theguardian.com about #InsectDecline with #DanJanzen, #WinnieHallwachs and the caterpillars of the Area de Conservacion Guanacaste #ACG in #CostaRica @gdfcf.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The official program for the 2025 Ecological & Evolutionary Genomics GRS is now live! www.grc.org/ecological-a... Poster submissions are still open through June 14, 2025. @jcbnunez.bsky.social

🚨 There is still time to submit a poster for our upcoming Gordon Research Seminar in Ecological & Evolutionary Genomics: Elucidating the Evolutionary Dynamics of Adaptation in Fluctuating Environments! 🧬 Apply now 👉 www.grc.org/ecological-a...

Are you interested in the genomic basis of repeated adaptation? The RepAdapt group now has >70 members working to re-run their whole genome shotgun datasets through a common SNP calling pipeline, sharing VCFs, and working together to analyse data. Please contact me if you'd like to contribute!

We still have a few spots left for the GRC Ecological & Evolutionary Genomics meeting in Tuscany this summer (July 13-18). Lots of great speakers already lined up, and we'd love to hear from you! www.grc.org/ecological-a...

#PostDoc in #Montpellier on mussel transmissible cancers #TransCan These weird cancers have undergone genome doublings and aneuploidisation You will play with PacBio and Nanopore data Join the #HyperCan team in a joyfull environment. #MarEvol #PopGen #MusselsAreCool euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/333894

And this may generate perverse incentives. If I'm paid the same regardless of the quality of my review, then this incentivizes just submitting a "lowest possible effort" review. More hours for same pay = lower $/hour, making it feel like putting in the extra effort isn't worth it.

Really excited to see this work, led by Mike Grundler, published! It's a new method for inferring the geographic locations of shared genetic ancestors. In the paper, we and use it to infer the geographic history of human genetic ancestry www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I'm excited to be working as an associate editor at Genetics, and looking forward to reading your submissions!

The crush of new grant cancellations hasn't let up. If your grant was terminated (or your app was pulled) please use this Google Form👇 to submit details for tracking purposes. Multiple advocacy efforts are moving forward, but we must must must know more about what grants were cancelled and why.

This looks really cool!

We had our 40th annual Darwin Lecture last Friday at University of Calgary, given by @jrossibarra.bsky.social and it was a banger! If you have a big public lecture, he gives a great one...Thanks again for coming Jeff!

Very nice location for discussing evolution!

Join us in Tuscany this summer for a Gordon Conference aimed at the cutting edge of how we use genomics to answer fundamental questions in ecology and evolution! Lots of great speakers already and we'd love to add you to the list www.grc.org/ecological-a...

Thanks yes I've been meaning to test this one on our datasets, haven't gotten around to it yet. Nice idea! Will work on this

Yes we tried pSONIC and found it improved things calls over short phylogenetic distances (e.g. within brassicas), but not much over larger ones (probably because of extensive rearrangement?)

What is state-of-the-art for orthology inference? Anything in the works we should be watching for? Have been using orthofinder2 and most interested in maximizing accuracy and number of genes with calls (not computation speed). Methods incorporating alpha-fold predictions? Synteny/collinearity?

New plant adaptation research from @samyeaman.bsky.social and his team: ucalgary.ca/news/plant-a...

Compare these results with Jim Whiting's paper on genes with signatures of repeated local adaptation, where they tended to be more central in co-expression networks (high pleiotropy), also consistent with migration-selection theory!! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Gabriele's paper is out in PNAS! He found a large number of genes with repeated sweeps in multiple plant species. Most interestingly: they tend to be peripheral in co-expression networks (low pleiotropy), consistent with mig-sel theory!! @gabnocgenomics.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Excited to hear that @mikeduncan.bsky.social is firing up Revolutions podcast again (and very much enjoying the Martian intermission)

Wow -- I can't believe this is the first time I've heard of this. Really concerning and glad to see leadership here

I’m proud to join more than 30 colleagues today in sharing our analysis of potential risks from “mirror life”. We summarize our findings in a @science.org article, and in greater detail in a 300pg technical report: Article: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Report: purl.stanford.edu/cv716pj4036

Registration is now open for the Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) on Ecological and Evolutionary Genomics in Tuscany, co-chaired by me and @jcbnunez.bsky.social! www.grc.org/ecological-a...

I'm looking for a new grad student interested in microbiology of ancient groundwaters, a fascinating journey into an enigmatic environment with opportunities for fundamental discovery and relevance to groundwater remediation. Contact me if you like fieldwork, mesocosm experiments and metagenomics.