Cooperation is a universal feature of complex systems, from the origins of life and microbiomes to societies. What universal patterns can be found in these systems? Here's our new @pnas.org paper. @jordipinero.bsky.social @artemyte.bsky.social @sfiscience.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

New round of NSF GRFP declines without review. If you were affected: 1) Write NSF 2) Write your Congressperson 3) CC us at [email protected] so we can compile + follow up Details and template at grant-witness.us/grfp-letter This is the link to the post: bsky.app/profile/noam...

New paper out - fun collaboration with @wcratcliff.bsky.social & led by the wonderful Tony Burnetti! IMO, a rare clear example identifying the mechanism underlying priority effects at macroevolutionary scales. Also, continuing to justify my PhD from a plant lab 🍃 www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Very cool! I’ll have to watch when I’m not chaperoning a field trip of rambunctious 5th graders!

New paper out! Here's a puzzle: phototrophy, the ability to use light for energy, is one of life's great innovations. It evolved early and transformed the biosphere. But it evolved 2x. Why not just once, why not more? Our work suggests the answer is priority effects. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Dang, love this idea. That could be a legit game changer.

Congrats to all who got their Simons Foundation E&E preproposals greenlit! While none of mine went through (no biggie- good ideas still percolated by stirring the pot), I'm curious to see what they were after.

We’re getting so many journal submissions from people who think ‘it kinda works’ is the standard to aim for.

Hah, I guess we need to evolve butts first!

Full house for @wcratcliff.bsky.social’s 45-min summary of 15 years of experimental evolution (including 8 years of MuLTEE) @pasteur.fr

Working on an “origin of animals” review paper with @thibautbrunet.bsky.social and Nicole King in Paris. Andy Knoll is joining us on Zoom from chilly Boston!

My next door neighbor gave me this custom-made bumper sticker. I’ll be honest, I don’t fully understand it, but it’s going on the car

I've spent the few days writing a 'mega multicellularity' lecture, integrating philosophy, paleontology, comparative cell bio, experimental evolution and theory into a (hopefully) comprehensive picture. It's 105 slides long and could easily be 200. It's kinda making me want to write a book.

Cow Tools! We have lived alongside cows for nearly 10,000 years. We breed them and exploit them It is now, only now, that we have discovered THEY CAN USE TOOLS Here I describe our study (paper) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... in @currentbiology.bsky.social with @auersperga.bsky.social

Nature highlighted @kaitong25.bsky.social's 'Behind the Paper' blog post in their end of year round up: communities.springernature.com/posts/top-po... The funny thing is, they told us "Posts over 1,000 words have reduced engagement- yours is over 3,000 words, please reduce length". We kept it long.

Writing a 2.5h mega lecture for my upcoming visit to Institut Pasteur. What a fun project/opportunity. Also extremely looking forward to spending a week in Paris during my sabbatical. You can see where my head is at!

This is a beautiful paper examining the molecular genetics of facultative multicellularity in a marine black yeast. I also love that they figure out the ecological context for the behavior (MC form when in sponges, where there are nutrients, & uni when starving!). www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Check out this growth difference in just 20 days! I've been feeding these flytraps with synthetic time release fertilizer in their traps (nutricote). I can't avoid seeing them as Arnold in his peak steroid days...

I took the first real vacation I have had in years this winter break- didn't open my laptop for over a full week (might be the first time I have done that in...20 years?). Back in the saddle this week and really enjoying editing a paper. Easy to lose sight of the fun when chronically overcommitted!

Great new paper! Many stinging wasps, bees, and ants have controlled the sex of their developing eggs for millions of year using an ancient segment of their genome- always the same segment- but what's weird is, *the exact DNA sequence of that segment doesn't seem to matter*.

I feel this one in my soul

Leaving my #NSF office for the last time, again

These guys are starting to size up nicely

🚨 What if evolution is the ”law”… and networks are the machines that do the work? In this paper (just published) I try to formalize how living systems are non-equilibrium, information-processing, adaptive matter. With a great biological flavor! 🧪🌐🌍🧬🦠 👉 iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1... 🧵 1/

We got yeast chihuahuas and yeast Great Danes out here evolving from the yeast wolves!

FINALLY GOT IT! I've taken well over 100,000 pelican pictures, maybe 200,000. Over 20,000 the past month alone. Today, I snagged "The One That Got Away" In my infinite optimism, I give you, a very rare: Fish success story. 🪶

Honestly, this is pretty cool!

🔥🔥🔥🔥

NSF - Forced reorg - POs down ~ 40% (DRP, most rotators not renewed, retirements) - Forced move (and we have to pack and clean) to a building with no furniture, little to no conference space for panels, inadequate 🛜, …) I personally love the boxes they gave us for packing. “Details matter” 🙃

@sayantandatta.bsky.social brought some Swiss culture to our lab after his month-long visit to @dudinlab.bsky.social's lab. I mean, other than the badass expansion microscopy chops, that is.

Awwwww yeeeeaaaah!

1/28 New preprint up, which I think is the best theoretical idea I've ever had. We asked a simple question: what are the costs of investment into non-reproductive somatic cells? Turns out these costs decrease with the *logarithm* of organism size! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

lol, I’d nominate this for @thelouvreof.bsky.social in the old school Science Twitter wing

Just preprinted what I think is the best theoretical insight I've ever had, which I believe fundamentally changes how we understand the evolution of germ-soma specialization. Hopefully the preprint will be up tomorrow and I can do a deep dive!

“The only reason I don’t have this funding is because my last name is Rodriguez.” MOSAIC checked many of the boxes of the administration — but that didn't matter. It was terminated, and left grantees scrambling Next installment of American Science, Shattered: www.statnews.com/2025/12/08/t...

Flytraps are crushing it- looking forward to some big bog gardening this spring!

Tony Burnetti and I recorded this super fun podcast in which we rank evolution's craziest adaptations. I think it turned out great! I might make this an exercise for one of my final evolution lectures next time I teach (dynamically rank / debate in class!). www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSum...

New preprint from our lab www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...! Andrea Dos Santos and Clément Vulin combine experiments and models showing how adding glucose can strengthen negative interactions between microbial species. This can be used in tandem with antibiotic treatment to inhibit pathogens!

One of my favorite preprints of the year from the great @mollyschumer.bsky.social. A foamy virus that makes things sparkle, now up on TWiEVO episode 120 for some podcast peer review www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T65...

Now, what you hear is not a test, I'm rapping to the beat And me, the groove, and my friends are gonna try to move your feet You see, I am Pontifex and I'd like to say hello

In which I fruitlessly beg NIH grant-seeking folks to focus on what is actually important. drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2025/11/21/i...

We just released a new major version of TrackMate (v8), the cell and organelle tracking plugin of Fiji. It ships many new features, detailed below, but that are articulated around the following:

Epic paper!!

Does anyone have any recs for good paper reading software? Something that allows me to listen to a paper like its a podcast, so I could digest papers while driving/walking/gardening?

Super excited for this project and grateful to the John Templeton Foundation for support!

Setting up for the 10 year qbios anniversary professional networking event (party)!

Dang, hard disagree. The best papers to write and read are works of art, not merely a list of data and statements. Don’t let LLMs take this away too, for gods sake.

Congratulations to Joe Felsenstein on being awarded the 2026 Mendel Medal!