Very sad to hear of the passing of Ed Kravitz. An amazing scientist and a fantastic person.

The New York Times piece today about US science is terrible and wrong—in many ways. I could write a whole article about this, but as one example: “To close observers, the original crisis began well before any of this…” No. I’m a close observer of science, and this is incorrect.

5/ Some wings have evolved strategies to help reduce damage resulting from collisions. For example, we learned a few years ago that wasp wings have a flexible joint that acts like a reversible crumple zone, allowing the wing tip to easily bend out of the way when it hits things...

3/ Sound up on this video 🔊🔊🔊, and you'll hear the characteristic wingbeat frequency of this foraging bumblebee as it ducks in and out of a flower patch. But you'll also hear the raspy tone of wing tip collisions as the bee inadvertently gets too close to the flower petals.

Asking BlueSky for help: For a review, I am trying to accurately credit the first paper that measured pairwise 3D distances between 2 pieces of DNA on the same chromosome (or cosmid). Is Trask 1989 the first? I know of earlier single-locus papers (1982). www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

ADD YOUR THOUGHTS ON LIMITING STUDENT VISA TO FOUR YEARS Comment period ends September 29th www.federalregister.gov/documents/20... 1/2

"More professors in the United States have been fired for controversial views in the past week than any other week in all of American history." www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

UPDATE: The 2025-2026 list of faculty and postdoc positions in ecology and evolutionary biology is out! Be sure to check out this active and helpful community run resources! docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

So proud of Jess Jones, an HHMI Gilliam Fellow, for defending her PhD today in @tuthill.bsky.social's lab! Jess was one of my lab's 1st hires in 2018. She was also 1st author of one of our first papers: elifesciences.org/articles/57258. I wouldn’t be where I am today without her contributions.

Now out in @nature.com: Our study discovering a neural circuit in Drosophila that predictively inhibits proprioceptor axons during voluntary leg movements, such as walking and grooming. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Don't make me tap the sign Large language models are slot machines that pay out in confidence, not information If the information is bad (it often is) no one cares But if the confidence was bad no one would use it 🤔 Luckily for the compulsive use companies want to promote, it's always confident

One underdiscussed part of the shutdown fight is that Trump has created an impression that he controls the whole government, so if it shuts down and he has to blame Democrats for not giving him money he needs, it pops that entire aura. If the dictator can't run things people will blame the dictator.

Not sorry enough, Disney

I like this piece, and I like doing sci comm. But I also think it’s not fair to demand every subject matter expert also be public-facing. Some people are really good at doing and that’s enough. We need more economically viable jobs for full-time sci comm to bridge findings from experts to public.

Like i know its horrible for so many reasons but the fact that it looks so bloody cheap is really sending me

new pape from our lab, led by the indefatigable @chrisjdallmann.bsky.social. i am very proud of this one.

Also, it makes zero sense that the president could be immune from all prosecution but still sue people like a private citizen.

Whenever I see cactus blooms, I tickle them. 💅🏻🌸 Thigmonastic stamens - rapid, touch induced movement for pollination. #plantjoy #iamabotanist

“Trump's Harvard cuts threaten a giant in the biomedical research community: A database about the tiny fruit fly” The FlyBase grant is run through the Perrimon lab at HMS, so when Trump cut off 100% of our NIH $, it causes existential risk to the entire community www.nbcnews.com/science/scie...

Look, they do not have the capacity or competence to do this at the scale they want you to fear they do, and your fear is precisely their greatest force multiplier. Everybody who is cowed into silence by their threats allows them a smaller pool to focus on.

Question for photogs of a certain age: Any tips for correcting chromatic aberration while wearing reading glasses? I have cheap reading glasses, and they add chromatic aberration when I'm viewing/editing photos. For now I'm turning my head to see if the ca comes from the photo or the readers.

Got a sudden burst of incredible aurora just now! The clouds came over pretty quickly, but managed to get a few panicked shots as we were all freaking out 😅

Undoing the harm wrought by the current regime would take an equally aggressive and even authoritarian approach. What does your read of the Democratic Party suggest about their likely willingness to fix everything if they are restored to power?

The intervening years may be quite tough with limitations on the number of funded investigators and grants. I wish I did not feel so strongly that this is actually the purpose of the new policies... /fin

I'm making a collage of Arabidopsis habitats for a seminar. If you have photos to share, such as these iconic ones from @mexpositoalonso.bsky.social & @coevolution.bsky.social, please send to [email protected]. Please let me also know how to attribute them. 🙏🙏🙏🙏

This is a disaster if the EU doesn't follow up by doubling the budget 😬🧪

I absolutely condemn the killing this week. But let’s be clear: Turning Point USA and its allies have been harassing professors across the nation for years. 4/

Though it’s traumatic for me to bring this up, I was targeted by a group allied with Turning Point USA in 2018, with the help of Tucker Carlson on Fox. My home address circulated online and I got death threats. 1/

1) Young conservative activist held many well-attended events on many college campuses debating left-wing arguments 2) Campuses are rigidly orthodox places that don't allow conservative ideas, let alone open debate These are contradictory! 1 disproves 2! Reason has gone out the window with this.

Join us! The Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History is hiring a curatorial associate! For more information : careers.amnh.org/postings/4529

🪰 How do dozens of tiny fly muscles cooperate to move a leg? We’re excited to share the first 3D, data-driven musculoskeletal model of Drosophila legs based on Hill-type muscles, running in OpenSim and MuJoCo simulation environments. Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2509.06426

(1/7) New preprint from Rajan lab! 🧠🤖 @ryanpaulbadman1.bsky.social & Riley Simmons-Edler show–through cog sci, neuro & ethology–how an AI agent with fewer ‘neurons’ than an insect can forage, find safety & dodge predators in a virtual world. Here's what we built Preprint: arxiv.org/pdf/2506.06981

Do you like cichlids? Fossils? Fossil cichlids? Would you like to study them as part of a graduate degree at the University of Michigan, joining an NSF-funded project? Get in touch.

Help @thetransmitter.bsky.social and @neuromatch.bsky.social understand what early-career neuroscientists need. Take just a few minutes to fill out the survey: www.thetransmitter.org/early-career... #neuroskyence

New paper on male bumblebee spatial movement strategies: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Thanks to journalist @felixschmidtner.bsky.social for bringing the plight of the key scientific database @flybase.bsky.social to a German/European audience www.faz.net/aktuell/wiss...

New #miRNA paper from Lai lab!! 🧬🔥 some think this field, despite recent Nobel to Ambros and Ruvkun, doesn't have much surprises left. but, do we EVEN KNOW WHAT a miRNA precursor LOOKS LIKE? we found some conserved miRNA hairpins up to 10x longer than suspected. this is mir-12, just bonkers! 1/n

Awful take by @ezrakleinbot.bsky.social. I’m against all political violence. The assassin should be tried and imprisoned. But kirk did not “practice politics the right way”. He invited violence against LGBTQ and other folk. He doxxed faculty to silence speech. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/o...

Honoring democracy means eschewing terror as a political tool, but it also means taking people’s words and ideas seriously as a reflection of their goals and personal character.

'All paths lead to water' - my newest aerial embroidery, inspired by the grounds of Antony House, Cornwall! I loved the radiating paths through the trees leading to the water edge so here's my take on the landscape... with kayakers! Now available here: victoriaroserichards.co.uk/collection/a...

Just for fun, I'm going to give you some clips of the hate mail I got from being placed on Kirk's TPUSA Dangerous Professor list. Buckle up:

Charlie Kirk was a bad faith, incendiary, anti-democracy white supremacist, wtf is going on!?

We are not safe on Utah education campuses. State laws allow open carry guns and our politicians fan the flames of hate and division. The USA will never be a “free” country until something is actually done about gun violence! I fear for where we are heading 😢

Job Alert! The University of Tübingen is hiring a FULL PROFESSOR (W3) in FUNCTIONAL ECOLOGY! Come and join our institute, and maybe our new excellence clusters @terra-cluster.org and @greenrobust.de. @gfoesoc.bsky.social @britishecologicalsociety.org @ecologicalsociety.bsky.social Please repost!

Stephen Jay Gould was born OTD in 1941. “Organisms are not billiard balls, propelled by simple and measurable external forces to predictable new positions on life's pool table.... Organisms have a history that constrains their future in myriad, subtle ways.” 🦫🦋🐋🌱🧠🗃️🧪#HistSTM #PhilSci #EvoBio

A good reason for faculty to join the @aaup.org , which fights for academic freedom and works to defend against attacks like this.

And what does this even mean? Of course, Texas A&M doesn't honor academic freedom. They just grossly violated it. And this has *zero* to do with abiding by federal laws. If anything, it is running afoul of the United States Constitution.

It is also abetting an authoritarian push that is taking all of our freedom.

Texas A&M should be ashamed of itself. It is encouraging cultural revolution-type snitching that is completely inconsistent with free inquiry and, frankly, being a grown-up that can be exposed to stuff that makes you uncomfortable. It's not only violating academic freedom, it's making kids dumb.

[Washington D.C, USA] Sticker in reference to the man arrested for throwing a sandwich at an ICE cop in D.C, 3 weeks ago