#MicroSky 🌎🐸🐢🐍🦎🦠🧫

Last call for abstracts! Join us at the Global Amphibian & Reptile Disease conference 🐸🐍🦎🐢🌎🦠🧬🧪

If you are a student whose NSF GRFP application was returned without review for vague 'eligibility' reasons: 1) Let your department chair & Graduate School know. Encourage them to contact NSF & congress 2) Write to your congressional reps. 3) Write to [email protected] to request re-consideration;

Just a little over a week left to submit your abstract for #GARD26! 🧪🌎🧬🦠 🐸 Don’t miss out on networking with other herpetologists around the #salamander capital of the world!

Registration is open! 🧪🌎

Calling all herpers, ecologists, & #conservation researchers! 🧪🌏 🌟Join us in Knoxville! #GARD26 #microbiology #disease #herpetology #ecology

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We want to hear about your research! Spread the word and apply by Feb 1, 2026 🌎🐸🦠

Come be my colleague! Our college at RIT 🐅 has recently secured funding for four new professorships including one in #ecology & #evolution thanks to @simonsfoundation.org! ✨🧬🎉🧪🌎 www.rit.edu/news/simons-...

Are you a researcher studying amphibian & reptile disease? We want to hear about your research! Come join us at #GARD26 in Knoxville 🌎 Please share! #conservation #herpetology

Applications for travel grants to #GARD26 are due Nov. 1st! We encourage diverse participation especially by those with limited financial resources and early career researchers. Join us in Knoxville! 🐸🐍🐢🌎 Apply: utconferences.eventsair.com/third-gard-c... #herpetology #amphibian #reptile

For thousands of years, humans have harnessed microbes to ferment beer and bread. But ecologist Rob Dunn asks: Who’s really in charge of this relationship? buff.ly/BZyFzN6

🌍 Languages of Life | Línguas da Vida | Bahasa Kehidupan 🗣️🌱 Biodiversity doesn’t speak only English. 🌳🐒 If species cross borders, our words should too. New paper in @ConLetters : why saving life also means using more languages 🔗https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/conl.13139

Please share with anyone who cares about NSF support for graduate students and take 30 seconds to sign and leave a comment. The deadline for the 2025 Graduate Research Fellowship Program is about one month away and literally no one can apply. #NSFGRFP jasonjwilliamsny.github.io/grfp2025/

An update to the Zoo Sphere of Influence model was recently published in the Biological Conservation journal (tinyurl.com/zoosphere) This model, first conceived in 2023, originally set out to replace the 50-year-old perception of zoos and aquariums... 🌎1/4

My amazing @ritscience.bsky.social student, Emma, attended Princeton EEB scholars program last week. So proud of her! She is looking for #PhD programs this cycle so if you are looking for a student that can bridge field, lab, and computational biology… she is the PERFECT person for your lab! 👩🏼‍🔬🧬✨

Come join us as we plan for the Global Amphibian & Reptile Disease Conference 2026! 🐸🐍🐢🦎🦠🌎

📖Published📖 Neshat et al. introduce MicroEcoTools, an R package designed to test ecological framework predictions using microbial community data 🦠 🌎 🧪 Read the article here 👇 buff.ly/sXnPdhO

It’s a bacterium-eats-bacterium world… www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

30+ dead turtles alongside NY Highway 90 killed by cars as they try to cross from @deptfishwildlife.bsky.social Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge 🤬😭 @governor.ny.gov we need wildlife crossings! @dec.ny.gov

Another project from my time @jgi.doe.gov published @phytobiomesjournal.bsky.social ! Using a greenhouse soil transplant experiment we uncover the core microbiome of Camelina & show how past cropping regimes/precipitation can exert a legacy effect on microbiome assembly 🌾🦠🧬🧪 doi.org/10.1094/PBIO...

URGENT: The scientists' letter must be signed before May 19, when comments close. 🌎

Professors at USGS coop units were absolutely critical parts of my education at 3 different universities. They're probably affiliated with more useful conservation research than any other agency on earth. Join the rally to defend science next week! 🌎🐟🦉🐍🦊🌿🧪 #hydrology #Invert mobilize.us/s/JyAqUI

In happier news: the MEGA Lab @rittigers.bsky.social celebrated the successful defense of our first MS student! ✨ @trminahan.bsky.social did an amazing job summarizing the last two years of research on salamander microbiomes. It is a MASSIVE dataset! Stay tuned for our preprint this summer 🐸🧬🧫🦠🌎

Getting a doctorate is hard work and it absolutely sucks when people swap out that hard-won gender-neutral expert title for something that both ignores your expertise and dismisses your gender. Apparently I'm not the only one who feels like this because you bought enough pins for me to make more!

Important 🧵 if your research depends on genome assemblies from long (PacBio / ONT) reads. As @merenbey.bsky.social says, these may not be the genomes you are looking for. TLDR: the assemblers are wrong and predict too many small circular contigs.

Our lab had a great time at our first #ImagineRIT event this weekend. Students talked to 500+ members of the public about their research in microbial ecology & genomics, and gave away lots of salamander swag! 🐸🧬👩🏼‍🔬👨🏻‍🔬🧪🌎🔬 @rittigers.bsky.social

Our commentary on the elegant in vitro microbiome coalescence experiments from @goldmandoran.bsky.social @ksxue.bsky.social et al is out. It was a pleasure to write about one of my favorite microbiome papers of the last few years. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Happy salamander season to all who celebrate ✨🌈

Amazing postdoc opportunity! Fletcher is a great mentor and wonderful human! Plus, Oregon is pretty darn beautiful.

Our framework explaining why ecological interactions change between contexts is out in Ecology Letters! A lovely collaboration with @saramitri.bsky.social which provides experimentally-testable links between the physiology and ecology of microbes. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Hey All, plz repost, and share with grads, post-docs and disease folks! We are hiring a post-doc to work on mechanisms of immune responses of frog hosts to Bd infections. Deadline is February 1, 2025. Details for the position can be found at the link below. 🐸🐸🐸 zamudiolab.org/2024/12/17/p...

Over 30 prominent scientists call for a ban on the creation of a "mirror cell"--a microbe made of molecules that are mirror images of their natural forms. It could cause a mind-boggling global disaster. Here's my story [gift link] 🧪https://nyti.ms/3OUCXp6

Is it “winner-takes all” when the simplest living things compete? Check out my fresh publication on phage coexistence in Science and a thread below🧵 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

So grateful to @hhmi.bsky.social for this @pbs.org 15 min documentary about our Amphibian Rescue project - more than a million views 👏🏼🐸❤️ m.youtube.com/watch?v=WXK6...

"Disentangling the impact of environmental and phylogenetic constraints on prokaryotic within-species diversity" by @omaistrenko.bsky.social (2020) investigated which factors contribute to pangenome size – e.g. it's higher in soil and lower in host-associated habitats academic.oup.com/ism...

Bacterial community function increases leaf growth in a pitcher plant experimental system #mSystems by @jess-bernardin.bsky.social et al journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Hello CNY Microbiology (and beyond!) friends! I am organizing a KBase bioinformatics workshop at SUNY ESF on December 11. This event is open to all our friends in the region and has a Zoom option. Please reach out if you have any questions! Register here: forms.gle/qkifXoMSH2uN...

The strain on scientific publishing: we set out to characterise the remarkable growth of the scientific literature in the last few years, in spite of declining growth in total scientists. What is going on? direct.mit.edu/qss/article/... A 🧵 1/n #AcademicSky #PhDchat #ScientificPublishing #SciPub

Just gave a lecture in my enviro micro class about microbial predation—a topic that blew student’s minds. And then I see this paper that blew my mind! So cool! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Naomi Beinart, 16: "We girls woke up to a country that would rather elect a man found liable for sexual abuse than a woman...Where the body I haven’t fully grown into may no longer be under my control. The boys, it seemed to me, just woke up on a Wednesday."

FYI, I did: go.bsky.app/TQpaTqF

Evolutionary biologists teaching intro courses: "Hardy-Weinberg is the null model of evolution." Evolutionary biologists studying bacteria/archaea/asexual eukaryotes: #evolution

My most liked X post, reposting here: 1 in 10 of the top 100 ‘best’ scientists are named Michael or Eric, but only 3% are female according to Research.com. Putting aside the obvious flaws of the H-index, these numbers are disheartening: research.com/scientists-r... #SciComm #WomenInSTEM

Here is a list of labs in #ecology and #evolution who are recruiting graduate students for next year: docs.google.com/spreadsheets... PIs looking to recruit can enter information here: t.co/Fn1LRAA5Ip I believe this list is thanks to @drcarl.bsky.social #evosky #ecoevo #evolbio #AcademicJobs

Together with @aaronliston.bsky.social we are recruiting a full-time lab technician to support our research labs at Oregon State University. jobs.oregonstate.edu/postings/161... Closing date is 11/22, but we will continue to recruit until the position is filled.

Annual reminder that PhyloPic is your free go-to source for organismal silhouettes for #Jack-o'-lantern designs phylopic.org @tmkeesey.bsky.social 🧪

Reintroducing myself! I’m an ecologist passionate about microbiomes, omics, and wildlife conservation. My lab studies the Microbial Ecology & Genomics of Amphibians (lovingly called the MEGA Lab). Aside from science my 🩷’s are my doggo, NY pizza, coffee, hiking, & nature photography.