i’m defending my phd in a couple weeks!!!! lmk if you’d like an invite/link

Yes, some people's legacies are complicated. For example, Watson. After all, though he was racist, don't forget his other traits. For example, he was also sexist. And also anti-semitic. And a data / idea thief. So let's not forget all the different facets.

New results from our lab: Polyploidization in diatoms accelerates adaptation to warming. Nat. Clim. Chang. (2025). doi.org/10.1038/s415...

How does life evolve to adapt to modern cities? Out now in Science, my PhD work with @lindymcbr.bsky.social uncovers the ancient origin of the “London Underground mosquito” – one of the most iconic examples of urban adaptation. 🧵(1/n) @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ady4515

A universal thermal performance curve arises in biology and ecology doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

New from Drs. Isabelle Neylanm & Ana Salgado, @rujutavaidya.bsky.social, & rockstar @lsuscience.bsky.social undergraduate Cullen Guillory: besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

We're excited to kick off another year of LAGNiAppE! 🎉 Welcome to our new cohort — we can't wait to see how they grow as researchers and individuals. Stay tuned as their journey unfolds! @tropicalbotany.bsky.social @invertevoeco.bsky.social @jembrown.bsky.social #postbacc #RaMP #training

Highly recommend meeting Finn, who is here with his person @ecarlen.bsky.social and is a very good boy. #evol2025 #evol25

The recording of my IDEA talk is up on the #Evol2025 YouTube channel, and I've thrown that together with a PDF copy of the slide deck and a bibliography: lab.jbyoder.org/2025/06/21/a...

From @rujutavaidya.bsky.social some categories of genes respond to heat stress through differential expression while others respond through differential exon usage. Only a small fraction do both. We miss an important part of the story when we focus only on DEGs! #Evo2025 #Evo25

On our way to #Evol2025! @rujutavaidya.bsky.social

How many paths lead to evolutionary innovation? How versatile are genomic toolkits? Excited to announce my new @pnas.org paper addressing these questions in collaboration with @rokaslab.bsky.social, @hittingerlab.bsky.social, and the Pennell lab! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Pause for a minute to appreciate the valiant Program Officers still at NSF, who are doing their utmost to preserve what they can. They’re in the stinking rotting belly of the beast, laboring on our behalf. ❤️❤️❤️❤️ to them

NEW: We (mostly @noamross.net) launched a website to shine a brighter light on terminated NIH and NSF grants. grant-watch.us It links to our NIH & NSF trackers, grant info submission forms, and other info. We'll also add new analyses soon. Check it out and let us know what else you'd like to see.

🧵 Thread on NSF grant terminations 🧪 This Nature article today confirms what DOGE's arrival at NSF can mean: terminating already awarded grants. "DOGE is...considering more than 200 of them for termination, NSF staff members have told Nature" What can we expect? And what should NSF grantees do?

“Exploring Careers in Ecology” webinar tomorrow! Join me, Rese Cloyd, and host Aaron Stoler, to duscuss finding jobs, navigating new careers, and defining success as a professional ecologist. Webinar is part of a series by @ecologicalsociety.bsky.social. Register: esa.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Live view of my students today, as I took them from salmon and white throated sparrows (gender and the expression of sex-associated traits are not binary!) to the Jan20 White House order on gender, to the closing of the Institute for Sexual Research in Nazi Germany.

Love this! @standupforscience.bsky.social Austin is making posters and taking our message to the TX Capitol tomorrow!

In Nature Climate Change @natclimchange.bsky.social, we show that Extreme Weather Events (EWEs) have strong but different effects on plant and insect phenology, as individuals respond to immediate environmental cues such as EWES, likely more rapidly so than to gradual climate change. rdcu.be/eaLMu

If you've been calling Congress, keep calling & if not, start-we're getting their attention. We had a good visit to a Congressional office yesterday to discuss science funding & the staffer told us how busy they've been-usually the Senate shwitchboard gets 64 calls/minute-now they're getting 1600 🧪

Please help spread the word. Open tech position. My lab at Loyola University Chicago. www.careers.luc.edu/postings/31037 A project to improve eDNA resources and use eDNA to study fish diversity in Illinois's Fox River. @danielbolnick.bsky.social @ambikamath.bsky.social @ericrlarson.bsky.social

🚨Three weeks left for applying to perform independent research @lsubiosci.bsky.social. Join us to learn skills for careers in STEM. 🗓️Application deadline March 16, 2025 (11:59 PM EST). Learn more: linktr.ee/evo_lagniappe #NSF #Postbacc #RaMP @tropicalbotany.bsky.social @invertevoeco.bsky.social

The reply email inbox for this “what did you do last week” email is [email protected], so, you know, definitely don’t send them any unrelated messages that would interfere with their ability to carry out Elon’s dumbass bullshit

I know somebody will tell me this can’t work but what about $0 registration for our agency colleagues who want to attend @evolmtg.bsky.social or other conferences so they can talk about their work? Network for jobs?

Just saw an email sent to a student of mine from a REU canceling their program due to staffing & federal research funding uncertainties. A REU was when I internalized my science ID & applying to grad school. If this continues, it will devastate my students #1 pathway to STEM careers.

Firings are happening right now at the National Science Foundation. Essential staff are being cut. This isn’t about the budget. If it was, they’d be going after the military (17%) or state appropriations (38%). NSF is 0.7% of the federal budget. All federal employees make up only 4% of the budget.

Firings happening right now at the NSF.

So my take away is: 1. They are setting up a legal battle where the court is encouraged to outlaw POC-associated affinity activities at any org receiving federal funding (not just schools) 2. They are intentionally avoiding a parallel case around women’s activities bc it undercuts their transphobia

Don’t know if anyone else read the letter and caught that it contradicts the majority opinion in SFFA, which allows discussion of racial identities in essays to be used as a factor in admissions. They’re trying to rewrite an already very conservative SCOTUS opinion www.ed.gov/media/docume...

What I see when I hear people say there’s too much DEI in schools

Most people in the US have no idea about the attacks on federally funded science or our government institutions. Many (or most!) of your family, coworkers, neighbors, and friends have no idea. My own MAGA dad thinks DOGE is just identifying waste, and that nothing has been cut. We have to tell them.

Trans people have always existed and always will

Go to the page, scroll to the bottom, respond NO when asked if this page was helpful, submit your suggestions for improvement 🙃😘 And in case you don't know, trans women of color organized the 1969 Stonewall riot www.nps.gov/ston/index.htm

My shirt today, in honor of the NPS Stonewall name change. On this Valentine’s Day I will not forget that I owe my right to be with a person I love to the trans women who started the uprising.

Musk has received $13B in government contracts over the last 5 yrs. With all his fuss about the $9B/yr in overhead to the more than 2,500 universities conducting lifesaving research, I am curious when he is going to turn DOGE on his own contracts and ‘efficiencies’. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/11/u...

We should all be using our best SciComm skills to talk about the impacts of these cuts. Many students in my class this morning had not heard this news, and none understood how indirect costs worked (because who does, outside of academia?) Several came up after class to thank me for the explanation.

Here are the losses red states will face w/ Trump's assault on NIH's indirect costs. TX: $310,282,120 OH: $171,355,609 TN: $133,514,022 MO: $131,590,159 FLA: $123,982,436 IN: $68,925,255 AL: $46,642,500 UT: $45,974,847 IA: $36,986,835 SC: $33,368,620 www.forbes.com/sites/michae...

Letter from the SSE/SSB/ASN councils on the scientific understanding of sex and gender, pls RT

Whenever you hear someone sneer about scientific research that seems useless to them — “they’re studying the spit of lizards?!” — remind them that’s exactly how we got Ozempic. globalnews.ca/news/9793403...

This, from the president of Wesleyan U, is excellent. “Authoritarians have long known that total control will elude them if they don’t eradicate the autonomous support engendered within civil society by cultural, religious, commercial, and educational institutions.” slate.com/life/2025/02...

Please share!

Bluesky community: a student reached out to me with an interest in passing a student senate resolution about science funding (I teach some amazing students…) Any resources or examples from your institutions that you can share?

Thanks for these numbers! Will be using these when calling congress but also for talking to 120 mostly premeds in class on Monday—

There are some good new pieces out now and some great threads here. bsky.app/profile/carl...

I usually reserve this account for my personal views; but today I want to represent my position as President of @asn-amnat.bsky.social to post a message that will shortly go out to the membership of the American Society of Naturalists from the ASN Executive Council

Oof. These bribes come in so many forms, but most importantly job security. At my uni many faculty have gotten real quiet after a 2nd prof was put on leave for criticizing our gov. (Trying to stay brave by reminding myself that I have the privilege of a dual income household…)

Americans are about to discover how science agencies fund universities. In both red and blue states. Slashing science = slashing jobs. Period.

Welcome to Bluesky @madelonkelly.bsky.social ! Science teacher extraordinaire (and also, coincidentally, my mom 💕).