The data is in: the NIH goalposts have shifted. What were once almost certain fundable scores have become coin flips and what used to be likely grants have become aspirational, leading to fewer awards. Another manifestation of how HHS policies have led to fewer awards and less science.

Want a reliable way to tell the two cryptic giant hummingbird species apart while birding in the Andes? Use your ear! 🎶 In a new @fieldornith.bsky.social J. Field Ornithology paper, we show how their vocalizations differ clearly—making sound a slam dunk for identifying them in the field.

I am super excited to announce that after a tumultuous period of uncertainty, KU MARC marc.ku.edu has been awarded another five years of funding! news.ku.edu/news/article....

It's funny, though, that even in times of backlash to the erosion of patriarchal gender roles, in practice women end up doing most of the child-rearing, domestic labour, AND also economically contribute to the household. Let's keep that part of progress, eh?

I am looking for a PhD student to join my new Socio-Eco-Evo group, hosted in Katie Peichel's Evolutionary Ecology Division @ University of Bern. We're offering a fully funded 4-year position, studying social plasticity and behavioral adaptation among stickleback in Greenland. Please share around!

Teaching ornithology this semester to mostly pre-health students, and it's probably my favorite class to teach. It's nice to review some of the recent literature, and here I'll post the papers that we discuss in class.

SSE is pleased to offer free virtual #Evol2026 registration to all SSE members residing in 152 countries and territories around the world including India, Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. Request your free registration code today! www.evolutionsociety.org/index.php?mo...

Field job in the beautiful mountains of NE Oregon doing passive acoustic monitoring and woodpecker demography just went live. Please share! jobs.rwfm.tamu.edu/view-job/?id...

This story, from @natezuke.bsky.social, is absolutely wild. A trans woman who never changed her gender marker was issued a letter invalidating her license. At the DMV they cut up her license, which had an "M" marker. www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-new...

New paper alert! 🦜 We gave wild cockatoos puzzle boxes across Canberra’s urban gradient. The finding? Urban birds approach faster, but are not better solvers. Our results suggest that urbanization shapes neophobia independently from cognitive performance. Read it here: doi.org/10.1093/behe...

Ugh I fell for it! Bummer.

Congrats to @ncaaup.bsky.social & all who fought against this surveillance policy that would've allowed admin to hijack microphones in the classroom for secret recordings. This move would've chilled classroom discussion & suppressed students' willingness to ask questions & take intellectual risks.

Please share and sign if you agree with my open letter calling for Botstein’s immediate resignation katemanne.substack.com/p/an-open-le...

White House stalls release of approved US science budgets: The administration has not yet released funding Congress allocated to multiple research agencies, so they cannot provide it to funded entities/people - including NIH and NASA. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Last call for applications!

Bhattacharya has been Trump's most loyal foot soldier in MAGA's vile war on DEI Jay's NIH canceled Duke hematologist Charity Oyedeji's $750,000 grant on how to assess & avert disability for people with sickle cell disease, most of whom are Black They said it was "DEI" which they were banning 1/2

I had to renegotiate my F99/K00 award twice in 6 months, and on both occasions I asked what specifically “DEI activities” means. I didn’t get clear answers, so I was hopeful the person that directive came from could specify (the NIH Director). I asked the on @whyshoulditrustyou.bsky.social podcast

Update: They passed it. We witnessed and walked out.

1. Numerous transgender people in Kansas are reporting that the state has sent them a letter demanding the immediate surrender of drivers licenses. Those driving could be arrested, charged, and see privileges revoked. Subscribe to support our journalism. www.erininthemorning.com/p/kansas-sen...

We are calling for Reviews, Commentaries or research papers for our upcoming Special Issue: The Integrative Biology of Reproduction, covering the entire reproductive process, from mate selection, mating and egg-laying or pregnancy through to parental care bit.ly/3ZT42hY

From our new paper out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social: www.cell.com/current-biol... w/ @neurofishh.bsky.social @gkafetzis.bsky.social @denilsson.bsky.social Looking across animals, the vertebrate eye is an obvious outlier. Why is it so different that other highly visual animals?

Apply for the Career Diversity Travel award to attend the Animal Behavior Society Conference in Cincinnati, July 14-18, 2026. Deadline: March 23, 2026. More info: https://www.animalbehaviorsociety.org/web/awards-career-diversity.php #conference

A study I led came out in Nature Cities yesterday! We used radar to study the role that urban landscapes play in migratory bird stopover. Spoiler: birds use cities a lot, and the patterns of their use reflect social processes and the inequities embedded in them. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

I am hiring a research assistant (vampire bats), a Panama fieldwork coordinator (vampire bats), and also considering postdoc apps (social behavior, any species): socialbat.org/2026/02/19/h...

In addition to serving incredible LEWK after another, Micaela Coel is such a great interview subject. A true artist.

Led by my talented PhD student @justine-armg.bsky.social we’re running a #meta-analysis of #cross-sex-genetic-correlations in fitness components. If you have unpublished data or know of studies that might not appear in a systematic search, please reach out, we’d love to include them! Please share!

My department at CSU Northridge is hiring a vertebrate functional morphologist! We've got a great EEB group, and we're looking for someone to carry forward a tradition of enriching organismal courses and community-engaged research. App review starts March 15 csucareers.calstate.edu/mob/cw/en-us...

Why are some males caring toward infants while others are neglectful or abusive? I'm so pleased to share work that my colleagues and I @princeton.edu have just published @nature.com (an explanatory thread to follow!) (1/8)

Are you an relatively new to field ecology and data collection? Or are are you supervising students? Our guide for effective field data collection is now published in @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social! We also include a printable poster with a visual overview of the guide doi.org/10.1111/2041...

It’s once again Girl Scout cookie season so it’s time for me remind everyone to please consider buying from NYC’s Girl Scout Troop 6000, which is entirely made up of girls living in NYC homeless shelters 🙏❤️

NSF Update Funding curve overall. A little bit of progress in the past week, but only a little bit. Now by Directorate... 1/11

Please read Sasha's piece here if you haven't already. 4/4 theinfinitesimal.substack.com/p/no-intelli...

My Evolution and Society class discussed @sashagusevposts.bsky.social's great piece "No, intelligence is not like height" in the context of eugenics and a student raised a great point: How do eugenicists reconcile their love of selective breeding and sterilization with their appeal to nature? 1/4

Looking for voice recorder recommendations - something we can use hands free (like safety pin to shirt or wear around neck) during behavioral observations!

Congratulations to Nicholas Antonson @nickantonson.bsky.social, winner of the 2025 JEB Outstanding Paper Prize, for his research into the neuromuscular coordination of movement and breathing in woodpecker drilling Find out more about Nicholas & his research journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

Fun news! @gcbias.bsky.social and I are teaching a 2-week online population genetics workshop this summer to raise money for the Center for Population Biology at UC Davis. We're trying to gauge interest -- please fill this out if you might be interested! And please share broadly!

Facing racism in the sport head on, Surya Bonaly landed the banned backflip on one foot and made history anyway ⛸️ 💥

i went back to a tougher, pre-covid syllabus for my intro NT class this term. students have been rising to the occasion magnificently. like, for real, i was expecting a bunch of drops after day 1. i got emails and office visits instead. it’s making for a very fun teaching term!

Reading about Trivers makes me sick, but also immensely proud of every Federal grant review panel I've ever served on. These dudes cozied up to Epstien because they liked power, but also because their transphobic race science could not survive the cleansing sunlight of scientific peer review.

so the guy sharing gross transphobic slop with Epstein here is Robert Trivers, the scientist who invented the specious yet popular "parental investment" theory, in which sperm are cheap so men want to f*ck lots of women, but eggs are expensive so women are looking for a man with "good genes"...

Exciting! But also focused on the "Intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Biological Sciences to Strengthen and Safeguard Biotechnology Innovations"

Did you know that Robert Trivers is in the Epstein files? I learned this today from my students in our Sexual Selection seminar, who were leading a discussion on critiques of Bateman's Paradigm.

Our new paper on Bateman gradients in black coucals and white-browed coucals is out. Females of both species outperform males in mating and reproductive success - confirming the generality of Bateman's principle when sex roles differ. Check it out: royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

It's black history month, and so our writer S. Baum decided to cover black trans people you may not hear about in your history classes. Go read their latest piece, and don't forget to subscribe to support our journalism. www.erininthemorning.com/p/black-tran...

Academics vying for a spot in Epstein‘s world. There are so many. I feel the need to make a thread, so I don’t keep confusing them. 1/

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;

Are you (or do you know someone) recently graduated from undergrad looking to beef up your skills and experience prior to starting grad school/career? Do you like social drama and parakeets? Come join my team! I'm looking for two people to start very soon!! tinyurl.com/59rf8jcy

Join us at the Evolutionary Biology Centre at Uppsala University. We’re searching for an Assistant Professor in Biology. www.uu.se/en/about-uu/...