🧪New #OA paper! Shrews are weird. They evolved a whole new immune organ the size of a kidney 🫘🤯! Led by Bill Thomas (who's on thee job market!), pancreas of Aselli was known to be packed with plasma cells at different stages @bmc.springernature.com 👉🏽 bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.... 1/3

My department at UT Austin is looking to hire an Assistant Professor in Evolutionary Biology, broadly defined. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions you may have. apply.interfolio.com/177547

a Python package I was using took ~18 seconds to import, so instead I spent two hours making a PR to fix it and reduce that to ~5 seconds time well spent ✅

Article out in @journal-evo.bsky.social with @klvoje.bsky.social: academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

With sequencing of Hitler's DNA making headlines, time for a reminder: analysing a polygenic score from a dead historically-significant figure won't give new insights into that person's behaviour. In a brief paper last year, we used Beethoven's genome to directly illustrate the fallacies involved.🧪👇

Cool paper on rate-time scaling: it’s not just an artifact! We need to re-think underlying evolutionary processes generating (fossil) phenotypic changes! By @vildebruhn.bsky.social @kjetillsj.bsky.social

I am so excited to share new work on a TE insertion that regulates iridescence in swordtails, led by fantastic grad student @nadiahaghani.bsky.social and with help from many coauthors! In a time that has been so difficult to navigate, this & other projects have kept my spirits up: shorturl.at/NE65A

I like to think Mostly Harmless talks to Moby Dick, and just sometimes Moby Dick lets Mostly Harmless do the relevant quote of the day. They both clear it with Suzie Dent, of course, in case of word overlap.

If you pick up an old shell, can you hear the C?

Today is the day! Our reply to the two concurrent critiques (from the same set of authors) is now published in the journal Intelligence 🧵 1/

Interested in the @evojlinnsoc.bsky.social special issue on phylogenomic discordance? tinyurl.com/v2eces3s 🧪 Three more summaries added below! We'll return when more articles come live. Again, all and any oversimplications are entirely my fault!

It was spectacular in Illinois last night!!

No no no begs every archivist. You are never going to be able to find anything. Please don’t start using emojis in file names. Who asked for this? What fresh hell is next?

New paper! We propose a framework to empirically study animal social relationships by modelling social network (SN) data as time-series—that is, without the need to aggregate them over time. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Check out our story in @plosbiology.org about how a nonrandom, clustered giant cell pattern forms in the sepal and leaf epidermis! It has been a great journey with @gweissbart.bsky.social, Frances Clark, Xihang Wang, @roederlab.bsky.social and co-authors. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

My book 'The Tree of Life' is published in the USA and Canada today. Available as book, on kindle and as audio. I would be really grateful for reposts. www.amazon.com/Tree-Life-So... www.amazon.ca/Tree-Life-So...

We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing: a 🧵 1/n Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820 Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/... Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

proof that science mis- and disinformation are effective and have profound consequences for society. This is a shameful milestone.

Now joined by Carrona Jewelry, cast in silver from real (and mostly Chilean) insects

Saw this just before I spotted this post from the great @mrgeorgewallace.bsky.social As the cousin of a trans person and the acquaintance and coworker of many others, I thank you.

What do you get when you cross a red-tailed hawk with a turkey vulture? 🪶

a few months ago I said "having generative AI handle absolutely anything with regards to healthcare is a nightmare and should be banned" and a bunch of people made fun of me and called me stupid. anyways,

Lophophorata is monophyletic! Super excited to see this work out in Current Biology - we sequenced a phoronid genome and used shared chromosome fusions to confirm the monophyly of Lophophorata. A big team effort from the Luo Lab @yjluo.bsky.social! More here: authors.elsevier.com/c/1m3mV3QW8S...

Saddened for all the students applying to the NSF GRFP who feel they can’t bring their full selves to their personal statements this year. Science is better with you in it. I hope you get the funding and keep doing excellent work.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #protistsonsky

🚨🦇New paper alert! We integrate information across fields to highlight key traits associated with the diversification of #bats, their roles as evolutionary drivers, and their importance to global ecosystems: An Integrative Perspective on Bat Evolution www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Well, you're in your little room And you're working on something good But if it's really good You're gonna need a bigger room And when you're in the bigger room You might not know what to do You might have to think of how you got started Sitting in your little room - The White Stripes

Our new @science.org paper is out! Cuckoos and hosts are locked in a coevolutionary arms race over egg mimicry. But how are these egg types inherited, and could this drive speciation? We sequenced hundreds of genomes to find out! doi.org/10.1126/scie... 🧵1/6

A fantastic piece. Fascinating that Watson was another victim of The Bell Curve and became entrenched by his undeserved arrogance and hubris

Glad to have this one out! As some of you might remember, I'd kicked around the idea for some time, but the inestimable @wrightam.bsky.social got it all pulled together properly. It's a first step - we still need to include likelihoods of stasis between first & … www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Interested in the biogeography of lizards?🦎 We studied the historical biogeography of Sceloporus lizards and the link between their dispersal and climatic niches 🌎🌦️ @fabrovillalobos.bsky.social @ndimhypervol.bsky.social @biojlinnsoc.bsky.social Learn more here 👇: academic.oup.com/biolinnean/a...

Amy Angert and I are recruiting a #postdoc to participate in a collaborative NSF-funded study of demographic responses to climate across the geographic range of the scarlet monkeyflower. Please repost! jobs.ncsu.edu/postings/224...

They're hiding the resegregation of the tech industry. www.wired.com/story/google...

Joshua trees make the cover of @newphyt.bsky.social for the issue with our paper, led by @kheyduk.bsky.social, showing that they use water-saving CAM photosynthesis — but only sometimes 🌿 buff.ly/WnPoRXa

Phylogeny of tinamous based on whole-genomes and fossils: academic.oup.com/sysbio/advan... 🪶🧪 (📷Musher et al.)

disappointed that @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social is implicitly endorsing the use of LLMs to replace scientific thought @richardsever.bsky.social this is a short-sighted move and a net negative for science

since chatgpt has coached another young person in a mental health crisis to their death, I am yet again tapping the sign

An Asgard archaeon with internal membrane compartments Brilliant study led by @fmacleod.bsky.social and Andriko von Kügelgen. Tight collaboration with @buzzbaum.bsky.social and lab. Congrats to all authors! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

"data irregularities" and "time-keeping oversights"

I hadnt seen this particular take on this story till now. A minimalist apology. Not impressed. nationalnews.co.uk/news/shamed-...

academic.oup.com/evlett/advan... So exciting to see a new method to model the evolution of G (and P) matrices on phylogenies. Another step in the direction of trying to bridge micro and macroevolution

We somehow live in a world where real politicians are more evil than a literal cartoon villain :/ www.reddit.com/r/futurama/s...

“Assessing phylogenetic confidence at pandemic scales” putting confidence limits on phylogenies with millions of sequences doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Cuckoo eggs match the eggs of their adoptive hosts thanks to (mostly) loci inherited from their mothers, who put them there — impressive multifaceted genomic study buff.ly/r8xpxaR

Wonder why this scene looks so familiar... #WildlifeWednesday 🐦🐕

we strive for accuracy in our data labels tyvm

It's 20 years since @seanphillips.bsky.social and I exchanged a sketchbook back and forth in the mail, a drawn &painted call and response. INTERSECTIONS may be out of print but here is a flip through that sketchbook. You can still find the book out there :)

You have to admire the bloody-minded ambition of a pelican trying to eat a whole capybara (who seems utterly unconcerned). The thing with pelicans is that they have ONE super-power & their brains default to "get it in your mouth & deal with it later." Let's talk about the gular sac of the pelican.