Y'all, I just got out of the NSF-BIO webinar where they explained changes to peer review. It's not good. 🧪 scienceforeveryone.science/changes-to-n...

A good time for a reminder that the BIO Directorate will hold a Virtual Office Hour on Thursday www.nsf.gov/events/nsf-b...

NSF - Forced reorg - POs down ~ 40% (DRP, most rotators not renewed, retirements) - Forced move (and we have to pack and clean) to a building with no furniture, little to no conference space for panels, inadequate 🛜, …) I personally love the boxes they gave us for packing. “Details matter” 🙃

New paper out now in @jexpbiol.bsky.social! Led by star PhD student @miaryras.bsky.social, we tested the effects of winter warming (a constant increase as well as fluctuating temps - see pic) on common wall lizard behaviour and physiology. journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

I’ve released a tool to sketch and edit phylogenetic trees! yawak.jp/PhyloWeaver/ Load a Newick file and intuitively add/remove/resize branches. Useful for quick conceptual trees, extracting subtrees, or turning ideas into Newick.

Looking for a PhD opportunity? I'm hoping to recruit someone to my group at Durham University to work on a project combining fieldwork and labwork to study speciation in rubyspot damselflies: iapetus.ac.uk/studentships... Get in touch if you want to chat!

New paper on deep-sea fish diversity out now in @sse-evolution.bsky.social, with @cmartinez.bsky.social and @sarahtfried.bsky.social academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

Ornithology is all about the process. #GoBills | #BillsMafia

What do you get when you cross a blue jay with a green jay? That’s not the start of a joke, but the subject of a new study that aims to describe a hybrid bird never encountered before in the wild. https://cnn.it/3WcFnDd

The first Aguillon Lab paper is officially out in early view at Evolution!! Led by postdoc @devonderaad.bsky.social, we’ve explored the hybrid zone between black-headed and rose-breasted grosbeaks in the Great Plains. #ornithology #hybridization #speciation #evolution doi.org/10.1093/evol...

I am beyond excited to announce that ggplot2 4.0.0 has just landed on CRAN. It's not every day we have a new major #ggplot2 release but it is a fitting 18 year birthday present for the package. Get an overview of the release in this blog post and be on the lookout for more in-depth posts #rstats

our paper on how light pollution affects bird vocal behavior is out today in Science!! w/ @brentpease.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

🥳 New paper out in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society! Manakin’s moving melody: the interplay between courtship dance display and vocalization as a predictor of hybridization in manakins (Aves: Pipridae) academic.oup.com/biolinnean/a... #ornithology

Further consolidating control over federal research funding under Russell Vought and a cadre of apparatchiks. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

New bird tree who dis. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Devastated to see the NSF postdoctoral research fellowship in biology archives. This is a transformative creative opportunity and a path to the professorship for many (including myself). Postdocs are highly trained and often in the newest techniques which spur innovation. www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

“With these considerations, we expect to fund through the 4th percentile.” There it is, in black and white, the destruction of cancer research in the US.

NEW: In an unprecedented move, the NIH will soon disinvite dozens of scientists about to take positions on advisory councils that make final decisions on grant funding. NIH staff were told to select others aligned with the Trump administration and told to expect placements by political appointees.

String manipulation is a critical daily task for bioinformaticians. Here is a cheatsheet using stringr: rstudio.github.io/cheatsheets... I probably use stringr::str_replace() once every other day... to clean up metadata (of course!) #rstats

A couple presentations from the lab at #ABS2025! The first is a poster by Catherine Alverson during the first poster session, tonight (07/09). Catherine will be discussing her research on the evolution of dimorphism across thousands of bird species.

“I hate to say it," says Yale energy economist Kenneth Gillingham, but the Senate version of Trump's big tax bill "would kill America's renewable energy market.” It's "truly bizarre, a self-defeating measure," adds Princeton's ‪@jessedjenkins.com‬. By @hencarnell.bsky.social via @motherjones.com

NEW: NSF will be kicked out of their building. Announcement will be made tomorrow by HUD Sec. and Governor of VA. HUD will take over the NSF building over the next two years. NSF staffer: "There is no planning for NSF, no identified future location, appropriation for a new building or a move."

ooooh new paper out today. a couple of years ago a big group of us were like "hey let's spend a few weeks painstakingly looking up the sources of every official bird common name" and as of today, you too can join us in our ornitholetymological (yes i made that up) rabbit-hole:

RFK Jr's "MAHA" report is filled with references to studies that literally do not exist, or that completely misinterpret the studies' findings. “We did not publish a paper.. on this topic with that co-author group, or with that title,” says one cited researcher. www.notus.org/health-scien...

Divergent selection and plasticity increases reproductive isolation early during incipient speciation. Find our new meta-analysis on experimental speciation studies here: rdcu.be/ek019 🧪 @EvolOdonata.ecoevo.social.ap.brid.gy @pipdowning.bsky.social

*** Academic BFD alert *** We just published a new global bird phylogeny. It synthesizes the work of thousands of researchers before us, and it will grow and improve over time. @snacktavish.bsky.social @birdsoftheworld.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The current #FeederWatch interactions dataset has grown to include just under 500,000 pairwise interactions! So many cool projects waiting to be done with this unique resource. FeederWatch data is always freely available feederwatch.org/explore/raw-...

A complete and dynamic tree of birds - out today in PNAS! Teamwork with @eliotmiller.bsky.social and others at @birdsoftheworld.bsky.social and Open Tree of Life to put together current relationships across all birds. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Now published!!!! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

My NSF PRFB on the genetics of female polymorphism in hummingbirds was terminated yesterday. I don't have much to say, I'm just sad. We've discovered so much, and could have gone so much further. If anyone else is in the same boat, esp postdocs, please reach out, it would be good to connect.

🥳 New paper out in the Journal of Raptor Research! A short commentary on the incidence of vulture hybrids. I found only three cases in the genus Gyps. The rarity of vulture hybrids is due to their old evolutionary age and strong social bonds. #ornithology #RaptorResearch

🙏 We need your help 🙏 The government continues to cancel grants at both NIH and NSF to censor science it doesn't like. We're tracking terminations to organize and advocate. Please report your terminated grants: NIH: forms.gle/J2znQ7y7YpeP... NSF: airtable.com/appGKlSVeXni... w/ @noamross.net

A lot of blood sweat and tears put into this one: we revisit Robert MacArthur's classic warbler study—with @eliotmiller.bsky.social and colleagues—using, among other techniques, fecal metabarcoding. 🧪🦉 📸 Ronnie d'Entremont royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... @psubiodept.bsky.social

Trump is ignoring Congress, the lower courts, and finally, the Supreme Court. We have a dictator. Full stop.

Genuinely think that they are genetically engineering grey wolves with a 'dire wolf' pentimento, and trying to engineer "wooly mammoths" so that they can sell tickets to see 'extinct' animals. These animals can never be released. It's Jurassic Park but without the charisma of Jeff Goldblum.

🚨 Not a drill: NSF GRFP results are NOW OUT!!!!! But...good news and bad news. 👍 I'm *thrilled* for the grad students for whom getting this award will be life-changing, esp now. 👎 # of fellowships went down by 51% (1000 this year vs. 2036 last year) See here: www.research.gov/grfp/Awardee...

The #handsoff rally in Buffalo, NY.

Before I joined @propublica.org, I spent five years working in population research. Many of my former colleagues were funded through NIH grants. Some of those grants have been terminated. Would appreciate you sharing this with your colleagues and groups.

Unidentified men grabbing someone off the street and putting her in a car because she wrote an op-Ed. This as flatly authoritarian as anything we’ve seen in this country in a very long time.

A call to arms for eBirders and iNaturalists. 🚨 We want your bird photos! If you photograph feeding birds with flowers, fruit, seeds or prey, upload the image with locality details. We are data-harvesting species, size and type of food/prey to study foodwebs and species interactions. Thanks! 🧪🌐🪶

This is horrible to post, but I may as well post it. We are essentially shutting down research operations in my group, which is focused on treatments for pediatric brain cancer. I’m a well funded investigator, and there’s no choice. Science can’t function without the stability of NIH

At least 15 probationary employees at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory have been laid off, according to a letter from two members of the House of Representatives in protest of the move. buffalonews.com/news/local/a...

Follow us on social media! BlueSky and Instagram will be our new main accounts. Check back for conference information, outreach, and opportunities for involvement in ABS :)

#StandUpForScience2025 rally in Buffalo. Excellent job organizing @mikefeigin.bsky.social and kudos to all the speakers and organizers. And big ups to the person with the “science is the powerhouse of society” sign. 10/10.

How do heatwaves affect different components of parental care? We find negative effects of heat stress in burying beetles when there is a heatwave during both pre- and post-hatching care, but not when the heatwave only affects one period. With the Sun Lab royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

NOAA's #GreatLakes Environmental Research Lab will be taking an "indefinite hiatus" from communications due to staff cuts. GLERL communicates critical weekly updates about the extent of harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie - like the one that left my hometown of Toledo without drinking water in 2014

I am recruiting 1-2 postbacs for my parakeet sociality & cognition project! This position is for people finished with undergrad but who have not yet started grad school. Must be totally fascinated by parakeet social drama (there's a lot of it!)🪶🧪 Job ad here: ornithologyexchange.org/jobs/board/s...

Have you ever wondered why so may birds have “flash” wing and tail color patches that appear when they fly? We did too. . . doi.org/10.1093/orni... Special thanks to David Allen Sibley for letting us use some of his incredible illustrations in Figure 1 #birds #ornithology

NEW: NSF confirmed that they fired 168 employees today, out of their staff of ~1,500 feds. This includes some people who'd finished their 1-year probationary periods, which were extended to 2-years last month without explanation. More to come.