Retraction of Research Article "Integrative phylogenomics positions sponges at the root of the animal tree" https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41643028/

Unifying phylogenetic traversal and deep learning to guide tree exploration https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41648436/

Deconvolving Phylogenetic Distance Mixtures https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41648417/

Defining Aeromonas species boundaries with large-scale average nucleotide identity analyses and genomic phylogeny https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.04.703925v1

My grad student, who got RWR and appealed, got an email from GRFP program today that said "Your application was screened by NSF program officers with expertise in your proposed field of study and was determined to be ineligible according to the solicitation requirements." No details were given. 😡

More on NSF Here are the number grants that were active in each year (at least part) including the effects of grant terminations (data from grant-witness.us) by directorate from 2021-2025. The only directorates showing losses are STEM Education and Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences.

A new lineage of Ranavirus micropterus1 infects ornamental wrasses from the Great Barrier Reef and causes severe disease in captivity https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.05.704086v1

This is a beautiful case of how real science happens & serious scientists work. Kudos to both set of authors: “This has been a humbling experience, but one that speaks to the self-correcting nature of the scientific endeavor.” www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

When the original authors and those who find errors in their work, pull together for the sake of correcting the record and moving science forward, it's a beautiful thing Retracted paper: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Researchers tested ASTRAL species tree inference with realistic gene tree dependence from recombination. Gene trees on chromosomes aren't independent, but full independence isn't needed for accuracy. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.06.597697

PFAS levels in #GreatLakes fish are dropping, study finds The declining levels were driven by an industry phase-out of legacy PFAS chemicals www.wpr.org/news/pfas-le...

A study in Nature Ecology & Evolution shows the long-term changes in tree species diversity across tropical forests in the Andes and Amazon. go.nature.com/45FPc1M 🌍 🧪

Oklahoma Gov. ended tenure at regional and community colleges. Research university faculty may still earn it, with regular review. www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty... #AcademicSky @insidehighered.com

“Palaeoverse, a grassroots organization that develops R packages for paleontology, has been awarded a Large Grant from the Software Sustainability Institute, via the Research Software Maintenance Fund” #rstats ropensci.org/blog/2026/02... 🧪

One of my neighbors has been putting up these fish facts posters. All kinds of different fish, marine, freshwater, deep, shallow, all kinds. This is a good one. “Stg this real fish” took me out. Good work, neighbor.

Hot take: folks are too focused on the AI emphasis of the PRFB & missing the most concerning part of the solicitation. The heavy emphasis on bio-AI integration for “technological advances” is a concerning degradation of NSFs mission to fund basic biological research.

Systematic inference of mutation rates and spectra across the tree of life via a scalable read-based framework https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.02.703326v1

Student had their GRFP returned without review. I'm closely following the existing conversations on this, but one of my qualms is that he's eligible for another year, but won't get any feedback. Anyone interested in banning together to provide reviews to students who are hoping to apply again?

Guess who is once again displaying their ability to hyperfocus on being a hater? It's me, I spent all evening writing my own compilation of all the reasons I think AI sucks so I can post it under genAI-made FB posts. Work-in-progress, suggestions welcome! www.skwinnicki.com/single-post/...

New preprint from our big collaborative evolution experiment in 9 whole lakes in Alaska, written by McGill grad student @lucaseckert.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... What happens if you put a mixture of multiple source populations together to complete & evolve in multiple new lakes?

More on NSF funding data A deeper dive into the numbers of awards by Directorate. 1/9

A deep-learning-based score to evaluate multiple sequence alignments https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.02.703429v1

I was just looking for papers on fish spine evolution, how fortunate!

Holy shit: it's an RFP for the NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology (PRFB). Hello old friend www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

Nested birth-death processes are competitive with parameter-heavy neural networks as time-dependent models of protein evolution https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.02.702952v1

Good News! 28 states have publicly rejected Kennedy’s vaccine schedule. They choose to follow evidence-based guidance from experts like the American Academy of Pediatrics or the American Academy of Family Physicians. 🧪 www.kff.org/state-health... Via @unbiasedscipod.bsky.social

Here is a 400BCE plate from souther Italy for serving fish. Three species of sparids (sea bream) are shown. Sea bream were among the first farmed fish this plate represents a common group of species from that area. 🧪🐡

Your time for doing science waxes and wanes throughout your career. Don’t let anybody tell you that you’re doing it wrong. You get to decide what’s right for you (as long as you meet your basic commitments). 🧪

Dragon in the deep. 🐉⁠ ⁠ Dragonfish (family Stomiidae) are cunning predators. Although they are strong swimmers, they prefer to lie in wait and ambush unsuspecting fishes and crustaceans. This black dragonfish (Idiacanthus sp.) was spotted at 527 meters (1,729 feet) in Monterey Bay.

Neil H. Shubin has been elected as the next NAS President! A leading evolutionary biologist and science communicator, Shubin will succeed Marcia McNutt on July 1. The Academy also named Cherry Murray as International Secretary and elected new councilors. Read more: www.nasonline.org/news/2026_pr...

Are you an undergraduate student interested in field biology? Then consider the Research Experiences for Undergraduates program in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior at Mountain Lake Biological Station! Fully funded! Applications due Feb. 27, 2026. Check mlbs.virginia.edu/reuprogram for more info 🧪🐟🌿🐍

Visited the Natural History Museum London last week and honestly: collections like this are the backbone of everything we think we know about the ocean. Absolute treasure trove.

Collections like these aren’t dusty archives. They are active infrastructure for science. Every jar is a data point across time, space, and extinction risk. Without collections, we lose our ability to ask new questions about the oceans.

I teach a science media literacy module in all my courses. It includes knowing the difference between a press release and a reported news story. Here's a really interesting new research paper about public understsanding of that difference! #SciComm 🧪 jcom.sissa.it/article/pubi...

As sweeping changes to the federal Clean Water Act in recent years have weakened protections for wetlands, Illinois has become the first state in the nation to officially recognize a conservation tactic known as rewilding.

Why did so much snow yield so little precipitation? The cold air limited the amount of liquid water in the snow. We had snow-to-liquid ratios of 20:1 last month, which is more like the champagne powder of Colorado instead of the normal Midwest slush. 2/2 See: mountwashington.org/snow-to-liqu...

Embarrassingly_FASTA: Enabling Recomputable, Population-Scale Pangenomics by Reducing Commercial Genome Processing Costs from $100 to less than $1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.02.703356v1

Dickinsonia, back when evolution was excited to make pancakes. Paleontologists are pretty sure Dickinsonia was an animal, a creature that lived in the sea around 550 million years ago. The flat, ripply organism adhered itself to the floor with mucus and grazed on mats of microbes. Slick. 🧪

🧵amazing results we've had using Gemini #AI to work with #Medieval #London primary sources: but also clear illustrations of how limited and flawed LLMs are as research tools. Transcriptions from 1980s handwritten index cards, and annotations were next to perfect, but flaws exposed in process (1/9)

The Helicoprion puzzled scientists for years, who couldn't figure out where to place its spiral-shaped jaw loaded with teeth. Dr. Nathan Lujan (Curator of Fishes) @potamophile.bsky.social sheds some light on this mysterious, extinct shark. Learn more at Sharks, on now through March 22!

Amid travel bans, a government shutdown, and funding crunches, 2025 was a turbulent year for U.S. scientific societies. https://scim.ag/4c0ZWM4

How understanding Alligator Gars can help Mississippi River floodplain restoration! @nfwfnews.bsky.social New conservation story: gardenandgun.com/feature/in-p...

NSF GRFP applicants (and mentors): Was your application Returned Without Review and deemed ineligible despite fitting in the allowed topics? 1) Write NSF 2) Write your Congressperson 3) CC us at [email protected] so we can compile + follow up Details and template at grant-witness.us/grfp-letter

As per always on this most holy of mammal holidays, Groundhog's Day, March Mammal Madness launches our annual tournament page! #2026MMM @mmmletsgo.bsky.social libguides.asu.edu/MarchMammalM...

A systematic exploration of current limitations of cognate-based phylogenetic inference https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41624326/

Are there any good ecology/evolution synthesis opportunities like NCEAS or SESYNC or CESAB (France) that would pay for people to meet together to synthesize research on a topic for a big paper?

Slim 5 can now simulate genomes with multiple chromosomes like autosomes, sex chromosomes, mitochondria and chloroplast dna academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...

Accidentally spilled coffee on my laptop, didn't boot up all day. Spent all day with my stomach tightened anxious about it. Somehow, it booted up again (yay). Doing breathing exercises now...