**PhD POSITIONS** I am recruiting 1-2 PhD students to work on sociality and cognition in Monk Parakeets, starting Fall 2026. Full ad is here: hobsonresearch.com/index.php/20... (please help spread the word!)

I had no idea there used to be a marine-based mink species in eastern North America! Super interesting, also sad. Only recently pushed to extinction en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_mink

How many species have been rediscovered? Which were surprising? What are the prospects for finding the remaining lost species? Learn more in a free webinar from @birdsoftheworld.bsky.social on Sept. 18 @ noon ET: birdsoftheworld.org/bow/news/sea.... #birds 🌎

We just pushed a new version of the global bird phylogeny to Github. Updated topology (v1.5), and now in the most recent Clements/eBird taxonomy. We'll push to CRAN soon too, but head over and grab the most recent clootl version now. @snacktavish.bsky.social github.com/eliotmiller/...

The GRFP lives!! (due end of October) www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

Like woodpeckers? Or population genomics? Or three-species hybridization? Or selective sweeps? Then this is for you! The typeset version of "Evidence for ancient selective sweeps followed by differentiation among three species of Sphyrapicus sapsuckers" is published today: doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

Some validation for my recent efforts in uploading some old images of unidentified species to @inaturalist.bsky.social – turns out I photographed an undescribed poison-dart frog in the Western Amazon 18 years ago 🌎 🧪🐸🪶 #ornithology #herpetology 🧵1/21

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/...

Bad plan. Definitely get a rabies shot.

🐦🔬 Recruiting PhD students! 🌎🧬 I’m looking for 1–2 PhD students to join our team starting Fall 2026 at the Sam Noble Museum & University of Oklahoma. Our research: 🐦 birds • 🌍 biogeography • 🌴 Neotropics • 🧬 population genomics • 🌱 speciation 👉 Learn more: www.moncriefflab.org Please share!

A big congratulations to William Farhan-Rios on this paper in @pnas.org, featuring a study of tropical-forest change over four decades along the Amazon-to-Andes elevational gradient in Bolivia and Peru 🌴 ⛰️ 🌐 @mobotgarden.bsky.social @livingearthcollab.bsky.social 1/3 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Poison sumac is like poison ivy. Only worse.

Happy to see this one out. We did a phylogenetic analysis of African Sesuvium using herbarium collections and genome skimming. We assembled ~9000 loci from orthologous genes identified from transcriptome data. We also described a new species! 🌿 #evobio #iamabotanist www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

One of our most beautiful native trees is Franklinia, Franklinia alatamaha. First seen on the Altamaha River in what is now Georgia in 1765 and transplanted to the northeastern US, it is now extinct in the wild. Read the amazing story of this tree at Our Trees.

Don't be me! Fairly new to Python, transforming data, and I discovered log1p, a "more numerically accurate way to compute log(1+x) when x is very close to zero". Genius! The number of times I've had to hand-code this in R, and it's more accurate?! Just realized log1p is also a base fxn in R 💩

Great graphics and article, featuring a highly technical and very scientific quote by a sassy bird doctor www.allaboutbirds.org/news/birds-d...

It's nice to see more discussion about the origin of pigeons that, like gentle and humble dandelions, follow in the dismissive wreckage of human history, without any fault of their own.

Just spent two late weekend nights nerding the f* out, and now I'm going to spend a little of my Sunday morning bringing you the fruits of my labors! Stare at these trees with me. What do you see?

In case you were wondering what to get me for Christmas www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCwn...

🫠. A tree came out today with 9,072 bird species, all placements based on actual DNA. It looks like they used eBird 2022 taxonomy; 10,096 were recognized back then. That means these folks just dropped (molecularly well informed) knowledge on 83% of the world's birds. www.cell.com/current-biol...

🚨 The New Age of global bird phylogenies continues! Hot on the heels of the fantastic updated tree created by @eliotmiller.bsky.social and others, we use a different approach to generate a near-comprehensive timetree of >9000 bird species. 1/3 www.cell.com/current-biol... 🧪🌐🪶

1. Kevin Gross and I just posted a new science-of-science preprint. This one explores the looming peer review crisis. As many of you know, it's becoming significantly more difficult for journal editors to find scholars willing to serve as peer reviewers for submitted manuscripts.

New paper out today in @pnas.org presenting near-complete phylogeny of the Grevilleoideae subfamily of Proteaceae plants, representing years of work and huge collaboration from an amazing team - ft. @marcelcardillo.bsky.social @hsauquet.bsky.social @austinmast.bsky.social and many others not on bsky

I've wanted to write this article for years. About my and other's struggles to even survive sometime in #academia. Thank you to the amazing editors at @plosbiology.org that gave me the forum to write this piece. #science

Sweet sweet Passerina sweep. Pokedex is full!

Trying to copy email addresses from Outlook is maddening. I spend about 5 mins a day trying to do it, and another ten minutes reading shit posts by other people who also can't figure it out.

I am looking for a postdoc to work on cutthroat trout evolutionary and conservation genetics, starting ~January 2026. Get in touch or find me at #Evol2025 for more information!

🦆 My new R package {avilistr} is live on CRAN! 🎉 The first unified global bird taxonomy (11,131 species) is now accessible to #rstats users. I built it this weekend after Cornell Lab's AviList release last week! 🪿 Blog: www.dalyanalytics.com/blog/avilist... 💻 GitHub: github.com/dalyanalytic...

Wait WTF? How did I not know about this?

"Scientists Are Using Drones to Unleash Thousands of Mosquitoes in Hawaii in a Bid to Save Native Birds. The lab-raised, male mosquitoes are meant to breed with the invasive ones on the islands and produce sterile eggs that will help suppress malaria." www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/s...

Last February, I led a proposal submission that encompassed six months, hundreds of hours, four institutions, a massive team, and and 256 pages. NSF just informed us that the entire Biology Integration Institute program was archived and our proposal would not even be reviewed. With a form email.

I love catbirds so much, but why are they so stupid around cars and bikes? Gotta be one of the most car-struck birds in the country.

i made a new framework for modelling stochastic eco-evolutionary dynamics of multivariate traits !! doi.org/10.1101/2025...

maybe my favorite paper I've written, I have a synthesis out today early access in @asn-amnat.bsky.social today that attempts to answer a simple but slippery question: what is an elevational range? doi.org/10.1086/737130

NEW SCIENCE! 🚨🚨🚨🧪🪶🌐 Our paper is now online at @natecoevo.nature.com! “Geographic redistributions are insufficient to mitigate exposure to climate change in North American birds”. We know birds are moving north with climate change, but what are the consequences? www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our paper about the flow of nocturnal bird migration through Colombia is finally out today in #ProcB! Using weather radars operated by the #IDEAM, we found that low variability in wind underlies a pace of migration that is far more gradual than at temperate latitudes. #Ornithology 📡🪶🇨🇴 🧵1/10

🧵New paper + open database drop! The Marine Organismal Body Size ( #MOBS ) Database is now live—85,000+ marine species, from plankton to whales, with standardized size data. A huge leap for biodiversity, conservation, and climate science. #science #marinelife onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Fuck, this is fucking terrible. And as the son of an entomologist, I can tell you these guys are not the type to be just fucking kidding around. #science #insects #entomology #climate www.theguardian.com/environment/...

A female Western Gull was recorded riding 150km in a garbage truck from San Francisco to a compost facility in Central CA, probably to forage. TWICE. An innovator, an icon, a genius. This is one of my favorite @waterbirdsociety.bsky.social papers I've ever handled as managing editor #ornithology

One legged partially leucistic junco mom successfully fledges nestlings. Wonders what sort of world her children are flying off to.

The 2026 federal budget proposes eliminating the USGS Ecosystems Mission Area, threatening bird banding, research, and conservation nationwide, endangering 100+ years of vital ecological data. www.aba.org/proposed-bir...

1. Did you know that the Corn Belt in the Midwest USA is so vast you can see it from space? 🌽 How would this affect billions of migrating songbirds passing through each year? 🐦 Check out our new study in @conbiology.bsky.social to find out! 🧵1/8 conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Re-upping this: If you are an ornithologist (ideally U.S.-based) who uses bird banding or BBS data in your work, I'd love to hear from you! You could comment as something like "a scientist from a state university" (for example) if you don't want to use your name.

Aw shit this is amazing. Can I get a t-shirt w that cover?

Great commentary on the new global bird phylogeny, if I do say so myself www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

"Our" orioles are nesting a hundred meters or so into the woods above the house, but I keep seeing them close to the house. Figured out what they're up--peeling bark off some old grape vines I pulled down. Bet her nest is beautiful!

What's up with data on Dryad not being made public after papers come out? It feels like 9 times out of 10 some button doesn't get clicked and the data stays hidden. Third paper in a month or so I've seen this with...

I'm looking for a postdoc in quantitative ecology / macroecology to start in summer/fall 2025 in my lab at Oklahoma State University. Please spread the word www.gilbertecology.com/opportunities