My favorite artifact in the "you don't need AI to do art" discourse is, of course, screenwriter Dan O'Bannon's sketch of the facehugger to explain it to Giger.

We hear woodpecker drumming everywhere, but rarely ask what it truly signals. This Conceptual Note looks at what we know — and what we don’t. theornithologist.org/is-woodpecke... #birds #birding #Woodpeckers #TheOrnithologist #ornithology

New Biology Letters paper! 🐟🐟🐟 Long-term lab rearing did not erode key physiological tolerances in an extremophile fish; encouraging for ex-situ conservation! #FishSci royalsocietypublishing.org/rsbl/article...

While reporting this, I had something happen that's never happened. A comms rep for one of the co's disputed my reporting and said what I was telling them was untrue because it was not in Grok, xAI's chatbot. I was looking directly at the files. And this person was using AI to challenge the truth.

From 1981 to 2016, hermit thrushes migrating through Chicago became smaller, with shorter bills and longer wings, relative to body size— there are genetic changes associated with shortening bills, but not the other changes 🌿 🪶 buff.ly/gzX4Oz0

"We have no way of reconciling what these cases will do to water supplies." New from Miranda Williamson: The world’s largest artificial intelligence data center complex is being built in Amarillo, and it’s almost seven times the size of Central Park.

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.

The website is currently down while Saimi does some maintenance, but if you want to submit early to the April art book, you can start now!

The first paper from the lab is now out in Science Advances: Multimodal social context modulates larval behavior in Drosophila www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... We find that fly larvae keep their distance to conspecifics in the absence of food, enjoy reading! @cbehav.bsky.social @uni-konstanz.de

Alex from our time working together, while he was in nursing school. Later, he moved to ICU, working as a nurse to support critically ill Veterans. He had such a great attitude. We’d chat between patients about trying to get in a mountain bike ride together. Will never happen now

the regime considers all resistance violent resistance. you chanting while holding a sign and carefully remaining on the sidewalk is as worthy of the death penalty to them as someone throwing a Molotov.

Experts who have followed authoritarian regimes abroad can tell you a lot about day-after reprisals to mass movements, which look a hell of a lot like today's killing

Very cool that Congress just renewed ICE's budget with absolutely zero concessions

You may’ve seen coverage of a new report on the threat to national security from environmental collapse. A common response that’s got my goat is: “Look, it’s not just tree-hugging enviros saying this, it’s hard-nosed spooks!” A short thread on why this framing is bad history & bad politics🧵😡😉

Life stages of Fundulus heteroclitus. Mummichog, killifish, call it what you want, but know it is among the mightiest inhabitants of North America’s east coast estuaries

I could give you a great summary of our new warbler diet paper… but if a picture says a thousand words, this awesome graphical abstract by @rushstudio.bsky.social tells the whole story. 🦉🧪 academic.oup.com/auk/article/...

The first preprint from my PhD work is out! We used C. elegans to define and manipulate heterogeneous groups, exploring how individuals with different behavioural phenotypes interact and shape collective behavior. Check it out here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Why do some worms graze on bacteria while others hunt and kill? Our study, published today in Nature, reveals how predatory aggression evolved in nematodes. Led by @gunizgozeeren.bsky.social and @leoboeger.bsky.social across the @jameslightfoot.bsky.social and @monikakscholz.bsky.social labs.

Are Darwin's finches affected by climate change? Time-series analyses of beak and body traits, precipitation and temperature show finches are a resilient system, responding mainly to short-term weather variation rather than to long-term climate change: Carrión et al. (2025) doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

A salamander sketch to wind down this evening. #SciArt

Are stick insects unique in their ability to transition to parthenogenesis? Our new review in @journal-evo.bsky.social covers intraspecific and hybrid origins, cytological mechanisms, and co-occurence of female-only and sexual populations, with comparisons to other taxa. doi.org/10.1093/evol...

Is speciation usually allopatric? Genomic analyses of 93 Drosophila species pairs show that gene flow during divergence is common—even among allopatric species—challenging the classic allopatric model of speciation. academic.oup.com/evlett/advan...

"There is one political problem from which all others follow, [including] the devastation of the living world. It is simply stated: the extreme wealth of a small number of people." If you truly care about nature, it's madness to ignore the root cause of its destruction.

It's horrific but also this is pretty much a regular arrest. That's how violent arrests are. I am glad people can see it and be horrified -- that's what police are out there doing every day, legally. Every 3 seconds basically.

The wildcat, so elusive it's considered 'the ghost of the forests', is making a comeback across parts of Europe. share.google/bln8cdyZjirf...

One of the biggest tells of gen-AI ants is the waist. I think this is because most ants belong to one of two subfamilies- Myrmicinae and Formicinae- that have very different waist structures, but the algorithms often average them into fake ants in a non-existent morphospace in between.

Are you an evolutionary biologist? Would you like to support your society journal? We are looking for new editorial board members across the field of evolutionary biology: 🧬🌿🪰🐀🦀🔬🧫🦠🐟🐦🧑‍💻🪸🦎 Learn more and find out how to apply: jevbio.net/call-for-edi... DEADLINE 19th January 2026 📣

ICYMI: A Mechanistically Integrated Model of Exploitative and Interference Competition over a Single Resource Produces Widespread Coexistence by Smith and Masel Read here! www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

The tutorial for how to assemble organellar genomes from nuclear-targeted long reads is ready to be used. Please check it out bioinformaticsworkbook.org/dataAnalysis... #Genome #genomics #assembly #bioinformatics #chloroplast #mitochondria

Interested in genetic diversity-area relationships as a potential proxy for genetic diversity? Check out Chloé Schmidt's latest 😀 @chloology.bsky.social 🧪🌎🧬🌐 #consgen #popgen #evobio with Sean Hoban, @debbiemleigh.bsky.social, & Walter Jetz onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Two new Science studies on lizard coloration reveal how a delicate interplay of genetics, environment, and social dynamics can either preserve or erase polymorphic diversity in species. 📄: https://scim.ag/4srYKHi 📄: https://scim.ag/4qCcsWn

We love to see universities caving to right wing hysteria both literally and figuratively paying the price for it

Mark your calendars and look up! Total eclipses, lunar occultations, planetary conjunctions and meteor showers await stargazers this year

Diese Studie zeigt eine unerwartete Gegenperspektive: Selbst sehr alte evolutionäre Gleichgewichte können erstaunlich fragil sein. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @science.org

For those keeping score, Bellingcat, The New York Times Visual Investigation Team, & Washington Post's Visual Forensic team have all published analysis showing the ICE shooter wasn't in the path of Renee Nicole Good’s vehicle when he shot her, contradicting statements by the President & his cronies

Genomic prediction of traits is less accurate when predictions are made in one population based on genetic associations in a second population, and less accurate when those two populations are less closely related buff.ly/BTZQ9nE

🐟 We look back on a fascinating year of articles, films and podcasts. 🌊 Interested in the science, policy and communication of freshwater restoration at a pivotal time for European environments? 🗺️ You'll find a lot to explore here! @merlin-project.bsky.social freshwaterblog.net/2026/01/07/t...

Interested in pursuing a PhD in the field of Ecology and Evolution? You can still apply for the nematode PhD project, application deadline is next Tuesday, 13. January 2026.

Useful reference for #SciArt! 🐡

Why do selfing rates vary across a species’ range? In alpine monkeyflower, self-fertilization increases away from the range center, supporting the abundant center hypothesis over historical range expansion in shaping reproductive assurance. academic.oup.com/evlett/advan... Photo Credit: Brewbooks

Evolution isn’t always forward-looking. Experiments show that an early, beneficial mutation can trap E. coli on a local fitness peak, preventing ecotype diversification in structured environments and highlighting the role of G×E interactions. academic.oup.com/evlett/advan...

Imagine being the person brave enough to leak this in the hopes that media attention could stop it and then the media just……buries it.

Some red salamander portraits (Pseudotriton ruber) in watercolor and gouache. I hope to find these guys some day when I can make it back to Appalachia. #SciArt #watercolor #amphibians #salamanders

Small-scale fen restoration brings back key species and ecosystem functions https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.01.697300v1

Cancel the LA Olympics, scrap the World Cup, the United States cannot be a trusted part of the international community so long as the White House operates this violently and with impunity.

Mutational Biases and Selection in Mitochondrial Genomes: Insights from a Comparative Analysis of Natural and Laboratory Populations of Caenorhabditis elegans academic.oup.com/g3journal/ad...

A year of Teesside’s coastal wildlife and wonders - they can take some finding but, mercifully, they’re still hanging on, for now. Wishing everyone the best for 2026. 🪶🐡 #nature #art