Evidence of a predator-prey co-evolutionary arms race within a nematode microhabitat https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.02.716111v1

“…the researchers argue that AI systems have given rise to a categorically different form of “cognitive surrender” in which users provide “minimal internal engagement” and accept an AI’s reasoning wholesale without oversight or verification.”

📣 We’re hiring a postdoc in the Rhee Lab at Michigan State University! This position focuses on plant–nematode interactions and desiccation tolerance in C. elegans, with collaborative projects across C-SPIRIT + WALII. Come work with us! 🔗 careers.msu.edu/jobs/researc... #plantscience

Many of you are probably wondering how you can manage to get yourself into a similarly awkward situation. You're in luck; a while back I wrote a long thread on how to befriend crows. Here it is.

Once upon a time I just admired nudis and sea slugs. But it was not enough. Now apparently I'm creating an R package to celebrate their colour palettes? 😅 First up, my Sydney fave, Hypselodoris bennetti. #rstats #nudibranch #dataviz 🦑🐙🧪 #marinelife #invertebrates

It is really, really wild how persistent and prominent this remains in common LLMs. There seems to be an air of "well they fixed that" and it is 100% not true: most of the energy just seems to be going towards 'being plausible enough to be accepted', ie style and not accuracy or truth

Finally! Here is our perspective on why cooperation maximizes diversity and how it promotes additional coexistence mechanisms that do not occur under competition journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1... This is a hard topic with strong opinions... Thanks @asn-amnat.bsky.social for publishing it! 🧵👇

Cities do not really have democratic control over their own police departments and Dem politicians nervously pretend like they don’t notice this.

Hi all. I am very excited that after 6 years I finally got my phylogenetic comparative methods book and online exercises online. Feel free to use and share. The book is here: nhcooper123.github.io/pcm-primer/. Note that it is not finished, we had to abandon it before the sunk costs fallacy broke us

Our paper is on the cover of @currentbiology.bsky.social : a strawberry poison frog with the most common color morph, living up to its common name 🍓. In this issue, we uncover the genetic basis of color variation in frogs from Bocas del Toro, where blue, green, yellow, orange, and red morphs occur

Fantastic news! 🦋🦋 Link to full report in 🧵 www.worldwildlife.org/news/stories...

The need to preserve animal culture in conservation efforts. 🪶 Gift link.

Das #Rebhuhn, Vogel des Jahres 2026, ist stark gefährdet ❌. Das liegt vor allem am Insektenschwund und Verlust von Lebensraum. Im Fokus von Schutzprojekten steht deshalb die Landwirtschaft 🚜. Und es zeigt sich: Die Bereitschaft ist da 🎉! www.t-online.de/nachrichten/...

"The results are astonishingly clear. On rewilded land, biodiversity surged across the board, with the number of bird species up 261%. The variety of bumblebee and butterfly species more than doubled, their abundance increased over 10x." The cure for nature loss exists. share.google/w30RUdw1902W...

The University of Tübingen seeks applications for a W3-Professorship in Experimental Biodiversity Research starting Oct 1, 2027. Apply by April 26, 2026. More info: https://uni-tuebingen.de/en/213700. #job

For decades biologists assumed ravens follow wolves to their kills. Our paper @science.org shows something different: ravens rarely follow wolves far. Instead they remember areas where wolf kills are common and return to them—sometimes from >150 km away. doi.org/10.1126/science.adz9467 📷Dan Stahler

Someone just posted about how they don't care if their students use AI as long as the text conveys the ideas the students meant to convey. The thing is, you don't know exactly what you think until you write it. And if some prefab thing pops up, you're liable to decide that was what you thought.

My latest! In this month's cover story for the @texasobserver.org, I wrote an expansive, oddly philosophical deep dive into the western diamonback rattlesnake, a much-maligned animal I've come to have a lot of respect and affection for

Okay this is the only situation where I'd gleefully leave academia for industry (if only I had Japanese language skills) www.ign.com/articles/the...

leland palmer in the black lodge

On the nature of darkness:

Leonora Carrington, The Lovers, 1987

Cool study. On a separate note, wow we need more (and larger) phylogenies of invertebrate clades

North American bird populations are not only declining, but they’re also shrinking faster with each passing year—particularly in regions shaped by intensive agriculture, according to a new study in Science. https://scim.ag/4bkrafP

A sense of direction

The FCC just opened public comments on SpaceX's plan to launch a million satellites to do AI compute in space. Under the current proposal, an environmental review won't be required. Please consider submitting a public comment to oppose this damaging plan. darksky.org/news/two-sat...

NIH sent notice this week that it will no longer recognize a union of early career researchers on the basis that trainees aren't "employees." My latest for @science.org. www.science.org/content/arti...

According to a new study of Australia’s koala populations, rapid demographic rebound may be able to restore once-lost genetic variation and drive recombination in ways that re-establish long-term evolutionary potential in previously bottlenecked populations. Learn more: https://scim.ag/4b6hLaE

Been wanting to write this one for awhile! Conservation obsesses over rare species. But what about the common ones? Bluegill are the fish almost everyone knows & caught as a child. But, how much do we REALLY know? New long-form essay 👇 🎣 #InDefeseOfPanfish tnature.substack.com/p/behold-the...

A war that isn't a war, documented with videos that may or may not be real, funded by elected leaders who are neither for nor against it, is the most dystopian thing that's happened in my lifetime

You're absolutely right—that was not a command post, that was an elementary school. Those were not military leaders—they were schoolchildren. I said the opposite, and that's on me.

Old-growth boreal forests have so much more life in them compared to monoculture plantations. Ancient trees decay for ages on the forest floor, providing habitat for plants and animals. Vitality everywhere you look.

It's the funding of taxonomic research & training that's dying out. Without an ability to identify life forms, we can't recognize/quantify invasions & extinctions and their impacts on ecosystems. Imagine trying to repair a complex steel structure if you can't distinguish different types of bearings.

Three weeks ago I spent a few days in one of our global dark sky sanctuaries in Rakiura Stewart Island New Zealand. Never has deep time felt so real or so close. But every now and then one of Elon's dumbfuck satellites would interrupt the eternal rhythms of the stars. Let's not let it get worse.

This is a mental war that we have to win. It's not about being a luddite, it's about destroying or retaining the ability to think. It's about how insidious this becomes in a situation where generative AI is adopted and then subverted intentionally. www.thealgorithmicbridge.com/p/a-new-whar...

This was such a fun collaboration with @analog-ashley.bsky.social and team, including some of our own @sciencebanshee.bsky.social and @shen4brains.bsky.social And h/t to Alana McPherson for the infographic! dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

Couple poeciliid sketches for #SundayFishSketch Xiphophorus birchmanni and Poecilia salvatoris #poeciliidae #SciArt

How specific are heritable symbioses? And what can we learn from swapping obligate symbionts across host species? We address this in our latest, led by @inespons.bsky.social & in our collaboration w/ @microbiome.bsky.social 🦠🪲 Out today in @natcomms.nature.com! 1/n www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New in JFB: Alfaro huberi must have one of the strangest mating behaviors among poeciliid fishes. #TeamFish #FishSci Paper: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... Corresponding video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKWA...

Are you an relatively new to field ecology and data collection? Or are are you supervising students? Our guide for effective field data collection is now published in @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social! We also include a printable poster with a visual overview of the guide doi.org/10.1111/2041...

This is hands-down the best thing I’ve read on Epstein‘s worldview and those of his fellow tech, finance, and academic elite. It’s a rough read, but at least every paragraph is a banger. 🔥🔥🔥😭

I'm super excited to share that this article was published today in Science! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... All made possible by the fantastic group of donors, volunteers and scientists at The American Chestnut Foundation (tacf.org), HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, and our collaborators.

A not-completely-exhaustive illustration of our winter shorebirds, but these are the species that you’re most likely to see during winter around Teesmouth (northeast England). 🐡🪶 #birdingNortheast

🦫 Die neue Biberverordnung in Baden-Württemberg sieht vor, dass Biber leichter getötet werden können. Aber der #Biber ist nicht das Problem, sondern die Lösung: Er ist eine Schlüsselart für unsere Natur! Hilf uns, Biber in BaWü zu schützen. ✏️ Zur Petition ➡️ petitionen.landtag-bw.de/Petitionen/D...

New preprint from the Genes and Behavior group! @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social @cbehav.bsky.social Youn Jae Kang led this study on the evolution of a collective behavior in C. elegans. doi.org/qq3t

📸 We’re delighted to unveil the winners of the RES #InsectWeek Photography Competition 2025! 🏆 Overall Winner Raghuram Annadana (IG: macro_by_raghu). The image shows a parasitic wasp laying its eggs inside Banana Skipper butterfly eggs. Read more and view the galleries 🔽

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.