🚨postdoc opportunity at UBC🚨 applications are now open for the Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship, due internally Oct. 15 - www.postdocs.ubc.ca/award/killam... I can nominate 1 person and give feedback on that nominee's materials - if interested plz email me by Sept. 10 - join us!

I can't remember the last time I successfully logged into NSERC or the CCV portal without needing support to manually unlock my account, due to being unable to remember which childhood best friend I used as a security question when I made my account 15 years ago

Closing in on @csee-sceemtgs.bsky.social !

Is @tessgrainger.bsky.social trying to tell me something 🤔

Today in lab meeting we are going to do a workshop for each student to develop an organizing conceptual schematic for their thesis (e.g., to be used for the thesis introduction or exit seminar). Anyone here willing to share theirs for inspiration? Here's mine as an example of what I mean 👻

Ecologists are obsessed with linking process and pattern, but quantifying the core processes of community assembly (and their interactions) in a natural setting is extremely hard. But we've done it! Using a fun new method. Very proud of this paper and of Emilie and Megan's leadership 🥳

Lots of excellent advice in this piece. The core message - only through writing do you really think and order your thoughts into logical sense. Makes a case for not using AI for 1st draft because you bypass the thinking step www.nature.com/articles/s41... @naturebiotech.bsky.social #PlantScience

Reports of USA border officials demanding access to people's devices and denying entry due to evidence of political leanings...this post alone will probably get me banned 😆

I simulated a fake dataset with a binomial distribution and used that fake data in a glmmTMB with A. a binomial error distribution and B. a beta error distribution (to test the consequences of my choice) The beta distribution had a hugely lower AIC. Anyone know why??

Hot tip for fellowship applications (imo): I see a lot of people being vague about their TAing load/other activities that take up time. Reviewers sometimes use this information to weight productivity. e.g., if two people have the same output but one person TAed way more

$3400 cad to publish a paper with the currency conversion 😬 i.e., 10% of my nserc

The default smiley on outlook changes the vibe in a way I don't love - it's almost dead in the eyes, can't put my finger on it

Peer review is nothing compared to 300 students carefully scrutinizing every sentence, word, symbol, choice of formatting in a midterm exam

Gotta love that the reason for threatening tarriffs keeps changing over time 🤔

Maybe this is more of a PSA for instructors. YouTube recently changed their policy so all PowerPoint embedded videos now have ads, even of they didn't a year ago. This means your class could get interrupted by an ad for an R rated movie etc. YouTube is aware of the issue but has no plans to fix.

Problem of the day: how to get a youtube video to play in lecture without first playing an ad for pants

Stats question: without doing math, does anyone know of a package that does inverse predictions for glmmTMB? E.g., I have a fitted equation and I want to know the value of a predictor that yields a specific value for the response

Our special feature/passion project at AmNat, "Demystifying fundamental theories in ecology", co-organized with @sebastianschreiber.bsky.social is out now 🤩 www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/an/2025/...

If anyone needs really good examples of really bad logic/hypotheses for class, watch an episode of Ancient Aliens

American Eco-Evo types! Looking for a conference where Equality Diversity and Inclusion are celebrated, not hidden? Interested in opportunities for collaborations, grad studies, postdocs, faculty jobs in Canada, a functioning democracy? THIS IS IT: event.fourwaves.com/scee2025/pages

What better time than now to choose @csee-sceemtgs.bsky.social for this year's conference trip 🇨🇦 see you in Sherbrooke, QC!

Lab meeting hot tip: I bought a box of ~40 international mystery snacks. 3 per lab meeting = a fun surprise for at least 10 meetings

New paper out today! Lead by superstar @keila-stark.bsky.social as part of a special @asn-amnat.bsky.social issue organized by @gerlame.bsky.social

Possibly the best seminar introduction I have yet to experience?? From @llseedsull.bsky.social

Fun (?) fact: TIL the "^" symbol is called a "carrot" 🥕

Interested in resource competition? Check out our just-published paper that, among many other things, translates parameters from LV models into mechanistic terms, and in general is a fun accessible read (imho) - it also provides a super precise definition of what "competition" is