Our paper is out! We show that a 'missing-self' regulator (CFH) isn't as constrained as we thought, instead shows strong diversifying selection, likely driven by pathogen exploitation (e.g. Borrelia). Highlights how competing selective pressures shape innate immunity academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-...

The second chapter of my PhD is now available as a preprint 🦚. A lot of it came together during long days in front of my blue screen, and weekends spent watching puffins in the UK. With an amazing team @robknell.bsky.social @jacek-radwan.bsky.social Jonathan Parrett and @ecologycoder.bsky.social

🌿 Meeting Plant Scientists | @botany.one 🎙️Jerónimo Vázquez-Ramírez 📝 “ From Eating Capulines to Researching Arctic Seeds ” A new interview from Botany One. 🔗 botany.fyi/0yhupl

Should Europe do the same?

Should universities and funding schemes move away from mobility rules? Scientists have the right to build a family too

Alita Burmeister (@aburmeister.bsky.social) is looking to hire a postdoc (or potentially a PhD student) for projects on phage resistance and evolution. The position description is posted to the Eco-Evo Jobs wiki and also available on her lab's website (arburmeister.weebly.com).

I'm not into squamate lizards, but I am reposting because they mentioned one of my favorite bands, Hot Chip

Great work @upama.bsky.social

Would you apply for NIH and NSF grants as a non-american scientist not based in the US considering current (geo)political events?

Looking for EU funding? Join the #HorizonEU Widening info day and discover new funding opportunities under the WIDERA Work Programme 2026-27. Experts from @ec.europa.eu will present the new call topics and provide guidance. 22 Jan 2026 🧪 link.europa.eu/JYYVPV Join online, no registration needed!

The US military isn’t just waging war on people; it’s waging war on the planet. 🌍🔥 A new documentary, 'Earth's Greatest Enemy', reveals how it drives climate breakdown and devastates ecosystems worldwide. 🧪 www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-u.s...

So there ya have it. We hope our data are useful to indexers, and to the public to help corral this widespread academic misconduct. The cost of inaction is immense. Without it, we will continue to piss hundreds of millions of research funds down the drain. arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563 17/17

Discussions around the inequitable scientific publishing is gaining momentum, but (funny enough) not at conferences, where scientists get together and can find solutions

We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing: a 🧵 1/n Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820 Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/... Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

I'm learning that in scientific articles, using the word "interesting" to describe other studies' results is just a polite way of saying "wtf is this" 🧪

Excited to release BoltzGen which brings SOTA folding performance to binder design! The best part of this project is collaborating with a broad network of leading wetlabs that test BoltzGen at an unprecedented scale, showing success on many novel targets and pushing the model to its limits!

🧪Superb work, a must read! Tech companies replicate the tobacco and fossil fuel industries' efforts to distort the scientific record. They deploy biased incentive structures and barriers, such as selective publishing and restricting data access, to impede evidence-based regulation. #AcademicSky

2 job adverts on a NERC project w myself + @darrenobbard.bsky.social on “What determines the virome: ecology and the environment, evolution, or species history?” early 2026 in @uniexecec.bsky.social - Postdoc: jobs.exeter.ac.uk/hrpr_webrecr... - RA: jobs.exeter.ac.uk/hrpr_webrecr... Pls share!

7. How to write consistently boring scientific literature. “Hell – is sitting on a hot stone reading your own scientific publications” Erik Ursin, fish biologist Thanks @fattebertj.bsky.social Open Access nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

I participated in writing this reflection for peeer about a workshop I attended at the evolution meetings this year about equitable and affordable publishing. Check it out here

Why would anyone want to be a scientist? "Doing good science requires the utmost exertion of body, mind and spirit, yet is consistently filled with failure and rejection." journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

Agreed, but learned society journals should strive to become more open and inclusive! Is this OK for our journals to hide behind paywalls that preclude free access by researchers from low income countries? More here: trulyopenscience.blogspot.com/2025/09/why-... #SocietyJournals #SciPub

It is a useful anti-anthropomorphism to say that environmental protection is not about 'saving the planet', but rather ourselves. This is true to a point, but if our species goes down, we will take many more with us. A sixth major mass-extinction is a distinct possibility. 🧪

Want to know all about ERC grants available this year? Don't forget to watch our webinar at 15:00 CEST today Thursday 10th July, to hear from the ERC experts 👉 europa.eu/!3rGdWB First though, to help you prepare, do read through the 2026 ERC Work Programme! 👉 europa.eu/!qhVTkt

Where do academics go when they leave for industry? The top 10 destinations are all tech giants—led by Google, Amazon, Meta & Microsoft. Pharma and biotech don’t even make the list. Fascinating shift in the R&D landscape. 🧪 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Is this good news amidst all the bad ones?

My talk at the @evolmtg.bsky.social is out (15:00 - 28:00). My slide and picture are on the cover 😂! I present the results of our study where we found signatures of positive and diversifying selection on CFH (an innate immunity gene) on the codons interacting with Borrelia youtu.be/Q64-FaaebBg?...

📣 Researchers in 🇵🇱Poland; ever considered applying for an ERC grant? In a webinar on 15 July you can ✅ Learn how to apply successfully ✅ Discover NCP support ✅ Get exclusive tips from an evaluator ✅ Hear testimonials from grant recipients Register 👉 bit.ly/ERC2025PL

Are you an ecologist looking for funding for your next project?  Round 2 of our BES Grants is now open for applications! 🧪🌍

One of the reasons why I decided to attend evolution 2025 only virtually

I'm looking for a postdoc in computational evolutionary phage genomics, with the goal to better understand how protein innovation arises in viruses, at @jagiellonskiuni.bsky.social in Krakow (Poland). Drop me a line if it sounds cool! Deadline: 20.06. Link here: mcb.uj.edu.pl/documents/15...

“the next very big milestone that I’m thinking about is AI making actual measurable economic impact, and, in particular, being able to create novel research” @lizziegibney.bsky.social from our Nature News team talked to Jakub Pachowski, OpenAI’s chief scientist 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

🧵5 Top Free Alternatives to BioRender for Scientific Illustrations! These five websites offer free scientific illustrations for biologists. Great for presentations, research papers and other research communication needs. Save and share the post!

Will talking about death caps and other mushrooms in Canberra in about 10 mins here www.abc.net.au/listen/live/.... Join us for Fun(gi) facts.

Jaw dropping

Now there's a memorable stat! "Colleges and universities are among America’s most competitive international exporters. In dollar terms, last year, the United States sold more educational services to the rest of the world than it sold in natural gas and coal combined." wapo.st/3EvzMCI

Early morning fieldwork. Hoping to see some voles

If you make me wait months for a review you better accept my manuscript 😭

Science is under threat in the US. @elife.bsky.social have commissioned a series of articles discussing the implications and what we can do. The first three articles are now live. More to follow: elifesciences.org/articles/106... elifesciences.org/articles/106... elifesciences.org/articles/106...

Interesting research questions

Looking forward to knowing more about research on mythical creatures at @evolmtg.bsky.social 2025 (virtual conf.)

Are you scared about the current political situation?

Advertising late: our pre-print on transcriptional acclimation to warming of an alpine herb is on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social We found that tolerant plants downregulate photosynthesis and upregulate mRNA processing pathways. Still under review in Mol Ecol www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Maybe I am doing this wrong, but I wrote an R script to automatically download hundreds of papers for a systematic review, only to find out that many publishers block this even though the paper is open access. How can we make life easier for whoever wants to do a review?

What makes a spider a successful urban adapter? Check out the latest PhD review paper by Nik Willmott 🕷️: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1... #BobWongLab 📸 www.flickr.com/photos/wikiw...

Are there any international conferences in ecology and plant ecology happening in Europe this year?

“I don’t think the richest guy in the world should be cutting funding for cancer research,” Vanity Fair’s Molly Jong-Fast posted to X on Sunday. “I’m not,” Musk responded. “Wtf are you talking about?”

🌟 Join Institut Pasteur as a Junior Research Group Leader 🌟 Explore host-microbe interactions in key areas like vaccinology, infectious diseases, neuro-immunology, and maternal health. 📅 Deadline: Feb 28, 2025 (few weeks left!) Apply now ⬇️

Have/nearly have a PhD? ≤7 years post-doc experience? Working outside UK? Not a UK citizen? BA & Royal Society offering 2-yr Fellowships for early career researchers to come to the UK! 💷 Includes: Research expenses £12k Relocation up to £8k 🗓️ Deadline: Mar 18, 2025 (17:00 GMT) #ResearchFunding

AI: great for generating code & highly repetitive tasks. But on any question of content it's like asking an industrious student to tell you what they think. The volume of info they can produce is impressive, but you can't trust any of it at face value. Might as well just write it yourself 🤷 #SciPub