I've slowly been reformatting notes from my population and conservation genetics course at Montana State University into a web book—a rough draft is now live here: elinck.org/popgen_conge...

Fewer amounts of new specific solicitations and more broad ones going forward Panels larger and with larger suites of research grants to evaluate and broader expertise within them Probably longer waits to sort through funding decisions

what do we think this will mean, practically speaking

"Chlorospingus" has to be near the top of the list when it comes to humiliating bird names

graphic design standards at science have slipped precipitously over the last 50 years

I suspect this is a sign of things to come—that opportunities to pursue an open-ended Ph.D. in EEB (i.e., a project not tightly tied to a particular grant) will be increasingly rare (www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...)

anyone have experience fragmenting DNA for WGS library prep with a Qsonica Q800R3? effective covaris alternative, or ineffective trap for cheapskates?

I have organized my life around not having to drive regularly since ~2009. we're about a week into having to do so for childcare, and man this blows

We used to live in a society. hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electr...

I can't help but notice polarization and societal dysfunction have increased since we stopped making websites like this

today is your last chance to comment on the feds' plan to rescind the roadless rule, which I urge you to strongly oppose on recreational and scientific grounds: www.regulations.gov/document/FS-...

you hate to see it

it's time for my class to learn about some Guys

Plant genome sequencing needs to go tropical. Check out this commentary I wrote with Felipe Zapata (UCLA) and María José Sanín (Montgomery Botanical Center) out today in Nature Reviews Biodiversity 1/5 www.nature.com/articles/s44...

i keep a facebook account open for the usual reasons (marketplace, that one aunt) and about two years ago began getting deluged with friend requests from random birders / nature guides around the world. when did this cultural norm get established?

my university information security office sends out fake "happy birthday!" phishing emails from an official address with a QR code and if you scan the QR code they enroll you in mandatory training

up for retention this semester; working off examples of dossier materials from colleagues. how are you people so productive??

Know an Evolutionary Genomicist looking for a faculty position? Join us in EEB @utknoxville.bsky.social Position is open for studying any organism, but personally I have some botany bias. 🌱 Apply before Sept 19 for full consideration. apply.interfolio.com/170735 Please share widely. Thanks!

looking for successful examples of applied / practical evolutionary / population / conservation genomics courses, at the graduate or advanced undergrad level. have you taught something like this? what worked?

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.

🧪 BREAKING (good news): Senate subcommittee says NO! to Trump's proposed slashes to NASA & NSF funding. Today, the subcommittee said to keep NASA + NSF funding at $33.9 billion, the same as in FY24. See 7:15 below. Full Senate appropriations committee meets tomorrow about it. 🧵 1/3

the undergrad in my lab saw a wolf while doing bird surveys today. casual Montana morning

the ad is up! applications due 7/15: evol.mcmaster.ca/brian/evoldi...

trying to figure out the best way to cite "The Voyage of the Beagle" and descending into madness

parenting pro tip: babies LOVE glacial lakes

ad to come, but I'm looking for an M.S. student to study the conservation genomics of swift foxes on the American Prairie Reserve in Montana beginning 9/1. this is a collaboration w/ Smithsonian & Justine Becker; strong candidates will have prior genomics experience and be up for remote fieldwork

The 500 additional GRFPs NSF awarded were not very evenly distributed across fields, it seems. www.science.org/content/arti...

A process server delivered a letter regarding my "hostile" and "defamatory" attacks on #ColossalBio co-founder Ben Lamm, insinuating I'm a misogynist and a failed scientist. Nothing I've said is defamation, but you can read it a judge for yourself. I've redacted my home address 1/n

really nice map of inventoried roadless areas, now under threat

Perhaps gauche to quote your own book, but I think CROSSINGS's section on the Roadless Rule gets at something fundamental: that to designate places as roadless is to assert that our national forests have value—for wildlife, for water, for slow recreation—beyond mere timber extraction. #roadecology

rescinding the roadless rule is probably this administration’s most damaging environmental policy to date: content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USD...

go @jlwilliamson.bsky.social!

exceptional data viz for a mobile device here

so... which Pacific seabirds need the most attention? Ask the experts! Excited to share a new paper in @society4conbio.bsky.social We interviewed 70+ seabird scientists, cultural practitioners and managers across the Pacific. conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

this is so useful: rpubs.com/dortizbarrie...

my take on this from @thatsmohrlikeit.bsky.social: don’t let them! www.hcn.org/articles/sen...

a golden rule of social media is that I will always have a typo in a paper-announcement-post

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

who did this

phenomenal thrift store luck yesterday

i'd love to chart with other ECRs / assistant profs about how everyone is navigating the apocalyptic funding landscape and trying to move forward without wasting time on doomed proposals. is there a slack group or something out there?

In case you couldn't bear to read all the way to the end (understandable), here is the proposed picture for the BIO Directorate.

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...

While we are all reeling from the budget and its major cuts to NASA, NIH, USGS, etc. I want to also draw attention to this little nugget about State Wildlife Grants, which is the mechanism for funding State Wildlife Action Plans. Eliminating SWG will destroy state natural resource agencies.

Bozeman: Consider coming to a panel @highcountrynews.org is hosting at the Country Bookshelf on Sunday. @nickbowlin.bsky.social, our deputy mayor, and Heather Grenier of HRDC will be discussing the city's housing crisis and spike in homelessness 👇

Terminal Genome Viewer (tgv), written in Rust github.com/zeqianli/tgv

jd vance using the reproducibility crisis in the sciences (“particularly in biology”) as fodder for his demagoguery

for your consideration: this ferruginous hawk

just had a brazen magpie raid our cheese plate open.spotify.com/track/1HgzFX...