Newly expanded version of my guide to scientific writing -- known as the “15 steps” -- published in PLOS Computational Biology. Special thanks to Éric Marty for creating a fantastic visualization. Check it out: journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol... #ScientificWriting #PLOSComputationalBiology

Huntington's disease has been successfully treated for the first time, doctors tell BBC

Finally, the results of my postdoc at the @bigdatabiology.bsky.social lab in Shanghai see the light! The work includes my three favorite things research-wise: 🦠 microbiome, 🧬 long-reads, and 🐶 dogs. See our new preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Always excited for an increased salary submission! Congrats to the Department of Biological Sciences at New Jersey Institute of Tech for their stipend increase! This union-based win brings the pay almost to the 1:1 line! Update your department and find out more here: rhettrautsaw.app/shiny/Biolog...

Elegantly explains how we can do better. Given so many ecologists espouse the value of non-local field research, it’s way past time to end what the author powerfully refers to as “extractive collaboration” that maintains invisibility of key contributors. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Think the Tony Blair Institute looks sinister? You've not seen anything yet. Crucial investigation by @petergeoghegan.bsky.social and Democracy for Sale: democracyforsale.substack.com/p/inside-the...

Interested in #virulence? Not sure what it is - or how to explain it? Just curious? 🧐🦠🧬🦋 @kayla-king.bsky.social and I just wrote a Primer for @currentbiology.bsky.social on the ecology and evolution of virulence! Check it below and share :) #MicroSky #EvoSky #pathogens

Microbiome sequencing has come so far in 2 decades. In my PhD— I used TRFLP…. am now doing long read sequencing of entire soil metagenomes! This review was great fun- thanks Gitta Szabó @emileyeloe-fadrosh.bsky.social Tanja Woyke of @jgi.doe.gov www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Please help shape this conference! If you, or someone you know, work on the future of birds or avian conservation or policy, please do nominate!

Can we pls get the press (& maybe comedians) to cover this gull summit? There’ll be plenty of serious stuff (maybe), but also enough material to fuel satire for years. Guessing what the first 'gull death' would look like during gull fieldwork last year was some of the most fun I've had in ages.

I'm sure anything that comes out of the Seagull Summit, and the reactions by everyone else to it, will be calm, measured, and sensible www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Do you know someone who does outstanding work on avian pop modelling & forecasting? Or who works at interface of avian conservation and decision making given uncertain futures? Submit a keynote nomination for the BOU conference Avian Futures here: bou.org.uk/event/avian-... . Deadline is next week!

Varied plumages makes identifying gulls tricky! This graphic identifies key features to look for on some of our common species. More tips on small gull identification can be found in the latest SMP news: www.bto.org/smp-news #seabirds #birds @btobirds.bsky.social @jncc.bsky.social @rspb.bsky.social

SMP Species Focus 2: The Herring Gull - A raucous bunch who often draw negative attention to themselves via their poor mannered food pinching in urban settings! This week’s content will show that they’re much more than that! #seabirds #birds @btobirds.bsky.social @jncc.bsky.social @rspb.bsky.social

we have gone from a world in which we were told not to cite wikipedia because it was unreliable to a world where wikipedia might be the only reliable source left on the internet and we all owe a lot to the pedantic nerds who got us there

It’s been a long time since I picked up a paintbrush (I suffered painting burnout) but this weekend I took inspiration - as artists have done for generations! - from my trip to @skokholmisland.bsky.social last June. A little 10x10cm mini acrylic on linen. Skokholm puffin at sunset.

Tidepooling in Japan 🐚🦀

Pacific Gulls in southeast Australia a few years ago. Gotta love that red lipstick! 😊 #SuperSeabirdSunday #seabirds #WildOz

Er, does the guardian think chimps have paws…? 🤔

Looking forward to using this package to simulate the data for my students to practice GLMMs!

🎉ASM is pleased to launch ASM Animal Microbiology🎉 Submit your original research & reviews now! The journal's EiC is José Vázquez-Boland, DVM, Ph.D., Chair of Infectious Diseases at the University of Edinburgh! @edinuni-irr.bsky.social ➡️ Read PR: brnw.ch/21wVUHf ➡️ Submit Now! brnw.ch/21wVUHe

In case you missed it: DNA miniprep columns are an equivalent replacement for the classic proteomics suspension-traps, and 10x cheaper. $5 a sample in prep just doesn't scale so it's either SP3 or this approach. pubs.rsc.org/en/content/a...

I just passed my 50,000th identification on @inaturalist.bsky.social! Identifying is a huge but often ignored part of the #iNaturalist community and dataset so I wanted to share why and how I identify. 1/14 🧪 #ecology #taxonomy #botany #CommunityScience

The interesting thing with watching students learn to write, in the 'genie out of the LLM-bottle' era, is that avg. writing isn't improving as much as I would have expected. To me this is evidence that knowing how to write well boils down to having a very clear idea of what you want to say.

Confused writing is usually a symptom of confused thinking. As we struggle to clarify writing, we clarify our thoughts. AI writing aids rob us of that struggle, leaving clean-looking text and thoughts still confused for lack of inspection. Writing is not just a product; it is a diagnostic tool.

Super paper from the mighty Mia Winkler, @genomarit.bsky.social and Iren Lohr. "We have previously shown that there were relatively few strain-sharing events across ecological niches...plasmid-sharing is considerably more common across niches than strain-sharing. " www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Australia’s quietest cockatoo is running out of trees. We have betrayed its gentle curiosity As logging, fire and shrinking habitat push the glossy black cockatoo closer to the brink, we don’t just risk losing a species, but a world of wonder www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Do it already

In his #ParentCarerScientist case study, Professor Ben Sheldon FRS talks about navigating crises at home and at work, and why it's important for leaders to set an example when it comes to balancing work with caring responsibilities: #CarersWeek #AndAScientist royalsociety.org/about-us/who...

🚨 PhD alert 🚨 We are looking for a highly motivated student to use 🧬 genomics 🧬 and 🛰️ bio-logging 🛰️ approaches to disentangle cultural and genetic contributions to seabird migration 🐣 Think this is you, or someone you know? Then come to our Q&A session at on 29/09 and check out the ad below!

this YouTube documentary on two young dudes discovering birding by entering a big year is hilarious.

A new Science study of ants in Fiji—involving genomic sequencing of over 4000 ant specimens from museum collections—shows that most native species have been in decline since humans first arrived in the archipelago 3000 years ago. https://scim.ag/489mI2o

Open postdoc position in in my lab in Berlin @mpiib-berlin.mpg.de. Join us to push the frontier in ancient microbial genomics. Please apply until Oct 17th. Reach out in case you have any questions. www.mpiib-berlin.mpg.de/2193291/job_...

Did you know that it's officially #PeerReviewWeek? 📑💭 Whether you're looking to learn more about #PeerReview for the first time or want to brush up on some best practice tips, check out our free guide below 👇 https://f.mtr.cool/eoffzyiudg

they were developed in a fentanyl lab located in Asbestos, Quebec, to be Woke, fireproof and deadly to the touch. their glands secrete generic prescription drugs and they all believe in climate change. these aren’t your granddad’s 30-50 feral hogs. they’re bilingual. they will win

⏰ DEADLINE TODAY! Nominate now for a BOU #ornithology award 🪶 🥇 Godman Salvin Prize 🥇 Alfred Newton Lecture 🥇 Janet Kear Union Medal 🥇 Early Professional Award bou.org.uk/about-the...

Today is “drag and tag,” tagging sharks with drag queens while raising money for LGBQT+ youth organizations in Florida! www.scientificamerican.com/article/drag...

I haven't used {DeclareDesign} before, but I have been using {marginaleffects} in my simulation-based power analyses for the past year or so, and I recommend you do too.

🚨 Gull Drama Seagulls - love em? Hate em? Shoot em? All of the above? 😇/😈 Our original paper about gulls in the Gulf of Maine in Cons Biol: doi.org/10.1111/cobi... Reply: doi.org/10.1111/cobi... Rejoinder: doi.org/10.1111/cobi... Don't hesitate to DM to chat, or for PDFs!

Every $1.00 spent on research generates $2.50 in economic returns. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/13/u...

We just pushed a new version of the global bird phylogeny to Github. Updated topology (v1.5), and now in the most recent Clements/eBird taxonomy. We'll push to CRAN soon too, but head over and grab the most recent clootl version now. @snacktavish.bsky.social github.com/eliotmiller/...

BTO Youth and Essex Birdwatching Society are running a WeBS training & Wader ID event for people aged 12-25 at Two Tree Island on Saturday 4th October. It's free to attend but places are limited, for full details and to book visit www.bto.org/our-work/eve... @btobirds.bsky.social #essexbirding

Male Reproductive Senescence in Mammals Is Pervasive and Aligned With the Slow-Fast Continuum onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

How do you long-read sequence metagenomes? I would argue it starts with the right sample storage & DNA extraction, to enable efficient @nanoporetech.com /@pacbio.bsky.social sequencing, which we investigated in our new paper: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Massive thanks to Klara for driving this

Excited to share our @cp-cellhostmicrobe.bsky.social led by Magda showing how Bif has co-evolved with different animal hosts 🐒🐭🐷🐦 Key takeaways: 🔹 Host ancestry + diet shape Bif evolution 🔹 Mammals enriched for carb-busting enzymes 🔹 Untapped diversity in non-human hosts = new probiotic potential

Wow, 17,000 applications! marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/news/msca-po...

If you are UK-based and working on any aspect of microbiomes (human, plant, insect, soil, animal, ...), please do sign up to Microbiome-Net for details of networking, funding and training opportunities. forms.office.com/pages/respon...

New #metagenome assembly comparison of PacBio, ONT, and Illumina in human gut #microbiomes. - "HiFi generated more cMAGs than ONT at every depth with either assembly method" - "HiFi cMAGs had significantly higher completeness and lower contamination than ONT" doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...

Source: The Guardian search.app/XuTT7

Nice day out in the Peak District for our induction week hike with the new Wildlife Conservation MSc cohort. They did well scrambling up this steep hill!