Are you interested in studying RNA phages? We are looking for a PhD student and a postdoc to join the lab! For more information and how to apply, see below 👇 Please RT!

A paper for the #eDNA crowd, in particular those using flies for terrestrial biomonitoring. We show that massive pooling works well, reducing costs + time, bringing us a step closer to scalable terrestrial eDNA biomonitoring. doi.org/10.1002/edn3...

Despite decades of effort, scientists have still not discovered a foolproof way to evaluate colleagues’ work that doesn’t involve reading the paper

New in @science.org, a paper from my PhD showing that ant groups fight epidemics by modifying the structure of their nests, giving them “architectural immunity”! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Fantastic reporting by @kakape.bsky.social on @scs22.bsky.social's work in the Arctic looking for sequenceable ancient RNA viruses. Amazing pictures (including this gem), and as always great story telling and commentary on the topic. Excited to see what they find. www.science.org/content/arti...

We're already at the hiding people from the secret police phase?

EXTREMELY COOL BAT STUFF: A study out in Science today found that the greater noctule bat, Europe's largest, hunts and catches *migrating birds* while in flight. In at least one case, a bat climbed to more than 1200 feet, then chased a robin downward FAST until it caught it near the ground.

New preprint alert! We DNA barcoded 95 thousand Ghanaian arthropods, more than doubling the number of BINs (a species proxy) available online from West Africa. In doing so we’ve released a huge amount of new data to scientists studying the region 🧪 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The NSF GRFP was a huge help for me along my academic journey - and I had to apply multiple times to get there. These last minute changes to eligibility are cruel and if you are impacted - please do sign. laurenkuehne.github.io/grfpChanges/

What a clever intervention to reduce malaria risk among babies! www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

New study by the Institut Pasteur de Bangui and HIOH examines CAR #mpox outbreaks via genomic #epidemiology. High frequencies of independent spillovers highlight the need to strengthen systematic surveillance & identify animal sources to prevent future outbreaks www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Great and fast work to sequence the genome of the new Ebola out break in DRC. Impressive! virological.org/t/the-16th-e...

If I could change one thing about #ScientificPublishing I'd ask funding bodies to stipulate all work they fund be published in non-profit journals. The knock-on effects would alleviate most of the strain on #AcademicSky. This isn't hard. It's big, but actually, it's pretty easy. 1/n

Using #AI to replace customer service, without telling people we are talking to a machine, is a horrible idea. Especially if you are dealing with a product recall for something that is spontaneously catching fire and your AI hallucinates… we live in weird and dangerous times. A thread...

We were part of another viral aRNA study that was just published. In this work spearheaded by Christian Urban in the lab of Verena Schuenemann, a new protocol was assessed (good for short fragments) and a seventh 1918 flu genome was completely sequenced bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Every country is warming. Every country is experiencing more extreme weather events because of climate change, mainly caused by burning fossil fuels. www.ShowYourStripes.info Time to #ShowYourStripes and start climate conversations to prompt actions to reduce emissions, personally & collectively.

The @helmholtz-hioh.bsky.social's One Health Surveillance Group received one of the Best Research Environments in 2024 awards, given out by the @jungeakademie.bsky.social + @volkswagenstiftung.de. idw-online.de/de/news853515

Congratulations to the @schauflerlab.org of the @helmholtz-hioh.bsky.social and @helmholtzhzi.bsky.social for receiving the Josef Wund Foundation's Undine Water Prize - very well deserved! The group is pushing very cool work on AMR and lots of exciting things afoot! jw-stiftung.de/index.php?vi...

Lots of information being gleaned from eDNA (www.nature.com/articles/s41...) but with increasing use of shotgun based approaches, there is also a risk of false positives, which I discussed with Warren Cornwall @science.org www.science.org/content/arti...

When viral epidemics are ignored they hardly magically disappear, they spread. Excellent reporting on the large outbreak of mpox in Sierra Leone. A country with a fragile health system and limited resources to effectively respond to this threat. www.science.org/content/arti...

Ecologists’ endless quest for automatic inference statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/05/28/e...

Our @ucl.ac.uk @crick.ac.uk work, out this week in @science.org, traces a genetic time series of bacterial infections to reveal when and how Borrelia recurrentis jumped from ticks to humans—via our body lice. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

🎧 New podcast episode! Dr. Jan Gogarten talks about being an expat in his own country and starting a family while doing science. And rain forest pathogens. @jangogarten.bsky.social @helmholtzhzi.bsky.social @helmholtz-hioh.bsky.social #diseaseecology #eDNA www.buzzsprout.com/2464891/epis...

Eine unsichtbare Mauer gegen globale Krankheitsausbrüche: Der Tierarzt Frédéric Singa, der WWF und @helmholtz-hioh.bsky.social analysieren im Kongobecken potenziell gefährliche Krankheitserreger und etablieren ein Frühwarnsystem für Pandemien. via WWF Deutschland. #OneHealth youtu.be/vPduEwIDXNc?...

Had a lovely discussion with Rachael Moeller Gorman of @socwithsci.bsky.social about my research + broader goals of @helmholtz-hioh.bsky.social + @helmholtzhzi.bsky.social. A neat initiative to communicate science with the public! socializingwithscientists.com/episode/jan-...

Remember when you first learned about genetics at school? All those fascinating examples of human traits that are each apparently determined by just a single gene? Time to check in on some of your favourites to see how they’re doing. 🧬🧵🧪 1/n

Have long been a @radiolab.bsky.social and @carlzimmer.com fan - this latest episode did a really nice job explaining why funding science broadly sets the stage for unexpected and transformative findings. The seemingly weird or esoteric can end up pieces of game changing findings.

New Postdoc position! 🐵🐵🐵🐵 On the socioecology of cognition in primates, based in Paris @mnhn.fr @cnrs.fr, with field work It has it all: - the best science - the best macaques - the best beaches - the best people - the best office view #Eiffeltower Join us!

In the U.S. in 1825, *452* out of 1000 children born died before their 5th birthday. By 1925, that number was 135 out of a 1000 children. Today, in 2025, that number is *7* And it is entirely due to advances in medicine, public health, and technology. 9/

Great news out of Uganda - the Ebola outbreak there is over: www.afro.who.int/countries/ug... Hats off to a huge mobilization and lots of hard work that paid off.

Jeffery Taubenberger, who gained fame for unearthing samples of the 1918 flu virus, and ultimately sequencing its entire genome, has been named acting director of the NIAID, Science has learned. scim.ag/3EzzUBo

Someone on Threads noticed you can type any random sentence into Google, then add “meaning” afterwards, and you’ll get an AI explanation of a famous idiom or phrase you just made up. Here is mine

GROSSARTIG! 🙏🏻 #ToomBaumarkt #FckNzs

Free speech in America is dying - this always seemed like a core tenant of US democracy and sad to see it sacrificed by Trump and co. The time to #resist has long arrived - things are rapidly marching towards fascism over there… www.ctpublic.org/news/2025-04...

Scientists think they know what animal carries mpox. It’s not a monkey A chance discovery led to the identification of a possible natural reservoir for the virus formerly known as monkeypox @maevecullinan.bsky.social reports www.telegraph.co.uk/global-healt...

Bisher war unklar, wo sich das Mpox-Virus in der Natur verbirgt. Dann erkrankt ein Affe. Forscher rätseln, wo er sich infiziert hat – und finden ein kleines Tier im Wald.

Und @jangogarten.bsky.social, ebenfalls Ko-Autor, mit weiteren Infos zur Studie zum #Mpox-Reservoir. bsky.app/profile/jang...

In this opinion piece with @jangogarten.bsky.social and @pikkajokelainen.bsky.social we talk about the importance of embracing the complexity of the ecosystem and integrating environmental data into One Health approaches. So if you are interested in this topic, check it out! doi.org/10.1016/j.on...

We just succeeded in formally linking a specific rodent species - the otherwise charming fire-footed rope squirrel - to the onset of a mpox outbreak in a primate species - sooty mangabeys. Here Kai’s report on the preprint we released yesterday 1/2

NEW PAPER, JUST OUT! 👀 Insects from the '70s and '80s were already collecting microplastic, decades before the term microplastic even existed. 🤯 A thread on the surprising history of this pollutant and the incredible insect larvae that helped us uncover it. 🐛 Let's dive in! 🧵👇 1/x

Another good reason why long-term (l-t) field sites are crucial for scientific research. Only l-t data collection, with l-t funding and a dedicated team on the ground provides a dataset for this. Thank you to SNF (17 y), MPS (28 y), HIOH and CNRS (new) for l-t support over 45 years. Read the thread

At first glance it may seem exaggerated to put so much emphasis on a single or a few ecosystems, but in the long run I think it is probably our best shot at disentangling the complex ecological processes that lead to the emergence of infectious diseases 3/4

Interesting that although we now have a close relative for mpox, the ancestry of smallpox (variola virus) is still unknown. The closest viruses are found in camels and gerbils (taterapox), but they ain't that close.

Mpox has inflicted Africa since 1970 but its origins remain a mystery Thanks to long-term surveillance, scientists were able to pinpoint a squirrel species as the source of mpox outbreak But is it the reservoir? Or is it part of a network of reservoirs? My latest in @nature.com shorturl.at/lY7Kf

Nice coverage of our study of MPXV in Taï National Park by @kakape.bsky.social + @janeqiu.bsky.social. Great example of the value of long-term wildlife health monitoring for public health: www.nature.com/articles/d41... www.science.org/content/arti... Preprint: www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-6...

“My detention at Guantanamo changed me. The isolation, the deprivation… it broke us down.” A Venezuelan man who entered the US for a CBP One appointment on Jan. 19, 2025—and violated no laws—describes the horrors of Guantanamo detention aka imprisonment. ccrjustice.org/sites/defaul...

Die COVID-19-Pandemie hat gezeigt, wie eng Mensch, Tier, Umwelt und Gesellschaft miteinander verknüpft sind. Das hat dem Thema One Health große Aufmerksamkeit verschafft. Das Historische Institut der UG startet daher am 8.4. eine One-Health-Vortragsreihe: https://ugreif.de/tpuqk

Looks like USA is detaining visitors at the border + turning people away for expressing views against the admin - all while dismantling free speech + undermining science. It is time for scientific societies to stop hosting conferences there. It isn't safe + excludes too many from community. #RESIST

It was great to be back in Uganda visiting collaborators and the team from the Kibale Ecology and Conservation Project! Many interesting ideas for new projects - such a wonderful place and fantastic people - grateful to be able to spend time there. Feeling recharged and ready to write some grants...

In case you signed up for 23andme at some point - they have filed for bankruptcy protection and your samples and data might be up for sale soon... here a description of the steps needed to both destroy your sample and delete your data: oag.ca.gov/news/press-r...