Great new pub by Pappalardo et al. on taxon-specific BLAST % identity thresholds for DNA #metabarcoding 🧬, with an associated Shiny app for optimized COI thresholds tailored to your data: besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... shiny.si.edu/ebbs_blast_f... #eDNA

🐠🦈 Just out: In this paper we ask "How has reef trophic structure changed since humans started removing predatory fishes from Caribbean coral reefs?". www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Illustrations @cookedillustrations.com

There's now a 15% overhead cap on NSF grants 😔, similar to the 15% NIH cap that went into effect several months ago: www.nsf.gov/policies/doc... A judge has temporarily blocked the NIH cap (www.science.org/content/arti...), here's hoping we get similar judicial checks on the NSF cap!

My cats decided to help me with my committee meeting slides. I think they turned out pretty great. #PhDCat #CatSky

I am thrilled to share that I was a awarded a 25-26 Graduate Continuing Fellowship from the University of Texas at Austin, supporting the final year of my PhD! This week, a colleague & I finalized lab work for 2 projects. I look forward to sharing our findings in the coming year!

On this celebratory day of women and girls in science, let’s reflect that the US National Science Foundation has put the words “women” and “female” (but not “men” and “male”) on the list of forbidden words that will get your grant slated for the reject bin.

Today is the last day of our #Metabarcoding in Microbial Ecology course! A huge thank you to our instructors and all the participants for making this week a great learning experience. @fonamental.bsky.social @delcampolab.bsky.social

As part of the ‘24-25 SWIMM program, a group of students from Mexico, Cuba and the US have been helping develop a Report Card of coastal resources of Tabasco. 🇲🇽🇨🇺🇺🇸 Last week, we presented a first draft to collaborators in Villahermosa! This has been an amazing group and project to be a part of! 💕

How is bat acoustic activity influenced by noise pollution? How do impacts differ between natural sounds and human ones with similar acoustic characteristics? 🦇💧🚗 Learn more in our new open-access publication, led by Ryan Vosbigian: dx.doi.org/10.1002/ecs2...

Just did the last PCR of my PhD and with that, Im done with the last of my lab work! 🧬🧪🎉

Coral bleaching surveys in Bonaire from 2016-2023 show that last year had the most widespread bleaching and related coral colony mortality. While this is disheartening, focusing on increasing local reef resilience can help buy time to address global climate change. 🪸💪 📖: www.dcbd.nl/reposerver/a...

For folks interested in coral reef ecosystem related research and news, check out the Coralsky feed! 🪸🐠🦀 bsky.app/profile/did:...

🚨 Preprint! We combine our recent open dataset of #APC prices with the article counts per journal-year from #OpenAlex to estimate how much the academic community has paid in APCs over the last 5 years. A. $8.349 billion ($8.968 B in 2023 USD) $2.5B in 2023 alone. arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551 #metasci

Im elated to share that my coral reef piece won the Society for Women in Marine Science art competition! #sciart #stippling

Recognizing and celebrating the many contributions, achievements, and inherent value of LGBTQIA+ community members today and every day! 🧵 of a few papers describing how we can better support 🏳️‍🌈 and 🏳️‍⚧️ individuals in STEM. #QueerInSTEM #LGBTQStemDay

In 'A framework for training graduate students & campus communities in inclusive teaching', @botanyberit.bsky.social, @scubamelman.bsky.social, Chris Biggs and & I share a tips & resources for formal professional development training in inclusive pedagogy. 🧵(1/4) doi.org/10.1128/jmbe...

Why do animals eat their own poop—and other animals’ too? It's not just your dog that does it, but fish, moose, and many other creatures! 💩 Learn more in a Nat Geo article by Katarina Zimmer highlighting my research and that other scientists: nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...

Parrotfishes help maintain resilient reefs by grazing algae & cyanobacteria, but some also eat live coral. 🪸 In a new study, we evaluated how parrotfish coral predation intensity varies across gradients in coral cover, diversity, & parrotfish abundance across 4 Caribbean regions: shorturl.at/fjZ22

I am honored to receive a Scholar Award given by the International Chapter of the P.E.O. Sisterhood. I am very grateful for this support as I advance in my PhD research on the trophic ecology of nominally herbivorous fishes! @thecaseylab.bsky.social #womeninSTEM

It was a wonderful to share work on 'Developing inclusive teaching frameworks for campus and community STEAM education' by myself, @scubamelman.bsky.social @botanyberit.bsky.social + Dr. Chris Biggs, and hear about projects by other grant teams at the @CTL_UT Teaching & Learning Symposium last week!

Amazing performance by the Casey lab at the 52nd Benthic Ecology Meeting! 🧬🐠 Shoot out to @hannah-rempel.bsky.social and @Zoe for winning best presentation awards 🏆#BEM2024

2 years & 2 months later, a stippling drawing I began inspired by a class assignment on "picture an ecosystem" is done! There's something magical to reefs that's always encaptivated me. While Ive never seen the coral triangle myself- the birthplace of reefs, I wanted to capture a bit of that magic.

Are you a woman or non-binary person studying or working in a marine science field in Texas? Consider joining the Texas Chapter of the Society for Women in Marine Science @txswms.bsky.social! texasswms.wixsite.com/texas-swms #TexasScience #WomeninSTEM #nonbinaryinSTEM

For folks learning to use General Additive (Mixed) Models in R, this free guide by the Quebec Center for Biodiversity Science has been a great resource for me! r.qcbs.ca/workshop08/b... #statistics #GAM #GAMM #academicsky #statsky

A few days before Christmas, Posit shared all talks & workshop materials from posit::conf 2023! I had the honor to teach two 1-day courses—the dedicated web pages feature slides, scripts & exercises👇 2️⃣ "Engaging and Beautiful DataVizes with ggplot2" posit-conf-2023.github.io/dataviz-ggpl...

I am elated and incredibly grateful to receive a 2024 UT Austin Stengl-Wyer Graduate Fellowship! This will support another year of my PhD research investigating the ecological roles of nominally herbivorous fishes in Panamá and Texas using molecular techniques. 🪸🐠🧬 #TexasScience #womeninstem

It’s been incredible to spend the past two weeks assisting on projects on Tropical Eastern Pacific reefs and see the other side of the isthmus of Panamá!

I’m elated to receive a UT Texas Gulf Coast Research Center Predoctoral Award & dive into some new research on Texas fish! Mariana Rivera Higueras, Juan Pablo Lozano Peña, Mel Niell, & I kicked off this project with fun & successful of field collections & lab work yesterday! @txacsci.bsky.social

Happy Halloween from the University of Texas Marine Science Institute! 🎃 I love being part of such a fun community!

Time to upgrade your #16S_rRNA V4 primers! Goodbye Parada et al. 2018 and Apprill et al. 2015. Welcome Hu et al. 2023. Greatly improved coverage for #Patescibacteria/CPR with minimal bias on other known taxa. #MicroSky 🦠🧫 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

No better way to start the day than sampling environmental DNA on the coast at sunrise!

We kicked off our first inclusive teaching journal club at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute today! We discussed how mixed assessment methods can improve gender parity in college bio courses (Cotner & Ballen 2017). Paper link: journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

For all things coral reef related, here's a Coralsky thread! 🪸 bsky.app/profile/did:... #coralsky #marinescience #research #coralreefs #coral #reefs

The Majoris Lab at TAMU-CC is open and recruiting a PhD student to study intra- and interspecific variation in larval dispersal traits. Full details at: www.johnmajoris.com/graduate-stu... @sicb-dedb.bsky.social

A study led by hannah-rempel.bsky.social found that Caribbean parrotfishes + surgeonfishes regularly eat fish poop, especially that of planktivores! When compared with their food sources, these feces may be a rich nutrient supplement–a fish "vitamin sea"! 🌊 💩 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

How do fish get their "daily vitamins" on nutrient-poor coral reefs? One way is by eating poop! 💩 🐟 Several recent studies involving Casey Lab members highlight the important, yet previously underappreciated role of fish poop as a nutrient source for reef critters! #VitaminSea A thread...

🚨 Science Resources for BlueSky 🚨 Scientist? Just joined BlueSky? Here’s four resources you might find useful. #AcademicSky 🧪 🧵 (1) A list of over 130 subject-specific feeds. Find posts by others in your area and use the right tags in your posts to get them seen.

Are you using eDNA or eRNA approaches to study aquatic ecosystems and want to standardize your approaches? A new paper just dropped comparing methods and best practices in this field! 🧬🌊 #eDNA #eRNA #molecularecology @thecaseylab.bsky.social

Yesterday Dr. John Majoris @gobywan.bsky.social of @tamu.bsky.social and I were busy soldering, assembling, and programming a Raspberry Pi (mini computer) to run a motor for an experiment on fish digestion! 🐠💻 Excited to get this experiment running! #TexasScience #UTMSI #TAMUCC

This is the British Ecological Society HTTP 404 error page... they have truly outdone themselves! While I didn't find the article link I was looking for, I did get a good laugh. 😂

Wow! This feels surreal to have my art on display at the grand reopening of the Texas Science & Natural History Museum! Thanks for the photo Katy Appler!! #sciart #steam #sciartseptember

Favorite R package discovery of the day... tidyr::crossing() This package is great for making a dataframe that includes all possible unique combinations of 2+ dataframes you are merging, or multiple vectors! #rpackage #stats #rstats #rforecologists

Two weeks left to apply for a graduate student position (oyster reef ecosystems or coral reef ecology) or research technician/lab manager position in my lab! fishandfunctions.com/join Please spread the word & email me for any questions.

American Association of University Women (AAUW) American Fellowship Dissertation Fellowship: $25,000 Postdoctoral Research Leave Fellowship: $50,000 Short-Term Research Publication Grant: $8,000 Deadline: Nov 15 www.aauw.org/resources/pr... #neuroscience #neurogrants

Rodnyel Arosemena López and I have had a busy summer studying how reef degradation influence coral reef fish trophic roles. 🪸🐟🏭 I’m grateful for a Smithsonian Predoctoral Fellowship that is supporting this ongoing work! #fieldwork #smithsonian #panamá #coralreefs

Happy #SciArtSeptember! This illustration of a Molly miller blenny with Dictyota and Caulerpa algae was inspired by my ongoing research. Prints are available for purchase, all proceeds support the Society for Integrative & Comparative Biology student fund! fineartamerica.com/featured/tin...

Hey Bluesky! Did you know that Caribbean parrotfishes and surgeonfishes eat fish feces, especially that of planktivores? Our research suggests that these feces may be a rich nutrient supplement–a fish "vitamin sea"! 💩 link.springer.com/article/10.1...