Making sure I cover the bases for everyone I follow and.... Merry Christmas! メリークリスマス! Feliz Navidad! God Jul! Fröhliche Weihnachten! Nollaig shona dhaoibh!

JOB KLAXON! The @nhm-london.bsky.social is recruiting a micro-CT specialist! jobs.nhm.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

[DIVE LIVE STREAMING] We plan to stream a ROV dive at the Quaker serpentinite seamount on the Mariana Forearc tomorrow, live from R/V KAIMEI! Dec 23 08:00-17:00 (Japan Time), on the @JAMSTEC_PR YouTube channel: youtube.com/live/Nt_8P_m... *If cancelled, will be posponed to Dec 24.

Really great 'blog from Torsten Struck on one of the greatest honours of our discipline, to see a PhD student spread their wings. I was lucky enough to have *three* MSc students graduate this year, and to have my first opportunity to review a PhD thesis. blog.annelida.de/2025/12/20/d...

🎥 Want to hear directly from our committee representatives? They presented these highlights during the last #ERGAPlenary. Rewatch their talks anytime: youtu.be/ldj49yUimeI?... 👏 Congratulations for the great work!!! #community #plenary #ERGA

What was the #ERGACommunity up to in 2025? The answer is: a lot! Head to our website for an overview of the main achievements and ongoing priorities across our community ➡️ www.erga-biodiversity.eu/post/erga-20... #community #2025highlights #ERGA @ebpgenome.bsky.social @biogeneurope.bsky.social

This. I find it overwhelming how much of the AI talk misses that *the communication is the fun bit*. Like... doing science art, sitting down with an artist, chatting about what can and can't be done, learning from each other and really collaborating. That's it. That is the filling of the sandwich.

My favourite part of submitting a paper is the word count. Copying everything into another document and then vandalising your own work by deleting figures and tables is weirdly satisfying. Also Submitted!

Erasmus is great, pleased to hear! I hope this is "as well as", instead of "instead of" the Turing scheme though. It had a rocky start, but encouraging exchanges outside of Europe, and broadening horizons beyond our nearest neighbours, is really important, and I can see it being left at the wayside.

Cystosoma, one of those large-eyed crustaceans, is illustrated here in Alister Hardy's The Open Sea - the World of Plankton (1956) #Crustmas

Very sad that I felt I had no choice but to resign from The Infinite Monkey Cage - a victory for the transphobes and other bigots - I did it because so much of the media has chosen to believe the kind and empathetic people are a fiction - they are real and so often unrepresented.

Is "AI" synonymous with "GenAI"? A new commentary in 𝘍𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘌𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘌𝘯𝘷𝘪𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 warns that conflating the two risks discarding powerful, low-carbon tools needed to offset the biodiversity crisis. Read the commentary: https://ow.ly/URze50XGmLw ESA Journals #Ecology

Science Manager Verity Nye is currently representing the Ocean Census at the 19th International Meiofauna Conference @19imco.bsky.social in Kolkata. If you're here, do speak to Verity about opportunities in the Ocean Census Science Network. Science Network 👉 oceancensus.org/science-netw...

Translating work emails from Japanese into Catalan and vice versa to get Double Language Practice. Beat That, Owl.

Thanks for boosting this! I loved working on these pieces.

Introduce yourself with 5 animals you’ve seen in the wild: Japanese giant centipede Asian Black Bear Spider Crab Basking Shark Peppered Moth

We look after a range of special interest and user groups at the University all based around the common theme of computation and data. One of our most recent groups is the #C++ user group. Find out more about their activites in this short interview with @russellgarwood.co.uk

If you use GMail, AI (Gemini) was turned on yesterday by default and now scans all of your content for machine learning. To turn off, go to Settings>General and scroll down. Uncheck the box for "Smart features." There's other "Smart" add-ons as well, but that's the one that reads your content.

New paper! Our study in Ecosphere, led by Chong Chen on our @oceancensus.bsky.social cruise, maps biodiversity in methane seeps. My role was minor, but everyone was a blast to work with. We have more exciting stuff from this cruise coming! esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Always exciting to find a class of arthropods I didn't know existed living in my yard-a quasi-centipede of class Symphyla, genus Hanseniella seen in dirt under a brick. Grateful to the whole #iNaturalist community for making these discoveries accessible to so many. #bugsky #inverts #macrophotography

On one hand, we shouldn't care about metrics and nonsense like that. On the other, hit 900 citations today! That feels like a big scary number!

I am once again asking for invertebrate species suggestions for the next edition of art book cover. The more obscure, the better. See past cover examples here: invertefest.com#artbook

oh yeah ok this is super cool not only did they find a gynandromorph spider, it also turned out to be a new species! 🤯🧪🕷️

Every day we learn on how AI screws ever more things in the practice of science. Now, on the arXiv in the computer science category, they only accept the peer reviewed post-prints of review papers. blog.arxiv.org/2025/10/31/a... 🧪

#marineinvert folks, not many #bryozoa genomes, here’s a new one, a Norwegian Flustra foliacea www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Genome is "large" (at c. 900Mb). Lead by Helle Baalsrud (NMBU) and Ole Tørresen (UiO). @ebpgenome.bsky.social Norway @kjetillsj.bsky.social

And now we watch as, for the second time in my working life, the job market detonates due to the greedy con men and foolish trends. How many times have I been asked how I will implement AI into my work in interviews and meetings in the last two years? Madness. www.reuters.com/business/ope...

A young PI here in Mainz has a fabulous PhD position that will be filled soon! By you? Keywords: Social insects, ageing, gene expression. www.blogs.uni-mainz.de/fb10-evoluti...

I did NOT know this!

🚨New paper out in Palaeontology! Check it out if you're interested morphological evolution, fossil phylogenetics, and macroevolution 🧪 "Assessing the impact of character evolution models on phylogenetic and macroevolutionary inferences from fossil data"

For the Americans I know you don’t hear much global news but Ireland just elected Catherine Connolly as our president by a laaaaandslide ✊🏽

Largest study of its kind shows AI assistants misrepresent news content 45% of the time – regardless of language or territory. www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/...

Gonna go see Perfect Blue in theaters. A pretty scary movie but thank god the internet isn’t real

Taking the first train home. All Night Karaoke! We can be irresponsible once in a while, as a treat.

Spotify has decided that I apparently exclusively want to listen to 80s City Pop today. And... well... I'm *not complaining*

We’ve had a fantastic few days at #IUCNCongress. Today is the last day to learn more about our species discovery mission. Ocean Census is at Booth 136 in the Exhibition Hall.

I feel like this is especially true because, with all the AI slop/techbro nonsense, TRON is arguably more interesting and culturally relevant than it *ever could have been in 82*. But in both 2000 and 2025, they dropped the ball on reviving a niche property (especially with the Jared Leto angle).

This is my second time ever in an Airport Lounge and I do have to admit, this is genuinely a better way of doing things. Now I'm a little bitter about having been kept on the Outside all this time...

Nice to be back in Fukuoka! Looking forward to seeing everyone for MeioScool!

Alright! Lets get this reassembly cooking!

What’s so mighty about meiofauna? On the #Shinkai6500 expedition, JAMSTEC’s James Fleming is exploring the hidden world of meiofauna—where thousands, even tens of thousands, of new species may be waiting to be discovered. @jamesfvfleming.bsky.social #JAMSTEC

PLEASE RETWEET.

Do these comments make the MS better? Absolutely, 100%. They are really good comments and great reviews, actually. But also this MS was first ready for submission in the middle of last year and I want it to be finally over, please, soon. (I know the answer here is "gitgud")

Youtube outdoing itself with the thumbnail tonight.

There are currently 9,492 marine sponge species recognised in WoRMS. 🧽 With more discoveries to be made, the Ocean Census Science Network needs more sponge experts. Come and chat to us at the World Sponge Conference to find out how you can support species discovery. @wscommunity.bsky.social

On the microscopes hunting for samples in sediment today. Or, as I like to call it "Animal, Vegetable, Microplastic".

Of the many writers to predict AI, only Douglas Adams got the tone right

For Dr Sonia Rowley, diving among gorgonian octocorals brings moments of pure excitement. Spotting a familiar species is like meeting an old friend, while discovering one for the first time is unforgettable. Watch Gorgonians of the Mesophotic youtu.be/H_1n5CQgWo8

There is something really satisfying when you do simple adult things on the phone in a language you are still learning. On one hand, just had to cancel and move and dential appointment. On the other, Behaving Like An Adult

The authors report that all seven tested deep learning models failed to outperform simple baselines in predicting transcriptome changes after single or double perturbations. I will duck for cover.