My postdoc director called my work "phenomenological" and forbade it. I walked to a museum, found Tinbergen had shared a Nobel for work of exactly that kind, and finished the study anyway. On temperament, luck, and what the system selects against 👇 academicrenewal.substack.com/p/a-certain-...

Devastating. I met Bill for the first time in 2006 and he was always one of the kindest, caring souls who mentored an entire generation of seabird scientists working in Newfoundland. We worked together, caught birds together, and learned together. He leaves a huge legacy.

I am very sorry to hear of the passing of Bill Montevecchi - a legendary marine biologist who contributed to much of what we know about seabirds in the North Atlantic

I desire high profile coverage of my science, not for citations, but rather because I want a dramatically-lit image of me in eyeliner with an iced coffee feeding a bagel to a parking lot seagull

Our new commentary rdcu.be/ftx6h in @natecoevo.nature.com written with folks from @inaturalist.bsky.social and @cornellbirds.bsky.social shows that use of AI to manipulate existing or create new wildlife images undermines the huge value of vast citizen science databases. 🌍🪰🪶 #Ornithology 🧵 1/10

a fact importantly not incompatible with either me being an animal or me having an evolutionary history - I will organize my body however I damn well please, thank you -

Indeed, a person who has deliberately gone through a procedure to render them infertile definitionally then has a body *not* organised to produce gametes. Claiming otherwise is Intelligent Design-style nonsense.

New paper! We simulated foraging trips of Northern gannets at Bass Rock to decipher what information individuals use to keep returning to the same foraging patches. Memory was the strongest driver, but it wasn't the whole story. 🧵👇 doi.org/10.1186/s404... 1/5

one unsung feature of field biologists is they are all huggers; someone will visit a field station for 48 hours and when they leave it's like 😭😭omg😭let's be pen pals🫂🫂😭

the gulls on my island absolutely lose their minds when a young one fledges; I like to think they're celebrating

Short scenes from the field

Glad to see my last dissertation chapter published! In this experiment, we tested how the arrival times and number of overlapping generations affect competitive outcomes between two flour beetles… doi.org/10.1002/ecy.... @esajournals.bsky.social (1/3)

NOW THIS IS THE STUFF

becoming convinced Nature papers are themselves just AI-generated ragebait; and boy howdy am I an easy target

Gull declines :(

I am happy to announce that the latest USGS analysis of North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) data, incorporating data through 2025, has now been released. Metadata and csv files can be downloaded at doi.org/10.5066/P1OS....

Micrographic birds tweeting at the beginning of קֹהֶלֶת qohelet (Ecclesiastes) BL Or 2091; Former & Latter Prophets & Hagiographa with masorah magna & parva; 13th century; Germany; f.338r @blmedieval.bsky.social

🐦🌙 Happy to see this big collaborative paper out in @currentbiology.bsky.social! We address a seemingly simple question using geolocator data collected across many species and individuals: how much of bird migration actually happens at night? www.cell.com/current-biol... A short🧵

Just out! Spatial epidemiology of Avian flu in seabird populations. #HPAI, #Bayesian, #Conservation, #Panzootic, #Gannets, @jwejeglinski.bsky.social @heyjoode.bsky.social , @sbohvm.gla.ac.uk @rspb.bsky.social @au.dk @heriotwattuni.bsky.social besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🧵 1/11New paper alert! One of two out today from #NearLab Ever heard of the Holiday Darter? These beautiful freshwater fish are hiding a big biodiversity secret in the rivers of Georgia, Alabama, & Tennessee and new genomic data is revealing it. A thread 👇

On the rare occasion that I have to hang out with a population geneticist, I dose them up with three beers and ask them whether inbreeding avoidance means Hamilton's rule is bogus

THE GUITAR SOLO IS ME. IT IS NOT FAST AND IT’S ON ONE STRING BUT IT SERVES THE SONG AND IT IS ME. AT MY FUNERAL TELL THEM THE GUITAR SOLO WAS ME

This puzzle is in my first book (the one no one reads), and I know Claude ate my books (bc I got part of that copyright settlement against Anthropic), so here's Claude's answer, from my book. The whole chapter is about this puzzle basically, builds answer using covariance genetics.

It is publication day for The Organism-Environment Pairing (@mitpress.bsky.social)! This 📗 has been deeply formative for me as a scholar, and it owes so much to so many wonderful people. I truly hope it finds many readers! mitpress.mit.edu/978026205282... #booksky #philsci #histsci #philsky #evosky

What a strange migratory divide. Do the populations even mix? 🪶 Many red-necked phalaropes breed on small ponds in West Greenland. Had no idea that they probably go to the western side of Central America. #Ornithology 🌍 www.frontiersin.org/journals/eco...

I guess I'm Dr. Cody Limber now!

How can plumage colors function as social signals in American herring gulls? 🧪 Thanks so much to Molly Hill & @liamtaylor.bsky.social for sharing this awesome behavioral research with me

How do fulmars respond to drones: #seabirds 🌍🧪

This study was made possible by long-term monitoring. These long-term datasets are vital for understanding how events like an HPAI outbreak affect seabird populations - not just immediately, but over decades. 🐦📈📉 #avianflu #seabirds

"Young gulls’ drab plumage may help them avoid adult attacks". An article about our new gull plumage paper is out in ScienceNews. Read it here: www.sciencenews.org/article/youn... The research, led by Hill and Taylor @liamtaylor.bsky.social, was published in Anim Behav: doi.org/10.1016/j.an...

I've been documenting a pair of black-capped chickadees nesting in our garden as they fly back & forth every few minutes, hunting meals. An avg clutch of 6 to 8 chickadees requires 3,000 to 5,000 feedings over the ~16 days from hatching to fledging. Most popular foods: caterpillars, moths, spiders.

Awesome www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Working with mitogenomes for eDNA, phylogenetics, etc, but not sure what's available on GenBank? Maybe your study group has weird mitogenome features? Come explore with with my new GenBankMitoReview tool! github.com/dmacguigan/G... #DNA #bioinformatics #eDNA #GenBank

I will not read 77 pages of lawyers not knowing anything about biology, I will not read 77 pages of lawyers not knowing anything about biology, I will not read 77 pages of lawyers not knowing anything about biology, I will not read 77 pages of lawyers not knowing anything about biology, I will not r

Are there grants to support small natural history/teaching collections? A little would go a long way to securing some valuable specimens we have at this PUI. But the funding landscape keeps shifting - any leads appreciated! #museum #naturalhistory #ornithology #PUI

I love a good rabbithole. The one I'm currently down: reading William Strachey's account of the wreck of the Sea Venture at Bermuda in 1610. 150 castaways.... what might they eat? How about a bird, which "there in the ground they have their burrows, like [rabbits] in a warren…" 1/3

animals would be so unimpressed by AI, they'd try to bite the computer and be like what is this fucking thing, and then go find some seeds or whatever

LITERALLY A PREDICTION I AM LITERALLY PREDICTING: In the back half of 2027 Colossal Biosciences is going to 'de-extinct' the Passenger Pigeon and their 'big new hook' is that there will be a breeding pair. The clutch will contain two eggs. I will hit my head against a wall until I pass out.

it's ok to be queer because it happens in nature, that's called the "naturalistic correct reasoning" right

can anyone point me to good work on behavior, timing, and coordination of egg-laying at nests and burrows in #Seabirds ?

#Evol2026 I’m launching a new research group at UNC Charlotte in January 2027. Prospective students, postdocs, and collaborators are welcome to get in touch: [email protected] More at jakeberv.com, lab website coming soon.

It will never stop being funny to me that the street fighter subreddit has a much better, well reasoned ai policy vis a vis literally all universities.

I am recruiting Ph.D. students this cycle. Students interested in deep-sea fishes and phylogenetic comparative methods are an especially good fit.

Drafting a very firmly worded email to facilities 😤

#NewPaperAlert! This one has a massive author list and has been a LONG time in coming, but is SO COOL! First, check out the first figure to get you interested! Manakins! Fruit! Sexual-selection in action (displays and Z:A chromosomal diversity)! Read on for the back story & link 1/n

who touched my goddam desk

Interested in #macroevolution, #macroecology, and mountain biodiversity? I'm recruiting a #postdoc for an NSF-funded project at Yale, in collaboration with Martha Muñoz (Yale) and Maya Stokes (Florida State University). I'll be at #Evol2026 and happy to chat! Link below

the best part about fieldwork is that all your sd cards are FAT formatted to 2 GB maximums

anyone have a pdf of Models of adaptive behaviour Houston, Alasdair.; McNamara, John (John M.) Cambridge, UK ; New York, N.Y. : Cambridge University Press, 1999 ?

Greetings from a very high tide!