There are horrors beyond life's edge that we do not suspect,

Understanding the tradeoff between the tradeoff between the tradeoffs between current and future tradeoffs between future and current reproductive success is critical for evaluating long term trends in tradeoffs between current and future reproductive success.

Now with pages in Conservation Biology Clarifying the so-called gull problem in the Gulf of Maine: Response to Taylor et al. (2024) doi.org/10.1111/cobi... Incomplete progress toward reasoning about the gull problem: Reply to Diamond et al. (2025) doi.org/10.1111/cobi... #gulls

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...

I don't care that practicing scientists flounder foundational terms (say 'meaning' in signaling, 'law' in evolution, 'nature' in conservation) - that's too much to ask for their (our) skills/interests. I do find it frustrating and unnecessary that they (we) constantly build *from* those terms

🎨 Huang Yongyu (1992)

The Heritage Foundation is going after me this morning calling me a terrorist because I am accurately stating what they are intending to do. Michael Knowles at CPAC explicitly called for the "eradication of transgenderism." I'll continue to speak the truth of what is being done to my community.

From generating fake microscopy images to predicting genomic variation in unsampled species, I predict AI will be the holy grail that biologists have long sought to cement their theoretical frameworks without having to worry about the pesky, pesky diversity of actual life

You want to be alive, but they want you dead. We’re a new, well, funded democratic group that thinks you can meet them halfway.

D G F E B C A H Sorry my beloved maritimes

It's the 125th birthday of the Workers Circle (@workerscircle.bsky.social‬)! Along with their social justice work, they also published Yiddish educational materials. The only zoology textbook in Yiddish, “The life of Animals”/ דאס לעבען פון חיות, was published by the Workers Circle in the 1920s.

An interview with me by @sicbjournals.bsky.social about the recent paper I published with them on the avian shoulder girdle and wing skeleton! iobopen.com/2025/09/15/m... 🪶🧪

Adding a touch of mechanistic detail about how animals actually forage reshapes the limits of theoretical models in ecology - Love!

I wrote about the Reiser brothers and their hilarious, disgusting Listers documentary for Slate: slate.com/culture/2025...

🚨 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!

"You can now use the palette argument like you would for non-position scales. " praise be!!!

I am beyond excited to announce that ggplot2 4.0.0 has just landed on CRAN. It's not every day we have a new major #ggplot2 release but it is a fitting 18 year birthday present for the package. Get an overview of the release in this blog post and be on the lookout for more in-depth posts #rstats

Really interesting study showing learning of tool use in carrion crows! www.cell.com/current-biol...

Remember that you don’t have to post your first reaction and Bluesky is forever even if you delete

OK North American bird folks here's a question. There seems to be much more interest (and knowledge) amongst museum folks in Europe about the history of ornithology, even the "big names" that I never felt I got when I was in Canada

Egyptian Nightjars are residents in the Dead Sea region, showing a high year-round roost fidelity | link.springer.com/ar... | Journal of Ornithology | #ornithology 🪶

occasionally I bemoan the fact that my fashion is becoming all jean skirts and eyebrows, because it's honestly quite a bit of work, and then I recoil at the thought that, no, in some multiverse I'm wearing that corporate quarter zip

Age at first return of Sable Shearwaters (Ardenna carneipes) | www.tandfonline.com/... | Emu | #ornithology #seabirds 🪶

www.pbs.org/newshour/sho... 👀

I WILL survive until 2063 to write a 100th anniversary retrospective called TINBERGEN DIDN'T REALLY CALL THEM FOUR QUESTIONS (and he was more interested in their nuances than their distinctions [and calling his 'evolution' our 'phylogenetic history' is so fucked up]) working title

If I see one more annual adult survival rate at 87% so help me I'm starting a full blown conspiracy

I'm hoping to take 1 MSc & 1 PhD student next year in the areas of Phylogenetic, Computational, and/or Evolutionary Paleobiology. Please reach out if you are interested in joining the @oupaleobiology.bsky.social, especially if interested in working on fossil echinoderms. Link for more info below. 🧪

New @adriftlab.bsky.social paper in Emu-Austral Ornithology with @seabirdsentinel.bsky.social on the age of first return of Sable Shearwaters #seabirds #ornithology 🪶🧪 doi.org/10.1080/0158...

I’ve done this for 2 weeks now and it *absolutely rules*. Best class discussions I’ve ever had. Best engagement with readings. They write in this worksheet for 15 minutes, then talk about their responses in groups of 3-4, then groups share with the whole class, and *then* we talk about the readings

Now being reported by CNN. edition.cnn.com/2025/09/04/p...

the worst part of every manuscript for an ornithologist, yes, worse than tough reviewers worse even than outright rejection when they typeset the paper and all the species names are lower case

journal proofs asking me to add "accessed on" date for R Core Team citation; how about every day of my life from dawn till dusk, leave me alone

Almost 10 years ago Smith and Baum's textbook introduced me to Phylogenetic Comparative Methods. We now have our own review on PCM! Come for history, traits and spicy takes! We welcome any comments/ concerns/ jokes! @tribblelab.bsky.social @crothfels.bsky.social and MRM! doi.org/10.32942/X28...

Excited to announce that the 1st paper from my postdoc is now out in @currentbiology.bsky.social ! Using a large dataset of 3D preserved fossils, we explore the diversification of jaws in early bony fishes. 1/15 www.cell.com/current-biol...

junior year of college I pulled an all nighter and, a little after 8AM, stumbled out into the quad. completely sick to my stomach, I was lying down in a pile of leaves a cartoonishly wizened man, cane and all, hobbled down the path next to me, stopped, and said, "enjoy it while it lasts, son"

orange gull from the summer

It was great to collaborate with you Joao on making some justice to the memory of the Elisabeth "The Great" Vrba and contextualizing her contributions as one of the "three musketeers" of the macroevolution! link.springer.com/article/10.1... 🧪 ⚒️ #Paleobio #Macroecology #Geology #EvoBio

Abbe Lowell and I represent CDC Director #SusanMonarez. Contrary to govt statements, Dr. Monarez has neither resigned nor yet been fired. She will not resign. We have issued the following statement:

this sport is magic

I dunno guys look at their clutches, bacteria are K selected

Now that the semester has started, I'm very excited to welcome new curators/faculty @andremoncrieff.bsky.social (Curator of Ornithology 🦜) and @gustavo-de-miranda.bsky.social (Curator of Invertebrate Zoology 🦂) to the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History and The University of Oklahoma!

HOLY SMOKES absolute barn stormer of a #feather #development paper now out from @codylimber.bsky.social, Gunter Wagner, and Rick Prum! doi.org/10.1111/ede....

With great joy—and a touch of nervousness—I’m thrilled to share that my first academic monograph will be published by @mitpress.bsky.social in May 2026! It examines the organism–environment relationship in biology from an integrated #HPS perspective: mitpress.mit.edu/978026205282... #evosky #philsky

just saw a regression that looks like this

Do I know anyone on here who might find it useful to predict hatching dates from birds eggs? Please reach out if you're open to help me develop ovotime.com to include more species, and to expand with more detailed #oology features! #phenology #seabirds #ornithology 🌍🧪

Amid all the continuing good news from the world, another preprint! Inbreeding depression and tuberculosis susceptibility in the critically endangered white-winged wood duck Asarcornis scutulata (photo by Katie Lubbock, Sylvan Heights Bird Park) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Next semester I'll be emergency pinch-hitting an upper level, undergraduate seminar in #Parasitology. I've got plenty of general background (esp. eco/evo/wildlife) but relatively little specific expertise What are some all time great #parasite papers / studies / stories etc.?

Next semester I'll be emergency pinch-hitting an upper level, undergraduate seminar in #Parasitology. I've got plenty of general background (esp. eco/evo/wildlife) but relatively little specific expertise What are some all time great #parasite papers / studies / stories etc.?

people always say to write scientific papers with HUGE PICTURE stuff at the start and end. why?? I mean, I get the opening bit, insofar as scientists have become convinced (wrongly) that readers and reviewers are stupid, lazy, or mean, and must be fooled into finding things interesting

Monitoring wildlife mortality 24/7 worldwide using participatory science Paper 👉: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... The Web Application 👉: huggingface.co/spaces/diego... #Biodiversity #iNaturalist #WildlifeMortality #DigitalOneHealth #ConservationTech #EcologicalForecasting 1/ A thread: