In case you missed it: our review titled "Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities" is out! 🚨 Let me hit you with some highlights on why spatial structure matters. (and why you should care!) Sharing is appreciated 🙏 🧵👇 doi.org/10.1093/fems...

Cross-domain metabolic interactions link Methanobrevibacter smithii to colorectal cancer microbial ecosystems www.nature.com/articles/s41... by @chmoei.bsky.social et al. (including @cdiener.com)

🏳️‍🌈 Do you want to connect with queer microbiologists in your region in real time? Come join our WhatsApp groups! 📱 Email us at [email protected] for more information. #Microbiology #PrideinMicrobiology

How specific are heritable symbioses? And what can we learn from swapping obligate symbionts across host species? We address this in our latest, led by @inespons.bsky.social & in our collaboration w/ @microbiome.bsky.social 🦠🪲 Out today in @natcomms.nature.com! 1/n www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Can plant pathogens boost vector fitness? Together with @hassansalem.bsky.social, we review how phytopathogens can spread further by moonlighting as insect symbionts 🪲 More on this nifty lifestyle in @annualreviews.bsky.social! www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

NSF GRFP applicants (and mentors): Was your application Returned Without Review and deemed ineligible despite fitting in the allowed topics? 1) Write NSF 2) Write your Congressperson 3) CC us at [email protected] so we can compile + follow up Details and template at grant-witness.us/grfp-letter

Our new paper, out today! We resurrected ancient nitrogenases first used by life on Earth 3 billion years ago. We combined synthetic biology and geology & validated their chemical #biosignature in rocks that helps reveal ancient life on Earth!(and beyond!) Link: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I can't overrecommend this incredible paper about water skaters (genus Halobates). No one knows how they evolved. No one knows what they eat. They are superhydrophobic, which means water LITERALLY CANNOT WET THEM. Perhaps we should call them anti-water skaters? 🌊🧪 journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Quickening the pace (of evolution). Spatial structure speeds up adaptation to antibiotics. Great work by Partha Chakraborty just out: doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

A number of our students got the following comment back on a rejection for the NSF GFRP. They are in an eligible STEM field. Is this something people in other places are getting too? Is it a quirk or targeted?

Hey cuties. Everything sucks ass. Get some valentines and send them to your friends. I'm sad. You're sad. They're probably sad. Send them a valentine. It keeps Skype a Scientist running, which hey, is very good too. squidfacts.bigcartel.com/product/deep...

Tired: Everything evolves to be a crab. Wired: Everything evolves to eat ants.

Announcing our next #NSFfunded workshop on "Telling Stories Through Data", co-lead by myself + @vgwschutte.bsky.social! It’s half bioinformatics data viz & half #SciComm - this year’s focus is host-associated microbiome datasets. Apply here to join us (form closes 1/10) bit.ly/TSTD2026 #symbiosky

The published version is out in PRL! doi.org/10.1103/19rh... with a nice writeup from UM - news.umich.edu/to-get-lifel...

check out our new blog post: What’s on the Menu? Not Microcystis, Say Mussels A study led by #CIGLR w/ NOAA_GLERL finds that these interactions may fuel cyanobacterial dominance & reveal key stressors shaping freshwater ecosystems. 🔗 Blog: ciglr.seas.umich.edu/menu-notmicr...

I am searching for a lab manager/researcher to come and work with a friendly, collaborative, and interdisciplinary group of students, postdocs, and staff on the microbial ecology of cyanobacterial blooms. careers.umich.edu/job_detail/2...

Viral "dark matter" dominates the virosphere. In this review by me & @karthik-a.bsky.social, we synthesize what's known, highlight major gaps, and outline paths forward for illuminating viral protein functions in diverse ecosystems.

Do you teach #rstats? Do your students complain about how lame and old-fashioned dplyr is? Don't worry: I have the solution for you: github.com/hadley/genzp.... genzplyr is dplyr, but bussin fr fr no cap.

Excited to be at ICTS for the school on Geometry, Mechanics and the Physics of Growth, co-organized with Ganga Prasath (IITM) and @joelmarthelot.bsky.social (Aix-Marseille)! Fantastic start with a lecture on continuum elasticity by @abigailplummer.bsky.social (BU)

Excited to announce the final version of the Mosquito Cell Atlas is out now in @cellpress.bsky.social!! 🦟🩸 There is SO much left to find & investigate in this dataset (& the rich biology of the Aedes aegypti mosquito)! We hope this helps scientists in many fields! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Excited to share our new paper out in @isme-microbes.bsky.social. We asked if environmental microbial communities can be adaptively modulated by host species that transiently acquire their symbionts from the environment #SymbioSky #MicrobiomeSky doi.org/10.1093/isme...

We selected the laziest mouse at each round to inoculate the next batch of germfree mice: over rounds of selection and passaging, behavior shifted without changes to the mouse genome: rdcu.be/eM3rO 🦠🧫

Such a delight to share our work on the evolution of a cheese rind fungus in @currentbiology.bsky.social. This is the fantastic PhD work of @nicolasleonlouw.bsky.social and resulted from amazing collaborations, a wedding proposal(!), an undergrad course, & more! 🧵 www.cell.com/current-biol...

Long-term monitoring of a North American cheese cave reveals mechanisms and consequences of fungal adaptation Penicillium solitum over 8 years in a cheese cave => green-to-white shift @currentbiology.bsky.social from @benwolfe.bsky.social with @kellerlab.bsky.social www.cell.com/current-biol...

📝 Excited to share our new paper in Molecular Ecology! 📝 We tested how multiple environmental stressors influence plant-associated microbial communities. 🌟 Each stressor mattered on its own, but their interactions often produced very different outcomes.🌟 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Check out our new review on how to measure thermal tolerance! 🐟🌡️🧪

We're helping @hollybik.bsky.social's group looking at features of a ubiquitous genus in the context of symbioses: Pseudoalteromonas is a novel symbiont of marine invertebrates that exhibits broad patterns of phylosymbiosis www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #jcampubs

Visibility matters in academia. Our name-change policy gives authors who change their names an unobtrusive way to update their papers published in eLife, meaning they can get recognition for their contributions. elifesciences.org/inside-elife...

Celebrating little wins in a time of great uncertainty as I submit manuscript revisions for the final chapter of my PhD while en route to a training course at Wood’s Hole. It’s moments like these that keep the imposter syndrome at bay!

I’m thrilled to share my first review about microbial ecology + mosquito-borne disease control! Bacteria block pathogen development in the mosquito gut, but which bacteria will produce long-lasting results in the field? Let’s think about colonization and persistence in the mosquito gut! (1/4)

Excited to read this review led by @holly-nichols.bsky.social highlighting the importance of incorporating microbial ecology in microbe-based mosquito control strategies! Congrats!

How may theoretical ecology & evolutionary theory push microbiology forward? At Environmental Microbiology, I am commissioning a series of Perspectives exploring that question. Excited to share them in the 🧵 below The series is open, so do get in touch if you'd like to propose a new contribution!

Beautiful new review paper in preprint bridging microbial ecology and classic ecology led by Maggie Vogel, @olimeacock.bsky.social and @annasophieweiss.bsky.social, also by @juliensluneau.bsky.social and @lambdapp.bsky.social from our lab (not me :)) ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

Protect Trans Scientists. cowritten with a lot of amazing people (I tagged those I could find but there are so many more incredible folks) www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @thepunkscientist.bsky.social @jlw-ecoevo.bsky.social @bfrancescol.bsky.social @drsueishaq.bsky.social

Just left the Animal-Microbe Symbioses GRC feeling grateful for this research community and its big heart...at a time when academia/science are under attack in the U.S. and when actual wars are raging, and people dying, the vibe reminded how the"lingua franca" that is science bridges the divides.

Started a starter pack for the presenters and attendees of the 2025 Animal-Microbe Symbiosis Gordon Research Conference. Let me know if I should add (or remove) you! go.bsky.app/Pnzz1R9

U.S. researchers are speaking up for science in local newspapers | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪

‼️I'm looking for a postdoc‼️ Come join effort in using metagenomes to quantify microbial catabolic potential and carbon substrate availability at the ecosystem level. We seek to understand evolutionary forces shaping the carbon cycle. Part of ccomp-stc.org careers.peopleclick.com/careerscp/cl...

What is common knowledge in your field, but. shocks outsiders? >90% of mosquito species (3700+) do not spread pathogens to humans.

Cool insect #NaturalHistory paper in @science.org! 🐛🐛🐛🐛🐛🐛🐛🐛🐛 “Hawaiian caterpillar patrols spiderwebs camouflaged in insect prey’s body parts” www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Happy Pride Month! You know who doesn't change their brand image to rainbow just for June? Ctenophores. They make their gay little rainbows all year. It's a Pride parade in the ocean every day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. 366 every four years. 🦑🐙

Happy pride to me and to you and to the bisexual bats and the gay giraffes and the lesbian albatrosses, and the trans fish and everybody else. Happy pride.

Excited to share the first preprint from our lab! Active solids show oscillations, but can they be fast (inertial)? Yes! We show how mechanochemical feedback can power inertial dynamics and chaos, in soft solids. A great colab with groups of X. Mao and N. Boechler! See more: arxiv.org/abs/2505.18272

So impressed and inspired by the students Sci Comm projects for my Microbial Symbiosis course! If you're looking for a fun distraction, check some of them out below. #SymbioSky

The 2nd Hablemos de Ciencia Symposium was a success! This event was started last year to create a venue for UW-Madison researchers to communicate science in Spanish. Science is done for and by speakers of different languages. The language(s) that we use to communicate science should reflect that!

The 2026 budget passback plan calls for eliminating NOAA Research, the scientific backbone that keeps weather forecasts, alerts, and warnings accurate and effective. This would have disastrous consequences. Read the AMS statement, in partnership w/ @nwas.org: bit.ly/4cz2RtC

It's mosquito time. We think we’ve been lacking lately on #mosquito photos…so here you go! Happy Friday! 🦟

schaechter.asmblog.org/schaechter/2... #MicroSky

I'm delighted to share a useful FREE web-based app portal of powerful bioinformatics tools for microbial genomes and shotgun microbiome sequences! It's called Micromics and is built by Middle Author Bioinformatics, led by co-founder @ironark.bsky.social omix.midauthorbio.com