📣 EvolDir is now managed by @eseb.bsky.social!
We are delighted to be taking the reins and express our gratitude to both Brian Golding who began this service to the community in the mid-1980s and to @rdmpage.bsky.social who ran this account until now 👏
You can now find evoldir here: evoldir.net
Applications are now open for the 2026 International Graduate Summer School: The Agents of Evolution, to be held at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, from August 17–22, 2026 (check-in on August 15–16)!
sapolsn.com/event/2026-s...
Black and red journal logo with the paper title and abstract.
In the latest #HOPOS, Jamie Shaw, Kevin C. Elliott, and Deivide Garcia da S. Oliveira provide a transcription and critical overview of Paul Feyerabend’s unpublished manuscript “On the Responsibility of Scientists.”
Link: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
Excited to share our work exploring how fly larvae flexibly adjust their foraging decisions based on resource quality and valence, shaped by prior experience 🪰🥳! Check it out: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
I always had the vague feeling that Scientific Reports and Nature Communications are mainly APC business models.
A paper estimated the total APC for gold/hybrid Open Access per journal 2015–2018: doi.org/10.1162/qss_...
Surprise, surprise - there are 2 outliers at the top😐
A CV of grants that were not funded and jobs applied for but not offered
A CV of grants that were not funded and jobs applied for but not offered
A CV of grants that were not funded and jobs applied for but not offered
A CV of grants that were not funded and jobs applied for but not offered
In academia, we're good at talking about successes, but sweep unfunded grants & unsuccessful job apps under the rug. It can be a tough road, filled w/ failure*
For anyone discouraged about the process, here's my failure CV
#AcademicSky 🧪
*None are really failures if you learn from them
✨ SAVE THE DATE ✨
This year's AES Conference will be held jointly with our friends at the Society of Australian Systematic Biologists 🧬
📍 University of Wollongong
📆 2-4 December
Mark it in your calendars ✏️ more information to come soon!
Book cover with a green gradient background for "The Organism–Environment Pairing: A Historical and Philosophical Reappraisal" by Alejandro Fábregas-Tejeda (MIT Press, 2026). The book series label “The Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology” appears at the top. The title is set in large, bold lettering using three colors: white (“The” and “Pairing”), warm yellow (“Organism–”), and bright green (“Environment”). The subtitle appears below in smaller white text, and the author’s name is printed at the bottom. In the lower right, a monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) rests on clusters of pink milkweed flowers. Behind it, a large pale-green butterfly silhouette fills the background; its outline follows the shape of a red lacewing butterfly (Cethosia biblis). The layered butterflies visually echo the book’s central idea of an organism–environment pairing.
What a joy to finally share the cover of The Organism–Environment Pairing (@mitpress.bsky.social)! The 📗 will be out on May 12 📆! I look forward to the conversations it sparks among scientists, philosophers & historians! mitpress.mit.edu/978026205282... #evosky #histsci #philsci #philsky #booksky 🌱🐋
Header and abstract page of an original research article in History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences (2026, volume 48, article 12) titled "Modeling versatility as the hallmark of model organisms," authored by Guido I. Prieto and Alejandro Fábregas-Tejeda. Abstract In recent years, discussions on the epistemology of model organism-based research have emerged in the philosophy of science. A key topic of discussion is how the epistemic insights gained from model organisms differ from those gained through other experimental organisms used in laboratory and field research. Here, we argue that model organisms are epistemically special due to their nature as ontogenetically changeable, standardized, and evolved material model carriers. These characteristics afford six important kinds of modeling versatility that biologists marshal in their investigations: (i) synchronic target versatility; (ii) synchronic scope versatility; (iii) diachronic target versatility; (iv) diachronic scope versatility; (v) manipulation versatility; and (vi) discovery versatility. In presenting these dimensions of modeling versatility, we also clarify key notions such as ‘representational target,’ ‘representational scope,’ and ‘representational power’ as these apply to modeling practices that involve model organisms.
It has been argued that what sets model organisms apart from other experimental 🐋🌱 is their high representational power. In our latest 📃, we argue otherwise: the hallmark of MOs lies in the dimensions of modeling versatility they afford to scientists 👇 link.springer.com/article/10.1... #philsci #HPS
Join our KLI Colloquium:
"O Theory Where Art Thou? The Changing Role of Theory in Theoretical Biology in the 20th Century and Beyond"
Speaker: Jan BAEDKE (Ruhr University Bochum)
🕒 26 Jan 2026, 3:00 PM CET
🗺️ at KLI, join online via ZOOM (link & info: www.kli.ac.at/content/en/e...)
Please join us for a @smtpb.bsky.social panel discussion about publishing theory in biology w/ @joshuasweitz.bsky.social (Co-Chief Editor of J Theor Biol), Mark Lewis (Advising Editor for J Math Biol & Bull Math Biol), and me (Theor Pop Biol)
13 Feb 2026 9:00AM–10:00AM PST
smtpb.org/event-6520871
Join our KLI Colloquium:
"On Experimental Models of Developmental Plasticity and Evolutionary Novelty"
Speaker: Patricia BELDADE (Lisbon University)
🕒 15 Jan 2026, 3:00 PM CET
🗺️ at KLI, join online via ZOOM (link & info: www.kli.ac.at/en/the_kli/n...)
How are sound elements combined to make calls in this Pūkeko population in NZ? How do calls change based on where they're made in the call sequence? Read our paper to find out!
Can sexual selection alone drive divergence? Experimental evolution in seed beetles shows that strong sexual selection accelerates divergence in reproductive traits and gene expression, even without environmental differences. Image credit: Udo Schmidt Wikimedia
academic.oup.com/evlett/advan...
A cartoon Macrostomum flatworm
POSTDOC recruitment! We’re looking for a post-doc to join us to work on the (epi)genetic basis of inbreeding depression as part of the ANR-funded project FRIDA
macrostomum.wordpress.com/the-genetic-...
Please share!
Thrilled to share my Bachelor's thesis work now published in the @jappliedecology.bsky.social! Using microclimate loggers and a 11-year mark-recapture dataset, we examine how selective logging differentially affects the survival and body conditions of eastern Himalayan birds.
doi.org/10.1111/1365...
The 2026 Guarda Summer Course in Evolutionary Biology is now accepting applications. Amazing place, amazing course, amazing opportunity for early grad students.
tb.ethz.ch/education/gu...
Come work with us! We are looking for a postdoc in #philbio or #philphysics to work on an interdisciplinary project that adopts the lens of self-organization & active matter to explore the boundary between living & nonliving systems www.kuleuven.be/personeel/jo... #academicsky #philjobs #HPS #evosky
View of Aberystwyth
Lectureship in Zoology at Aberystwyth University! jobs.aber.ac.uk/en/vacancy/l...
Come join our fantastic team at @aberdlsagb.bsky.social @aberuni.bsky.social in beautiful Wales. Application deadline: 14 Dec 2025.
Poster for the XIV Workshop on Philosophy of Biology and Cognitive Sciences. The background is dark green with large yellow text and decorative abstract flower illustrations in red, yellow, and green at the corners. Dates ‘18–19 June’ appear at the top right, along with the venue: UNED, Edificio de Humanidades, Paseo de la Senda del Rey 7, Madrid. The keynote speakers are Enara García (SDU), Alejandro Fábregas-Tejeda (KU Leuven), and José Antonio Pérez-Escobar (UNED). A bold yellow banner reads ‘Call for Abstracts,’ with a deadline of 15 January. At the bottom is a contact email: xivpbcs@gmail.com
I am incredibly honored to have been invited as one of the keynote speakers for the XIV PBCS! This long-standing initiative is very supportive of graduate students & early-career researchers, so I encourage everyone to submit their abstracts! See you in Madrid next year! #HPS #HPbio #cogsci #philsky
We got published in Ecology&Evolution! We propose an equation from which we derive the fundamental equations of population ecology and evolutionary biology (the Price equation). #evobio #philbio onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Bielefeld University seeks a full-time research associate in Evolutionary Ecology of Behaviour. Application deadline: 11.12.2025. For details and to apply, visit: jobs.uni-bielefeld.de/job/view/4618/research-p... #job
It’s tomorrow at 7pm JST!
Nice article by @dingdingpeng.the100.ci and @boryslaw.bsky.social: 'violations of measurement invariance imply that there are potentially interesting differences in the measurement process between the groups, which could warrant explanations in their own right.' www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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
Each dyad (a, b) moves through four discrete states over time, represented by coloured circles. The dyad remains in a given state for a certain duration, or "holding time", before transitioning to a new state according to state-specific transition probabilities, indicated by arrows showing all possible (non-zero) transitions. Paintings by Sofia M. Pereira & Judith von Nordheim.
New paper!
We propose a framework to empirically study animal social relationships by modelling social network (SN) data as time-series—that is, without the need to aggregate them over time.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Including 'Feyerabend, Freedom, and the Tyranny of Science' & "Paul Feyerabend’s 'On the Responsibility of Scientists'" 🤩😄
Applications are currently being accepted for UBC's ✨️ Biodiversity Postdoctoral Fellowship ✨️ (two positions!!), due Jan. 15
Please share far and wide 🚀
(See thread)
Meghna Krishnadas will present the next PopBio seminar:
The relative and interactive roles of abiotic and biotic drivers on demographic responses of plants
Join us online, Thursday Oct 30 1pm AEST.
Sign up to our mailing list to receive the zoom link: forms.gle/u7B1fyzRAwar...
Despite decades of effort, scientists have still not discovered a foolproof way to evaluate colleagues’ work that doesn’t involve reading the paper
