Vibe-coding spaghetti: Unpacking an AI metaphor for biology I recently saw a post on Bluesky just saying “Coconuts”. Intriguing! Underneath was a screenshot of a tweet which was even more intriguing. The tweet said: “A techbro told me that biolo…

Might be of interest! makingsciencepublic.com/2026/04/03/v...

I actually really like the coconuts story being a myth. We come up with all sorts of things that we think are true then more evidence and genome research comes out and that long held belief is kicked out for something else.

Thanks for sending this!

New preprint! We sequenced 175 'Alalā (Hawaiian crow) genomes to understand why >50% of eggs fail to hatch in a species recovered from just 9 individuals. What we found was a both exciting and surprising. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Genetic prediction with ARG-powered linear algebra Abstract. Ancestral recombination graphs (ARGs) are an attractive means for quantitative genetic analysis of complex traits because they encode the realize

journal website version !

academic.oup.com/genetics/adv...

How do we obtain the correct frequency dependent formula for random effects in linear mixed models?

We introduce a principled procedure on how to dump population genetics to linear mixed models.
(1/n)

Parameterizing the genetic architecture under stabilizing selection www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03...

The youngest #kakapo chick on Pukenui/Anchor Island: Hanariki-A2, at 3 days old. It's a tiny 42g, but doing OK. Managed to keep it mostly dry on a very wet night. #kakapo2026 #conservation #birds

Would the pre-built kraken libraries work for you? benlangmead.github.io/aws-indexes/k2

Hoiho - the world’s rarest penguin, fewer than 150 mainland pairs left

🐧We researched one of the world’s rarest #penguins. The yellow‑eyed penguin (aka hoiho/takaraka) isn’t one homogeneous species after all!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

#hoiho #conservation #genomics #birds #nzwildlife #endangered #wildlife #nature

Hoiho DNA key to combating disease Attempts to conserve the hoiho/yellow-eyed penguin may have just reached a turning point, after landmark genomic research found the species is...

www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin...

More Hoiho coverage! #Conservation #animals #birds #genomics

Cartoon strip, someone believing the universe is elegant, made of lisp programming language coding. But then god saying it's actually just held together with perl

I often think of DNA like this comic
xkcd.com/224/

ALT text:

Coconuts

Text: The Evolution Exchange, a monthly conversation series from the Society for the Study of Evolution. Outlines of cartoon heads with speech bubbles.

💬 In the second installment of The Evolution Exchange, retired NSF Program Officer Dr. Sam Scheiner returns to discuss how to craft a successful research proposal. Watch or read the transcript here: www.evolutionsociety.org/the-evolutio...

Insect research has used Drosophila as a model organism for over a century. But today’s tools now open up a much wider spectrum of insects which deserve to be studied. See the recent commentary in @fly-journal.bsky.social by @peterkdearden.bsky.social, ‘Why just fly?’ doi.org/10.1080/1933...

Symbolic regression for empirically realistic population dynamic time series www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02...

A Beginner's Guide to Structural Variants in Eco‐Evolutionary Population Genomics Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) has greatly expanded researchers' ability to study structural variants (SVs), that is, the variation in the presence, number, orientation or position of a DNA sequence. ....

New review!

Theory & a practical guide to structural variants in popgen🧬

Many thanks to my co-authors: @rebekahoomen.bsky.social
@annatigano.bsky.social @marenwellenreuther.bsky.social @janawold.bsky.social @dlfield.bsky.social @clairemerot.bsky.social

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

A female kākāpō on a nest with two eggs. Credit: Andrew Digby

Two more #kakapo nests found on Anchor today: Waa on 3 eggs and Hauturu (pic) on 2.
Also two matings last night:
Anchor: Konini 💚 Quill
Whenua Hou: Hera 💚 Tutoko
#conservation #kakapo2026 #birds

Very excited about this latest work led by @jermp.bsky.social! Since it's initial release, SSHash has served as the basis for several other tools (Fulgor, piscem, etc.). It was already very fast. It is now *substantially* faster!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A nice opinion paper (doi.org/10.1016/j.pb... ) from @anneroulin.bsky.social that highlights the need for caution when generalizing about the importance of TEs in local plant adaptation.
#TEsky #transposon

I use a vacuum with the attachment removed. And have also gotten some sundews, which are certainly pretty, but have caught 2 out of ∞ bugs so far

Exploring #PAG33 and San Diego for the first time! If you're interested in knowing more about why bird microchromosomes are so hard to sequence, come by poster 287 this afternoon!

Now published in Algorithms for Molecular Biology: link.springer.com/article/10.1.... Key message: a tiny CNN model with 7k parameters can capture main splice signals across vertebrates+insect and halves the minimap2 & miniprot junction error rate. I always use this new feature now.

A Kākāpō amongst vegetation, with only the side of its head showing. Credit: Andrew Digby

#kakapo breeding seasons are always roller coasters.
☹️ Young male Tau Kuhurangi has died on Pukenui, likely from a wing injury. Population is now 236.
🙂 Second mating of the year: Esperance (pic) and Ian. #conservation #parrots #birds

Under the Lens Podcast | Bioprotection Aotearoa

We made a podcast for @bioprotection.bsky.social Have a look if you are interested in all things that start with b, Nick singing 80's songs or, perhaps more importantly, why and how to save the planet. bioprotection.org.nz/under-the-le...

Nest Survival Models and Genomics Illuminate Hybridisation Attempts, Guiding Culturally Informed Management to Recover a Critically Endangered Seabird Long-term monitoring has revealed hybridisation attempts between the Critically Endangered Kuaka Whenua Hou (KWH, Pelecanoides whenuahouensis) and the abundant Kuaka (P. urinatrix). Here we use model...

I'm delighted to share that our publication 'Nest survival models and genomics illuminate hybridisation attempts, guiding culturally informed management to recover a critically endangered seabird' is out now in Animal Conservation @animalconserv.bsky.social! doi.org/10.1111/acv.... 🧵 1/9

D-BLUP: a differentiable genomic BLUP model with learnable variance and marker weights www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11....

Big bluestem has been a lovely and complex system to work with for the majority of my PhD and will always have a piece of my heart! Very excited to share this work with the community.

Help. Can anyone in my network (or outside) endorse me for arXiv q-bio? #breeding #breeding

It’s Tuesday folks, and you know what that means: