bifrost: an R package for scalable inference of phylogenetic shifts in multivariate evolutionary dynamics www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04...

I'm not a psychologist but that was such a good article. Loved your explanation of collider bias. And very clear examples at the end of how we can use plausible mechanisms together with observational data to inform conclusions.

I read once that "correlation does not *specify* causation". But there's often some kind of causal direction (either way) or probabilistic element involved. Some correlations really are spurious of course. Is that consistent with your POV?

MRU Talent Management - Laboratory Instructor - (3495)

Come join our department as a full-time lab instructor!

mtroyalca.hua.hrsmart.com/hr/ats/Posti...

Graphical depiction of the changes to the muscle transcriptome that result in persistent enhanced growth phenotypes in lake sturgeon

What underlies plasticity and persistent enhanced growth following warm temperature exposure?

We sequenced lake sturgeon muscle tissue to find out

A variety of molecular mechanisms and cellular changes work together to increase muscular development across timescales

🧪🌎🌐🐠

tinyurl.com/mr2n2cvb

Reposting again, sorry! Also, Jason Weir is not on Bluesky.

The Weir Lab logo. Two birds pull apart a DNA strand, representing speciation. A small blue butterfly on the i in Weir represents some of the lab's more recent work.

Interested in the genomic, behavioral, and morphological drivers of bird evolution? The Weir Lab at UT Scarborough has PhD positions available!

Please share widely. As a current postdoc in the lab, I am happy to share my experiences with applicants.

🐦🦜🦉🧬

Reposting, sorry! Also, Jason Weir is not on Bluesky.

As an intermediate step in that process, I sometimes delegate a task to my future self (this ultimately changes nothing about the outcome).

The link is broken for me 😢

It's not widely known that the Middle Ages are so-called because every European was between approximately 45 and 60 years old during that period.

Different process which changed in the gill of lake sturgeon during early development.

New lake sturgeon work out investigating transcriptional shifts in the gill during early development

mRNA changes associated with histone modifications, DNA methylation, and apoptosis were conserved across both populations, as well as population-specific processes

🧪🌎🌐🐠

tinyurl.com/bdekwzed

This is easy for me to catch, because my results are never good.

This experiment was fun to pull off! I'm glad it worked out so well.

*Sees Socrates themed intro slide...raises hand.*

Confucius?

Are gene expression responses to an immune challenge conserved over macroevolutionary time? Not so much... in a new preprint we measure & compare differential expression in response to an immune adjuvant, in 14 fishes sampled from across Actinopterygii
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
A short thread

This illustration depicts north america colored te to burnt orange, highlighting temperature differences across the continent. The 8 north american sturgeon species ring the outside of the map. Each sturgeon species is underlaid by a color which corresponds with dots on the map. The dots on the map show where thermal tolerance studies were completed, and the size of the dot corresponds to how many studies were completed in that area. Illustration by Madison Earhart.

Out in Global Change Biology,

We conducted a meta-analysis to assess the thermal tolerance and adaptive capacity of North American Sturgeons.

While sturgeons are incredibly thermally plastic, increasing temperatures limit their physiological capacity and likely recruitment🧪🐠🐡🌎
tinyurl.com/369edzft

Alternatively: "Thanks for taking this commission. You have seen a lake sturgeon before, right? I need my bros to see I was carrying a kickass one."

"...yeah. Totally. You bet. Lake sturgeon pro over here."

@eveliendegreef.bsky.social and I wrote a follow-up piece in @theconversation.bsky.social. It was great to write more about the context surrounding bowhead whale and narwhal genomics.
theconversation.com/commercial-w...

Excited to share our latest paper in Global Change Biology! 🐳Here we examined bowhead and narwhal genomics and the legacy of commercial whaling: dx.doi.org/10.1111/gcb....
Collabs w/ C. Müller, @biomatt.bsky.social, S. Ferguson, C. Watt, M. Marcoux, S. Petersen, @colingarroway.bsky.social

Climate change introduces threatened killer whale populations and conservation challenges to the Arctic Global Change Biology is an environmental change journal tackling issues such as sustainability, climate change and environmental protection.

Check our new paper in Global Change Biology by
@colingarroway.bsky.social
& I with many great collaborations! doi.org/10.1111/gcb.... 1/4