"Together we must reestablish the idea that older people are advocates and protectors for those beginning their careers. In an era when young people are being treated like meatware in an anonymous employment algorithm, we need to bring them all the wisdom, encouragement and connections we can."
New to bsky, trying to (re)connect with eco-evo folks. I'm an evolutionary ecologist who studies how rapid evolutionary dynamics shape community and ecosystem processes. My work integrates experimental evolution, population genetics, and community ecology, with an emphasis on biological invasions.
I knew Canada was angry but didn’t realize it was this bad: “more Canadians flew to overseas destinations than drove to the U.S.”
Our team appeared in The Daily Californian news!
Discussing our experimental evolution in Science Magazine www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... and a recent paper on the threat of genetic diversity loss in PNAS doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
Check it out:
www.dailycal.org/news/campus/...
@forbes.com picking up the recent work by @carlbergstrom.com & Kevin Gross in @plosbiology.org on the future of peer review.
www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...
☘️New paper!☘️ Very excited that my 3rd and final data chapter of my PhD with @evoecolab.bsky.social is now published in JEB! We manipulated precipitation and herbivory at field sites in Ontario and Louisiana to test their effects on white clover HCN chemical defense phenotypes
Our new experimental evolution study across 30+ locations using the plant Arabidopsis thaliana —— we direct "see" adaptation and extinction to different climates at the genetic as it happens!
Read it in Science
dx.doi.org/10.1126/scie...
@ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social
@hhmi-science.bsky.social
Hi all. I am very excited that after 6 years I finally got my phylogenetic comparative methods book and online exercises online. Feel free to use and share. The book is here: nhcooper123.github.io/pcm-primer/. Note that it is not finished, we had to abandon it before the sunk costs fallacy broke us
#ggtree has a relatively steep learning curve. But after looking at a few Python alternatives eg., toytree, ETE, Bio.Phylo it's hard to match its layout versatility. 21 tree variants with just a few lines of code.
#rstats #phylogenetics #bioinformatics
Proud that this work is now published!
We hope it helps orient future #Nanopore long-read sequencing studies hunting for structural variants
Also really happy to share eight new high-coverage (>100x) long-read read pools and assemblies with the #Drosophila community!
doi.org/10.1093/g3jo...
I am SO THRILLED to share our first fully-lab lab paper!!!!!! Led by @hybridzones.bsky.social & @hagarsoliman.bsky.social, w/ a major assist from @pfschwarz.bsky.social!!!!!!!!!!!!! Read more below, if you're curious (you should be- it's AWESOME!!!!!!!)
link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
This is a nice little essay that scientists-in-training should read. Writing is a process for thinking and developing ideas as much as communicating. Some types of discomfort are productive and should be embraced. Good writing is hard and uncomfortable, and crucial for career progression.
Mostly entering random things into random online forms
Wright's generic path diagram showing A as a cause of X, D as a cause of Y and B, C as partial causes of X and Y. (reproduced from Wright, 1920, p. 329)
Photo of Sewall Wright in front of a blackboard with mathematical symbols
#TodayinHistory #dataviz #Onthisday #OTD 📊
💀Mar 3, 1988 Sewall Wright died in Madison, Wisconsin, USA 🇺🇸
1920: invention of the path diagram to show relations among a network of endogenous and exogenous variables forming a system of structural equations.
Established idea of diagram thinking
I’m with you 100% Sandbox learning is efficient but it’s a reason why students have trouble translating their knowledge to the messiness of the real world where there is rarely one single ‘right’ answer
The Vatican Museums' Bramante Staircase provides a striking visual metaphor for a vicious feedback cycle in scholarly publishing: rising paper submissions across an expanding landscape of journals strains the limited supply of volunteer peer review labor, which in turn makes editorial decisions less predictable and encourages authors to submit their work more ambitiously, increasing the burden on peer reviewers further still. Image credit: Carl T. Bergstrom
The process of #PeerReview is vital to contemporary science, but is also under enormous strain. @carlbergstrom.com & Kevin Gross use mathematical models to dissect the threats to the long-term viability of peer review, suggesting ways to stabilize it @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4kR02bo
Great book!
Some scientific flaws but mostly it’s ridiculous, over-the-top nonsense that defines good satire
… A sports drink company owns the FDA, DHHS, and FCC. They successfully replace water with their Brawndo energy drink to irrigate the world’s crops. This boosts Brawndo’s bottom line, delighting stock owners while dooming the global food supply.
… so maybe the toxic potential of social media tycoons was not yet obvious. Terry Crews as president Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho is a highlight of the film, and a major plot point involves the selling out of government agencies to corporate interests…
The scenario is based on the tired old eugenics trope that conflates financial wealth with Darwinian fitness via some magical thinking about gene function. To be fair, the film was made in 2006, before the trillion-dollar tech companies started to enshitify their own creations.
One major flaw in the plot occurs early in the film, when we are told that it took 500 years of inbreeding to create a human population so distracted by mindless entertainment that they fail to elect competent leaders or conduct critical research that could reverse self-annihilating economy
Currently watching: Idiocracy
1. Kevin Gross and I have a new paper out today PLOS Biology.
We used economic models based around screening games and the market for unpaid labor to highlight a meltdown cycle threatening peer review.
…or the student-to-faculty ratio, which doesn’t always translate to quality mentorship
Yeah, I love that term too. I think it is a well-characterized phenomenon, as defined by Cory Doctorow, to such an extent that it shouldn’t even need quotation marks.
As an educator, this interference to learning and intellectual development is what concerns me about AI, much more than cheating. Here’s a link to the original white paper:
www.umb.edu/media/umassb...
60 minutes of world-class hockey ending with a few minutes of beer league slop
Come join #LaurierBiology!
We're recruiting 3 tenure-track faculty positions!
Integrative Organismal Zoologist!
careers.wlu.ca/job/Waterloo...
Microbial Systems Biologist!
careers.wlu.ca/job/Waterloo...
Computational Ecology/Modeling Biologist!
careers.wlu.ca/job/Waterloo...
DEADLINE MARCH 22nd!
