eDNA is possibly the coolest application! Below: read-level placement across a pan-vertebrate mitochondrial pangenome (left) where a clear cluster of read assignments supports the presence of many mammoth reads (right). Processing ~9 billion reads took just 8 minutes!
🤖 The Orbitoscope is a new open-source robot that creates detailed 3D models of insects without ever having to touch or move the specimen.
📷 This system rotates the camera instead of the insect and allows incredibly accurate measurements.
➡️ Learn more: doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1277.177740
Maybe journals aren’t the root cause of problems in academia just a symptom…
Yes, yes you do 😉
Bit sad to no longer be running the bot that forwarded EvolDir emails to Bluesky (and before that, Twitter), but at the same time relieved that @eseb.bsky.social has taken over responsibility for that task. If you are into evolution in any way, follow @evoldir.bsky.social for conferences, jobs, etc.
There are some instructions here evoldir.net/brian/evoldi... They are delightfully old skool, basically send an email to an address to be added to the mailing list.
📣 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
Latest displacement activity is playing with an idea for showing the Open Tree of Life opentreeoflife.github.io using summary trees and animated transitions (with some help from Claude Code and OpenAI) #opentreeoflife #phylogeny
A page of beetle specimens with the details of BHL Day 2026 overlaid.
How do scientists use biodiversity literature?
At #BHLDay2026, Lauren Hughes, Principal Curator In Charge @nhm-london.bsky.social, will explore how BHL is the bridge between taxonomy @marinespecies.bsky.social & the evidence behind it.
📅 29 April: London + online
🎟️ Register now: bit.ly/bhlday2026
if your problem with open access is that commercial publishers are hoovering up all the money, design open access interventions that specifically prevent commercial publishers from receiving your money.
"Why funders shouldn’t withdraw money from open access publishing" www.samuelmoore.org/2026/04/14/w... by @samuelmoore.org
Here's another example, this time Queensland in Australia. bold-view-bf2dfe9b0db3.herokuapp.com/geo.php?coun... This time the polygon isn't a close match for the actual state of Queensland, suggesting that either some barcodes have the wrong coordinates, or they didn't come from Queensland.
Inspired by an old Flickr post code.flickr.net/author/flick... I built a tool to display a polygon around DNA barcode localities in the @boldsystems.bsky.social database. For example, here is Switzerland bold-view-bf2dfe9b0db3.herokuapp.com/geo.php?coun... as outlined by DNA barcodes.
Finally bit the bullet and re-created my eBird account after it was somehow set to perma-private mode yrs ago, but of course the data migration is a HUGE pain. For one, the eBird data download table doesn't match the import format, so I need 3rd party software (Scythebill!) to reformat everything
DNA:ta ilmassa!
“Viruses, bacteria, fungi, plants, animals, birds, fish … the intestinal parasites of moose... whatever was out there and had a reference to match it, we could see — every single organism that is not extremely rare in the ecosystem”
www.nature.com/articles/d41... #eDNA
I find myself telling Claude Code to keep things simple, old skool PHP, HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript. Sometimes I think it sulks a bit as it packs away React, etc. but I do need code I can read
I'm trying to get Claude Code to code in a more "LibraryThing" style, so I had it do an extensive review of the current style, honed over 20 years. This is exactly right, and (IMHO) good advice for every coder.
I remember scanning this every week in the Biology Library when I was a student at @aucklanduni.bsky.social (in the days when each university department would have its own library).
Rather remarkably, my search of the web yielded only one good image of what was once one of the most important things in science
This is why the statement below's so important. Let's try to avoid those missteps this time, not succumb to fantasy economics and wishful thinking, be smart about funding infrastructure, and consider which parts of the ecosystem should be non-profit vs commercial 3/3 bsky.app/profile/rich...
Oops @biodivlibrary.bsky.social link had some stray characters on the end, try www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography...
This bumper special issue was an absolute joy to co-edit. Get stuck in!
#FunFact The scientists recreated snail teeth using 3D printing to test how different designs affect feeding performance.
3/3
JOB: Machine Learning Engineer at Cambridge Digital Humanities for interesting (fixed term) project with CAMPOP www.cdh.cam.ac.uk/about/news/n...
You don't want to miss the upcoming webinar series hosted by @bgbol.org kicking off on 23 April ⬇️ 💡
How every layer of science's "self-correcting machinery" failed when Iva Veseli and I simply wanted to reproduce the findings of a high-profile study on gut microbiome and autism:
merenlab.org/2026/04/15/u...
#Science #publishing is changing fast - AI, open data, reviewer fatigue.
🥳🎂 Our #OA #journal One Ecosystem @oneecosystem.pensoft.net marks 10 years by doubling down on quality, transparency & innovation.
👇See the full editorial here: doi.org/10.3897/onee...
#ecology #sciencepublishing
The programmers we can't afford, who build the 80% solutions that fall short for everyone, don't use what they build and don't feel the need to improve it.
Towards the end of this interview, Clive Thomson points to the coming boom in software customization. It's true that we have forever been ill-served by systems that we can't create for ourselves, nor afford to hire programmers to make for us.
