Weakening the type concept and giving species names to genetically distinct clusters are not just cardinal sins of #systematics - it's bad science. Here, we argue why such a proposal that was put forward a few months ago, should be ignored. #DNAbarcoding #crypticspecies
doi.org/10.1098/rsbl...
Yes our country is falling apart and yes these are terrible times. But a small inkling of joy: In June, my first ever novella, The Harvest, will be published by Black Hare Press. It's of the #horror genre, and my first ever work of fiction. :)
blackharepress.com/products/the...
📉 FY2026 is worse.
NIH has made 10,195 awards so far. NSF has made 613.
Six hundred thirteen.
Congress appropriated the money. The agencies are not spending it.
Grant freezes. NOFO collapse. Staff RIFs. Review cancellations. You can win the budget fight and still lose the funding war.
Obsessed with Punch the snow monkey? Me too! I spoke to @npr.org for their Short Wave science podcast about what's going on and gave some insight into snow monkey culture 💜🐒
I've been developing a new python package that I'm calling "Geneland". It takes DNA sequence data or a precomputed distance matrix (if using RAD-Seq) along with GPS coordinates and outputs an interpolated genetic landscape surface. Similar to Alleles in Space (but prettier). #popgen #evoldir #python
Clearly some cloud seeding has been going on. This is the most snow Rhode Island has ever received since the blizzard of ‘78. #oceanstate #wintryfun
Classes cancelled and Providence, Rhode Island is expected to get a hefty two feet of snow. Will be hunkering down with this beautiful lady for the next 48 hrs #winterstorm #oceanstate
Congrats!!
What a week. But pleased to share new #fish #biogeography paper by PhD student Bryson Hilburn on southeastern stream captures (🐟not 🐿️) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
My recent piece in the Chronicle. I know many other faculty members and colleagues feel the same way. #academia #highereducation #actuallearning
The Natural History Museum Denmark seeks a Tenure-track Assistant Professor & Curator in Bryology. Applications due by Mar 23, 2026. More info: https://employment.ku.dk/tenure-track/?show=156070 #job
Environmental DNA is cool but to make a giant inferential leap from biodiversity monitoring to population-level inferences is fool's gold. Technological novelty is killing pure science. #popgen #randomthoughts
I know NSF has been gutted in terms of personnel but FFS...I didn't know how bad it was. Literally no one in the IT Help Desk can help me solve a simple problem with research.gov. SMFH...UGH.
Also, as an added bonus, the program pulls the geographic location of each sequence (if available) and puts into the FASTA header for each entry.
Screenshot of "COI Fetches" which fetches COI sequences from GenBank and puts it all into a FASTA file and also tags the location of each item.
In #popgen, I have students work with short DNA barcodes. They hate having to fetch them from GenBank using the "front door" and none of them code. So, I created a GUI that retrieves COI data for any species and compiles it into FASTA file. I'll be hosting the installer on my github account.
So sorry :( My condolences John...
IYKYK
Python has a quantum simulator (Qiskit) that you can play around with but getting time on actual quantum hardware is insanely expensive and I doubt NSF would ever fund something as wild as what I'm proposing. So this is a huge deal for my lab. Thanks to #IBM for taking a chance on this!
Woke up this morning to an email from IBM stating that my proposal was accepted. Essentially I get to analyze population genetic data on an actual quantum computer---and compare those results with what we find using classical computing. #popgen #bravenewworld #quantumcomputing
Chris Madel announced he is ending his bid for the GOP nomination in the Minnesota governor's race, citing national Republicans' handling of immigration enforcement in his state. Aaron Lavinsky / TNS/ABACA via Reuters Connect
Chris Madel Republican candidate for Minnesota Governor: “I can’t look my daughters in the eye & say I’m running as a Republican, when they’re pulling over Hispanics & Asians because of the color of the skin — I did not sign up for that”
It's really too bad the United States Congress no longer exists.
Snowstorm, a cat and his favorite author #rhodeisland #sundaymorningblues
Another Gestapo murder in Minnesota. Six agents wrestle someone to the ground and then shoot him in the back
www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...
If you find any of them, let me know!! We still don't know the extent of their range....
Proctoeces maculatus. Their sporocysts are these germ balls that eventually rupture into cercaraiae which go on to infect a fish host where it becomes an adult fluke. Except that we've found both sporocysts and adults in the same mussel (autoinfection).
If you are considering doing genomic research on children... don't. We are not yet able to prevent significant harm to participants and society.
Yup and in some populations they can complete their entire life cycle in mussels. I’ve gotten push back on that but we’ve found both sporocysts and adults in mytilus edulis although the latter is rarer.
We found a population of them teeming with trematodes up here on the cape
Remember that article that came out sometime last year in Frontiers in Psychiatry, where the author claimed that #parasites can cause heightened sexual aggression in humans? It moved around on social media even though it was nonsense. Here's my response:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
