SMBE Mid-Career Excellence Award - Matt Pennell
This year's SMBE Mid-Career Excellence Award goes to Matt Pennell, professor @cornelluniversity.bsky.social
Visit our website to learn more about the SMBE Faculty Awards
🔗 smbe.org/faculty-awards
#society
Unlocking a flexible set of phylogenetic models for discrete and continuous trait evolution using discretized stochastic diffusion www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04...
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.
Was a pleasure talking with @johannawagstaffe.bsky.social about how the public can understand scientific publishing. @evolletters.bsky.social @sse-evolution.bsky.social @eseb.bsky.social
www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDrQ...
Oof. Of course it is. I am an idiot :P
I am not hip :/ What is AB?
First you go to a cute walk with your wife by the river and see some funny duck, and next thing you know 2 weeks later you're taking an online ornithology class and birding in the sleet beside 12 people who woke up at 6 AM to stand in the middle of a swamp to see a weird bird with a long neck.
Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution 🇨🇦 is celebrating its 20th year! Mark the occasion and support the society with a limited edition mug or notebook! 🇨🇦
Our paper on generalized dynamic phylogenetic models is finally out in MEE 🥳 The brainchild of @err-ring.bsky.social, GDPMs open up a vast new space for comparative studies on complex, coevolving traits, greatly aided by @scottclaessens.bsky.social's work on the accompanying R package. Check it out!
A picture of Bruce, a green parrot, missing his upper beak. Photo by Alex Grabham
Bruce is a New Zealand parrot missing his top beak. It’s a serious disability, but he has managed to become the alpha of his group, through creativity. Here’s my story about Bruce and the mostly mysterious natural history of disability. Gift link: nyti.ms/4cwVGT5
Has anyone come across a cheap or DIY qPCR instrument that can easily be used in the field?
A picture of a rather dilapidated copy of "The picture of Dorian Gray" There is visible water damage to the cover and the plastic cover is yellowing. Obviously, not evident from the picture but there is a truly foul musty smell emanating from it!
Last week, a gentleman returned this rather dilapidated copy of this famous book to us after 50 years. He had found it in his attic!
Presumably this means there is a pristine copy somewhere in our libraries....
🚨Palaeoverse Lecture Series🚨
🗓️30th April 2026, 15:00 UTC🗓️
Join us next week for a talk by Joseph Flannery-Sutherland
@joeflansan.bsky.social
from University of Birmingham, on “Cleaning taxonomy, time, and their messy interactions with the fossilbrush R package” 💻
bit.ly/palaeoverse-...
My mom holding an embroidery of a trilobite wearing a crown of flowers.
My mom - a geologist - gets out the embroidery that I made her every spring. Because trilobites wearing a crown of flowers are a harbinger of springtime.
#Embroidery
Y'all I found some #rstats code that is _essential_ for debugging:
install.packages("beepr");
library(beepr);
# success
beep(8);
# failure
beep(9);
You're welcome :)
Tropical Fuck Storm @tropicalfuckstorm.bsky.social has been my go-to band since seeing this KEXP performance. Fantastic stuff. youtu.be/UCantJzv05k?...
\m/(>.<)\m/
Voyager 1 has had another instrument shutdown. On Friday, the team at JPL sent the command to shut off of the low energy charged particle instrument. That means that there are now only two operational science instruments on the spacecraft.
science.nasa.gov/blogs/voyage...
at least you tried dot gif
[Hooded Warbler today]
So, it turns out that crystal vibrations can actually heal people. The crystals just need to have been installed in the transducer assembly of an MRI or High Intensity Focused Ultrasound! Also, can one intentionally electrocute ones self with piezoelectricity? youtu.be/U7NvNRzRrvQ
I Frank-ified him.
People tried to scam insurance by dressing up as a bear and wrecking luxury cars.
"Investigators then took the video to biologists with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to also look at the video. The biologists said, 'it was clearly a human in a bear suit.'"
abc7.com/post/3-south...
٩(◕‿◕｡)۶ _Very_ jealous. This is one of the few parulids (north of Mexico, anyway) that I have not seen :( Almost impossible to imagine I'll ever visit its range again (눈_눈)
I'm looking for applied tutorials on sensitivity analyses for NMAR outcome variables. Any favorite resources #rstats and #stata crowd?
A doctor guy apparently named 'Frank'. A Zappa moustache has been poorly gimped onto his face.
Someone asked me an easily lookupable fact about an anti-authoritarian hip hop metal band.
I told them to RTFRATMM.
[Not mine; cannot find attribution :( ]
#TiL To stop ants coming in to your house leave a saucer of milk outside. The adult ants drink it & it has an effect on ant reproduction. The young are born without toes so they can't climb in to your cavity walls.
This effect is called lack toes in toddler ants.
