As any working UK university academic could have told you any time in the last 2 decades, the system is structurally screwed, and was doomed to implode from the day the fees-and-competition fix was in.
post18.co.uk/blood-debt-t...
Green woodhoopoe perched on cassia tree seedpods. The bird is holding a spider in its red beak,
For today's #Birdoftheday theme of #ComeDineWithMe here is a green woodhoopoe with an unfortunate spider that I photographed last week at Satara #birds #wildlife #photography #KrugerNationalPark
New paper out in #Ecology Letters: We manipulated the presence of "fighter" and "scrambler" males in soil mite populations and showed that aggressive male behaviour reduces population size and stability. 🧪#SexualSelection #PopulationEcology onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Close up with a beautiful nudibranch on a rocky reef. The lower half of the image is a palette of swatches made from the nudi's vibrant colours.
Once upon a time I just admired nudis and sea slugs.
But it was not enough. Now apparently I'm creating an R package to celebrate their colour palettes? 😅
First up, my Sydney fave, Hypselodoris bennetti.
#rstats #nudibranch #dataviz 🦑🐙🧪 #marinelife #invertebrates
Simulation Models of Cultural Evolution in R by Alex Mesoudi
#RStats
bigbookofr.com/chapters/social%20scienc...
Birthday surprise for me: 0.7% of the global population of wild dogs playing with an old mudflap. #wildlife #wilddog #Lycaeon #KrugerNationalPark #SouthAfrica #conservation
I’m about to head off into the boonies in South Africa for a couple of weeks R&R but will drop you a line when I’m back.
Yes: I can think of quite a few ways that could happen off the top of my head. We could maybe have a bit of a chat about this if you’re interested in exploring it a bit further?
Ooh that is a good thought. Could certainly impact this but I'd need to think about it. Probably mostly in systems where post-copulatory sexual selection is important? We are modelling how EPCs alter the effects of monogamy as a follow up, could have an impact there. Thank you!
Why would I use "AI," I actually know how to fucking write
4) In small populations and especially when there are severe penalties for homozygosity, however, random mating systems are more likely to persist and polygyny does especially badly, the latter because of the reduced Ne that polygyny causes, leading to rapid loss of genetic diversity.
3) We find a complex relationship between mating system and evolutionary rescue. When populations are large or the cost of homozygosity is low then mate-choice polygyny is the best, with mutual choice monogamy intermediate.
2) We use a new dual model for heredity, with an infinitesimal model component to model adaptation and a finite-locus component to let us track loss of genetic diversity. The infinitesimal component lets us model a highly polygenic trait like thermal tolerance.
1) New manuscript preprint up: we model adaptation to changing environments under mating systems ranging from random mating via mutual choice monogamy through to female choice polygyny. 🧪www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03...
What would work in the UK would be if we could generate some metric of “citizenship” (reviewing, editing, society work) and then include that metric in university league tables. Uni management would suddenly start wanting staff to do lots more.
OK @qmul.bsky.social you've no longer got the most evil management of any university in the UK. Time to up your game!
More seriously, this is utterly appalling. What a terrible way to treat your teaching staff... who are the ones that pay all the bills.
Perfect.
We need a “research community contribution” metric that then feeds into league tables. That’d sort the whole problem instantly.
The horror…
One does wonder how come we tumbled from number 1 to number 31 in the Social Mobility Index since the year this Principal arrived at QMUL... 🧐
It's as bad as the bit in Master and Commander where they are making jokes about weevils in the biscuits and the beetle larvae in question are clearly Tenebrio molitor.
Now you want *shudders* oiks who didn't go to any school that one's heard of as fellows? They'd use the fish knife to butter their bread and pass the port in the wrong direction.
...and now, despite being an elitist, self-selected group that 99.9% of UK scientists will never get an invite to, it claims to represent scientists in the UK. Don't get me started on them making Elon Musk a fellow.
I should say I might have a personal bias in selecting this.
"These structures were functional and used in thermoregulation / anti-predator defence / species recognition / yada yada" to "these were socio-sexual signals or weapons for intraspecific contests" for stegosaur plates / lambeosaur crests / ceratopsian horns and frills etc
Well, now I have to change my feature on scientists in the Epstein files.
I also agree. Fluorescence in nature seems quite common and it’s very hard to see it as having any sort of adaptive significance. NB fluorescence (glowing under UV light) != reflecting in the UV spectrum (“UV colouration”) which can often be adaptive in species that can see in the UV eg bees
Male marsh harrier flying right to left with blue sky behind. The upper wings with black tips and then white and reddish-brown over the shoulders are clearly visible.
Male marsh harrier flying left to right in front of a blue sky. The typical white wings with black tips contrast with the brown body and one yellow leg can be seen
A wren sitting on a horse chestnut twig facing left with its beak open.
Male marsh harrier and a wren having a sing-song from Tophill Low this morning before the clouds rolled in and the wind got silly #birds #ukbirds #wildlifephotography #ukwildlife #birdsofprey
