good scientific writing alert "In the Hawaiian honeycreepers, the progression “rule” is more of a polite suggestion" from nice new paper on Hawaiian honeycreeper phylogeny www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Our paper (also, my first first-author paper) is now available in MEE early view! In this study, we introduced a state-dependent Ornstein-Uhlenbeck model we implemented in RevBayes to test adaptive hypotheses in macroevolution. (1/3) besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

An efficient Bayesian phylogenetic approach for joint inference of continuous and discrete trait evolution under a state‐dependent Ornstein–Uhlenbeck model

Macroevolutionary adaptation of a continuous trait to different discrete states across species can be modelled using a phylogenetic state-dependent Ornstein–Uhlenbeck (OU) process. Existing infere...

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Thrilled to have my first thesis chapter published in @currentbiology.bsky.social! We combine genomics, gene editing, and performance experiments to reveal the genetic basis and functional consequences of hurricane-induced trait shifts in island lizards! Check it out: www.cell.com/current-biol...

Genomic targets of hurricane-induced selection on clinging performance in an island lizard

Vaughn et al. show that hurricanes drive parallel genomic selection signatures in island anoles. One candidate locus (hs6st1) is associated with rear toe length. CRISPR disruption reduces hindfoot ele...

cell.com

Hey Bluesky! Emerging from my dissertation-formatting cave to share that I defended my PhD last week! So many incredible people helped me reach this point, especially over the last few months as I scrambled to finish in time. I’m lucky to be surrounded by such good friends.

Magic traits, search costs, and the persistence of species in secondary contact Jack R. Farley, Darren Irwin bioRxiv 2026.07.23.740407 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Magic traits, search costs, and the persistence of species in secondary contact

When two populations come into secondary contact, assortative mating can act as a barrier to gene flow. However, when assortative mating is incomplete, associations between preference and cue loci can...

biorxiv.org

Hey Bluesky! Emerging from my dissertation-formatting cave to share that I defended my PhD last week! So many incredible people helped me reach this point, especially over the last few months as I scrambled to finish in time. I’m lucky to be surrounded by such good friends.

1/4 In today's funding climate, every grant and fellowship matters. Based on feedback from our GSAC Community Check-In Survey, we're building a growing hub of graduate & postdoctoral funding opportunities and job boards to make them easier to find. 🧵

“Perfectionism is about the avoidance of unhappiness. There are therefore as many kinds of perfectionist as there are kinds of unhappiness” “Phylogenetics without genomic data would be inaccurate, but phylogenetics without morphology and other phenotypic information would be pointless” Great post!

Wayne Maddison@waynemaddison.bsky.social · 3w ago

Scientific fashions, perfectionisms, and the value of traditional morphological taxonomy. #evolbio #philsci 🧪 waynemaddison.wordpress.com/2026/07/16/s...

Interested in joining a growing lab in LA? We’re hiring a postdoc!! Please spread the word to folks in your network and feel free to get in touch with any questions recruit.apo.ucla.edu/JPF11142

Wrote a little something about ecological fitting, a concept that has gently rewired my experience of hikes and wildflower walks, and what it means if most organisms are living, not their best possible life, but well enough. Not the fittest, but the fitted

Not the fittest, but the fitted

A marine blue butterfly (Leptotes marina, native to the Americas) nectaring on the flowers of a white clover (Trifolium repens, native to Europe) in the lawn of a Los Angeles city park. (Photo by me) A little knowledge of natural history is a dangerous thing. This is, first, because knowing a few things — the names of some common wildflowers, or the songs of some neighborhood birds — begets curiosity about more things, and soon enough you've gone from installing…

denimandtweed.jbyoder.org

Excited to say that I will be starting as the Curator of Ornithology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History this fall! I can't wait to work with the newly renovated collection and continue my research program back in the Great Lakes. (1/3)

A professor in Tufts University’s School of Engineering required one of his international graduate students to work an unpaid TA job this past spring semester. After she went to her union and blew the whistle, Tufts withdrew her from her program. A thread of rage. 1/

I think there's actually a useful difference we can draw here. Namely: there is incrementalism that comes from pushing wherever possible (and with whatever levels possible) to make progress toward a maximalist demand, versus incrementalism that's positioned as an excuse for setting minor goals

kyle tear down that highway lucas 🏳️‍🌈@itskylelucas.com · last mo.

My not-so-hot take is that what Mamdani is doing *IS* incrementalism, and the bar is so deeply in hell that a politician just doing *anything* good consistently is a total anomaly for people. And I think for now that is good and fine, because it is restoring people’s faith that better is possible.

OMG our own collection has dozens of such jars and we keep hoping someone will put them to use

Kym Deyn@kymdeyn.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Rough day, so have a poem about the Jar of Moles in the Grant Zoology Museum in London that everyone has regarded as too thoroughly batshit to publish

New paper out today! @sternarchella.bsky.social and I review how modularity and integration influence adaptive radiations and diversification. Read it here: rdcu.be/fpcSX

AVIAN PHYLOGENY researchers! A call for new data!

Eliot Miller@eliotmiller.bsky.social · 2mo ago

🔊 We're getting ready to update the @birdsoftheworld.bsky.social #phylogeny & #taxonomy! Please please please! If you have a phylogeny published in the last year, or you've noticed one we're missing, let us know via the feedback form at the top of the page. birdsoftheworld.org/bow/phylogen... @world

Reminder that the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) is asking members to sign letters regarding the OMB rule (by 6/15) and to submit individual responses (by 7/13!!). We have >250 signatories right now, GREAT!, but we have ~4k members, give or take, so pls get those signatures in!

Gina Baucom@gbaucom.bsky.social · 2mo ago

🚨SSE members: check your inbox!🚨 SSE has sent an important email regarding the OMB's proposed overhaul of federal grant regulations--changes that could affect peer review, publishing, conferences, professional societies, international collaborations, and more. @sse-evolution.bsky.social

Really nice memoriam to Robert Ricklefs by Brian McGill: dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2026/06/11/r... Ricklefs got ecologists to think big: about the role of history, biogeography & macroevolution on ecological patterns. More than anyone, his work shaped the course of my career.

Robert Ricklefs – in memoriam

Robert Ricklefs, a giant of ecology, passed away on Sunday. It is hard to overstate the extensive impact Bob had on the field. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in the US,…

dynamicecology.wordpress.com

I think about this scene all the time. RIP Anthony Head

Anybody addressing evolutionary psychology in intro bio?

Rebecca Sear@rebeccasear.bsky.social · 2mo ago

“We conclude that evolutionary psychology can increase victim-blaming attitudes through an increase in the belief that gender roles are natural and immutable, and that this can be understood through the theoretical framework ‘the cultural scaffolding of rape’”

recruiting a couple new grad students to start in january, please share! www.gilbertecology.com/opportunities

New post is live! 40 years of race science arguments about brain size & the racial IQ gap, nobody bothered to write down the math or do anything beyond gawk at correlations. I did, walking through the data & formalizing it with the Lande equation. It fares worse than you could even imagine.

Race on The Brain: why brain-size differences can’t explain the IQ gap

Tackling a popular hereditarian argument

open.substack.com

Very happy to announce a big new paper from the lab, led by grad students @smishra677.bsky.social and Laia Pomar-Pallarès (in collaboration with @roblanfear.bsky.social). We introduce a new way to study introgression, with accompanying software (DAFT) 1/n 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🧨 New publication out (I think this one is 🌶️ ): Cerca & @stelkens.bsky.social - "The identity crisis of speciation genomics". academic.oup.com/evolinnean/a...

Reptiles with longer Wikipedia pages tend to be bigger. The relationship is a power law with exponent = 0.85. I guess humans really like writing about big lizards? The longest article is the Komodo Dragon.

An REI co-op member sitting peacefully in her camp chair -- reading a book, wearing a hand-painted "Boycott REI" shirt, warmly greeting customers -- got arrested by six police officers yesterday at REI's Seattle flagship. That's who REI called the cops on.

Happy to see my PhD work on birdsong complexity published today! doi.org/10.1098/rspb... 🐦‍⬛ 🎶 ⬇️ Why are some birdsongs simple and some extremely complex? The answer is long thought to be ‘sexual selection favouring complex signals’. But - really?

Song complexity in suboscine birds: evolutionary drivers and ecological constraints

Abstract. Acoustic signal complexity varies widely in animals, from single notes to highly sophisticated vocal displays. In birds, vocal complexity can evo

doi.org

I am recruiting Ph.D. students this cycle. Students interested in deep-sea fishes and phylogenetic comparative methods are an especially good fit.

Here’s some of the art that UChicago deems too controversial to display at the Lab School