When your microbial samples come back with Homo sapiens 🙃🙃🙃

@anthropic.com is rolling out watermarks on text created by their Claude models. So curious to see how this works and how it plays out. Will it reduce slop? support.claude.com/en/articles/...

How Claude marks AI-generated content | Claude Help Center

support.claude.com

Day 1 of ICOM (and my talk) done! Already feeling so stoked and vitalized by all the talks I’ve been attending here. And very grateful for the IMS/New Phytologist Early Career Researcher award to come here 🥰🥰 @icom2026.bsky.social @newphyt.bsky.social

Anthropic just launched "Claude Corps," a massive $150M fellowship placing 1,000 early-career professionals at nonprofits to work with AI. It includes an $85k salary, full benefits, and technical training. Highly recommend checking this out. 🧵 www.anthropic.com/news/claude-...

Introducing Claude Corps

We’re launching Claude Corps, a national fellowship program for people early in their careers who are passionate about extending the benefits of AI to communities across America.

anthropic.com

I was just reading "Skippy Dies" by Paul Murray and a thought about choosing "the most beautiful explanation" stuck with me. In science we are trained to aim for parsimony and the simplest answer. But ecology is messy. Sometimes the simplest answer misses the beautiful one. #PhilosophyOfScience

Seeing Al Gore speak at #Vanderbilt years ago shaped my view on climate. Rutger Bregman’s new piece applies that framing to AI. "Abandoning the field is not the same as stopping the technology." A great read for anyone in tech or ecology. rutgerbregman.substack.com/p/an-inconve... #AI #EDS

An Inconvenient Truth About AI

Twenty years ago, climate denial was a problem of the right. Today, AI denial is a problem of the left. And the consequences could be even more disastrous.

rutgerbregman.substack.com

(1/2) A really cool paper I co-authored just dropped in Scientific Reports! It was an absolute honor to help with the experimental design on this project alongside Philipp Waschk, Mark Anthony, and the rest of the team. Check it out here: www.nature.com/articles/s41... #Fungi

Thanks, Justine!

Justine Karst 🇨🇦@j-karst.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Two excellent candidates to consider for IMS Communications Director. Thanks to both for running!

I am running for Communications Director for the International Mycorrhiza Society! 🍄 I would love the opportunity to help continue to modernize how we share our science. #SciComm #Mycorrhiza #Fungi

International Mycorrhiza Society@mycorrhizaims.bsky.social · 3mo ago

📢 ATTENTION IMS Members! Meet the candidates for Communications Director of the IMS. Learn about their ideas for strengthening communication, outreach, and engagement across our global mycorrhizal community. 🗳️ Stay informed and be ready to vote! 👉http://mycorrhiza.org @icom2026.bsky.social

Some big news to share. I have officially accepted a postdoctoral fellowship through the ORISE program! Exciting things are ahead, and I am so ready to start this next chapter of my research career. Stoked to get more into the world of fungal genomes 👀 👀 #Postdoc #WomenInSTEM #ORISE

Sometimes the best way to process big life changes is to go run some whitewater 🤘 It feels wildly unreal to visit places like this in the middle of a desert. Feeling so lucky ☺️ #Packrafting #Whitewater #WorkLifeBalance #FossilCreek #Flagstaff

A double graduation weekend! 🎓 The undergrad I mentor also walked two Saturdays ago. He recently gave an amazing talk on his research, and seeing his growth as a scientist has been one of the most rewarding parts of my PhD. Incredibly proud! #Mentorship #AcademicSky

Officially walked for my PhD on Saturday! 🎓✨ It was so special to have my family in town to celebrate together. I wrapped everything up with one final lab meeting last week, too. It is the end of a long and awesome era, but I am ready for the next adventure. 🏔️🌲

Spending the week in Boulder at the ESIIL AI for Sustainability summit! 🏔️🤖 It is inspiring to be around researchers balancing the tension between sustainable AI and AI for sustainability. More to come! #AI #EDS #ESIIL

The next generation of fungal ecologists is looking sharp! My mentee is currently running an experiment testing if carbon availability drives Alternaria to switch from pathogen to mutualist in Sorghum. It is a nuanced, difficult question, and he is absolutely crushing it. Proud mentor moment!

I use AI to extract ecological data. Meanwhile, AI is out here extracting my actual face. 🤖😂 An organization recently ran my photo through an AI enhancer before publishing it. A fun(??) digital makeover? Original on the left, AI on the right. Spot the differences!

Trading the computer for the river! 🚣‍♀️🏜️ Heading into the Grand Canyon for a packrafting trip to celebrate my successful PhD defense. Completely off the grid for the next little bit. Wish me luck!

Officially a certified Carpentries Instructor! 💻✨ Data science shouldn't be gatekept. Really excited to run official workshops and help more ecologists wrangle their data. @carpentries.carpentries.org

It is officially Dr. Bea Bock! 🎓🍄 Today I successfully defended my PhD dissertation on plant-fungal symbioses, common networks, and computational ecology. Huge thanks to my advisors, my lab mates, my pratner Kyle, and our two sweet little cat-children for getting me across the finish line.

I am officially defending my PhD this Thursday, March 5th! If you want to hear about AI literature mining, cottonwood drought survival, and the "dark web" of fungal networks, come by! Check the poster for the time. DM me for the Zoom link so we can keep the internet trolls out of the meeting!

Very excited to share that I am heading to CU Boulder this May for the 2026 ESIIL Innovation Summit! 🏔️💻 We will be spending the week focused on AI for Sustainability, Earth embeddings, and open environmental data. Can't wait to collaborate with this community.

Finally gave my digital home a renovation! 🛠️ I moved away from just listing dissertation chapters to sharing actual resources. You can now find my open-source R packages (nanodRop), wet lab protocols, and NLP workflows all in one place. Open science or bust! 🧬💻 beabockm.wixsite.com/bea-bock

Home | Bea Bock - Studying Plant-Fungal Associations

Researching how plants and fungi associate. Currently searching for Postdoc opportunities. Beatrice Bock (included for searchability).

beabockm.wixsite.com

People often assume Arizona is just saguaros and heat. Meanwhile, Flagstaff is doing this. ❄️ The roads are messy, but the coding productivity is high today. Hunkering down with data pipelines now (and dreaming of thawing out in there later). Stay warm, friends!

Press release by @binghamtonu.bsky.social about our @frontiersin.bsky.social in #Ecology & #Evolution rev: “Abundant empirical evidence of multilevel selection revealed by a bibliometric review”. Natural selection operates from molecules to ecosystems. #MLS www.binghamton.edu/news/story/6...

Beyond ’survival’ of the fittest: Evolution works in teams - Binghamton News

Review of scientific studies shows that natural selection operates on multiple levels

binghamton.edu

Returning to Van Nuland et al. (2023) this morning. 🍄 It’s one of those papers that stays relevant because the continental-scale dataset on Populus fungal associations is just that good.

📢 A new publication from our team is now out in the @ecologicalsociety.bsky.social BULLETIN! 👉 doi.org/10.1002/bes2... It shows how community, collaboration, & multilingual science are not extras—they are essential for equity in ecology. 🌎 📢Please share to amplify Latin American voices!

UW–Madison scientists have published new research about the makeup of death cap mushrooms (Amanita phalloides) after learning that its spread across continents has changed the chemistry of the species. 🍄‍🟫

The Changing Chemistry of Invasive Death Cap Mushrooms

University of Wisconsin–Madison researchers just released a groundbreaking study on the same mushrooms behind an uptick in poisonings in California.

ls.wisc.edu

Dissertation: SUBMITTED to my committee! 🥂🧬 It’s a strange feeling to finally hand over the document I’ve been living with for so long. Huge thanks to everyone who helped me get to this point. Next stop: PhD Defense! 🦋 #ScienceSky #PhDLife #BiologicalSciences #GradSchool

So excited to announce I've received the ECR Award from the International Mycorrhiza Society! I’ll be heading to Cairns, Australia this summer for ICOM as the North American travel award recipient.

I loved hosting this interview with Dr. Pedro M. Antunes for the South American Mycorrhizal Research Network! We dove into the fluid mechanics of mycorrhizal networks and why biological sciences need more interdisciplinary physics thinking. Watch here: youtu.be/zqaS6ZBimYA

Pedro M. Antunes on fluid mechanics within mycorrhizal networks

YouTube video by Mycorrhizas

youtu.be