Fantastic work by the inimitable Michael Campana: a Big Bang of adaptive radiation, inter-species gene flow, and catastrophic extinction in Hawaiian honeycreepers. Grateful to be part of the team with Madhvi Venkatraman, Mirian Tsuchiya, Rob Fleischer and many more!

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences@pnas.org · 4w ago

A phylogeny of the Hawaiian honeycreepers reveals how 60 species radiated out from a single rosefinch-like ancestor over a 1-million-year period between 2.5 million and 3.5 million years ago. Just 17 taxa remain—and most are endangered. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/3nfH50ZxWv7

One of the most-viewed PNAS Nexus articles in the last week is “Emphasizing society's expectations enhances charitable giving in NGO advertisements.” Explore now: https://ow.ly/voL950ZwbB5 To submit your own research, visit PNAS Nexus at https://ow.ly/a9nO50ZwbzC.

On August 1, 1931, Harriet Creighton and Barbara McClintock published the first experimental proof that genes are physically located on chromosomes—a discovery that transformed genetics. 1/3🧵

I’ve been yelling about it this all year. Municipalities still act like these are unfortunate incidents instead of what they are. They’re attacks on critical infrastructure. We’ve underinvested in modernizing essential systems and infrastructure while degrading cybersecurity.

ICE literally went into a national forest and arrested people who were swimming, etc. www.charlotteobserver.com/news/state/n...

ICE agents target NC’s Pisgah National Forest and make multiple arrests, feds say

Immigration and Customs Enforcement extends its reach to western North Carolina’s wilderness areas and makes 13 arrests in Pisgah National Forest, feds say.

charlotteobserver.com

🚨Out today in @society4conbio.bsky.social, in my new paper with @birdmapper.bsky.social, we show a positive relationship between exinction risk and colourfulness across the world's passerine birds! conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

The link between colorfulness and extinction risk across the world's passerine birds

Many of the functional traits that mediate extinction risk across the range of biodiversity relate indirectly to a species’ ability to persist in a changing world, yet certain traits such as colorati...

conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Let's do some Canadian pipeline-wildfire math. The Canadian Energy Center says growing oil exports by 1.5M barrels/day **could** boost GDP by ~31B annually. Meanwhile, wildfire smoke health costs alone - just the health costs, nothing else - averaged 23B/year, past tense. And they're growing fast.

Ontario hardest hit as wildfires cost Canada billions | NOW Toronto

A new report estimates wildfire smoke has cost Canada $231 billion since 2014. See how much each province has spent.

nowtoronto.com

Evidence that fighting pathogens requires more than the immune system: Great work by my collaborator @johnneddermeyer.bsky.social showing that evolved resistance to avian malaria in O'ahu 'amakihi is due not only to immune genes, but also calcium flux genes. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Evolution of Resistance to Avian Malaria Infection in an Endemic Hawaiian Honeycreeper

Hawaiian honeycreepers, a group of endemic song birds, represent one of the most stunning examples of an adaptive radiation. An evolutionary history devoid of malaria-causing parasites has made them ....

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

UPDATE: ProPublica is tracking the increase in immigrants filing claims that their detention is illegal — known as habeas cases. While new cases are being added at a somewhat slower rate, there are still far more than ever before: https://propub.li/4yiYGwu

This week, Trump cut Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments to less than 10% of their current size. Trump and Republicans in Congress are gutting our public lands so their billionaire drilling and mining buddies can get even richer. Public lands belong to us, not them.

Trump Sharply Cuts the Size of Two National Monuments in Utah

Native American tribes and environmental groups are expected to challenge the move to shrink the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments.

nytimes.com

Awesome paper by a fantastic group of people 👏

Terezie Mandakova@terimandakova.bsky.social · 2mo ago

The dynamic genomes of Salvinia reshape our understanding of fern chromosome evolution | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Great thread—link to article at the end.

Kate Clancy@kateclancy.bsky.social · 2mo ago

What a great article not only on faculty workloads, but how little our salaries actually factor in to most university budgets. A few highlights. First, our salaries are falling:

1/n Check out our new paper, spearheaded by @fborne.bsky.social, just out in PLoS Genetics doi.org/10.1371/jour....

Epistasis among clustered lineage-specific amino acid substitutions in the Drosophila Trio protein

Author summary Proteins fold into three-dimensional structures that are essential for their function. Because these structures depend on interactions among amino acids, the fitness effect of a mutatio...

doi.org

Aspiring Eco-Evo PhD students - check out the Simons Graduate Fellowships! it's a full ride!! 🧪https://www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/simons-graduate-fellowships-in-ecology-and-evolution/

Simons Graduate Fellowships in Ecology and Evolution

The purpose of these awards is to provide support for students entering U.S.-based Ph.D. programs with a plan to perform research in ecology and evolution. While we will consider all projects in ecolo...

simonsfoundation.org

There's an autism crisis, all right -- a "crisis of public trust" as RFK Jr and other high-profile officials fuel misinformation, advocates say. My latest: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

US ‘drowning in misinformation’ under RFK Jr, autism advocates say

Health officials in Trump administration were accused of fueling ‘crisis of public trust’ over autism and vaccines

theguardian.com

The cover of GBE's May 2026 issue features the study by @lorenalf.bsky.social et al. on the genomics of adaptation of lynx species. 🔗 academic.oup.com/gbe/issue/18/5 📷 Jorge Monje Martín (@jrgmonje) #genome #evolution

This product should not exist. www.wsj.com/us-news/chat...

UPDATE: After yesterday's 5th circuit ruling, which reinstated outdated restrictions on mifepristone, medication manufacturer Danco has asked the SCOTUS to immediately restore full access to the medication.

Supreme Court Asked to Restore Access to Abortion Pill by Mail

nytimes.com

Jay Bhattacharya pulls a study because he doesn’t like the conclusions. I cannot explain how bad this is and how it reeks of the stench of ideological zealotry and has no basis in science. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/22/u...

C.D.C. Cancels Publication of Study Showing Benefits of Covid Vaccines

nytimes.com

www.propublica.org/article/trum... The most heartless thing our government has ever tried to do. If you are very poor, have an adult child with Down’s syndrome living with you, the govt will cut your benefits. WTH

The Trump Administration Aims to Penalize Disabled Adults Who Live With Their Families

A rule change pushed by White House officials would slash benefits or end support for as many as 400,000 Supplemental Security Income recipients with Down syndrome, dementia and other disabilities who...

propublica.org

Please repost: My department at USC is hiring for a teaching-track faculty position. We are looking for someone principally to teach statistics for biologists, but there will be opportunities for other courses in statistics & algorithms applied to biology usccareers.usc.edu/job/los-ange...

Fascinating and disturbing theintercept.com/2026/04/23/c...

ChatGPT Confessed to a Crime It Couldn’t Possibly Have Committed

A renown criminologist’s experiment with ChatGPT demonstrates the destructive power of police to elicit false confessions.

theintercept.com

Save the US Forest Service from destructive “restructuring” peer.org/letter-tell-...

LETTER | Tell Congress to Save America’s National Forests and the Science That Protects Them

Sign our letter calling on Congress to to take immediate action to protect the U.S. Forest Service and the public lands it stewards.

peer.org

HHS just published an update to its Scientific Integrity Policy. Notably, it has removed the concept of political interference, and no longer calls it out as something specifically to be prevented. www.hhs.gov/sites/defaul... (deletions in red, insertions in green)

New in @science.org ‼️ In the most comprehensive study to date, we show that wildlife trade is driving animal-to-human zoonotic spillover at a planetary scale, with +1 spillover per host every 10 years. Live animal markets and illegal trade pose even greater risks. 🔓 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

My PhD paper on my beloved cycads and beetles on the cover of Science!!! Check out how we studied thermal infrared as a pollination signal, from molecular mechanisms to the wonders of behavior... science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Submit symposium proposals for the 2027 ASN meeting in Long Island by April 30, 2026. Topics should advance biology and promote diversity. More info: https://www.amnat.org/announcements/ASN-mtg-2027.html #conference

Preprint up now! With @ferrisifolius.bsky.social, we found positive selection on leaf shape plasticity across the altitudinal range of the cutleaf monkeyflower. This experiment was a HUGE personal undertaking. If you give it a read, I’d love to hear your thoughts! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Phenotypic plasticity is broadly adaptive across an elevation gradient in the Cutleaf Monkeyflower

Phenotypic plasticity is a key mechanism by which organisms can cope with environmental heterogeneity, but its evolutionary consequences depend on how plastic responses align with the broader adaptive...

biorxiv.org

Bay Area Popgen. FREE awesome popgen conference. Registration and application for talks now live on our website!

Dmitri Petrov@petrovadmitri.bsky.social · 7mo ago

The next BAPG has been announced! April 11 at Davis organized by the inimitable @jrossibarra.bsky.social! bapg-conference.github.io