A big congratulations to Funk Lab PhD students Elena Newmark, Kat Stroh, and Scott Monahan on winning multiple awards and grants this spring, including a Rupel Family Scholarship (Scott and Kat), a GDPE Research Grant (Kat), a Grad School Council Travel Grant (Elena), a Reed Fellowship (Elena)...

Very cool work based on an amazing long term study of bighorn sheep: No Pedigree, No Problem: Genomic Inbreeding Tracks Genetic Rescue With High Resolution - Mitchell et al: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

No Pedigree, No Problem: Genomic Inbreeding Tracks Genetic Rescue With High Resolution

With increasing habitat fragmentation and population isolation, inbreeding becomes a pressing concern for the persistence of wildlife populations. Detailed inbreeding monitoring is crucial for assess...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Congratulations to Joe Felsenstein on being awarded the 2026 Mendel Medal!

This would be a dream team to work with!

Hey folks going to #evol2025 in Athens. The SSE #DEI committee is sponsoring a workshop on how to avoid bias in writing T&P letters. Registration is required and the workshop is open to all career stages! Please share and help spread the word @sse-evolution.bsky.social @evolmtg.bsky.social

Congratulations to lab member Gabi Alves Ferreira who lead us in this fun project! She modeled how range shifts of neotropical frogs with climate change will change phylogenetic diversity and endemism in the new communities. So great to see this published #ProudPI 💪🐸 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Climate change is projected to shrink phylogenetic endemism of Neotropical frogs - Nature Communications

Climate change is a major threat to biodiversity. This study predicts that climate change will reshape Neotropical frog diversity, causing losses in phylogenetic diversity and phylogenetic endemism, w...

nature.com

Amidst *everything* going on, I'm still proud to see my 2nd chapter of my PhD out in full in the latest special issue of @animalecology.bsky.social! doi.org/10.1111/1365... (1/4)

Quantifying intraspecific variation in host resistance and tolerance to a lethal pathogen

Our study highlights the importance of considering intraspecific variation in host tolerance and resistance to pathogens. We apply a multistate model as a new way to quantify host tolerance and resis...

doi.org

These NIH applications have the same materials and the same scoring criteria. Panels were postponed more than a month. Hopefully enough time to make the common-sense decision to reclassify these as standard applications and give full consideration this cycle! www.chronicle.com/article/nih-...

NIH Again Tosses Grant Applications for Program That Funds Minority Researchers

The agency, for the second time this year, has withdrawn applications for the F31 diversity fellowship, which is designed to “promote diversity in health-related research.”

chronicle.com

Congratulations to my PhD student Shanelle Wikramanayake for being awarded a Rufford Small Grant and a HCI Michael Dee Grant to support her super cool research on the effects of fragmentation and climate change on rainforest lizards in her home country of Sri Lanka! #rainforest #ClimateChange

The National Science Foundation benefits communities in every state.

"I’m feeling betrayed, gutted, lost, anxious, and furious." Our story for @science.org—on the ongoing mass firing of federal employees and reactions in the scientific community. www.science.org/content/arti...

Mass firings decimate U.S. science agencies

White House dismissals and rationale challenged by dismissed scientists and lawsuits

science.org

New analyses of Italian wolves across time confirms they are genetically and morphologically distinct from other European wolves. Also, there’s as tiny rebound of genetic diversity relative to the 20th century bottleneck. Conservation works! #consgen www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Museomics and morphological analyses of historical and contemporary peninsular Italian wolf (Canis lupus italicus) samples - Scientific Reports

Scientific Reports - Museomics and morphological analyses of historical and contemporary peninsular Italian wolf (Canis lupus italicus) samples

nature.com

Bluesky has not yet had any Rhombophryne testudo. Let’s fix that. I think it will do all of us some good. 🐸🟤

Congratulations to @robynshaw.bsky.social, @cegrueber.bsky.social, and too many other friends to list here on this important paper in @nature.com on the global extent of genetic diversity loss. It was a pleasure discussing it w/ Elizabeth Pennisi from @science.org. www.science.org/content/arti...

Wide range of Earth’s species are showing a decline in diversity

The loss of genetic variation means species may be less resilient to climate change and other stressors

science.org

Our long term project has finally been published - genetic diversity is lost worldwide, but we can also make a difference and conservation actions matters. Find out more in the Science news here www.science.org/content/arti... #Consgen

Wide range of Earth’s species are showing a decline in diversity

The loss of genetic variation means species may be less resilient to climate change and other stressors

science.org

Diversity is pretty neat actually. #SundayFishSketch

What do evolution and adaptation have to do with predicting vulnerability to climate change? Find out in our new paper led by the amazing Dr. @brennaforester.bsky.social and featuring the WORLD'S COOLEST 🐸 just published in Molecular Ecology: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...! #congen

Redlisting genetics: towards inclusion of genetic data in IUCN Red List assessments link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Redlisting genetics: towards inclusion of genetic data in IUCN Red List assessments - Conservation Genetics

Genetic diversity is critical for adaptation in response to changing environments and provides a valuable metric for predicting species’ extinction risk. The International Union for Conservation of Na...

link.springer.com

What can genome sequence data reveal about population viability? (And equally important, what CAN'T it reveal??) These are key questions that @martykardos.bsky.social, Lukas Keller, and I address in our new paper in a Molecular Ecology special issue: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.... #congens

“Experts and scientists are migrating to Bluesky in record numbers.” Welcome if you’re new (and if you’re not, please help by reposting) - here’s a starter pack for the #biodiversity science-policy community: go.bsky.app/LjV86zg

Good morning from La Hacienda Águila on the Colorado Front Range.

Did you know that orchids have a big chunk of fungal mtDNA stuck in their own mitochondrial genomes?? In this new preprint, we found that fungal-derived tRNAs are functional in the orchid mitochondria. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/4

November 18 is the International Day of LGBQTIA+ People in STEM! Today more than ever we want to stress the importance of communities, building connections, and raising each other up. Let's keep leaving our mark for the betterment of us all! 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 #QueerinSTEM prideinstem.org/lgbtstemday/

VACANCIES! PhD and Postdoc Positions on🐟predator - 🐸prey responses to climate change as part of highly integrative #NSF collaboration. Postdoc ad: drive.google.com/file/d/1_Mbv... PhD ad: webpages.uidaho.edu/hohenlohe/UI.... Please RT! #ConservationGenetics #ClimateChange @sse-evolution.bsky.social

What an awesome paper. Hope!! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Reintroduction of resistant frogs facilitates landscape-scale recovery in the presence of a lethal fungal disease - Nature Communications

The pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) has devastated amphibian biodiversity, and methods to reverse these impacts are lacking. This study shows that frogs collected from recovering populati...

nature.com

Protection of the genetic diversity within species is a crucial component of biodiversity conservation. Recently, new indicators have been developed to help monitor #GeneticDiversity. We evaluated these indicators in >900 species from 9 countries, using existing genetic and non-genetic data #consgen

Multinational evaluation of genetic diversity indicators for the Kunming‐Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework

We assess two genetic indicators for 919 taxa, representing 5271 populations in nine countries, including megadiverse countries and developing economies. The majority of taxa assessed (83%) had data ...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Postdoctoral position available on population and landscape genomics to inform host-pathogen co-evolution and conservation of wild 🦌and CWD as part of highly integrative, fun team!: drive.google.com/file/d/1qAyg.... Please RT!