Honestly, you can’t overstate the threat.

Ardem Patapoutian@ardemp.bskyverified.social · yesterday

The lead story on NYTimes this morning. Comprehensive coverage of “How Trump Is Dismantling America’s Scientific Research Machine”. Gift article link: www.nytimes.com/2026/10/31/c... Gift article.

How Trump Is Dismantling America’s Scientific Research Machine www.nytimes.com/2026/10/31/c...

How Trump Is Dismantling America’s Scientific Research Machine (Gift Article)

The system that has driven life-altering discoveries and helped make the United States a superpower is now under intense strain.

nytimes.com

An interesting PhD opportunity at the Cornell University.

Found the gene for butts, y'all!! It's a duplication.

Molecular Biology and Evolution@molbioevol.bsky.social · 4d ago

Wang et al. analyze genome data of four geographically isolated rumpless breeds of chicken. Findings support a model of parallel evolution in a specific cis-regulatory element of the IRX1/IRX2 intergenic region. 🔗️ academic.oup.com/mbe/article/... 📷️ Kun Wang #societyjournal #evobio #molbio

Come be our colleague! TT position in Neuroscience in my Department, chock full of great colleagues and in a fabulous place/R1. Reach out if you have questions... careers.umass.edu/cw/en-us/job...

Assistant Professor - Behavioral Neuroscience - Amherst, Massachusetts, United States

Title: Assistant Professor - Behavioral Neuroscience Executive Area: Academic Affairs College/School/MBU: College of Natural Sciences Department: Psychology and Brain Sci Work Location: Amherst Schedu...

careers.umass.edu

Less science, but more 'metascience', presumably to justify WH proposals to slash NSF by $4B in FY 2027. "The U.S. National Science Foundation Office of Metascience (NSF OMS) applies the scientific method to how science and engineering are funded, organized, and evaluated." What could go wrong?

Office of Metascience (OD/OMS)

NSF's mission is to advance the progress of science, a mission accomplished by funding proposals for research and education made by scientists, engineers, and educators from across the country.

nsf.gov

How are new castes created? Clues from six unusual individuals of the ant Aphaenogaster luteipes 🐜 Intercastes combining queen and worker traits reveal how development could provide the material for ant caste evolution. insectessociaux.wordpress.com/2026/10/28/h... #SocialInsects #AntEvolution

Ant Caste Evolution: Clues from Aphaenogaster luteipes

Six unusual Aphaenogaster luteipes ants reveal how queen and worker traits can combine, offering clues to how new castes evolve in social insects.

insectessociaux.wordpress.com

In case you weren't worried already: arxiv.org/abs/2606.10159

Gaming AI-Assisted Peer Reviews Poses New Risks to the Scientific Community

AI is increasingly used to support scientific peer review, from manuscript screening, reviewer assistance to editorial triage. Although such systems promise to reduce reviewer burden and accelerate pu...

arxiv.org

In case you didn't know: we are acting as guest editors of this special collection on TEs and Development for Mobile DNA. It would be amazing if you could share with relevant researchers 🙏 link.springer.com/collections/...

I'm hiring a postdoc for our NSF IntBIO project on songbird behavior, physiology and fitness! Start date as early as April 1 or as late as Sept 2027. Emphasis on behavioral endocrinology and transcriptomics, plus field ornithology based on applicant interests: academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/33216.

One thing that pisses me off to no end about AI bros in academia is when they cherry pick their favourite problem, where AI may or may not actually work, while proceeding to ignore the global net negative effect of AI usage on the rest of the world. (Full ivory tower, but pretending it’s not.)

Ohio State is searching for an arthropod biologist (e.g. entomologist) at Associate/Full Professor level. They will join our Museum community and oversee the Triplehorn Insect Collection. osu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/OSUCareers/j...

Martha N. and John C. Moser Chair in Arthropod Biosystematics and Biological Diversity

Screen reader users may encounter difficulty with this site. For assistance with applying, please contact hr-accessibleapplication@osu.edu. If you have questions while submitting an application, pleas...

osu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com

There are certainly animals with weird complex genomes. But let me update your graph with the maize numbers.

jim mallet@wtf-r-species.bsky.social · last wk.

It's not just maize, it's every genome. Currently, my favourite organism, Heliconius butterflies, is one of the champions of mess -- Fang, B., & Edwards, S.V. 2025. Pangenomes: new tools for ecological and evolutionary genomics. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 41:230–244. doi.org/10.1016/j.tr...

The Dept. of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at U. of Tennessee, Knoxville is accepting applications for MS or PhD. Admitted graduate students are fully funded through teaching assistantships that cover tuition, fees, and an annual pay of $28,134. Deadline Dec 1 2026. eeb.utk.edu/graduate-stu...

Breaking trait scaling via the evolution and regulation of dimorphic decoupling in ants | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... #Ants #Pheidole 🐜 @uottawa.ca @uottawascience.bsky.social

Evening of doodling

We are hiring temporary plant evolutionary ecology field technicians for the 2027 season! Ideal for a post-bac interested in applying to grad school. We begin reviewing applications on November 10. Please repost! jobs.ncsu.edu/postings/235...

Excellent review of the many things we have to thank insects for!

Dr. Jessica L Ware@jessicalwarelab.bsky.social · 2w ago

Insects’ contributions to people: ecosystem services and functions provided by insects academic.oup.com/aesa/article...

Significant news in the ongoing dismantling of NSF. Fewer and fewer left to direct an agency whose decisions on what to fund (or even whether to use their budget at all) increasingly reflect the administration's political priorities rather than the prioritization of investigator-initiated research.

Dan Vergano@danvergano.bsky.social · 2w ago

FYI Science Policy News NSF Acting Director, Chief of Staff to Exit www.aip.org/fyi/nsf-acti... Agency leaders will be “working closely with the White House” to identify a new acting director if President Donald Trump’s nominee is not confirmed by Jan. 1

Good report on a frustrating situation by @kvasquez.bsky.social cen.acs.org/policy/resea...

NSF closes fiscal 2026 with over $1 billion left unspent

The agency says the money will be invested in Trump-aligned initiatives

cen.acs.org

Cool new research by De Gasperin et al! "Overall, our study indicates that multiple transitions of social forms occurred across the ant phylogeny, and that both monogyny and polygyny can be favoured in a broad range of environmental conditions, harsh or mild."

fully funded PhD position studying salt marsh ecology & resilience in the Kostka Lab at Georgia Tech! Start date August 2027 (+ working with Bald Head Island Conservancy)

Together with other scientists I’m suing the 🇺🇸 US National Institutes of Health for violating our 1st Amendment rights & censoring our health science. I’m ready to shine a light on the darkest days. Buckle up, read on. This gets pretty wild… THREAD

ACLU@aclu.org · 2w ago

By terminating research grants like Kelton's to censor views it doesn’t like, the NIH is blocking scientists from work that would advance public health for all of us. We're pushing back. Tell Congress to demand the NIH restore the grants and stop its censorship campaign at aclu.org/nih_censorship_

This is a truly startling paper. It shows that mRNA can perform regulatory functions *in addition to* its role in encoding a protein. In other words, the distinction between protein-coding RNA and noncoding regulatory RNA is fuzzy. /1 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Regulation of target gene expression by chromatin-associated protein-coding transcripts in plants

Protein-coding transcripts are regarded as intermediates that mediate DNA-to-protein information flow, leaving their noncoding regulatory potential largely underappreciated. Genome-wide profiling of R...

science.org

Told you supergenes were everywhere ;) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A supergene and genomic mosaicism are associated with phenotypic evolution in Galápagos tree finches - Nature Communications

Adaptive radiations produce striking phenotypic diversity over remarkably short evolutionary timescales. This study uses genomic analyses of Darwin’s tree finches to reveal a cryptic lineage, in which...

nature.com

My department (Biology at Northeastern) is hiring a Teaching Professor in Biology. This is a great opportunity to develop a long-term career focused on teaching, with an established path for growth and promotion. Please apply, and spread the word! 🧪 #academicsky

40 years ago today, the BDSC made its 1st shipment. To celebrate, Trudy Kaufman, who packed the 1st shipment, boxed up the same kinds of flies for John Roote at Cambridge, who placed the 1st order. Watch for pics of the arrival next week. We’ve shipped 4,882,378 vials total. That’s a lot of flies!

How does cooperative living arise from information encoded in a genome? To highlight this key topic in evolutionary biology, GBE presents its virtual collection on the “Evolution of Sociality.” 🔗 academic.oup.com/gbe/pages/ev... 📷 @meganbarkdull.bsky.social #societyjournal #genome #evolution

LSU is hiring an Assistant Professor in Behavioral Ecology! Please see the job posting here and share. Application review begins November 15th. lsu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/LSU/jo...

Assistant Professor-Behavioral Ecology

All Job Postings will close at 12:01a.m. CST (1:01a.m. EST) on the specified Closing Date (if designated). If you close the browser or exit your application prior to submitting, the application progre...

lsu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com

Orthopterans and flea beetles in a new Ant Lab video, out today! youtu.be/Wr8mGF4P188

How Cricket, Grasshopper…& Beetle!? Jumps Work

YouTube video by Ant Lab

youtu.be