now on the cover @esajournals.bsky.social Front. Ecol. Env. with @ejgnam2.bsky.social beautiful photo from world's coolest site by Francesco Ventura Young seabirds are mysterious - but we need to keep learning about them! They matter for biology, and for conservation! doi.org/10.1002/fee....

🚨NEW PAPER 🚨 "Deconstructing empirical fitness seascapes across scales of granularity" published in #G3 (@genetics-gsa.bsky.social) 1/2 The fitness landscape has been among the most influential instruments in evolutionary theory for nearly a century. But we often treat them as fixed and static.

OK hive mind, do I know anyone who is up on best practice for archives that are a mix of digital and physical? I need a brain to pick!

Join us for our next panel discussion 'Being queer in Seabird Science'! 🏳️‍🌈 🗓️ Friday 7th August ⏲️ 09:30 - 11:00 (BST) 📍 Online Sign-up here to receive the joining link: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... 📷 @scottishseabird.bsky.social

now on the cover @esajournals.bsky.social Front. Ecol. Env. with @ejgnam2.bsky.social beautiful photo from world's coolest site by Francesco Ventura Young seabirds are mysterious - but we need to keep learning about them! They matter for biology, and for conservation! doi.org/10.1002/fee....

🚨THE POLLS ARE OPEN!🚨 All members will receive a link to vote. You may need to check your spam inbox! If you aren’t a member and would like to join, we'd love to have you. waterbirds.org/join-the-soc... 🐦 If you become a new member, you will receive the voting link on a rolling email schedule. ✉️

Also check out these GORGEOUS watercolors by Rice biology/art student Caroline Pollan!

Rafael Marcondes@rafamarcondes.bsky.social · last mo.

Excited to share the (modest) results of our monitoring of bird-building collisions at Rice University, along with the hot and probably ill-informed takes of an evolutionary biologist dabbling into conservation for the first time!!! With huge thanks to... ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

🦠 SYMPOSIUM SPOTLIGHT — S03-04 Seabird Health and Disease: Lessons from Bird Flu and Beyond Emerging diseases, climate change and global pressures are reshaping the challenges facing seabirds. Convenors: Patricia Serafini, Amandine Gamble, Jana Jeglinski & Jude Lane. bit.ly/4589Gzi #WSC4

undergrads asking me R questions are always holding their laptops by the screen for some reason

Very cool pair of papers demonstrating little link between amount of additive genetic variation and amount of nucleotide variation within species: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Levels of additive genetic variation vary substantially between species

Adaptive potential determines how populations respond to environmental change. This study compiles evolvability estimates from over 170 multicellular species, revealing substantial variation across th...

journals.plos.org

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

real actual science blowing my mind like it always does

Jeff Groh@jeffgroh.bsky.social · last wk.

Avocados come in 2 varieties - A-types start each day female and switch to male midday. B-types do the reverse. In work just published from the last chapter of my PhD, we show this system evolved 40+million yrs ago and is regulated by alleles of 1 transcription factor www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Please share, I am hiring an evo devo postdoctoral research fellow! 📍: The Sleight Lab, University of Aberdeen, Scotland (5th oldest University in UK & English-speaking world) 📅: start after 1st December 2026 🐌: Evolution and Development (molluscs) ⌛: 3 year contract sleightlab.com/vacancies/

Are you interested in #gulls, diet metabarcoding, or both? Of course you are! Check out our new preprint where we use molecular methods to decode the (animal-based) diet of lesser black-backed gulls - arguably a species with one of the most diverse diets out there. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

bioRxiv Ecology@biorxiv-ecology.bsky.social · 2w ago

Evaluating DNA metabarcoding to characterise diet diversity and foraging strategies in a generalist mesopredator, the lesser black-backed gull (Larus fuscus) https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.17.738687v1

An interesting paper! I am not sure it tracks with how I understand phenotypes to exist in real populations. But perhaps my imagination is too limited - I love anything that makes me think twice like this!

Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.@arctomet.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Hemiplasy helps explain high rates of apparent morphological convergence in neoavian birds: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...

old packing list

Here's a useful page with a **ton** of common tasks in #RStats, done with parallel syntax for tidyverse vs. data.table vs. base. arelbundock.com/posts/dt_tb_... #rdatatable #tidyverse

Happy to share this 'capstone' project from my time as a postdoc @umich.edu, where we show that hierarchically nested bursts of body-shape evolution may underlie much of perching-bird diversification over ~50 million years. Free access link here: rdcu.be/fuxB1

Rates of passerine body plan evolution in time and space

Nature Ecology & Evolution - A reconstruction of the evolutionary history of passerine body plans over the past ~50 Myr shows rare bursts of phenotypic innovation near the origin of major...

rdcu.be

As a reminder, I am starting a new lab at UNC Charlotte in 2027—and I am eager to apply these new tools, along with others, to diverse systems. Get in touch if you have ideas. bsky.app/profile/jake...

Jake Berv@jakeberv.bsky.social · last mo.

#Evol2026 I’m launching a new research group at UNC Charlotte in January 2027. Prospective students, postdocs, and collaborators are welcome to get in touch: jacob.berv@charlotte.edu More at jakeberv.com, lab website coming soon.

All I notice is this

Philip Bump@pbump.com · 3w ago

Visualized.

Historical Perspective: Sridhar et al. use the backstories of famous scientific papers in Ecology and Evolution to uncover the background roles of natural history that are written out of papers. Available now ahead of print! www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

This December (2026) I'll be starting my own research lab as a curator of ornithology at @amnh.org. We will seek to understand global avian biodiversity using evolutionary and conservation genetics, with the backing of the incredible AMNH ornithology collection. devonderaad.github.io

this is awesome fingers crossed in a few hundred million years we get at least one pharyngeal-jawed pinniped!

Z. Jack Tseng@tsengzj.bsky.social · 3w ago

Our newest paper on mammalian dental evolution, out today as the cover article in @science.org, lead by @narimanechatar.bsky.social with a team of fantastic early career scientists!!! 🎉🥳 “Performance trade-offs define a fundamental dental dichotomy in mammals” www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Diamond OA, society run: for scientists (and everyone), by scientists, free to read, free to publish in. Great service by @systbiol.bsky.social and the Bulletin’s founding editor, @bryanccarstens.bsky.social

The Society of Systematic Biologists@systbiol.bsky.social · 3w ago

The Society of Systematic Biologists is looking for a new editor for the Bulletin! The Bulletin of the Society of Systematic Biologists is the Society’s diamond OA journal. Are you interested? Or know someone who might be? See 👇 www.systbio.org/eicbssb.htm

My postdoc director called my work "phenomenological" and forbade it. I walked to a museum, found Tinbergen had shared a Nobel for work of exactly that kind, and finished the study anyway. On temperament, luck, and what the system selects against 👇 academicrenewal.substack.com/p/a-certain-...

A certain cast of mind

The argument about research culture leaves out something personal, and no reform reaches it.

open.substack.com

Devastating. I met Bill for the first time in 2006 and he was always one of the kindest, caring souls who mentored an entire generation of seabird scientists working in Newfoundland. We worked together, caught birds together, and learned together. He leaves a huge legacy.

Gary Burness@garyburness.bsky.social · 3w ago

Very sad news www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

I am very sorry to hear of the passing of Bill Montevecchi - a legendary marine biologist who contributed to much of what we know about seabirds in the North Atlantic

I desire high profile coverage of my science, not for citations, but rather because I want a dramatically-lit image of me in eyeliner with an iced coffee feeding a bagel to a parking lot seagull

Our new commentary rdcu.be/ftx6h in @natecoevo.nature.com written with folks from @inaturalist.bsky.social and @cornellbirds.bsky.social shows that use of AI to manipulate existing or create new wildlife images undermines the huge value of vast citizen science databases. 🌍🪰🪶 #Ornithology 🧵 1/10

Citizen science platforms must mitigate against the threat of generative AI

Nature Ecology & Evolution - Citizen science platforms must mitigate against the threat of generative AI

rdcu.be

a fact importantly not incompatible with either me being an animal or me having an evolutionary history - I will organize my body however I damn well please, thank you -