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Josef Uyeda

@pseudacris.bsky.social

238 Posts1186 Follower394 Folgt
Matthew Hahn@3rdreviewer.bsky.social · 6d ago

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

Josef Uyeda@pseudacris.bsky.social · 6d ago

Interdisciplinary scientist is an awesome science role, but my experience is that it isn't rewarded early on. Being a translator is a profession by itself, interdisciplinary science doesn't just happen by putting experts in a room together. It's more natural & effective if "trained from birth" 1/n

Pam Davis-Kean, PhD@umpamdk.bsky.social · last wk.

I consider myself an interdisciplinary scientist. A post on LinkedIn challenged the idea that we should mentor our students to be more interdisciplinary. Here are my thoughts on what that means in my new APS Presidential column. www.psychologicalscience.org/publications...

Alexei Drummond@alexeidrummond.bsky.social · last wk.

Get excited :) PhyloSpec is coming! A shared standard + modelling language for phylogenetic models. Write a model once, run it across engines like BEAST X, BEAST 2.8 & RevBayes. Easy and reproducible. Built by @tochsner.bsky.social & collaborators (ETH Zürich, Auckland, LMU). phylospec.com

PhyloSpec

A standardized way to describe phylogenetic model components, common assumptions, and best practices in the field of phylogenetics.

phylospec.com

Jake Berv@jakeberv.bsky.social · 2w ago

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.

Announcement for a new Biodiversity Informatics Research Group at UNC Charlotte, launching January 2027. Dr. Jake Berv is launching a lab studying biodiversity across space and deep time, integrating phylogenomics, fossil and modern specimens, fieldwork, and comparative methods. A major near-term interest is developing and benchmarking human-guided AI research agents for rigorous, reproducible analyses in ecology and evolution. Prospective students, postdocs, and collaborators in macroevolution, computational biology and AI, natural history, and open science are welcome to get in touch at jacob.berv@charlotte.edu. More information: jakeberv.com. The graphic features McDowell Nature Preserve in Charlotte.
Jake Berv@jakeberv.bsky.social · 2w ago

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

Josef Uyeda@pseudacris.bsky.social · 2w ago

The NY Times favorite industry: making a movement's imagined rhetorical excesses more narratively focal than the modest clearly beneficial shift it is successfully pushing for. Now for native plant gardening!

Ferris Jabr@ferrisjabr.bsky.social · 4w ago

For the @nytimes.com Magazine, I wrote about the increasingly fervent native plant movement; its esteemed guru, the entomologist and bestselling author Douglas Tallamy; and the complexities of ecologically responsible gardening in our modern era. Gift link 🎁 : www.nytimes.com/2026/07/07/m...

ali alkhatib@ali-alkhatib.com · last mo.

i did a triple take at this line. the university of michigan apparently jeopardized a grad student's status and got him detained by ICE for almost a month on this basis, which i can only convey to non-academic folks as "absolute horse shit"

Luke told Kame that he did “not meet the minimum qualifications to serve” as TA for the course because he had not taken the course himself, Kame said.
Gregg Gonsalves@gregggonsalves.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Holden Thorp is an institutionalist. He's been a university chancellor, provost, now EiC of Science. When institutionalists pull the fire alarm, we listen, because the call to action he issued this week exposes the dire nature of the threat we are facing. 1/ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Another red alert for American science

Although research has bipartisan support in the US Congress, and trust in science is above 75% across the country, the Trump administration seems as determined as ever to mortally wound the nation’s s...

science.org

Will Stancil@whstancil.bsky.social · 3mo ago

It really is inexcusable that the NYT maintains a "free speech on campus" reporter who DOESN'T COVER OFFICIAL, POLITICALLY-MOTIVATED CENSORSHIP OF SPEECH ON CAMPUS. At some point you're actively deceiving the public, no?

Alejandra Caraballo@esqueer.net · 3mo ago

Texas is banning students from writing on LGBTQ topics and removing any references to gender identity and sexual orientation. You'll never guess what the author here hasn't covered but then immediately wrote this piece.

Jonathan Basile@jonothingeb.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I wrote for @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social about Kathryn Paige Harden's new book, an attempt to popularize the eugenics of criminality. I read it as a gambit to build liberal support for the project animating far right politics today, inspired by Replacement theory.

Los Angeles Review of Books@lareviewofbooks.bsky.social · 3mo ago

"The book reads like an 'Eat Pray Love' of biotech grifting, designed to make her into a public figure based on her personal journey." Jonathan Basile reviews Kathryn Paige Harden’s “Original Sin.” https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/original-sin-eugenics-scientific-calvinism-kathryn-paige-harden/

the cover of Original Sin
Kevin Bird@stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I’m so glad someone covered this story. Brian is an amazing scholar and person who I’ve been blessed to be able to get to know, even a little. What happened to him is awful

Needhi Bhalla 💅🏽@needhibhalla.bsky.social · 4mo ago

“We’ve lost out on the ability to continue to improve this work to make it more effective, and to explore how to apply it to other areas…There are a lot of different ways that genetics has been used to justify prejudice and…that human-made social categories interface with biological categories“🧪

Liam U. Taylor@liamtaylor.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Now with pages @systbiol.bsky.social ! "Social Environment and the Evolution of Delayed Reproduction in Birds" with @pseudacris.bsky.social and Rick Prum Some comparative support for the hypothesis that the evolution of complex social contexts restructure life histories doi.org/10.1093/sysb...

Social Environment and the Evolution of Delayed Reproduction in Birds

Abstract. One puzzling feature of avian life histories is that individuals in many different lineages delay reproduction for several years after they finis

doi.org

Jeremy Berg@jeremymberg.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Narrator: It is almost unbelievable that the Director of the National Institutes of Health would would pass judgement about a grant including assuming it didn't have a control group. This is AFTER he and NIH had been found to have terminated grants in an "arbitrary and capricious" manner. 41/n

Michael D. Green, PhD@michaeldgreen.phd · 5mo ago

Below is the response to my question. The funny part of his response is that my research needed a control arm. My study actually did have a control arm (about 80% of the sample never reported discrimination). So the answer itself makes me even more confused.

Michael Green 50:10 My name is Michael Green. I recently finished my PhD in Population Health Sciences at Duke University, and I'm a recipient of an F99/K00, award from the National Institute on Aging. That program is designed to support early career scientists with their PhD and into a postdoc. I'm a black man in his late 20s who come from a family where a lot of people stopped going to their doctor for preventative care because they felt like they weren't being listened to. By the time they came back, it was often too late. My grant focused on studying how patient reported discrimination in healthcare settings is associated with cardiovascular and cognitive health outcomes. It was peer reviewed score competitively and awarded in August of 2024. In July 2025 NIH told me my grant needed to be renegotiated to remove what they called DEl activities. They gave me a week to rewrite 70 pages of work. I asked for specifics on what was flagged, and I received none. So I moved the word black from my grant and references to evidence on why black adults report feeling mistreated in healthcare settings. I didn't change my scientific approach at all, just the language. I didn't have a learning moment from the process, because I still don't know what a DEl activity is. The context of my grant, no one told me. It's now late February. I'm unemployed. I have no health insurance. I haven't received a paycheck since I graduated in December 2025, and out of the 69 recipients of this award at NIA, I'm the only one who has ever had to change the title of their grant beyond punctuation and spelling. Brinda Adhikari 51:42 Okay, so Jay, what would you say to Michael Green in that situation? Jay Bhattacharya 51:47 I'd say that he didn't take advantage of the opportunity to rethink his grant. Like, we gave him the opportunity, and he didn't take advantage of it, right? So he again, I didn't know this grant specifically, but, like, I'll tell you, like, based on the title, what I hear is a gra…Jay Bhattacharya 51:47 I'd say that he didn't take advantage of the opportunity to rethink his grant. Like, we gave him the opportunity, and he didn't take advantage of it, right? So he again, I didn't know this grant specifically, but, like, I'll tell you, like, based on the title, what I hear is a grant where it has as a premise, something that, in principle, couldn't have a control group. And so does bad science. So I, you know, I do again- Brinda Adhikari 52:09 So what would have made us better? Jay Bhattacharya 52:11 Just okay for let me just finish Brinda. So I think if, if I say that, I provisionally, because, again, I've not read his grant so, but based on that 90 second snippet, he had the opportunity to be more specific about his hypotheses, make them actually scientific, give them give make arguments for control groups. We gave him that opportunity, and he didn't take it. That's what I'd say. Brinda Adhikari 52:35 Let me ask you, you know, is it worthwhile? Because I know that one of the things you have talked a lot about is improving health outcomes. Do you believe that there is scientific merit to studying the role that discrimination plays in health outcomes? Jay Bhattacharya 52:56 What do you mean by discrimination? Brinda Adhikari 52:58 That if a- that when a patient goes to a doctor, and the doctor has, you know, is, is treating black patients differently than other patients, that that can lead to poor health outcomes, and that's worthwhile to study. Jay Bhattacharya 53:11 So Brinda, so you, you said earlier that there that minorities may have different health, you know, biology or other things, doctors ought to take that into account, right? Tom W. Johnson -- WSITY 53:23 Yeah, wait, Brinda Adhikari 53:24 Wait, wait, I guess what I'm saying is, Are are you denying that- Jay Bhattacharya 53:29 I'm not denying, don't put words in my mouth Brinda Brinda Adhikari 53:31 I'm asking. I'm just asking a question. Are you denying that black Americans face dis…Jay Bhattacharya 53:29 I'm not denying, don't put words in my mouth Brinda Brinda Adhikari 53:31| I'm asking. I'm just asking a question. Are you denying that black Americans face discrimination at higher rates when they're in a medical system. Jay Bhattacharya 53:41 What do you mean by discrimination? Dr. Mark Abdelmalek -- WSITY 53:44 So for example, that, let's say, you know, they they, somebody goes in and they have pain. Jay Bhattacharya 53:49 Mark, are you saying that doctors are racist? Is the hypothesis that doctors are racist? Dr. Mark Abdelmalek -- WSITY 53:52 I'm not saying that doctors are racist. I'm saying that- Jay Bhattacharya 53:54 We're saying is the hypothesis that you're putting forward the doctors are racist? Be specific about the hypothisis. Dr. Mark Abdelmalek -- WSITY 53:59 Yeah let's be specific. His hypothesis, if you the study-Jay Bhattacharya 54:02 I mean, we don't know his hypothesis- Dr. Mark Abdelmalek -- WSITY 54:04 Well, just in general, the hypothesis is, we just want to understand what factors are associated with poor health outcomes. For example, is that a legitimate hypothesis? Jay Bhattacharya 54:16 That's vague, but yeah, I want to know why people have bad health outcomes. We should definitely that's something we interested in studying, but Dr. Mark Abdelmalek -- WSITY 54:22 that's a research question. Jay Bhattacharya 54:23 That's a that's a vague research question. I want something specific. Okay, here's some specific, conceptual right? Dr. Mark Abdelmalek -- WSITY 54:29 Here's something specific. Okay, you go to the doctor, and we've heard this that, you know, black women aren't really given the same attention as, you know, say, non black women in terms of pain scores. Or, you know, sometimesBild
Michael D. Green, PhD@michaeldgreen.phd · 5mo ago

I had to renegotiate my F99/K00 award twice in 6 months, and on both occasions I asked what specifically “DEI activities” means. I didn’t get clear answers, so I was hopeful the person that directive came from could specify (the NIH Director). I asked the on @whyshoulditrustyou.bsky.social podcast

Colin Carlson@colincarlson.bsky.social · 5mo ago

In what world is it even helpful to treat this guy like he's not a vicious, churning, petty, malignant, Internet-rotted psychopath

Michael Green 50:10 My name is Michael Green. I recently finished my PhD in Population Health Sciences at Duke University, and I’m a recipient of an F99/K00, award from the National Institute on Aging. That program is designed to support early career scientists with their PhD and into a postdoc. I’m a black man in his late 20s who come from a family where a lot of people stopped going to their doctor for preventative care because they felt like they weren’t being listened to. By the time they came back, it was often too late. My grant focused on studying how patient reported discrimination in healthcare settings is associated with cardiovascular and cognitive health outcomes. It was peer reviewed score competitively and awarded in August of 2024. In July 2025 NIH told me my grant needed to be renegotiated to remove what they called DEI activities. They gave me a week to rewrite 70 pages of work. I asked for specifics on what was flagged, and I received none. So I moved the word black from my grant and references to evidence on why black adults report feeling mistreated in healthcare settings. I didn’t change my scientific approach at all, just the language. I didn’t have a learning moment from the process, because I still don’t know what a DEI activity is. The context of my grant, no one told me. It’s now late February. I’m unemployed. I have no health insurance. I haven’t received a paycheck since I graduated in December 2025, and out of the 69 recipients of this award at NIA, I’m the only one who has ever had to change the title of their grant beyond punctuation and spelling.Brinda Adhikari 51:42 Okay, so Jay, what would you say to Michael Green in that situation? Jay Bhattacharya 51:47 I’d say that he didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to rethink his grant. Like, we gave him the opportunity, and he didn’t take advantage of it, right? So he again, I didn’t know this grant specifically, but, like, I’ll tell you, like, based on the title, what I hear is a grant where it has as a premise, something that, in principle, couldn’t have a control group. And so does bad science. So I, you know, I do again- Brinda Adhikari 52:09 So what would have made us better? Jay Bhattacharya 52:11 Just okay for let me just finish Brinda. So I think if, if I say that, I provisionally, because, again, I’ve not read his grant so, but based on that 90 second snippet, he had the opportunity to be more specific about his hypotheses, make them actually scientific, give them give make arguments for control groups. We gave him that opportunity, and he didn’t take it. That’s what I’d say.
Michael D. Green, PhD@michaeldgreen.phd · 5mo ago

I had to renegotiate my F99/K00 award twice in 6 months, and on both occasions I asked what specifically “DEI activities” means. I didn’t get clear answers, so I was hopeful the person that directive came from could specify (the NIH Director). I asked the on @whyshoulditrustyou.bsky.social podcast