NEW stuff for Monday morning! Get your new stuff here! Pandemic risk is going up. Can we bring it back down? Probably not - unless we radically reimagine our relationship with nature, food, and each other. First preprint led by the brilliant @torrelavelle.bsky.social: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

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

Really excited to see this peer-reviewed and published and published in epidemiology and infection. This work was motivated by the observation that we do not see #LassaFever outbreaks in sense West African cities despite high predicted biological hazard. doi.org/10.1017/S095...

Scientists have mobilized against OMB's power grab, but we need to look beyond our own grants and make coalitions with neighbors whose hospitals, schools, broadband, roads and parks are at risk. Go out and talk to your town council and county commission! www.forbes.com/sites/judyst... 🧪

How The OMB Rule Could Hurt You And Your Town

The OMB proposal threatens scientific research and ALL federal funding for states, cities, and nonprofits. It politicizes ALL funding. Call your reps and write an objection.

forbes.com

Thousands of biomedical studies are stuck in limbo as NIH drags out renewals months after annual budgets expire. Since 2025, the rate of overdue renewals has TRIPLED. This leaves scientists unable to plan, keep staff employed, or maintain long-term research. grant-witness.us/posts/2026-0... #NIH 🧪

Overdue Grant Renewals at NIH and AHRQ – Grant Witness

The government’s delays renewing in-progress research are leaving researchers in limbo.

grant-witness.us

Beak Dad Behavior

After 7 days, #NSF grants started flowing again yesterday. NSF generally stops during fiscal year turnover, government shutdowns, or funding lapses. Other than that, it had not taken a week off since 1970. Under this administration, it has done so three times. grant-witness.us/posts/2026-0... 🧪

NSF’s Halts in Grantmaking are Unprecedented – Grant Witness

The National Science Foundation’s pause breaks decades of consistency and continuity.

grant-witness.us

Beyond excited to share that the preprint for the first chapter of my dissertation is up. So grateful to my co-authors and especially my PI, @stephseifertphd.bsky.social, for their support throughout this ambitious three-year project. Here’s to shaking up evolutionary paradigms 🥂

Steph N. Seifert, PhD@stephseifertphd.bsky.social · 2mo ago

🚨 Ever wonder why some viral reassortants establish and spread while others disappear? Us too! Led by @ricardoriveroh.bsky.social, we studied drivers of viral reassortment across hantaviruses and found that it varies dramatically among lineages (1/3) Preprint: doi.org/10.64898/202...

New preprint that I helped with! Here we show that understanding ecological context is fundamental to understanding reassortment in orthohantaviruses.

Steph N. Seifert, PhD@stephseifertphd.bsky.social · 2mo ago

🚨 Ever wonder why some viral reassortants establish and spread while others disappear? Us too! Led by @ricardoriveroh.bsky.social, we studied drivers of viral reassortment across hantaviruses and found that it varies dramatically among lineages (1/3) Preprint: doi.org/10.64898/202...

🚨 Ever wonder why some viral reassortants establish and spread while others disappear? Us too! Led by @ricardoriveroh.bsky.social, we studied drivers of viral reassortment across hantaviruses and found that it varies dramatically among lineages (1/3) Preprint: doi.org/10.64898/202...

“While many of the city’s raccoons are healthy, some are infected with rabies, a deadly virus that attacks the central nervous system… This year [NYC’s health department] has already logged two rabid raccoons in areas of Brooklyn where it has never seen them before: Midwood and Sheepshead Bay”

Keeping an Eye Out for Rabid Raccoons

nytimes.com

we're hiring for a new research assistant to join our group at OU to manage field studies on migratory and Neotropical bats! please see the linked application on our website: beckerlab.weebly.com/join.html. applications will be reviewed in early August and the position can start in January.

NSF seems to have stopped making new awards last week. There have been no new awards from any directorate since Weds, June 3. Even with the slow pace of new awards this year, there's been a consistent trickle. Something stopped the flow. grant-witness.us/funding_curv... #NSF 🧪

We're very happy that our study found a home in the EcoHealth journal and we hope the disease ecology community, in particular, find applications of our model!

Peter Daszak@peterdaszak.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Their paper is freely available for download from @naturehealthglobal.bsky.social's EcoHealth journal, via @springernature.com's website here: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Great new paper by Erin Clancey of @pullman.wsu.edu, Scott Nuismer & @stephseifertphd.bsky.social featured in the press. The authors built a mathematical model that uses commonly-captured serology data to accurately identify peak viral risk for outbreaks. Awesome work! phys.org/news/2026-06...

Predictive model could help track deadly viruses back to their source

A new predictive model developed at Washington State University could help scientists more efficiently identify the reservoirs of emerging zoonotic viruses and dangerous pathogens like Ebola that can ...

phys.org

Fun fact: Our CREID-ECA renewal proposed generating standardized diagnostic controls and reagents for all known zoonotic filoviruses (including BDBV), with stocks ready to ship from East Africa to partner countries under existing MOUs. Then the entire CREID network program was canceled. 🫠

For the last three years, we have gathered ALL available Hantavirus and Arenavirus surveillance data. Today, we’re glad to share the largest database ever assembled for these viruses. We hope it helps address questions from the recent ANDV outbreak and guide surveillance.

David Simons @davidsimons.bsky.social · 2mo ago

1/7 New #ecology preprint out. We’ve spent half a century searching for Arenavirus and Hantavirus reservoirs, but it turns out global surveillance is essentially just us looking under the nearest streetlight. It is decoupled from actual host biodiversity.🧵 doi.org/10.64898/202...

Largest data synthesis effort for hantavirus and arenavirus surveillance ever put together! Proud to have this paper up; while the dataset and analyses on hantaviruses is especially timely, we started this project when @davidsimons.bsky.social received an FIR through @viralemergence.org in 2023. 🐀🦠

David Simons @davidsimons.bsky.social · 2mo ago

1/7 New #ecology preprint out. We’ve spent half a century searching for Arenavirus and Hantavirus reservoirs, but it turns out global surveillance is essentially just us looking under the nearest streetlight. It is decoupled from actual host biodiversity.🧵 doi.org/10.64898/202...

Our new paper doi.org/10.1098/rspb... on long-term genetic threats to small populations finds that "mutational meltdown" (bad mutations fixing) is less of a problem than "mutational drought" (too few good new mutations) @wmawass.bsky.social @uliseshmc.bsky.social @jeremyjberg.bsky.social 1/5

Extinction vortices are driven more by a shortage of beneficial mutations than by deleterious mutation accumulation

Abstract. Habitat loss contributes to extinction risk in multiple ways. Genetically, small populations can face an ‘extinction vortex’—a positive feedback

doi.org

More details soon but just got notice of award on a large grant in the AIxBio / biosecurity space! Will be hiring postdocs soon, and so will a few of my collaborators. Email me if interested!

The Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Disease Conference (EEID) has made its way to the Asia-Pacific! Come join us in Hobart to open this new chapter and build capacity and networks in the region: eeid-asiapacific.org

From Molecules to Ecosystems: Uniting pathogen ecology, evolution and One Health across the Asia–Pacific region and beyond.

Click here to submit an abstract Click here to register August 26-28 2026, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia Abstract submissions close June 19 2026 Register now as space is limited. Hosted by the...

eeid-asiapacific.org

The National Science Foundation is terminating and suspending grants again, and at Grant Witness we need you to help to track them! 🧪 We can only identify research being suppressed by under-the-radar suspensions directly from researchers. Please report! grant-witness.us/posts/2026-0... #NSF

New Grant Disruptions at NSF - We Need Your Help to Report! – Grant Witness

grant-witness.us

Great opportunity for anyone interested in contributing to important work on disease ecology!

Cara Brook@caraebrook.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Hi all! The Brook lab is hiring a new lab manager, ideally starting sometime in summer 2026. Please submit a CV and cover letter to the linked application on our website to apply: brooklab.org/join. Application review begins on June 9 and will be rolling thereafter!

Are interacting species showing more similar responses to environmental predictors than expected by chance? Is this similarity protecting species pairs from interaction disruption under climate change? If you want to find out, join us for a fully funded Ph.D. with @epic-biodiversity.org 🌎🧪

ÉPICBiodiversity@epic-biodiversity.org · 3mo ago

Join us! We are looking for a Ph.D. student to work on the response of ecological network structure to environmental drivers; this line of research can be adapted to questions on climate change, phylogenetic conservatism, and more! 🧪🌎 epic-biodiversity.org/opportunities/

Great new work on the Spike of OC43 clinical isolates (a seasonal coronavirus). In contrast to OC43-Lab strain used to define 9OAc-Sia as the canonical receptor, inserts near the RBD can significantly modulate affinity (likely to avoid decoy receptors). #virology www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Today we are launching the @target-amr.bsky.social flexible funding initiative to pump prime new research across disciplines in the broad field of AMR genomics. Introduction by @ksbakes.bsky.social at #TARGetAMR26 Flexible Funding – TargetAMR share.google/bWYYdQUo8azy...

Our important research on SNV genomes from the PNW is out. It constitutes a timely reminder of Hantavirus circulation in US rodent population and its ability to infect multiple hosts and undergo reassortment to generate expanded genetic diversity.

Steph N. Seifert, PhD@stephseifertphd.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Coincidentally, our paper on the first SNV genomes is out now in EID led by Grant Rickard and @ricardoriveroh.bsky.social More soon, including a massive synthesis effort on hantavirus and arenavirus surveillance that's been 3-years in the making... wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/...

As an ESI, I've been wondering who will be left to rebuild our biomedical and basic research infrastructure in 2.5 - ?? years. Expertise is not a faucet that you flip on and off when it's convenient. Expertise is developed through sustained investment; each delay, each cut, and we lose experts.

Kristian G. Andersen@kgandersen.bsky.social · 3mo ago

The article also mentions the cancelation of NIH's "CREID" network that were specifically there to strengthen pandemic preparedness. As I mentioned earlier in the week, our primary focus for our "WARN-ID" moving forward was, 🥁, hantaviruses, because, yes, they're trouble. bsky.app/profile/kgan...

Wild how fast conspiracy news went from "rare disease" to "mRNA vaccines" to "lab leak". HFRS-associated human hantavirus infections in Europe/Asia are a significant and persistent public health problem. Vaccines against HFRS have been around since the early 90s.

„The man had returned from a trip to South America with his wife at the end of April. Having noticed symptoms, he telephoned his GP and went to the University Hospital Zurich (USZ) for further assessment. There, he was immediately placed in isolation.“ www.bag.admin.ch/en/newnsb/p-...