The Cost of Free Labor: Will Nature Ever Pay for Peer Review?
Valentina Di Santo
@vdisanto.bsky.social
Comparative physiologist and biomechanist studying fish locomotion at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego 🌊🦈🐟🐠🐡 www.valentinadisanto.com
Paying peer reviewers works. Benefits authors, editors & reviewers. Hopefully other journals will try this.
Nature@nature.com · last mo.A biology journal trialled paying their reviewers and found it led to faster first editorial decisions – and increased review quality. go.nature.com/446SaLu
Q&A story by @nature.com on how @biologyopen.bsky.social found that paying reviewers cut time to first decisions by 85% while maintaining or even improving review quality. Q&A 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/d41... Pre-print 🔗: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Apply to be a reviewer at Biology Open To expand the Fast & Fair peer review experiment to more subject areas, @biologyopen.bsky.social are inviting researchers to join their peer reviewer pool. Find out more and apply at
BiO - Fast and fair peer review
Biology Open – Fast & Fair peer review To accelerate our publication process, we are testing an initiative that prioritises fast but fair peer review. This approach pays reviewers (220 GBP per…
biologists.com
Introducing the undulating tripod gait, the walking strategy used by many fishes. We tracked the fishes, built a model, a robot, and found that 3 body segments, 2 fins, and friction are all it takes. No specialized anatomy required. Out today in Nature Communications www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Zebrafish <5 days post fertilisation are used in large numbers in experiments. The impact of a range of anaesthetics was investigated so researchers can make scientifically informed anaesthesia choices. Thanks to lead author Sylvia Dimitriadou #3Rs #fishsci onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Evaluating Anesthetics for Improving Scientific Research and Welfare Using Larval Zebrafish
Using physiological and behavioral assays, we quantified the effectiveness and appropriateness of six commonly used fish anesthetics on zebrafish embryos. Different anesthetics performed better under...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Fish have served as models to understand how organ systems both allow and respond to exercise for almost a century. In their SI Commentary, Lauder & co suggest 6 outstanding questions that remain unanswered in fish locomotion doi.org/10.1242/jeb....
Tierney Thys was truly an amazing advocate for the oceans and for the wonderful ocean sunfish, Mola mola, and its relatives. A grad school friend in the Wainwright lab at Duke, truly saddened to hear that she is gone. Great tribute by her sister. 🐟🧪🌿🦑 thys-danielle.medium.com/the-ocean-le...
The Ocean Legacy of National Geographic Explorer Dr. Tierney Thys
In Memoriam
thys-danielle.medium.com
🏅Congratulations to Scripps marine biologist @vdisanto.bsky.social on being named a 2026 Sloan Research Fellow! Her research explores how fish move through changing oceans. Meet other @ucsandiego.bsky.social scientists who earned the @sloanfoundation.bsky.social honor. ⤵️
Four UC San Diego Faculty Earn Prestigious 2026 Sloan Research Fellowships
UC San Diego faculty members Valentina Di Santo, Fleur Ferguson, Mattia Serra and Hao Zhang have been named 2026 Sloan Research Fellows. The four scientists represent UC San Diego’s Halıcıoğlu Data Sc...
today.ucsd.edu
today.ucsd.edu/story/2026-s... #SloanFellow
Four UC San Diego Faculty Earn Prestigious 2026 Sloan Research Fellowships
UC San Diego faculty members Valentina Di Santo, Fleur Ferguson, Mattia Serra and Hao Zhang have been named 2026 Sloan Research Fellows. The four scientists represent UC San Diego’s Halıcıoğlu Data Sc...
today.ucsd.edu
Honored to be named a 2026 Sloan Research Fellow @sloanfoundation.bsky.social. Grateful to my students, collaborators, and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography @scrippsocean.bsky.social community as we work to understand the mechanics and energetics of animal locomotion. #SloanFellow
Congrats, Neil! @neilshubin.bsky.social
National Academy of Sciences@nasonline.org · 6mo agoNeil H. Shubin has been elected as the next NAS President! A leading evolutionary biologist and science communicator, Shubin will succeed Marcia McNutt on July 1. The Academy also named Cherry Murray as International Secretary and elected new councilors. Read more: www.nasonline.org/news/2026_pr...
"Alex Kleytman, an 87-year-old Ukrainian Holocaust survivor, was celebrating Hanukkah with his wife of 57 years, Larisa Kleytman, also a Holocaust survivor, when the attack began. He was killed while shielding Larisa from the bullets with his own body." www.timesofisrael.com/chabad-rabbi...
Chabad rabbis, Holocaust survivor, 10-year-old among victims of Sydney terror attack
At least 15 people were killed when two gunmen opened fire on 'Chanukah by the Sea' event at Bondi Beach. These are some of their stories
timesofisrael.com
426.40 parts per million (ppm) CO2 in air 14-Dec-2025 keelingcurve.ucsd.edu
The Keeling Curve
The Keeling Curve is a daily record of global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration maintained by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.
keelingcurve.ucsd.edu
When oxygen becomes very low, do schools fall apart, or do fish change how they swim to maintain the formation? We tested this in a new project just published in Bioinspiration & Biomimetics: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...
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iopscience.iop.org
Catch my new lecture at the Collège de France entitled “The Origin of Walking.” Thanks to @denisduboule.bsky.social for hosting! 💙🧪 m.youtube.com/watch?v=fNim...
Neil Shubin (2) - Denis Duboule (2025-2026)
YouTube video by Sciences de la vie - Collège de France
m.youtube.com
"What Grant Reviewers Actually Look For (and What They Ignore)" jim-olds.org/2025/10/23/w...
“What Grant Reviewers Actually Look For (and What They Ignore)”
A close colleague of mine at a major US research university begins the process of preparing a grant proposal by creating something he calls a “storyboard”. When I was growing up in LA, the concept…
jim-olds.org
UPDATE: The 2025-2026 list of faculty and postdoc positions in ecology and evolutionary biology is out! Be sure to check out this active and helpful community run resources! docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
ecoevojobs.net 2025-26
docs.google.com
🧪 University of California leads the nation in academic research www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/univers...
The University of California leads the nation in academic research, new ranking finds
UC San Diego and UC Berkeley lead the way for public university research, with eight UC campuses total among the top 30 influential and impactful public research institutions.
universityofcalifornia.edu
The NSF GRFP is back. Students interested in applying to work in my lab at SIO can email me directly with a CV and a letter to outline how their interests and research experience might align with the work we do. I'm recruiting students interested in biomechanics. www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo... 🧪 🐟
Apply for the Scripps Postdoctoral Fellowship! I'm looking to support a strong candidate in fish physiology and/or biomechanics. Deadline: Oct 9, 2025. Eligibility: PhD by Nov 30, 2026 with ≤3 years postdoc experience. 2 years, $74K salary, $6K research allowance 👉 apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF04348 🧪 🐟
Scripps Postdoctoral Scholar Award - 2026
University of California, San Diego is hiring. Apply now!
apol-recruit.ucsd.edu
UC Berkeley's Martin Fish Speciation Lab seeks a part-time lab manager for pupfish research. Requires a biology degree and some lab experience. Flexible hours, multi-year position. Apply: chmartin@berkeley.edu. More info at https://ib.berkeley.edu/labs/martin/ #job
Martin Lab
Martin Lab
ib.berkeley.edu
Something exciting just left the gym -- meet Arnold the first generalist musculoskeletal control policy! The human body has 600+ muscles, yet we seamlessly coordinate them for everything from whispering a syllable to felling a forrest. How? www.arxiv.org/abs/2508.18066
New paper from my postdoc, Francesco Masnadi (co-advised with Agnes Karlson), in Harmful Algae. 🧪 🐟 We looked at how sticklebacks cope with cyanobacterial 🦠 blooms, from toxin accumulation and detox enzyme activity to predator escape responses. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Sub-lethal effects of natural cyanobacterial blooms on fish: Enzymatic activity and swimming performance in Gasterosteus aculeatus
Cyanobacterial blooms are intensifying worldwide due to eutrophication and climate change, increasing cyanotoxin exposure to aquatic organisms. This s…
sciencedirect.com