Ben Ashby

Happy International Women’s Day! We are grateful to the incredible women who lead (and have led) the Canadian Society of Ecology and Evolution, & to all the women ecologists & evolutionary biologists across Canada for their important work. You help make our society, country, & planet a better place!

Apart from much else, the naming of this tool defames the guy who said, "The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think".

Time to publish responsibly: DAFNEE, a database of academia-friendly journals in ecology and evolutionary biology Abstract. The current economics of scientific publishing reveal a profound imbalance: academia pays prices far exceeding the actual costs of publication. R

A super handy database to help support academic society journals and other ethical publishing. academic.oup.com/jeb/article/...

I’m going to halve my publication output. You should consider slow science, too If we don’t slow down, the research enterprise is going to crash, argues Adrian Barnett.

I've been thinking a lot about quality vs quantity of publications recently. Like many, I've felt the pressure to publish for various reasons. At times this felt like a conveyor belt, so I've been trying the slow science approach to hopefully enjoy doing science more.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

We've got ISSUES. Literally.

We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do?

arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563

A 🧵 1/n

Microbial Evolution: Impacts on Human Health Call for Papers A defining characteristic of infectious diseases is that they evolve. The consequences of this evolution are among the most pressing medical issues facing humanity, including emerging pandemics, antibiotic resistance, and the success or failure of vaccines. Pathogen evolution profoundly influences virulence, transmission, and responses to a broad array of human interventions. While the evolutionary dynamics of pathogens have historically been challenging to study, large-scale genomic sequencing, novel computational tools, and experimental methods are rapidly changing the field. We encourage submissions on the broad topic of the evolution of infectious diseases. This Special Issue aims to feature research that blends evolutionary approaches to understanding pathogen heterogeneity and ongoing genetic change in clinical samples and models of human infection. It also seeks to highlight opportunities to design treatment and prevention strategies that remain effective in the face of ongoing pathogen evolution. Submission – open until January 31, 2027 Guest editors Robert Woods, MD PhD, University of Michigan Camilo Barbosa, PhD, University of Michigan Silvie Huijben, PhD, Arizona State University

🚨Call for papers🚨
Microbial Evolution: Impacts on Human Health
in the society journal Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health

Guest Editors: Bob Woods, Silvie Huijben & Camilo Barbosa
EIC: me

This will be great, please submit and share!
academic.oup.com/emph/pages/m...

Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines: Introduction A free online humanities course about how to learn and work and thrive in an AI world.

Recently had the chance to hear @carlbergstrom.com on information foraging in the current space of LLMs.

He and @jevinwest.bsky.social have crafted a course that touches various facets of LLMs. Just finished reading through its 18 modules. Absolutely loved it!

thebullshitmachines.com

The deadline for applications is Nov 15 - please repost!

Coevolutionary cycling in allele frequencies and the evolution of virulence Abstract. Coevolutionary cycling in allele frequencies due to negative frequency-dependent selection—sometimes referred to as Red Queen Dynamics—is a key p

Super proud of Daniel Kim, whose paper on coevolutionary cycling and the evolution of virulence has just been published in @journal-evo.bsky.social. Daniel was in high school when he did this research and has just started his undergraduate degree @kebleoxford.bsky.social.

doi.org/10.1093/evol...

Don’t ask “when is it coevolution?” — ask “how?” Abstract. Coevolution has come to be widely understood as specific, simultaneous, reciprocal adaptation by pairs of interacting species. This strict-sense

So this came online over the weekend: My dive into the "definition" of coevolution is online ahead of publication in @journal-evo.bsky.social!

Don’t ask "when is it coevolution?" — ask "how?"

doi.org/10.1093/evol...

Please spread widely and quickly - the more signatures we get the better chances we have of cajoling NSF into changing course on this small but very impactful item

Ecology and evolution of virulence Silva and King discuss the concept of virulence and the ecological and evolutionary factors that shape it.

Interested in #virulence? Not sure what it is - or how to explain it? Just curious? 🧐🦠🧬🦋

@kayla-king.bsky.social and I just wrote a Primer for @currentbiology.bsky.social on the ecology and evolution of virulence!

Check it below and share :)

#MicroSky #EvoSky #pathogens

Join us at SFU for a 2-year Mekler Postdoctoral Fellowship in mathematical biology to work with me and Ailene MacPherson. Apply at www.mathjobs.org/jobs/list/27... by Nov 15.