Cody Thompson

We are hiring a full time plant mounter to join our U-M herbarium team. The person will mount specimens from around the world and train students in the plant mounting process. Cool botanical job! careers.umich.edu/job_detail/2...

Michigan's #UMMZ Reptiles and Amphibians Collections Manager position is now open. Join a great museums group and help manage the world's second largest herpetology research collection. Please share! careers.umich.edu/job_detail/2...

Check out the museums and Emerging Pathogens' new website! Join us to learn about how working with museums might benefit your research! #research #science #evolution

My Site MEPA aims to unite museum biorepositories across the Americas, with stakeholders in wildlife and human health, field biology, and public health, in an effort to build cross-disciplinary...

3/3 If you are interested in MEPA, check us out here:

mepa-network.weebly.com

2/N Many of these individuals are part of @mepa-social-media.bsky.social. The paper provides data on existing genetic resources from mammals available to researchers to study emerging infectious diseases, such as hantaviruses, arenaviruses, and other zoonotic pathogens.

#collectionsareessential

A comprehensive survey of mammal collections and genetic resources in South America: challenges and directions Abstract. Natural history collections serve as crucial infrastructure for both basic and applied scientific research, providing temporal and spatial specim

1/N Check out our recent publication on South American mammal voucher and tissue collections!!! This paper was led by Marcelo Weksler, Guellermo D'Elia, and Pablo Teta, but it included contributions from over 100 scientists.

#mammalogy #collectionsareessential #onehealth

My lab had the pleasure of collaborating with colleagues from @texastech.bsky.social on a joint field expedition in Kansas and Nebraska! In total, 4 students, 1 postbac, and 3 PIs participated on the trip. We even had the opportunity of crashing at the Thompson Ranch for an evening...

Green road sign on the highway that says: Grants City Limit Elev 6470

Y’all, big news, I found out where they’re keeping them all

Save the NSF The National Science Foundation is one of the world’s premier funders of basic science research (i.e. the fundamental di...

"Save The NSF" - a little blogpost I wrote to amplify the #SaveTheNSF mission.

The National Science Foundation is one of the world’s premier funders of basic science research; proposed federal cuts would derail how we do science in the U.S.

aguidetoacademia.blogspot.com/2025/07/save...

Macomb County Health Department issues warning about ticks and Lyme disease In today’s Health Alert, a warning for anyone planning to enjoy the outdoors this holiday weekend. Ticks are active, and the risk of Lyme disease is real across Michigan.

In today’s Health Alert, a warning for anyone planning to enjoy the outdoors this holiday weekend. Ticks are active, and the risk of Lyme disease is real across Michigan.

Check out the new MEPA (Museums and Pathogens in the Americas) @bsky.app page!!!

bsky.app/profile/mepa...

The University of Michigan crew is in full force at the Annual Meeting of the @mammalogists.bsky.social!!! It’s been great to bring so many current and former students together.

#gobluemammalogy #naturalhistory #collectionsareessential

World's natural history collections ready to aid in pandemic preparedness Across the world, natural history museums hold about 3 billion specimens of plants and animals in collections—and these collections may also contain information needed to prevent, prepare for, and res...

Natural history museum collections may contain key data for predicting and preventing future pandemics, according to a new @umich.edu-led study analyzing how preserved biological specimens can support global disease surveillance. #science
news.umich.edu/worlds-natur...

Communicating our #pandemicpreparedness conversations with #graphicfacilitation. Thanks #NSF for seeing the potential in our work to harness the power of natural science collections and cross-domain expertise.

See @codythompson51.bsky.social's take on "What can NHC's do to be part of the pandemic preparedness solution?" graphic credit doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

This research was funded by the #NationalScienceFoundation!!!

@debpaul.bsky.social @jcolella.bsky.social @mikecove.bsky.social @katderieg.bsky.social @lexifrank.bsky.social @dannyibaneziv.bsky.social @drfirefly.bsky.social @klphelps.bsky.social @speer.bsky.social @n8upham.bsky.social @omys-omics.bsky.social @soltislab.bsky.social

Harnessing natural history collections for collaborative pandemic preparedness Five years after the outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, we have the opportunity to gather lessons learned about needed infrastructure for predicting, und

Check out our new paper in #BioScience!!! If COVID taught us anything, we very much need to be doubling down on our scientific structure and not regressing, and we need to improve collaborative networks that transcend geopolitical boundaries.

#naturalhistory #collectionsareessential

Exclusive: NSF faces radical shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions Changes seen as a response to presidential directives on what research to fund

"the agency’s 37 divisions—across all eight NSF directorates—are being abolished and the number of programs within those divisions will be drastically reduced. The current directors and deputy directors...might be reassigned to other positions at the agency or elsewhere in the federal government."

Exclusive: NSF stops awarding new grants and funding existing ones US science funder also plans to screen grant applications for compliance with ‘agency priorities’.

Nature reports that the National Science Foundation has stopped awarding new grants and allotting funds to existing ones. All of them. @colincarlson.bsky.social says that unless the freeze is lifted, it “is going to destroy people's labs.” 2/10
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Almost done…

#gobluemammalogy

Some of the #ummz mammal division students got in on a little moose antler cleaning today!!! The antlers were part of a donation to our collection, but needed a little TLC before going into the cabinets.

#naturalhistory #collectionsareessential #gobluemammalogy

Science and R&D has traditionally received strong bipartisan support in the US Congress. But the White House is supposedly pushing cuts of 55% (NSF), 44%(NIH), 27% (NOAA), 50% (NASA), 100% (USGS ecosystems). Meanwhile China INCREASED their R&D spending by 8.3%

Why is the U.S. National Science Foundation important?

Please share your stories!

Use the hashtags #WithoutNSF or #WithoutScience

So much this👇🏽

Trump swings budget ax at USGS biology research Plan to eliminate $307 million ecosystem program could face obstacles in Congress

All wildlife research at USGS will be eliminated. All research and science centers. All coop units. BBS, BBL…. gone.

www.science.org/content/arti...

9 images of animals rendered in 3d from CT scans. top row: a mouse skeleton, a Jamaican fruit bat skin, a Jamaican fruit bat skeleton, snake skull second row: a shrew muscle image, a snake brain, a bowfin fish bottom row: a bat skull, a rodent skull

Here's a collage of specimens scanned and segmented at the UMMZ for the bluesky community to enjoy!

75% of US scientists who answered Nature poll consider leaving More than 1,600 readers answered our poll; many said they were looking for jobs in Europe and Canada.

We polled Nature readers to ask if they were thinking of leaving the US for jobs abroad. Three-quarters of them (who said they were US-based scientists) said yes. 🧪

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

U of Michigan @umich.edu set aside funds from central to support researchers with unexpected disruption in federal funding for up to 6 months.

Are any other institutions doing this? Seems like a good move.

#Medsky #NIH #federalfunding #researchfunding 🧪

record.umich.edu/articles/uni...

Fellow Mammalogists,

Along with many other prominent scientific societies, ASM has signed on to this letter coordinated by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Best,

Felisa Smith
President, American Society of Mammalogists

ucs-documents.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/science-netw...