Kinsey Brock

Under Faculty Pressure, Harvard FAS Dean Hopi Hoekstra Rolls Back Restrictions On Campus Signage | News | The Harvard Crimson The Faculty of Arts and Sciences quietly revised its guidance on campus use rules last week to allow publicly visible signs in private spaces, after months of pressure from faculty who said the guidel...

A win for academic freedom.

Being a professor is a tough job because we have a lot of competing pressures, but remember that we have an obligation to govern ourselves.

www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

We have a growing collection of resources for women in ecology that support, celebrate and advocate for women's roles in research and practice. 

Check our collection of resources here 👇
https://f.mtr.cool/gtwczvuefr

This is an amazing program that BSA is running this year with the help of generous donations from the community after NSF funding was terminated. If you have undergrads interested in botany, encourage them to apply! Signing up to be a mentor is also super rewarding!

Five cool nerds standing in the desert 🏜️ 🦎

Brock Lab @ HerpFest 2026 Anza Borrego 🌵 🐍 🦎

Society for the Study of Evolution Site description

Are you a grad student attending #Evol2026? Submit your talk for the SSE Hamilton Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Presentation! Finalists will present their talks during the virtual portion of the meeting. Apply during registration. Deadline April 15! shorturl.at/qDIP4 @evolmtg.bsky.social

Can't wait for beignets and buskers ! 🎺

Every senator who voted to confirm RFK Jr owns this tragedy. Every single one.

Society for the Study of Evolution Site description

📢 Now accepting proposals for the Graduate Research Excellence Grants! These provide evolutionary biology research funds for early and advanced Master’s and PhD students. Applicants must be members of SSE. Deadline: May 18, 2026
www.evolutionsociety.org/content/soci...

Screening, sorting, and the feedback cycles that imperil peer review The process of peer review is vital to contemporary science, but is also under enormous strain. This study uses mathematical models to dissect the threats to the long-term viability of peer review, su...

1. Kevin Gross and I have a new paper out today PLOS Biology.

We used economic models based around screening games and the market for unpaid labor to highlight a meltdown cycle threatening peer review.

Migratory bird stopover patterns linked to urbanization and social landscapes - Nature Cities Urban ecology traditionally focuses on single cities, yet cities play key roles in ecological processes such as migration. Radar analysis across the continental USA reveals that nearly half of stopove...

A study I led came out in Nature Cities yesterday!

We used radar to study the role that urban landscapes play in migratory bird stopover. Spoiler: birds use cities a lot, and the patterns of their use reflect social processes and the inequities embedded in them.

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Olha aí gente! Free registration to virtual Evolution 2026.

This is one of the things I am constantly (including in our book, Life After Cars) trying to get people to care about! This is killing us, folks

Climatic variability drives greater thermal tolerance breadth and enables larger range size in butterflies Abstract. Although climatic variability has been proposed to shape physiological tolerances, and in turn, species distributions, relatively few studies hav

We found support for the Rapoport effect in butterflies 🦋 species that live in more variable climates have broader thermal tolerances and larger range sizes. A collaboration with Aaron Yilmaz and @sarahdiamond.bsky.social 🔬

academic.oup.com/biolinnean/a...

Amazon's tax bill plunges after GOP tax cuts The 87 percent drop is largely due to a more generous depreciation break in the 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act.'

Thanks to the OBBB, Amazon’s tax bill for 2025 is $1.2 billion, down from $9 billion the year before despite a 45% jump in profits.

Are you an early career biologist seeking a position (Masters up to faculty)? I have talked to so many people who feel alone, like they don't have resources, or who are seeking community during this difficult time in the job market. I created a Discord community to help. discord.gg/nmktHJhUPH

I don’t know who needs to hear Jesse Jackson leading the kids on Sesame Street in this beautiful call-and-response reminding them that every child is somebody, but here it is

I'm teaching a grad level proposal writing class. Had planned to go in depth about how funding agencies are organized, how panels work, etc. Now it feels like I'll be saying a lot of "This is how it was, I'm not sure how it'll work going forward."

UNC Admin Can Now, Officially, Secretly Record Faculty The new policy prohibits students from recording class without permission but explicitly allows administrators to surveil professors for any “lawful purpose.”

UNC Admin Can Now, Officially, Secretly Record Faculty

Davis Summer Population Genomics Program Want to learn population genetics? Please fill out this form to indicate your potential interest in a 2-week intensive online summer population genetics course taught by Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra and Graham...

Fun news! @gcbias.bsky.social and I are teaching a 2-week online population genetics workshop this summer to raise money for the Center for Population Biology at UC Davis. We're trying to gauge interest -- please fill this out if you might be interested! And please share broadly!

People have woken up to what Ring Door Bells are being used for.
Sit down and let me tell you about Alexa

Graduate Students’ NSF Fellowship Applications Are Being “Returned Without Review” - Eos Graduate students applying for NSF funding have had their applications returned without review—even though their proposed research appears to fall squarely within the fields of study outlined in the p...

Graduate Students’ NSF Fellowship Applications Are Being “Returned Without Review” 🧪
eos.org/research-and...

New round of NSF GRFP declines without review. If you were affected:
1) Write NSF
2) Write your Congressperson
3) CC us at grfp@grant-witness.us so we can compile + follow up

Details and template at grant-witness.us/grfp-letter

This is the link to the post: bsky.app/profile/noam...

Unveiling the urban colonization of the Asian water monitor (Varanus salvator) across its distribution range using citizen science

peerj.com/articles/173...

Please share. 💔

Giant reptiles should take back ALL our cities. We obviously can't be trusted to run anything. Time to give the lizards a shot.

The giant reptiles reclaiming the world's most visited city Once driven to the city's edges, Bangkok's giant monitor lizards are now thriving in parks and canals – and becoming an unexpected part of the visitor experience.

Giant water monitors persisting in the world's most visited city! 🌆🦎

www.bbc.com/travel/artic...

Rock art from at least 67,800 years ago in Sulawesi - Nature A hand stencil painted on a cave wall on a small island off the coast of Sulawesi more than 67,800 years ago suggests a very early occupation of Wallacea.

Rock art from at least 67,800 years ago in Sulawesi
¿La pintura rupestre más antigua de la humanidad?
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Come celebrate International Darwin Day with us @sandiegostate.bsky.social! Deets in the flyer (designed by the awesome @doc-brock.bsky.social).

The American Naturalist classic cover

Special Feature: Can we predict the future of evolution? In this review, Jackson et al. dig into genomic analyses of change over time to determine if and when evolution can be forecast using genomic methods.

Read now ahead of print!
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

The NIH's MYF policy in 2025 resulted in 4000 fewer grants and fellowships that touched every area of biology and medicine; continuing it in 2026 would be disastrous for science, technology and health in the United States 🧪
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...