This account of the eLife saga will provoke much debate. One aspect isn't accurate: eLife wasn't "designed as an experiment in removing gatekeepers". The original intent was to publish "outstanding papers" but have the gatekeepers be academic not professional editors 1/2 nikomc.com/2026/03/05/e...
Four Brachyrhamdia imitator catfish
Four Brachyrhamdia imitator catfish
Stopped by a new fish shop in another town, they had a good deal on some adult Brachyrhamdia imitator... But now I need to find the matching Corydoras species that they are mimics of!
A larval Macrourid sighting at 917 m! ROV pilots filmed future-fish during the #OBVI #LivingBioreactors expedition, supported @schmidtsciences.bsky.social. Scientists are studying midwater organisms and how they sequester carbon.
Reliable Inference of Phylogenomic Relationship via Assembly-Based Strategy Accommodating Raw Reads and Proteins https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41800729/
One of these was Whiskers as a bebe. He actually hatched summer of 2020, so that means he was pushing 6 years old 😓
piqtree: A Python Package for Seamless Phylogenetic Inference with IQ-TREE https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41802268/
A sign with the NSF logo upside down on the floor with other construction debris
Seen on the Hill last week, no notes
Ever wondered what #Thrips we have in our collection? Thanks to Ashleigh and Ruth these are now readily found digitally! emu-prod.amnh.org/imulive/iz/i... #AMNH #Thrips #Thysanoptera
HP2NET: Empowering Efficient Phylogenetic Network Analysis through High-Performance Computing https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.05.709005v1
I got kicked out of the conference room that I had signed out at the beginning of the semester for a weekly meeting, with the claim from the other people that they had a standing meeting. Rather than fight them on it I just took my group to the other conference room, but what the heck!
Do not see a phone number to call company to buy product (because I need to confirm the purchase is tax free), so I guess... I'll just wait for them to respond to filling out the contact form...
Petunia hybrida has been bred into an incredible diversity of colors and patterns.
Most arise from mutations in the anthocyanin pathway or post-transcriptional gene silencing that turns pigment genes on and off 🧬🎨
Our Galapagos program this summer officially got the green light. Looking forward to it.
A picture in Puerto Ayora from a few years ago. Man, I miss the tropical sun and ocean!
The U.S. government has lost more than 10,000 STEM Ph.D.s since Trump took office.
A Science analysis reveals how many were fired, retired, or quit across 14 agencies. Read more: https://scim.ag/4boPkq8
Applications now open for the Graduate Research Excellence Grants! These provide evolutionary biology research funds for early and advanced Master’s and PhD students. Proposals due May 18.
www.evolutionsociety.org/content/soci...
This provides clear paleontological support for a congruent re-interpretation of acipenseriform jaw bone homologies made recently on the basis of comparative studies of facial musculature in living actinopterygians: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Multicolored image showing a CT model of a fish skull. Different anatomical regions appear as contrasting colors, and individual bones are labeled.
We were struck by how closely the large lateral upper jaw bone—identified as a dermopalatine in living acipenseriforms—resembled the maxilla of early ray-finned fishes. So I borrowed the specimen and zapped it with the new (at the time) CT scanner at Michigan in late 2017. Beautiful scan data.
Photogrammetric model of a fossil paddlefish skull set against a dark blue background. This fossil was collected, along with a sturgeon, inside the body cavity of an Edmontosaurus.
Bizarrely, some of the best Mesozoic acipenseriform fossils are from inside hadrosaur skeletons. They were almost certainly scavenging within the body cavities of dinosaur carcasses and became accidentally entombed, preserving their delicate anatomy. umorf.ummp.lsa.umich.edu/wp/specimen-...
Illustration of sturgeon cranial anatomy from Parker (1882). Images include a sturgeon skull and jaws, a head in sagittal section, and the branchial arches. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rstl/article/doi/10.1098/rstl.1882.0004/119303/III-On-the-structure-and-development-of-the-skull?guestAccessKey=
Acipenseriform jaws are fiercely weird. Because they are so modified relative to other ray-fins, it is hard to determine the identity of individual bones. Many recent accounts of acipenseriform skeletal anatomy indicate that the maxilla—the major upper jaw bone in other groups—is absent.
Photograph of a fossil fish skull in right lateral view. The bone is dark brown/black against a gray matrix.
Out now in Contributions from me and @gilespalaeo.bsky.social, a deep dive into an early member of the sturgeon and paddlefish lineage. Bear with me, but there’s a long backstory highlighting uncertainty about the anatomy of living species and how well-studied fossils can still yield new insights.
Using Variable Window Sizes for Phylogenomic Analyses of Whole Genome Alignments https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.04.709403v1
New blog post on #ai and #bioinformatics code - and {edgePython} - a port of {edgeR} from #rstats to #python
https://brianrepko.github.io/blog/posts/2026-02-26-edgepython-and-ai/
Excited to share this preprint that describes my latest work on using GPUs to accelerate processing of RNA-seq data.
The title says it all: "RNA-seq analysis in seconds using GPUs" now on biorxiv www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... and github github.com/pachterlab/k...
Figure 1 shows they key result
The Null Hypothesis is Always Wrong!
New blog post - check it out.
ecoevoevoeco.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-...
snputils (snputils.org): A High-Performance Python Library for Genetic Variation and Population Structure www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧬💻🧪 github.com/AI-sandbox/s...
Comparative Genomics and Phylogenomics of the Mustelinae Lineage (Mustelidae, Carnivora) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41782205/
Very proud of this perspective that came out of some really interesting and difficult conversations with friends and colleagues!
TLDR: how do scientists define sex? why does it matter??
#EcoEvo #Ecology #Evolution 🧪
Graph of award probability of R35 and R01 from NIH factbook as a function of review rank percentile. As is apparent, 2025 is a significant departure, with lower award probabilities at all scores <40 and significant departures from norm, where even being in the top 10% is no longer a nearly certain indicator of success. Data source: https://report.nih.gov/nihdatabook/report/302
The data is in: the NIH goalposts have shifted.
What were once almost certain fundable scores have become coin flips and what used to be likely grants have become aspirational, leading to fewer awards.
Another manifestation of how HHS policies have led to fewer awards and less science.
Largescale sucker.
First largescale sucker of the spring.
We found a viral Trojan Horse: a virus can hide inside another virus.This one surprised us: deltaviruses don’t just borrow a helper virus. They can travel inside it.
A literal Trojan Horse “virus-in-a-virus” route into cells. 🤯 Kudos to 1st author @viroscope.bsky.social and co-authors !
