David Bapst

The Pokémon Company Is Actively Recruiting PhD Holders With Backgrounds in Ecology to Work in Tokyo - IGN The Pokémon Company is actively recruiting PhD holders with backgrounds in ecology to work in Tokyo. This is perhaps the closest chance Pokémon fans have to channel their inner Professor Oak in real l...

This could be your dream job!
PhD in ecology, and English and Japanese language skills required... working for POKEMON!!!

www.ign.com/articles/the...

holy shit

Figured in Elles & Wood means it’s a pretty famous specimen

Specimen A18197 at the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences: the graptolite Trigonograptus, glued to a blue tablet with labels indicatating publications in which it's been illustrated.

Next month, at the 2026 meeting of the @thebsls.bsky.social at the @unistrathclyde.bsky.social, I'll be talking about what the heck literary scholars can, might, or should be doing with natural history collections.

Check out the dual view scope for visitors to follow along!

As an ant scientist, I… I’m not even sure what to do with this.

📢 Including fossil tips in your phylogeny can double your continuous trait model fitting accuracy!

Updated preprint out now on @ecoevorxiv.bsky.social.

🔗 doi.org/10.32942/X27...

with @pedrolgodoy.bsky.social @macroecoevoale.bsky.social and @bethanyjallen.bsky.social

Caption from Figure 9 in paper: Appendages of Ordovician Phacopida. A, B Anacheirurus adserai from the Fezouata Shale (Pérez-Peris et al., 2021). A, Endopodite (YPM 226573). B, Exopodite in dorsal view (YPM 517074). C, Bavaillia zemmourensis with antennae (MCZ:IP:20105; Martin et al., 2016; Richards et al., 2024). D – F, Ceraurus pleurexanthemus from the Rust Formation (Losso and Ortega-Hernández, 2024). D, Biramous appendages (MCZ:IP:110933). E, Biramous appendage (MCZ:IP:112018). F, Exopodite (MCZ:IP:104973). G – I, Flexicalymene senaria from the Rust Formation (Losso and Ortega-Hernández, 2024). D, Protopodites in cross section (MCZ:IP:104956). E, Biramous appendages (USNM 68379). F, Endopodites (USNM 68381). J, Placoparia cambriensis from the Llanfallteg Formation (NMW 91.46G; Whittington, 1993). Abbreviations: ant, antennae; cla, claw; en, endopodite; end, endite; hyp, hypostome; lm, lamellae; pn, podomere number; pt, protopodite.

Do you ever wonder about trilobite appendages?

Literally everything ever known has now been reviewed by Sarah Losso @thomashegna.bsky.social @invertebratepal.bsky.social 🧪⚒️🦑

osf.io/preprints/pa...

Opinion: Take your feet off our necks Against my better judgment to not put sensitive information in writing — the greatest, yet-to-be-censored lesson the regents still ought to learn — I’m confessing my feelings: I’m exhausted. The regents have officially graduated from demoting deans, botching a professor hiring and firing lecturers to eliminating our Women’s and Gender Studies program. Care to guess...

"We’re all bearing witness to the institutionalization of intellectual violence at a university that should be free from aggressive political interference."

New preprint!! 🌟📝

Can we tell if a horseshoe crab will moult ?
Will it moult tomorrow or maybe in a week? 🤔👀

In this study, we developed a simple and non-invasive approach in determining the moult stage of the Atlantic #horseshoe crab by looking at key structures. #inverts #science

Texas A&M helped me thrive as a transgender person. Now, it's complicated. A mostly good college experience is hard to square with the school that exists now. 

“Who gets to be an Aggie, a citizen, a Texan, an American? Is it people like me, women, young people, Black and brown and Latino and Muslim and so on? Or is it people who claim they represent a true, rugged Texan-ness or American-ness...?”

Was it this one? www.slideshare.net/slideshow/ba...

Figure 2.1 the variety of organisms with very different habits and habitats which may accumulate as fossils in one layer of sediment on the sea floor. Drawn by Miss Mary E. Pugh.

I don’t know what I like better: the bloat-and-float kangaroo(?) or the expression on the whale as it is taken down by a giant squid #FossilFriday

From: Ager 1963 Principles of Paleoecology

An annoyed whale is getting a death hug from a cephalopod

Definitely giving that squid some side eye 😒

“Ugh, really?”

Cambrian Foundation: Fortunian
Cambrian Nemesis: Stage 2
Cambrian Wrath: Stage 3
Cambrian Starfall: Stage 4
Cambrian Revival: Wuliuan
Cambrian Imperium: Drumian
Cambrian Hegemony: Guzhangian
Cambrian Restoration: Paibian
Cambrian Rebellion: Jiangshanian
Cambrian Frontier: Stage 10

I can see the mass paperback cover art of each one in my mind’s eye

Cambrian Red Alert

will need a trilobite species named in honor of Tim Curry

Cambrian animal party time

Cambrian Rebellion
Cambrian Insurrection
Cambrian Regime Change
Cambrian Imperium
Cambrian Revival
Cambrian Restoration
Cambrian Starfall
Cambrian Hegemony
Cambrian Frontier
Cambrian Wrath
Cambrian Nemesis
Cambrian Foundation

Yeah, okay I’m just stealing words from science fiction titles now

what if it was a Cambrian Implosion instead 💥

Jensen out here going "listen they need to spend more money. what are they going to do? go broke?"

61% of NSF staff weigh intellectual merit more than BI, 34% say it is equal. 5% say BI > MI. 96% say it is clear to assess IM, only 52% can assess BI.

Interesting slide from the presentation of the merit review shows NSF staff opinions about intellectual merit and broader impacts (both of which are factored into approving awards).

Slide about streamlining. Plan is to reduce the number of solicitations by about half, to less than 100. Simon Malcomber, the chief science offer is working on this.

'Governance and decision making to accelerate the President's S&T priorities'

Slide about changes to decision-making. Cheatham claims there are challenges associated with the discipline-based structure because of siloing. There's apparently to be a whole separate organizational structure for presidential priorities like quantum and AI.

say that to Boxer from Animal Farm’s face I dare you

Someone Left A Cake Out In The Rain Olympic gold medalist Alysa Liu’s medal-winning skate to the 1978 disco cover by Donna Summer of “MacArthur Park” has got the song stuck in a lot of people’s heads, streaming data reveals. The song was averaging 12,000 streams per day in the six days leading up to the free skate, according to Luminate. On Friday, the number jumped to 115,000 streams. By Saturday, streams hit 139,000. Given that the tracking week for chart eligibility ended Thursday, we won’t see movement immediately, but there’s a decent shot that the disco hit finds its way back onto the charts. From Numlock News, by Walt Hickey

Well, @walthickey.bsky.social , I also suspect there was also a spike in the version of this song many nineties kids remember, which is Weird Al's excellent 'Jurassic Park'

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh4z...

I suspect convergence on worm morphology might still beat limpets, and over a lot more phyla, too... #verminization