April Wright

A grey and black dog looking balefully at the camera because I’ve put her dinner in a puzzle toy

Why do you force me to sing for my supper, mother? Are you a monster?

DC Mardi Gras was canceled. I assume they just forgot to pick him up after and I’m going to randomly run into him on the streets here

📢 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

Casablanca is a movie where everyone does something unexpected that is totally in character and that is actually what life is like, especially when life is hard, uncertain, and unknowable.

The book does acknowledge the improbability of these animals meeting!

In a series of hilarious illustrations, bird wins

You know what? I’m curious. Let’s find out.

Demetra has done a great job raising the research capacity of a small collection at a PUI. Definitely worth attending and chatting with her!

I’d be happy to go over the economics with you (been on the core organizing committee for 4 years, chief organizer for 2), but this is far and away the most cost effective way to offer a virtual meeting and has been great for global engagement

On the expansion and evolution of a master’s project Academics often lament that hardly any master’s projects – even the best ones – get published. The student moves on. Other research takes priority. No one has time to do the final analyses. Here I tel...

Academics often lament that hardly any master’s projects get published. The student moves on. Other research takes priority. No one has time to do the final analyses. Here I tell how one master’s project was, through persistent teamwork, finally carried over the finish line: go.nature.com/4aKs7N3

This Brazilian frog might be the first pollinating amphibian known to science Nectar-loving tree frog likely moves pollen from flower to flower

It’s the first time a frog—or any amphibian—has been observed pollinating a plant, researchers reported in 2023.

Learn more on #WorldWildlifeDay: https://scim.ag/4riUU1G

The nature and prevalence of diversification rate shifts across the Tree of Life Abstract. Strong disparity in species richness among organisms is well documented, but heterogeneity in the underlying diversification process is less unde

We hope that our study will provide the foundations for understanding the nature of diversification rate shifts in exceptionally species-rich clades. You can read it open access in Evolution Letters: doi.org/10.1093/evle...
@bjorntko.bsky.social @jclarkepaleo.bsky.social @hoehna.bsky.social

I feel like there’s also a weird AI x ?something? Interaction where if I said something, but Chat said something different, I was wrong. So I just watched these kids in wonder as they spun their wheels, refused to listen, and failed to solve hallucinated problems

It was magical

I keep telling people I recently had my first “AI-enabled” undergrad interns. It was worse than if they knew nothing. People who know nothing at least ask for help

I let them work for a few months because I was curious to see if some latent desire for help and instruction might kick in, but nope

I had this happen right before a talk once. Scraped my knee but that was about it. Felt very silly while it was happening, like a slo-mo bike accident.

Enabling Fieldwork for All (EFFA) Framework: Supporting physical, social, financial, and psychological safety in the field Comprehensive review of fieldwork safety literature across disciplines yields synthesized recommendations.

Excited to share a new paper written by a AAAS Policy Fellow I mentor, Dr. Lisa Walsh.

“This review synthesizes literature on fieldwork safety across scientific disciplines, highlighting four facets of safety for leaders and researchers to address: physical, social, financial, and psychological.”

Early synapsids from the Cisuralian (lower Permian) Pedra de Fogo Formation, Parnaíba Basin, Brazil: the first definitive South American “pelycosaurs” The paleotropics of Euramerica provide nearly our entire picture of Permo–Carboniferous terrestrial tetrapod evolution. The geographic sampling bias inherent in this record obscures important event...

Novo artigo quentinho, recém saído do forno com @jdpardo.bsky.social . Nada menos que os primeiros "pelicossauros" do Gondwana. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... +

So I pleased to announce the conceptual spawn of FigTree: PearTree (acronym still to be finalised). If you want to dive right in it is hosted as a web app here: artic-network.github.io/peartree (click the “Example...” button for immediate candy and then click every button you can find).

But don’t read the sequel/prequel trilogy. Just awful.

An angry grey cat yammering at the vet

I demand to be returned to my bed!

Very grateful to live somewhere where I can walk the cat to the vet, but boy is walking the cat to the vet miserable

You and me both, bird.

Right, exactly. Being at a primarily undergrad institution where publishing is not as important, I've always been more willing to be adventurous and try different publishing models. It's a freedom others might not have.

Having published a couple living articles, they're a bit of a nightmare. Preprint + paper seems like the right balance.

I think people genuinely have no clue. I tell people back home and they're shocked.

Years ago our admin did a red and black report. It took salaries & how much $ each instructor made in tuition $ for classes we taught-you were in the red or black. They released numbers once & shut it down bc humanities were producing huge $ for uni & engineers, business and scientists were losing $

Maybe someone can point me in the right direction, but is there any evidence of “grade inflation” as real? Like, you take a bunch of high achievers, put ‘em together and they keep achieving. Duh.

At my regional PUI, students come in bimodal and leave bimodal.

A covarion model for phylogenetic estimation using discrete morphological datasets Abstract. The rate of evolution of a single morphological character is not homogeneous across the phylogeny and this rate heterogeneity varies between morp

Our new paper 'A covarion model for phylogenetic estimation using discrete morphological datasets,' is out in SysBio!
We introduce the "covariomorph" model in RevBayes to capture character and lineage specific rates of morphological traits.
🔗 doi.org/10.1093/sysb...

The Epstein files document what many women researchers have long experienced but rarely seen laid bare so starkly: exclusion operating behind closed doors, shaping who gets funded, invited, mentored, and taken seriously. How many of these networks, norms, and gatekeepers remain in place?

Even more concerning when you realize that a lot of institutions use learning management systems for research purposes. A student using the cheating machine could have huge FERPA, IRB, and research privacy implications