Kristen Behrens, PhD

How do you get access to papers behind paywalls? #LetsChangeThat (Also side note, not all journals charge authors!)

Goddamnit Michigan

There are a lot of scientific illustrators and graphic designers who are building their portfolios and will take on work for less than you might imagine. It's not out of reach.

Jeremy Wade #fish #fishing #river #monsters #gar #piranha #tigerfish #congo #amazon #hooked

Michigan's risky Palisades reactor restart is behind schedule | Opinion Holtec’s attempt to restart the shuttered Palisades nuclear plant faces delays, safety questions and missing documentation.

“A company with zero nuclear reactor operating experience is seeking NRC forgiveness for unpermitted welding on the 55-year-old Palisades reactor pressure vessel containment head.” The issues “could threaten financing of the entire atomic energy industry.”
@nucsafetyucs.bsky.social

Happy #internationalwomensday! Championing, researching, and discovering incredible women is our entire mission - not just one day a year. Here are some of the female scientists we’re thinking of in particular today…

an eastern red backed salamander in the leaves

(._____.)

Barred Hamlet fish in graphite and colored pencil; yellow, blue, tan

Barred Hamlet, Hypoplectrus puella #SundayFishSketch #fish #fishart #Hamlet

A hand-drawn digital painting by the artist Dhiyanah Hassan of three garden eels on the ocean floor. The one in thr foreground is painted in more detail, sticking out from the sand and slightly bending its head towards streams of light depicted in a soft lilac tone, part of the dynamic shading of the piece. The other two are in the background, facing the opposite direction but similarly looking up at the light rays. The background is a mix of textured and blurry, wuth some grains of sand highlighted.

Revisiting a fave, experimenting with different brushes and gestures for this study of Spotted Garden Eels #SundayFishSketch 🐡
#art #SciArt #fish #fishArt #wildlife #wildlifeArt #nature #artists

Ink sketch of a fish

A young of the year Lake Sturgeon, all covered in spiny scutes. #SundayFishSketch

🌿 Postdoc opportunity in plant evolutionary ecology/genetics!

My lab in the Dept. of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan is recruiting a postdoctoral researcher to start Fall 2026.

We study plant adaptation, using weeds as model systems.

#Postdoc #EcoEvo

Pls RT!

Colored pencil drawing of four long and skinny fish poking their heads out of a den in some rocks like Diglets. They’re black with a horizontal white stripe and white belly.

Quick #SundayFishSketch while I move some data around of convict blennies, who are apparently probably not the sister group to cichlids after all 🫢

I am tired of people insinuating that biology education research and disability advocacy within the field or STEM at large are "less rigorous" or "less important" pursuits when both of these areas of critical research are what will help us continue moving the field forward.

Watercolor painting of a Moorish Idol, Zanclus corutus. What look like eyebrows are actually horns on adult fish. The common name may refer to the reverence that fishermen in some parts of Southeast Asia have for these fish. I’m painting one reef fish per day for 100 days with the hope of building a community. It’s about how art becomes connection. If you love the ocean, curiosity is enough. 🐠

100 Days of Reef Fish
Beautiful Reef Fish 5/10: Moorish Idol, Zanclus corutus. The common name may refer to the reverence that fishermen in some parts of Southeast Asia have for these fish.
#sciart #marinelife #coralreefs #dothe100daysproject #sundayfishsketch

A detailed digital composite image based on the 1947 historical photograph of geneticist Barbara McClintock. McClintock, with her characteristic short hair and round glasses, is seated at a microscope, using tweezers in a Petri dish. While based on the original photo distributed for her AAUW award, this image presents a significantly expanded and fictionalized laboratory environment. The simple wooden workbench is now densely populated with a vast, colorized collection of complex glassware, numerous amber-colored reagent bottles, intricate distillation columns, and botanical specimens relevant to maize cytogenetics, creating a rich, illustrative narrative of her "jumping gene" research context that was not present in the original photo. The expanded background shows complex vintage laboratory cabinetry. This image explicitly states it is a composite: a digital recreation where Seriously Scientific has taken the historical figure and placed them into an augmented, complex fictionalized environment. Based on original source from Smithsonian Institution Archives. Digital composite by Seriously Scientific.

Remembering Barbara McClintock on International Women's Day!
She discovered that genes aren't static, they can actually "jump" around on a chromosome.

Her discovery of transposons ("jumping genes") fundamentally changed how we understand evolution and the complexity of DNA! 🧬🌽

#WomenInScience

Horizontal photo of a crayon sketch of an anchovy with mouth closed

I enjoyed some anchois frais marinés today at my friends' restaurant, so here's Engraulis encrasicolus / European anchovy for #SundayFishSketch today. Bon appétit! (And always a fun reminder that anchovies look like real-life Muppets with their big eyes and exaggerated mouths!) 🦑🐡🧪

Great thread on a cool animal and a major problem: where do sturgeon come from? I still wish we could find a Triassic acipenseriform, there are a few candidates. But, the Triassic presents a daunting challenge to parsing out lineages that are gave rise to the fishes we have today.

Next meeting is Sat April 4th at 2pm back at North Hydro Park. Come grill out and fight data centers!

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.

Stand Up For Science Founder and CEO Colette Delawalla speaking at the Washington D.C. Take Back Our Science Rally!

Stand Up For Science Founder & CEO Colette Delawalla states three demands:

1. Remove RFK Jr.

2. Reinstate the American Dream of Science.

3. Science should be driven by scientists not political appointees.

Join the fight!
standupforscience.net/march7

Two dinosaurs and and the Stand Up For Science Duck mascot stand at the D.C. National Day of Action rally. The dinosaurs have signs reading "Don't let good science go extinct" and "Science saves lives"

The dinos are out for science!! Are you??? Join us in Washington D.C. on the National Mall!!!

Info here! : fight2win.standupforscience.net/DC-March/

For those interested, Research Investigator role available in Pediatric Hematology at University of Michigan Medicine, within the zebrafish-friendly lab of @clot1.bsky.social! careers.umich.edu/job_detail/2...

An Army Corps project could wipe out one of Florida’s last thriving coral reefs The fate of one of the last thriving coral reefs in Florida may be imperiled by plans to widen the shipping channel leading into Port Everglades.

The US army corps of engineers is considering, right now, what would be the largest destruction of coral reefs in US history. To make a port slightly bigger.

People know this, right?

www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

🧪🦑🌎

I think this is a great argument, beautifully constructed

Our (@jeffsekelsky.bsky.social, Corbin Jones & me) #Meiosis, Recombination & Evolution of Sex class @uncchapelhill.bsky.social geeked out about #BChromosomes w/ Patrick Ferree from @scrippscollege.bsky.social about his @plosbiology.org paper on female meiotic drag in Nasonia: doi.org/10.1371/jour...

An illustration showing the Atlantic off the Ring of Kerry.

Looking into the ocean #sciart

The bitterest pill about AI cheating for me is that AI'ed assignments take much longer to grade than honest assignments because they turn grading into an investigation.

So when the student spends less time, I spend more. Fun!

Virginia proposes a law to teach facts in schools

Watercolor painting of a Copper Band Butterflyfish, Chelmon rostratus. These fish form long-term monogamous pairs. I’m painting one reef fish per day for 100 days with the hope of building a community. It’s about how art becomes connection. If you love the ocean, curiosity is enough. 🐠

100 Days of Reef Fish
Beautiful Reef Fish 3/10: Copper Band Butterflyfish, Chelmon rostratus. These fish form long-term monogamous pairs.

Thanks again, Uncle Scotter, @dinosaucerous.bsky.social for the suggestion.

#sciart #marinelife #coralreefs #dothe100daysproject

Why We Must Fight to Stop HR 7661 Before It Destroys the Lives of American Children Lately I’ve been calling my House rep and screaming about one zillion things, and maybe you have too. But today I want to talk about one thing in particular you should add to your list: H.R. 7661 i…

I wrote about the first national book banning bill, which effectively seeks to erase trans people. At the end I include a link to let your reps know that you oppose this bill and all it stands for. lithub.com/why-we-must-...