Pedro Brandão-Dias F Pinto

How Fragmented Is eDNA? A Case Study on Shark DNA in Tropical Reef Seawater This study quantified mitochondrial eDNA fragment lengths in offshore tropical seawater using qPCR assays targeting amplicons from 119 to 15,727 bp in tiger shark (Galeocerdo cuvier). Copy numbers st...

Nothing like starting the day with a well-written and relevant paper.
Today’s pick was genuinely rewarding to read, so I’m sharing it:
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Kudos to @katfiishn.bsky.social

Just received an invitation to volunteer as an editor for a for-profit publisher that charges thousands in fees.

Nope.

"But it counts on your CV!"

🙄

On our survey, someone "does not believe #eDNA" because it has given them "nonsensical results". Which result, you ask?

Wolves in the city. 🐾

Well... 🐕🐩🐶🦮

(PDF) A State‐Of‐The‐Art Review of Aquatic eDNA Sampling Technologies and Instrumentation: Advancements, Challenges, and Future Prospects PDF | The field of environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis has revolutionized our ability to detect and monitor biodiversity in aquatic and terrestrial... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ...

New study finds autonomous #eDNA samplers are scalable ecological monitoring tools.

🧬 Read the publication at
researchgate.net/publication/...

#ecology #marinescience #environmentalmonitoring

Bird field guides that hide maps at the back: unacceptable. 🤦

No weight saved. Clarity gone.

Range matters so much for ID — put the maps where they belong!! 🗺️🐦

#vent #birding

Yeah that is the point. If you try to record everything you see on purpose, then it is "unbiased". You then compare with the "biased" citizen science data and correct for the bias once you know the factor.

🥷

Lol we just saw a bunch of people running and we were like: "they are probably just trying to get to the Mona Lisa or something" and move on with our life.

Less than 5 minutes later we were gerring evacuated.

6 years in Houston though and not a single direct Hurricane hit. Not a bad track record.

lol

When I say I am lucky for bad luck, people think I am joking

Have you ever been at the louvre and it got ROBBED the moment you arrived?

Well, it just happened to me LOL

Happy 1000th life bird day!! 🐦 🥳

I went into a nearby hotspot today to get this done... it was a great one, complete with friendly local birders. 56 total sp with 13 lifers at once, which put me at 1004 life birds!

Not sure who the exact 1000th bird was, my best guess is the Water Rail!

DIYNAFLUOR Microgrant Opportunity

The DIYNAFLUOR is an affordable and simple DIY plug-and-play nucleic acid fluorometer.

This microgrant provides access to materials to build one.

Apply here 🔗 docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

And please share widely! #CitizenScience #MolecularEcology #OpenHardware

🚀 The @ednacollab.bsky.social just launched the DIYNAFLUOR Microgrant 2025!

They’re offering materials + support to build a low-cost DIY fluorometer for eDNA quantification.

It can be as effective as Qubit at a % of the cost.

Great opportunity for anyone in #eDNA, #DIYBio, #CitizenScience 👇

It turns out you can buy a monthly public transit pass and save money in Paris!😄🐓

(But it is valid from the first calendar day of the month, not the day you first use it)😑

You can also buy a weekly 7 day pass!

(But its valid from Monday to Sunday of a given week, not any 7 consecutive days)🥴

I think you have to make a bioblitz in an area with heavy inat observation, recording evry little thing possible. Then you make a joint statistical model estimating a conversion parameter between inat and unbiased bioblitz. Then you use the conversion parameter to all of inat.

New paper shows that spotting rare birds increases the odds of people starting a checklist, thus data is a little biases.

Makes sense ... I do the same! On routine walks or usual hikes I skip eBird, but when something unusual 🦤 (or a lifer!) appears, I can’t resist starting an eBird list 😅

Only negative controls amplified.

Multi-generational vulture nests hold 700 years of human artifacts Crossbow bolts, sandals, slingshots, and more.

super cool study found human artifacts in Bearded vulture nests, incl. "weaponry like a crossbow bolt and wooden lance, decorated sheep leather, and parts of a slingshot....a shoe made from twigs and grass is ~675-years-old." link to paper: doi.org/10.1002/ecy..... www.popsci.com/environment/... 🧪🌍🦉

Pre-print em português (sorry @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social ) do nosso artigo publicado recentemente na PECON disponível no @ecoevorxiv.bsky.social

ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

Deciphering Landscape‐Scale Plant Cover and Biodiversity From Soil eDNA Biodiversity surveys are essential but challenging to conduct at scale, prompting this study to evaluate soil-extracted eDNA as a proxy for traditional field-based surveys for describing plant commun...

🚨 New #OpenAccess paper in #Environmental #DNA! 🚨

Led by #TimGoodall @ukceh.bsky.social with @danread.bsky.social we tested whether #soil #eDNA metabarcoding can capture plant #biodiversity & vegetation cover across the UK 🌱

🔗 doi.org/10.1002/edn3...

I have gone through Fig 2 of my upcoming paper ~20x now. Every time, I find a small error that I hadn't seen before, which triggers a series of ~10 steps and 5 min of work to update it. It`s a complex figure.

If y`all find an error in it while reading the paper, please DO NOT tell me. Thank you 🥰

How many Nanopores is too many Nanopores to have running all at once? Well, @AdenIp has four (!!!!) up here at the @ednacollab.bsky.social right now 💢💢💢💢

Why, you ask?
"Why not?" - he says

Lots of air eDNA data coming out of the oven (literally, these basicalling GPUs warm up the room a lot 🔥🔥🔥)

Some call it fashion

Today the glove box gave me a glove with no thumb and dared me to do science without opposable thumbs. I rejected the challenge 👍

I feel like we tend to complain loudly and often when manuscript peer reviews are bad or unfavorable.

But today I got reviews... and they were reasonable and polite!

Faith slightly restored!!

Toxic trait of bioinfo folks:
Everyone insists on building their own pipeline 👨‍💻

Is it (a) distrust, (b) dreams of citations, (c) tryna prove competency— or all?
Even if it’s a wrapper on a wrapper, god forbid you just use an established one!

I am half guilty as well.
xkcd nailed it long ago.

Beta-Binomial and Dirichlet-Multinomial are the GOAT distributions

Why are statistical methods so often explained as if the authors are afraid someone might actually understand what they did?