Justin Yeakel 🦣🐆

Got vaccinated today, mate… I’m an all-in-the-left-arm guy… now I’m walking in circles.

Distilling food web dynamics: top–down and bottom–up drivers of extinction and trophic cascades Quantifying population dynamics is a fundamental challenge in ecology and evolutionary biology, particularly for species that are cryptic, microscopic, or extinct. Traditional approaches rely on cont...

New paper where we explore how the dynamics of food webs can be explored when populations are ‘distilled’ to high and low states, or Boolean switches… Somehow this leads to a discussion involving Otodus megalodon :D

nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Transmission networks of long-term and short-term knowledge in a foraging society Abstract. Cultural transmission across generations is key to cumulative cultural evolution. While several mechanisms—such as vertical, horizontal, and obli

💙New paper!💙

How is knowledge transmitted across generations in a foraging society?

With @danielredhead.bsky.social
we found: In BaYaka foragers, long-term skills pass in smaller, sparser networks, while short-term food info circulates broadly & reciprocally

academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

Mark Novak, @kecoblentz.bsky.social, John DeLong FTW - a very cool paper I need to dig carefully through!

A can of Open Nature cat food and human food (tuna) looking remarkably similar…

Okay Open Nature… are you *trying* to make me eat cat food?

"Behavior drives morphological change during human evolution"

Our new article is out in @science.org today

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Behavior drives morphological change during human evolution Dietary shifts and corresponding morphological changes can sometimes evolve in succession, not concurrently—an evolutionary process called behavioral drive. Detecting behavioral drive in the fossil re...

New paper in Science!

Luke Fannin and Nate Dominy on the bridge; I'm some kind of assistant science officer or asking the chief engineer where the bathroom is, but hey I'm part of the fleet -- Also, it's just a really awesome project, so check it out...

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I see dead people meme with text: I see power laws

Make it stop…

Same (4 days ago), but I couldn't figure out how to take a screenshot without my iPad blacking out the image.

FERAL AND HYSTERICAL MOTHER HORROR'S ULTIMATE READING GUIDE TO DARK AND DISTURBING FICTION BY WOMEN

My book drops in 2 months!
“This is an essential, long-overdue guide, and a wonderful read.” -Stephen Graham Jones, author of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter @sgj.bsky.social
Bookshop: bookshop.org/a/7576/97988...
Barnes: www.barnesandnoble.com/w/feral-and-...

Buffalo Hunter Hunter Poster by Jason Ragosta | Redbubble A fan poster for Stephen Graham Jones' novel Buffalo Hunter Hunter illustrated by Jason Ragosta.

My cousin-in-law @jasonragosta.bsky.social (is that a thing?) knocks it out of the park with this amazing The Buffalo Hunter Hunter fan poster from the legendary @sgj.bsky.social
www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/1715...

a wizard is holding a magic wand in front of a fire demon ALT: a wizard is holding a magic wand in front of a fire demon

Walked into this knowing of only one Balrog, despite my SNES streetfighter cred

Exciting opportunity for prospective grad students wanting to study the science of science w/ @culturologies.co … check it out!

career2.successfactors.eu/sfcareer/job...

Looks like Elon flew too close to a bloated orange giant ☀️

Ahhh - your book Song of the Dodo changed my life and prompted me to go to grad school. Excited to hear more about this one!

How is your day going?

for k in 1:length(ksdvec)
ksd = ksdvec[k];
ksdname = ksdstrs[k];
ksd = 1.5;
....(long simulation)....
end

allometry-breaking!!!

Was Jim Estes Indiana Jones? Pretty much, but with sea otters 🦦

Jim Estes was one of my PhD advisors at UCSC… a generator of great ideas and discussions, always angling positive when others tried to tear down, a rockstar who didn’t act like a rockstar. This was my slide for Jim in my dissertation seminar… thanks for the good conversations and caribou sausage

Food-washing monkeys recognize the law of diminishing returns Monkeys are sensitive to foods coated with tooth-damaging sand and will invest time and energy to eliminate sand, but dominance rank affects the effort allocated to cleaning behaviors.

New paper on food-cleaning monkeys showing some true grit.
Led by Jessica Rosien, Nate Dominy, Luke Fannin, Suchinda Malaivijitnond and Amanda Tan - this was a fun collaboration :D 🐒
elifesciences.org/articles/98520

Ah - having looked… cybersecurity and ocean sci increased. I’m guessing ocean sci has a ‘mining-focused’ mandate

Let me guess - you only come out ahead if you’re working in AI or looking for fossil fuels…

‘I Didn’t Want to Make a Scene’: A Professor Recounts the Conversation That Got Him Ejected From Commencement Colin Holbrook says he approached the University of California system president about pro-Palestinian protests.

If this happened as described — and there is no reason to think it didn’t — what does this mean for academic freedom? The vise is closing.

www.chronicle.com/article/i-di...

🦦

I resigned because of a profound breakdown in governance, transparency, and accountability at the NSF—issues I felt obligated to bring to public attention.

Got our kid on those tablets - sounds like we’d better stock up (live in an area without fluoridated water)

The dynamics of microbial cooperation... Cheap metabolites make for shaky friendships; but pricier ones can keep the peace... 🦠

Thanks @janamassing.bsky.social for leading the charge! And great working again w/ @akfbio.bsky.social & @thilogross.bsky.social

But how do you feel about *old* slasher movies?

A new preprint from the lab. Might be of interest to people who use barcode lineage tracking to catch de novo adaptive mutations. #popgen #evolbiol

Awesome! ❄️

Excited to be included on this - a very exciting project and I learned a lot working with @mhab.bsky.social @thilogross.bsky.social and @akfbio.bsky.social (as usual) 😀