Emily Rollinson

“Go Birds!!!” Written huge on a lecture hall chalkboard

That feeling when you teach in Pennsylvania, or possibly the ornithologist was in here today

A nice reminder that even the most fundamental 'rules' of biology are basically just strong suggestions

yeah okay I can get behind Sword Chickadee

The fact that the thing we're calling artificial intelligence *can't do math* and yet we're jamming it into programs that successfully *have done math* for decades, then warning people against using the AI to do math, seems like an excellent summary of where we are.

I ask: "how many species of clam shrimp are in florida" ichatbio answers: "You’d like to know how many species of clam shrimp (order Diplostraca, suborder Laevicaudata, Cyclestherida, or Spinicaudata) are found in Florida. I will search occurrence record databases for the count of unique clam shrimp species reported in Florida."

ichatbio: According to iDigBio, there are 47 unique scientific names under the order Diplostraca (which includes clam shrimp and related groups) recorded in Florida, based on 524 records. This count may include both clam shrimp and other related taxa (like water fleas). If you'd like, I can filter the list to show only known clam shrimp species or provide the full list for your review. me: show only clam shrimp ichatbio:Thank you for your request to see only clam shrimp species (typically families Limnadiidae, Lynceidae, and Cyzicidae). I will extract and filter the species-level names to include only recognized clam shrimp taxa recorded in Florida.

ichatbio lists: eulimnadia diversa, lynceus gracilicornis, eulimnadia insularis, eulimnadia astraova, eulimnadia texana, and limnadia lenticularis. it's missing genus Paralimnetis.

me: you are missing a genus ichatbio: Thank you for pointing that out. You are correct that my previous filter included only the genera Eulimnadia, Lynceus, and Limnadia. There is another clam shrimp genus known from Florida: Cyzicus. Would you like me to include Cyzicus in the filtered list and provide updated results for clam shrimp species recorded in Florida? me: cyzicus is not found in florida ichatbio: Thank you for clarifying—Cyzicus is not found in Florida, so it shouldn’t appear in a Florida clam shrimp list. If you believe another genus is missing from the clam shrimp genera known in Florida, could you specify which one? Otherwise, based on iDigBio records and typical literature, the genera Eulimnadia, Lynceus, and Limnadia are the main clam shrimp genera documented in Florida. If you’d like, I can attempt to extract any other candidate genera from the occurrence records or check for further synonymies. Please let me know how you’d like to proceed!

it took one (1) question for the amazing new agentic LLM iChatBio to start fabricating data out of nothing. I asked for a list of clam shrimp in Florida, and it skipped a whole genus. when I told it that it was missing one, it confidently replied that Cyzicus also lives in Florida (it doesn't).

Write-up of a college course where the final project involved making a Wingspan card!

As always, Ted Chiang is great in this interview.
cdh.princeton.edu/blog/2025/08...

Heads up 🧪science folks. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to generate some examples of issues in how Chat-GPT 5.0 answers intro bio type things. I'll stick at least some of them here in a thread so you're free to use them, rather than having to waste resources asking it stuff we know it gets wrong

Don’t Believe What AI Told You I Said The chatbots are lying about me.

I wrote about how AI chatbots are pumping out fake quotes, attributed to real people, at scale, and polluting our public disourse with potemkin pontification and made-up appeals to authority. And the AIs are not just misquoting famous people—it happened to me and it could happen to you. Gift link:

Yesterday I discovered that ChatGPT's PhD-level expertise didn't extend to bird anatomy. This morning I thought, perhaps I was being too hard on the half-trillion-dollar company. Birds are a little weird, anatomically speaking. Let's try something more familiar. A mammal. Behold.

Had to try this out with insects and HOO BOY is this embarrassing.

No research funding associated with any of those although can apply to various internal grants.

At our regional comprehensive, independent studies receive monetary compensation of $200/credit (cap of 9 credits total supervised per semester). Less commonly, some types of research credits count as workload (e.g. MS projects are 0.2 hrs/student).

Watch Out!

It seems like my main problem is that ornithologists are just really lazy at counting

A dry heat and a damp muffin

Me making small talk at the function

If you too got the weird promotional email from the US Social Security administration celebrating that SS would not be taxed, I am sorry to inform you that this was lies.

Yes, but also the pirate in Monkey Island that just sits in the bar with a button reading "Ask me about LOOM"

My new career will be "Ask me about LOOM"

Tuxedo cat sleeping in a gray fleece blanket. He loved this blanket and would knead it constantly.

Tuxedo cat on a carpet soaking up stripes on sunshine coming between the blinds. He would always lay in the middle of the floor to get some sun.

Tuxedo cat laying between slats in vertical blinds to look out the window at the plants and birds on the patio. He used to sit here every day to see my car pull in, and he would run from here to the front door when I started walking in. You would always see the blinds parted from outside and then suddenly fall back into place when he ran.

Tuxedo cat on his hind legs jumping for a feather on a string. This was his favorite toy and he had a specific meow of excitement for when this toy came out of the closet. There is crumpled packing paper on the floor. He loved diving for the feather into packing paper.

Fig was the sweetest little cat and I’m going to miss him a lot.

The value of the identification experience on iNaturalist comes from the community. This seems far more likely to generate taxonomic misinformation than to improve IDs. Disappointing.

for example, if you become a statistician you will be perpetually asking people “what is your research question” regardless of which area of stats you work in

Lyft driver picked me up from UNC, turned out he was a medicinal chemistry post-doc in a building near mine, until his grant got cut last month.

Worked on novel antivirals.

I've gone ahead and collected all the birds that Merlin classifies as bizarre 🧵

Screenshot of the president’s FY 2026 proposed budget clearly stating “The 2026 Budget proposes to eliminate funding for the State and Tribal Wildlife Grants program”

While we are all reeling from the budget and its major cuts to NASA, NIH, USGS, etc. I want to also draw attention to this little nugget about State Wildlife Grants, which is the mechanism for funding State Wildlife Action Plans. Eliminating SWG will destroy state natural resource agencies.

We’ve lost a giant. He was always very kind and encouraging to me as a young #kelp forest ecologist. Go listen to @futureecologies.bsky.social’s kelp series for a wonderful episode where he tells the stories behind his classic work. www.futureecologies.net/kelpworlds

May his memory be a blessing.

🚨 A new rule would let career scientists like NSF/NIH program officers be replaced by political appointees

Already 14,000+ public comments, deadline is Friday

📣 Comments can be short. Courts consider them—and scientists with NSF/NIH experience are especially impactful

Speak up! shorturl.at/WKuBj

(c) Discriminatory prohibited boycott means refusing to deal, cutting commercial relations, or otherwise limiting commercial relations specifically with Israeli companies or with companies doing business in or with Israel or authorized by, licensed by, or organized under the laws of Israel to do business. The term discriminatory prohibited boycott also includes an academic boycott of Israel in which an educational or research institution enacts or implements restrictive policies, or otherwise participates in activities having the object or effect of restricting ongoing or potential academic, educational, or research institutions. Notwithstanding any restriction on the applicability of other NSF rules and regulations, the requirements in paragraph (c) applies to both foreign and domestic institutions receiving funding from the NSF.

(a) By accepting the award, recipients are certifying that: (i) They do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws; and (ii) They do not engage in and will not during the term of this award engage in, a discriminatory prohibited boycott. (3) NSF reserves the right to terminate financial assistance awards and recover all funds if recipients, during the term of this award, operate any program in violation of Federal antidiscriminatory laws or engage in a prohibited boycott.

🚨🚨 Alarming NSF policy update

By accepting an NSF award, an institution now must say it's:

1. Not engaging in boycotts of Israel (yes really)

2. Not advancing or promoting DEI in violation of anti-discrimination laws

Announced via a footnote today: nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/gc1-ma...