Kinsey Brock

AI misinformation may have paradoxical consequences To understand why, consider the side-blotched lizard

A very interesting article in @economist.com
www.economist.com/finance-and-...
made me think about the risk of AI slop science papers, and how to create barriers to them (especially at the preprint stage). One idea in this economist article is about tracing the writing & research process..

it's scientifically true

Don't You Know That I'm Toxic? Wild Birds Learn to Avoid a Novel Aposematic Warning Signal The foraging behaviours of predators towards aposematic prey have been studied extensively and there is much empirical evidence to support this theory. Often, studies involving wild species are relat...

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

“When participants used ChatGPT to draft essays, brain scans revealed a 47% drop in neural connectivity across regions associated with memory, language, & critical reasoning.

Their brains worked less, but they felt just as engaged—a kind of metacognitive mirage.”🧪

Career Opportunities Applicant Log-In

My department at California State University Northridge is hiring! We're looking for a new colleague studying microbiology or molecular/cellular biology. I'm not on the search committee, but happy to answer questions about the department and campus, and life in LA

buff.ly/Pc1KOaC

For a Student Who Used Al to Write a Paper A poem by Joseph Fasano Now I let it fall back in the grasses. I hear you. I know this life is hard now. I know your days are precious on this earth. But what are you trying to be free of? The living? The miraculous task of it? Love is for the ones who love the work.

I really hope I won’t have to spend my entire career reading and refusing to grade AI slop.

Feedback and grades are for the ones who love the work. !

Horrible idea. AI will regress all grants towards the mean since AI is trained to produce the average output.

Grants require expertise that ignores bad literature and rejects author assertions if false. no AI review I've seen has ever challenged the author's assertions as fundamentally flawed.

Our new paper! Led by @miaryras.bsky.social with @wolfgangwuster.bsky.social and others 🦎

Last month’s King tides coincided with a huge swell that took out a few chunks of cement along this wall over #ItsBeach

You may be able to publish your paper in Functional Ecology and our other open access journals at no cost!

Find out more about resources like funding, waivers and agreements – including our own BES waivers – that cover processing and publishing fees

buff.ly/OsBvjdf

🧪🌍

Reminder that the CSU system is spending $17 million on ChatGPT.

AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself Students use AI to write papers, professors use AI to grade them, degrees become meaningless, and tech companies make fortunes. Welcome to the death of higher education.

Absolutely devastating account of the CSU's $17 million capitulation to ChatGPT, from a fellow faculty member watching it happen www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...

AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself Students use AI to write papers, professors use AI to grade them, degrees become meaningless, and tech companies make fortunes. Welcome to the death of higher education.

“The math is brutal and the juxtaposition stark: millions for OpenAI while pink slips go out to longtime lecturers. The CSU isn’t investing in education—it’s outsourcing it, paying premium prices for a chatbot many students were already using for free.“
www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...

The U.S. Is Funding Fewer Grants in Every Area of Science and Medicine (Gift Article) A quiet policy change means the government is making fewer bets on long-term science.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Housing proximity and vegetation cover affect diel activity patterns of domestic cats (Felis catus) in regionally protected shorelines Abstract. Free-roaming domestic cats (Felis catus) are among the most impactful non-native species globally, causing the extinction of 63 endemic vertebrat

Huzzah! After a lot of work, I'm happy to share that the results of my first chapter have been published and are available for your perusal. In this paper, I was interested in understanding how characteristics of urban environments influence the diel activity of cats academic.oup.com/jue/article/...

Employment - Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

EEB Postdoctoral Fellowship @ U.Toronto app deadline Jan 15 2026. Opportunity for independent research, encourages collab across labs/disciplines. Lots of great folks to interact with, Come join us!
eeb.utoronto.ca/employment-2/

I love this.

Time to publish responsibly: DAFNEE, a database of academia-friendly journals in ecology and evolutionary biology Abstract. The current economics of scientific publishing reveal a profound imbalance: academia pays prices far exceeding the actual costs of publication. R

DAFNEE, a useful database of academic-friendly journals in #Ecology and Evolutionary #Biology

academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-...

This semester I ran a class where we read recent papers in phylogenetics / systematics. I'd prepare an intro for each with background, then we'd dig in. I'd write a blog post after each as well. All the papers, slides and posts are now available at brianomeara.info/posts/phylop...

🧪 #AcademicSky

This is a wonderful piece.

Also, this is superb.

It’s blowing my mind that schools, universities, public services would run headlong into this. We spent 15 years documenting black boxes. This is a black box in a black hole!

Bird humor. 😎🪶

We are deep into word-by-word censorship. Not only are universities purging/rewriting their websites based on centralized edicts, they are sending lists of forbidden words to guest speakers...

Team fish - we need your help! We are trying to build a database of all the fish chromosome-scale genomes where sex chromosomes have been identified. Have you build one or some? Do you know someone who has? Can you post the link in the comments? Please spread the word and repost! Thank you!

New species 🚨, not one, not two, 13 new bush frogs from Northeast India!!!
One of the exciting revisions I've been involved in for a few years now is out today. It is led by @bitupan-herp.bsky.social, a PhD. student who will soon be a doctor.

There are so many immensely talented paleoartists and scientific illustrators this cover could have been done by. Disgraceful for a journal to go with bad AI images instead.

Detail from Figure 1 of the linked preprint: a diagram contrasting the two weasel morphs, one of which is brown in summer and white in winter, and the other of which is brown all year; with images of weasels in both forms of winter coat; and then nucleotide and amino acid sequences for the two MC1R variants underlying the two coat types

These weasels have locally adapted their winter coats to varying snow cover thanks to a million-year-old mutation 🌿

buff.ly/TnOfYWt

On official UC letterhead: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA James B. Milliken President Office of the President 1111 Franklin Street Oakland, CA 94607 universityofcalifornia.edu CAMPUSES Berkeley Davis Irvine UCLA Merced Riverside San Diego San Francisco Santa Barbara Santa Cruz MEDICAL CENTERS Davis Irvine UCLA San Diego San Francisco NATIONAL LABORATORIES Lawrence Berkeley Lawrence Livermore Los Alamos DIVISION OF AGRICULTURE AND NATURAL RESOURCES November 18, 2025 Dear Chancellors: I'm writing with regard to the President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (PPFP) and the program's associated faculty hiring incentive. As you know, for more than 40 years, PPFP has provided postdoctoral research fellowships, professional development, and faculty mentoring to scholars in all fields whose research, teaching, and service advance the academic and research missions of the University of California. Since 2003, UC campuses that hire current and former PPFP fellows into ladder-rank positions have been eligible for a hiring incentive funded by the University that provides support for newly hired fellows for five years. Since the creation of the incentive, more than $162 million has been invested by the University to support PPFP faculty hires. This commitment has enabled our campuses to successfully recruit and retain outstanding faculty across a range of disciplines. Given the myriad challenges currently facing UC - including disruptions to billions of dollars in annual federal support, as well as uncertainty around the state budget- reasonable questions were raised in recent months about whether the University could maintain the commitment to current levels of incentive funding. After considering a recommendation to sunset the incentive program due to these significant fiscal constraints, I consulted with all of you as well as faculty and campus academic administrators and systemwide Academic Senate leadership. [continued on next image]

After learning more about the history and success of the program and weighing the thoughtful perspectives that have been shared, I have concluded that barring extraordinary financial setbacks, the PPFP faculty hiring incentive program will continue while the University continues to assess the program's structure as well as its long-term financial sustainability. As a result of our continuing consultation and review, there may be consideration of some changes to elements of the program including the total number of incentives supported, a number that has fluctuated significantly over the years, and how the awards are distributed among campuses. In the meantime, the University will continue to fund the PPFP faculty hiring incentive program and campuses may continue to take advantage of these incentives. We will have an opportunity to discuss any potential changes prior to adoption. As we look to the future, I will continue to engage with faculty leaders, program stakeholders, and UC community members about this important program. I especially appreciate the thoughtful perspectives shared in recent weeks by Academic Council Chair Palazoglu and Vice Chair Scott, the Council of Graduate Deans, UC faculty members, and you as our campus leaders. Sincerely, James B. Milliken President

WE JUST KEEP WINNING. (UC President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program RESTORED!!!!)

Fig. 1 from the article: introduced house sparrows had more sites with significant change in DNA methylation and a larger magnitude of change in DNA methylation between 0- and 8-h after lipopolysaccharide injection.

NEW PAPER: Introduced house sparrows showed more numerous, larger, and more variable DNA-methylation changes after simulated infection than native birds, suggesting distinct epigenetic responses that may aid introduction success.

➡️ vist.ly/4eq4a

#ornithology #birds #plasticity #stress 🪶