Milton Tan

Summarizing >6000 analyses but my script isn't yet polished and automated

The biggest bottleneck at this point is me checking back to make sure it ran correctly then run the next step

Is this true? 🧪🐟

Small models are underrated. Big models like the immensely impressive GPT-5 and Claude Opus/Sonnet will remain useful and major workhorses. But small, cheap, easy-to-fine-tune and deploy small models will have increased utility

A large corydoras catfish next to a smaller striped panda garra fish

My little panda garra has been adopted by the cory squad.

Barchart showing distribution of specimens across animal phyla. Chordata = 15, Arthropoda = 8, Mollusca = 3, Annelida, Cnidaria, Echinodermata, Nemertea and Onychophora = 1. Chordata is coloured to show that we have most mammals (7) then fishes/reptiles (3), then birds/tunicates (1).

Bar chart showing that 4 plant specimens were angiosperms and 1 was a bryophyte

Who ❤️ data? Our 36 specimens (31 animal, 5 plant) so far represent 8/31 (25%) animal and 2/14 (14%) plant phyla/divisions. Chordata/mammals are winning (but many of these appeared in OVERRATED). @joshlukedavis.com and @nhcooper123.bsky.social have done OK so far but there's more diversity to cover!

Teach Me About the Great Lakes | Spoiler Alert: This is Not Fine What are the aquatic invasive species that Great Lakes experts wish you knew more about? Megan and Carolyn discuss with TMATGL all-stars El Lower, Katie O'Reilly, and Brian Roth.Links:Past episodes...

New episode of the Teach Me About the Great Lakes podcast is out! I joined a couple other invasive species folks to talk about the new-ish aquatic invasive species in the #GreatLakes region we think people should know about www.teachmeaboutthegreatlakes.com/113

YouTube video by MBARI (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute) Throwback to one of our earliest encounters with a deep-sea gulper eel

My unsolicited #eel fact for today is that there are ten species of Gulper Eels (Saccopharynx) while there is only a single species of Pelican Eel (Eurypharynx ).🐟

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nwD...

The so-called “Monster Shrimp” is the larval stage of the deep sea-dwelling Cerataspis monstrosa.

#cerataspismonstrosa #deepseacreatures #blackwater #blackwaterdiving #blackwaterphotography #gug #chrisgug #gugunderwater

An intriguing behavior of global rain an exercise

Rainforests create their own rain… eroding them destroys that alarmingly fast. They’re not just lungs of the planet, but a biotic pump of moisture, cooling, sustenance, life open.substack.com/pub/climatew...

Follow Alpha Lo of the Climate Water Project ericagies.bsky.social
@robdelaet.bsky.social

The now Critically Endangered Manjuarí (Cuban gar, /Atractosteus tristoechus/) as painted in La Habana by Antonio Parra around 1787
@solomonrdavid.bsky.social

YouTube video by Penn State University Mudskipper Blinking

#FishADay Periophthalmus barbarus Atlantic Mudskipper. Coastal tropical Africa. Spend most of their time on land, subsequently developed some unique adaptations to do things terrestrial tetrapods take for granted, like blinking--pulls its eyes into its head.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=twho...

After playing with some options amongst the students in my lab, I have finally developed a lab logo! Prepare for our merch line featuring it on shirts, hats, sneakers, guitar picks, NFTs, bibles, steaks, wine, golf courses, and more!

The @romtoronto.bsky.social Sharks exhibition is opening this weekend! The perfect family-friendly destination for the Thanksgiving long weekend!

Estimating the rate of quantitative trait evolution in the presence of gene tree discordance by calculating likelihoods across trees Quantitative traits provide insights into how phenotypes evolve across species. However, standard comparative methods often assume a single species tree and overlook the discordant gene tree histories...

New preprint led by grad student, Yu Mo! We introduce new software to calculate evolutionary rates of quantitative characters in the presence of discordance

1/

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Independent genomic trajectories shape adaptation to life on land across animal lineages How animals repeatedly adapted to life on land is a central question in evolutionary biology. While terrestrialisation occurred independently across animal phyla, it remains unclear whether shared gen...

How did animals repeatedly conquer land? 🌊➡️⛰️ We analysed ~1,000 gene repertoires (24M genes!) from all animal phyla to uncover how this happened. Work led by @gemmaeling.bsky.social & Klara Eleftheriadi, both first coauthors of this titanic effort!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We still can’t predict much of anything in biology Biology is hard. Yes, even for AI.

Biology is much more complicated than most non-biologists can imagine. And AI is not going to change this anytime soon.
blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/we-still-c...

This is how I want to be awarded the Nobel Prize.

phylo2vec adds Rust‑based vector tools for phylogenetic trees

The phylo2vec library implements vector-based phylogenetic trees with a Rust core and offers thin wrappers for R and Python, reducing memory use enough for desktop analysis. Read more: https://getnews.me/phylo2vec-adds-rust-based-vector-tools-for-phylogenetic-trees/ #phylogenetics #rust

Estimating the rate of quantitative trait evolution in the presence of gene tree discordance by calculating likelihoods across trees https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.06.680724v1

a blue background with line art of the profile of a woman holding a pen and thinking, a light bulb, and a note with a pencil. In the middle the phrase "The Public Scholar"

Opinion | What Makes a Great Op-Ed? An ‘L.A. Times’ Editor Explains

Op-ed editor Philip Gray shares advice for academics on how to get published in a national paper and how submitting pieces is a numbers game. https://bit.ly/46W4zmE

#EDUSky #HigherEd #AcademicSky

A calm river with a bouldery shoreline & a backdrop of mountains & trees along the bank with their tops lit up by the brilliant autumn sun

i got outside for a bit. thought i'd visit a little spot i know, which last year was the last place i got to before my truck up & died on me.

so shaking that little curse was part of it... 🧵

Calling Bullshit: Data Reasoning in a Digital World The world is awash in bullshit. Politicians are unconstrained by facts. Science is conducted by press release. Higher education rewards bullshit over analytic thought. Startup culture elevates bullshi...

Continuing my tour of books I should have already read, Calling Bullshit by @carlbergstrom.com and @jevinwest.bsky.social. Just a delight - an accessible, entertaining, insightful look at various forms of BS. Much like Weapons of Math Destruction, would love a 2025 update of this one.

So are the people roleplaying with LLMs that do deep-thinking also reading the LLM thought processes or does that break immersion

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/... 🧪🌍🦉

Palaeoproteomic insights into the deep roots of the cave bear lineage in Europe https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.05.680322v1

An image created by Adam Yates comparing a photo of the "complete" cranial material of Ultrastenos huberi with prior interpretations of the material. At the bottom left sits a reconstruction of Ultrastenos willisi based on the 2016 interpretation of it as a narrow-snouted animal with a circle around the skull table and an arrow pointing to the skull table of the "completed" Ultrastenos skull in the middle. The top right corner shows a reconstruction of "Baru" huberi based on pre-2024 ideas of the animal. The snout tip is encircled and an arrow points towars the snout elements of the Ultrastenos huberi fossil. This shows how both individual fossils were once interpreted vs how it actually looked like put together. The finished fossil suggests a small animal with a fairly traditional looking crocodilian snout.

#Croctober Day 6
Heres a fun one from a research history POV.
In 1997 researchers described a snout tip under the name Baru huberi and in 2016 skull elements were given the name Ultrastenos willisi
Only last year did we recognize that both fossils belonged to a single individual

I have been trying to explain a microfiche machine to one of my dear, brilliant, talented, but clearly too young to be alive collaborators. And it is taking the last of my soul.

“Micro…fish?? I have never heard that word in my life.” I recorded the timestamp so it can be put on my tombstone.

Robin Williams' daughter has some quality thoughts on AI slop

I was struck by this digital hydrologic map of Venezuela. It's by Pablo Hernandez B. Now I'm clear in my mind that yes, most water in Venezuela flows west to east, with smaller systems in the NW and SW defined by high mountains.🧪🌎⚒️🐟

I have a fabulous undergrad who has a lot of experience with QIIME2 & using R to analyze microbiome data. She is looking for a job starting in January. Would love to learn more bench and field skills (will be getting some in her last 2 months). Open to academic, industry, government jobs in the US.