Brian O'Meara

No such thing as a shark? Genomes shake up ocean predator’s family tree Sharks might not be a natural biological group, with most species potentially closer kin to rays than to an oddball group of sharks.

Chase Brownstein's shark paper covered in Nature News!

Please help my colleagues, who are working on an important survey! #NaturalHistory

Interesting trail design decision. Panther Creek State Park, Tennessee.

#SpringBreak

Thanks to all who expressed such affection for and interest in Amherst Books, now for sale.
For those of considering making an offer, I found the asking price: $400,000

Amherst Books (Amherst, MA) For Sale - New England Independent Booksellers Association
www.newenglandbooks....

I lean more towards Rhynchophorus ferrugineus, but those are cool, too

In a retaliatory move to protect their dairy farmers, the University of Wisconsin is making a butter so firm yet airy you don’t need to wrap it around popcorn to eat it as a delicious snack.

[This is a joke. At least until US News adds snack innovation to their rating metric]

Interactive XKCD 🔗

editor.p5js.org/isohedral/fu...

10 days remaining to submit your Mini-ARTS award! These awards are for revisionary taxonomy and systematics. Up to $4,000 is available per award. For guidelines and to submit your application, see our website

www.systbio.org/mini-arts-aw...

There is No Consensus on Biological Sex At this critical moment when misinformation about sex is being applied to policy globally, scientific clarification on the definition of biological sex is valuable. Here, we evaluate the primary appr...

New paper out in ecology letters! with @andylee.bsky.social @allydefduf.bsky.social

We synthesized the active debate on how scientists define sex, including limitations and assumptions. We believe this discussion will lead to more accurate science.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Yeah… I drank basically nothing but strong tea for years, like the person in the article. It’s delicious, doesn’t feel unhealthy (it’s water plus a leaf, right?), etc. But in hindsight, unwise.

Earl Grey tea intoxication A 44-year-old man presented in May, 2001, with muscle cramps. He had no medical history of note, but volunteered the fact that he had been drinking up to 4 L of black tea per day over the past 25 year...

I made the mistake of “no, yes, no”: only Earl Grey all the time. Turns out this is a known bad idea: www.thelancet.com/journals/lan... .

Yet another benefit of variety.

Given the caps that HR-1 (2025) placed on federal student loans (annual cap of $50,000, max $200,000 total)*, I can see more SoMs doing this to appeal to prospective med students

*The cost of medical school is far more than $50,000/year

This is an amazing program that BSA is running this year with the help of generous donations from the community after NSF funding was terminated. If you have undergrads interested in botany, encourage them to apply! Signing up to be a mentor is also super rewarding!

CAES scientist studies Earth’s oldest pollination systems | CAES Field Report A University of Georgia entomologist studies cycads — the world’s most endangered plant order — to uncover how ancient beetles and weevils shaped the earliest insect pollination systems through heat, ...

My college wrote a lovely piece about my research. And the photos of me and my babies 😍 So happy to be here @universityofga.bsky.social Thanks! 🌿🪲🔬

fieldreport.caes.uga.edu/news/caes-sc...

cc @dwbapst.bsky.social

You could, but then that requires homoplasy (four allele test fail). With just the three combos, each trait changes once on the underlying species phylogeny

For binary characters the minimum is fewer than this (and even less for multistate), right? Three species could have states 00, 01, and 11, for example, so just two characters

And I was a math-loving high school student hearing my usually feminist dad speculate that maybe Summers had a point because he was the president of Harvard...

Still got an econ phd, though. Better late than never, NBER.

SORTEE Webinar: On what makes good sharable and reproducible R code, how to do it, and why it’s good for science For this month's SORTEE webinar, Dr. Dax Kellie from the Atlas of Living Australia will present on good, sharable, and reproducible R code in science

In one week I'll be talking about tips for reproducible R code and why science would love you to try these tips on your own code too 🧪😍🌏

It's an online talk, so feel free to watch comfortably from your couch. Hope to see you there!
@sortee.bsky.social #rstats

events.humanitix.com/sortee-webin...

Join Xerces and help protect pollinators in Tennessee! 🏙️🌾🐝

Job Title: Pollinator Conservation Specialist, NRCS Partner Biologist, Urban Farms and Small-Scale Operations
🌎Location: Jackson, TN
💲Compensation: $65,998/yr
📅Apply by: Mar 26

Learn more and apply at xerces.org/jobs

Associate Lecturer in Plant Ecology PRIMARY DETAIL - Salary package: $123,435 FTE (Level B.1) plus 17% employer's superannuation contribution and annual leave loading. - Full-time- 35 hours per week, fixed term for 36 months - Based at ...

Exciting position at The School of Natural Sciences at Macquarie University.

We are looking for an Associate Lecturer in Plant Ecology.

A great opportunity to teach, mentor students and contribute to plant ecology research on the Wallumattagal Campus in Sydney.

I've been on SSE council since 2022 -- first as a council member and now as SSE President. I've loved every minute of it and have learned so much. If you're an SSE member and are interested in serving on council, let us know by self-nominating!

🌿 Postdoc opportunity in plant evolutionary ecology/genetics!

My lab in the Dept. of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan is recruiting a postdoctoral researcher to start Fall 2026.

We study plant adaptation, using weeds as model systems.

#Postdoc #EcoEvo

Pls RT!

Millions of Americans can now claim Canadian citizenship by descent. But they have to prove it | CBC News Amid rising tensions in the United States and increased global volatility, many Americans are looking to Canada — and their roots — for a possible way out following recent changes to Canada’s citizens...

Lots of Americans in my family tree are related to me via ancestors who came through Ontario. Sounds like they might be eligible. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Chewed-up orca fins on Russian beach point to cannibalism, and scientists say it may explain why some pods are so tight-knit Detached orca fins scored with distinctive tooth marks suggest that killer whale cannibalism is happening — and it might explain some complex orca societies.

#whale #orca #canibalism

"Filatova and her colleagues think the southern resident orcas were probably attacked and eaten by Bigg's orcas."

"At least now we know that cannibalism happens, but I think it is not super common," Filatova said.

share.google/JXA7WJXOn5zP...

At Largest ICE Detention Camp, Staff Bet on Detainee Suicides, AP Reports Camp East Montana has received several 911 calls in the span of five months about immigrants trying to harm themselves.

Staff at the nation’s largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility have placed bets on which detainee will be the next to die by suicide, according to new reporting from the Associated Press based on 911 calls and detainee accounts.

I’m so excited for this! Who’s going?

My talk will be about time, as ecology’s final frontier: dynamics, timescales, resolution and extent, historical contingencies, and the denominator of all ecological processes.

Publisher demands $500 from impersonated author to retract paper Last year, we wrote about a Walsh Medical Media journal that refused to withdraw an author’s paper unless he paid a fee — even though he didn’t write or submit the article. For one reader, some det…

Lol. This is academic publishing taken to its logical end.

Happy birthday!!!

The data is in: the NIH goalposts have shifted.

What were once almost certain fundable scores have become coin flips and what used to be likely grants have become aspirational, leading to fewer awards.

Another manifestation of how HHS policies have led to fewer awards and less science.