Brian O'Meara

Pls re-post: My department @oxfordbiochemistry.bsky.social are recruiting for several new faculty positions (links below). Broad search in molecular biology/biochemistry, across prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Interested in understanding life at the molecular level, this job might be for you!
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Beloved lepidopterist Kevin dissects some noctuid genitalia in the Visible Lab, which he has decorated to look like the penalty box at a hockey game. He is wearing a Pens jersey and a hockey helmet while he looks thru the microscope.

I thought our new “visible lab” space felt like a petting zoo but @mothpotato.bsky.social had a much better idea

kill the imposter syndrome in you head because not only is there someone out there doing it worse than you, they're also using chat gpt to do it

Anyways.

Birds That Don't Exist: Niche Pre‐Emption as a Constraint on Morphological Evolution in the Passeroidea We use topological data analysis to reveal a persistent morphological gap in a major group of songbirds (superfamily Passeroidea). The gap remained unoccupied for millions of years, even though nearb...

Well damn, this is cool.

Birds That Don't Exist: Niche Pre-Emption as a Constraint on Morphological Evolution in the Passeroidea | Chia et al., 2026 | Ecology Letters

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

I’d be happy to go over the economics with you (been on the core organizing committee for 4 years, chief organizer for 2), but this is far and away the most cost effective way to offer a virtual meeting and has been great for global engagement

Evolution has been the two separate modalities for a few years now. The SSB-only satellite meetings are only in person

🎓We are advertising three 2-year research+teaching positions in applied maths or stats.

These have a reduced teaching load (50 lectures a yr) compared to a standard academic position so applicants can gain teaching experience while having time for research

jobs.canterbury.ac.nz/jobdetails/a...

If there were ever a species that would be the right one to do conservation on, it’d be this.

🐳 Large, charismatic
🐳 Easy to track
🐳 Of interest to tourists
🐳 Near many universities, aquariums
🐳 Clear risks

and yet down to <400 individuals, and we’re seeking to deregulate

Enabling Fieldwork for All (EFFA) Framework: Supporting physical, social, financial, and psychological safety in the field Comprehensive review of fieldwork safety literature across disciplines yields synthesized recommendations.

Excited to share a new paper written by a AAAS Policy Fellow I mentor, Dr. Lisa Walsh.

“This review synthesizes literature on fieldwork safety across scientific disciplines, highlighting four facets of safety for leaders and researchers to address: physical, social, financial, and psychological.”

0th International Barcode of Life Conference in Bangkok, 2-6 November 2026

Registration and abstract submission is open for the 10th International Barcode of Life Conference in Bangkok, 2-6 November 2026 dnabarcodingconference.com #dnabarcoding @boldsystems.bsky.social @iboleurope.bsky.social

🚨 We're hiring!
Postdoctoral positions in modeling of development and evolution at @stockholm-uni.bsky.social & @scilifelab.se

Focus: dynamical systems, time-series, phylogenetics, dimensionality reduction

📍 Stockholm
🕒 2+1 years
🔍 Details: su.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

Please share!

I could see it maybe being useful for history. But the reality is it’d probably just train future LLMs that (human, orangutan) is a viable hypothesis…

Huh. I suspect I have years of archives in my inbox. Would this be of interest to put online somewhere?

Tatsuya seminar

Social insect themed snacks

Social insect themed spread

Grape termites with almond sliver legs and edible eyes!

Great day for the #MoreauLab! Postdoc Tatsuya Inagaki @tatsuyainagaki.bsky.social gave the EEB seminar and we hosted a pre-seminar social insect themed coffee!

David Marques was an amazing speciation genomics researcher, a passionate birder, and a wonderful friend, husband, and father. May he rest in peace. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We already have more than 💯 participants for #ExE2026, but there are still places available.

Once you have registered, you have until April 1 to submit an abstract, so don’t miss out and register now at sites.exeter.ac.uk/exe/registra...

Everything you need to know is 👇 and at evoxeco.uk!

Symbols This is some text with a footnote.* Here is another footnote.† And a third.‡ A fourth footnote here.§ And a fifth.¶ Sixth,‖ seventh,** eighth,†† ninth,‡‡ and tenth.§§

Continuing from a Previous Document This document is part of a series. The previous part had three footnotes, so this one begins at iv.iv The numbering continues naturally.v And so on.vi A fourth footnote here.vii And a fifth.viii Footnotes First footnote in this document — marker is iv. ↩︎ Second footnote — marker is v. ↩︎ Third footnote — marker is vi. ↩︎ Fourth footnote — marker is vii. ↩︎ Fifth footnote — marker is viii. ↩︎

Format support Every Quarto format handles footnotes differently, and not every format supports every possible extension option. | Feature | HTML | LaTeX | Typst | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | All `style` options | Yes | Yes | Yes | | `custom` symbols | Yes | Yes | Yes | | `cycle` modes | Yes | Yes | Yes | | `start-at` | Yes | Yes | Yes | | `marker-prefix`/`marker-suffix` | Yes | Yes | Yes | | `text-prefix`/`text-suffix` | Yes | No | No | | CSS customization | Yes | — | — |

Three screenshots from InDesign showing the `style` option, `start-at` option, and `marker/text prefix/suffix` options

New #QuartoPub extension! Footnote Styles: github.com/andrewheiss/...

You can use one of nine InDesign-style footnote numbering systems (like *, †, ‡, §, ¶ symbols!) or define your own. You can also start numbers at arbitrary values and do a bunch of other neat things.

This is making the rounds uncredited once again, so... 🤷‍♀️

A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025 for the Directorate of Biological Sciences.

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A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025.

NSF Update (Awards through 2/27/26)

Directorates to follow

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Michelle Stocker and Stephanie Drumheller (selfie) at a lab bench.

Back at it today on the VTCT scanner.

And also working on an unrelated manuscript while the machine hums away in the background.

Seminar flier for Wissam’s defense

My PhD student Wissam Jawad defends his dissertation tomorrow! 1pm CST - please join us if you’re on campus or message me for a zoom link if you’d like to join us remotely.

Today I learned that I can film darter gill parasites live!! Here's a fantail darter parasite throwing the teeniest tiniest tantrum I have ever witnessed (40x magnification).This might be the first time this species has ever been filmed. Look how cute it is!!

new package alert! {tidychain} is a #rstats packaged inspired by the below authors experience in showing how an excel file was changed / manipulated by looking at the underlying xml files to prove fraud in research

datacolada.org/109package

usrbinr.codeberg.page/tidychain/

David Botstein | 1942 - 2026 | Online-Tribute.com David was a beloved husband, father, brother, scientist, teacher, mentor, musician, friend, who touched the lives of thousands. David’s wide-ranging scientific career spanned decades with a legacy o…

Crap

www.online-tribute.com/DavidBotstein

David Botstein passed away. I worked with him at Stanford for a few years in designing and teaching a course on "The Heart". My heart is heavy right now. He was a wonderful mentor.

So I pleased to announce the conceptual spawn of FigTree: PearTree (acronym still to be finalised). If you want to dive right in it is hosted as a web app here: artic-network.github.io/peartree (click the “Example...” button for immediate candy and then click every button you can find).

An historic black and white illustration of a paper nautilus floating on the ocean. There are boats, a city and hills in the background.

🎉 Huge news for BHL: The Field Museum is taking over the hosting of BHL’s website, servers & infrastructure, ensuring long-term stability and access for its 63+ million pages of open biodiversity literature. Learn more:
blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2026/02/tran...
#BHLTransition #ILoveBHL 🌍 📚 🧪

FAQ for NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP) return without review (RWR)

An NSF spokesperson just responded to our request for percentages:

"NSF declines to provide the data. As stated below, we do not have any additional information to share beyond what is already included in the FAQs: www.nsf.gov/funding/info...

The last-minute change in eligibility criteria excluded second-year grad students, so the total number of NSF GRFP applications is likely to be MUCH smaller.

We're playing word games if they don't tell us % of applications returned without review.

I appreciate @klangin.bsky.social's work on this!