Marty Kardos

Optimising Genome‐Wide Detection of Runs of Homozygosity: Impacts of Reference Genome Quality and Sequencing Parameters on Inbreeding Assessment Inbreeding and inbreeding depression pose a critical challenge to the persistence of small and isolated populations, driving the need for precise assessment of genomic metrics. Genome-wide runs of ho...

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

The EPA will approve two new pesticides containing “forever chemicals” and relax a reporting rule for companies who make products with forever chemicals.

The moves come after a $60 million lobbying blitz from the forever chemical industry.

Where is the MAHA outcry?

To be clear: he is in no way a "man in science." The entire premise here is laughable.

🧬 Out now! This study on the endangered eastern Massasauga rattlesnake reveals 218 candidate genes linked to disease response, highlighting genetic factors that may influence resistance to Snake Fungal Disease.
(Photo from the Gibbs Lab)

Bowhead whale. Illustration by Uko Gorter/American Cetacean Society

How bowhead whales live for centuries—and how we might borrow some of their biology to extend our healthy lifespan. Gift link to my new column: nyti.ms/4hyD9ry

Trump Opens Pristine Alaska Wilderness to Drilling in Long-Running Feud

More geniuses at work! www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/c...

Heat Has Essentially Wiped Out 2 Key Coral Species on Florida Reefs

Removing building blocks. one at a time.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/c...

Q&A: inbreeding and its implications for conservation - BMC Biology Inbreeding depression plays a role in the decline, endangerment, and extinction of small populations, and thus inbreeding has received much attention in conservation biology. The term inbreeding is us...

All those questions about inbreeding in conservation that you were afraid to ask.

A bunch of early career scientists is here to explain something that even Wright and Fisher couldn't agree on, the (not so) simple question of what is inbreeding.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Geniuses at work

It’s hard to imagine how platforming such a terrible person could be a good thing

Not unless there is a viable wild population

Washington Post: White House begins destroying East wing facade to build Trump’s ballroom

It’s not his house. It’s your house. And he’s destroying it.

📣📣📣 CONSERVATION GENETICS WORKSHOP -
Few more spaces left!

ConGen Population Genomic Data Analysis Course
🧬💻💡
University of Pretoria, South Africa 🌍
7-14 December + field trip to Kruger NP!
🦁🐃🐘🐆🦏

More info & registration here: www.umt.edu/congen/africa/

Salmon clear last Klamath dams, reaching Williamson and Sprague rivers Just a year after four dams were removed, a group of fall Chinook have migrated nearly 300 miles into the Upper Klamath Basin.

For the first time in more than 100 years, Chinook salmon have been spotted at the confluence of the Sprague and Williamson rivers in Chiloquin, the government seat of the Klamath Tribes in Southern Oregon.

Really nice! Congrats.

A mosaic of modular variation at a single gene underpins convergent plumage coloration The reshuffling of genomic variation from multiple origins is an important contributor to phenotypic diversification, yet insights into the evolutionary trajectories of this combinatorial process and ...

1/9 New in @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ado8005
How does genetic architecture constrain evolutionary trajectories? To address this question, we inferred the genetic architecture of convergent plumage coloration and its evolutionary history in wheatears.

After a long and frustrating discussion with the Cell Press ”help”-desk, led by Ben and Tom, the paper is finally made open access (in line with what we had requested and expected from the beginning) 😅

Low mutation rate but high male-bias in the germline of a short-lived opossum Abstract. Age and sex have been found to be important determinants of the mutation rate per generation in mammals, but the mechanisms underlying these fact

New paper led by @yadirapga.bsky.social!

Opossums have babies at 6-months of age, but are still highly male-biased in their mutations

academic.oup.com/genetics/adv...

Purple pollen visible in a dissected flower of Linum grandiflorum, flowering flax, an insect-pollinated species.

*Postdoc in Evolutionary genomics at Stockholm University*
We are recruiting a postdoc for a large interdisciplinary project to investigate evolutionary drivers and genomic consequences of pollen evolution in response to pollination mode shifts in flowering plants. 1/5

su.varbi.com/what:job/job...

I'm hiring a postdoc... By combining samples that are more than a million years old with the short generation time of small rodents, we hope to gain a unique window into evolution unfolding across millions of generations!

Law Firm Pressures Brown University to Erase Research on Anti-Wind Groups

My lab's been attacked by an anti-wind group and their lawyers. They threatened the science funding of my whole university, to shut me and my undergraduate research assistants up.

NYT just covered it. 1/n

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/25/c...

Inbreeding reduces fitness in spatially structured populations of a threatened rattlesnake | PNAS Small and fragmented populations are at high risk of local extinction, in part because of elevated inbreeding and subsequent inbreeding depression....

www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

ConGen: Population Genomic Data Analysis Course/Workshop, South Africa 2025

Conservation Genomics course (ConGen) this December in South Africa

This course is always a lot of fun, and will be great for grad students, postdocs, or anyone else wanting to dive into applications of genomics for conservation and management of wild populations. www.umt.edu/congen/africa/

A great way to destroy biodiversity is to be consciously ignorant of it

I’m pretty amazed that any real scientists are still willing to be involved with Colossal.

Wyoming deer are heading to the high country, some will travel up to 150 miles. Amazing - and necessary - movements across vast swaths of YOUR public lands. Follow along for weekly updates!

N.I.H. Workers Denounce Trump’s ‘Harmful’ Health Policies

This is admirable

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/09/h...

Agents that make frequent massive mistakes I suspect

We really did live through a world-historical scientific and technical effort to contain a pandemic, decide that we don't ever want to do that again, and conclude that means tearing down everything and everyone involved in containing a pandemic