Christopher Witt

I figure the 3-toed woodpecker is misnamed bc 3 toes PER FOOT

Are anteaters the new crabs??

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcini...

Early this morning #Whimbrel POTSKAR landed in Guinea, W Africa, after flying 7000+km from St-Petersburg, Russia. It took POTSKAR 5.5 days of NON-STOP flight, varying altitude from 10s of meters over the Baltic and the Med, to >5km over land. #ornithology

www.globalflywaynetwork.org/tracks/speci...

This is a tremendous letter overall, but the answer to #3 is YES (a small error but deserving of correction).

Text from an FAQ in Okbay et al 20222: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-022-01016-z a similar same statement is made in an FAQ in 2025: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.14.653986v1.supplementary-material Text reads: "The results of SSGAC studies have sometimes been used by online platforms, including some companies, to predict individual outcomes. We recognize that returning individual genomic “results” can be a fun way to engage people in research and other projects and to feed or stoke their interest in genomics. But it is important that participants/users understand that these individual results are not meaningful predictions and should be regarded essentially as entertainment. Failure to make this point clear risks sowing confusion and undermining trust in genetics research"

It is depressing, but all too predictable, how swiftly we’ve gone from the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium offering reassurances about the uses of behavioural polygenic scores to one of their lead authors marketing embryo selection for IQ

Reconsidering space-for-time substitution in climate change ecology - Nature Climate Change Ecologists often leverage patterns observed across spatial climate gradients to predict the impacts of climate change (space-for-time substitution). We highlight evidence that this can be misleading n...

New paper out on the dangers of using patterns across spatial climate gradients to predict what will happen with changing climate. That includes species distribution modeling. Space-for-time substitution can be misleading in sign, not just the magnitude of effects.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Increased drought drives avian community declines in the warm deserts of the United States The frequencies, intensities, and durations of extreme weather are increasing under climate change, furthering biodiversity loss. In the Southwestern …

New research from our lab documents important drought impacts on desert bird communities in the SW United States 🌎🐦

25 years of bird data across the Mojave & Sonoran deserts, show drought drives clear declines in bird abundance & species richness.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

1/3

Check out our new special feature: Monitoring and Restoring Gene Flow in the Increasingly Fragmented Ecosystems of the Anthropocene www.pnas.org/topic/574 #biodiversity #evolution #ecology #popgen #ClimateEmergency

How conspiracy theories about COVID’s origins are hampering our ability to prevent the next pandemic The COVID pandemic likely began when the virus jumped from animals to humans, and didn’t start in a lab. But false narratives continue to circulate.

The politically weaponized "lab leak" theory is destroying both pandemic preparedness & all of American science.

Grateful to @kgandersen.bsky.social, @arambaut.bsky.social, @eddieholmes.bsky.social, & Bob Garry for their courage & commitment to our field.

theconversation.com/how-conspira...

Bequeath

The LISTEN principles for genetic sequence data governance and database engineering - Nature Genetics This Perspective proposes a checklist of six database design considerations, LISTEN: licensed, identified, supervised, transparent, enforced and non-exclusive, aimed at ensuring access and benefit-sharing principles in open science.

🚨 NEW today in Nature Genetics: the LISTEN principles are a FAIR-compatible framework that will allow genetic sequence databases to seamlessly participate in new multilateral access and benefit-sharing systems, such as the CBD Cali Fund and the WHO PABS System. 🧬🧪

🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Love this story. How a Peruvian in Rome became the papal barber

The NIH’s 2024 budget of just under $37B generated $95B in economic activity in 2024 alone. 99.4% of new pharmaceuticals approved from 2010-2019 came from NIH-funded research. I’m hard pressed to think of anything that generates as much direct economic benefit as our NIH did before they destroyed it

This lying monster.

NIH created and funded therapies his own daughter with cystic fibrosis benefits from.

Legitimizers including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, Nate Silver… 😢

Yep, that was the point.

Clear for a long time before they took power, and yet very little resistence or at least introspection from the media &polizical elites on the left and center who happily did their part in legitimizing the false lab leak myth to the public.

Here’s the ‘lab leak’ family of Covid conspiracy theories, all of which are utter BS, being used to justify Project 2025’s destruction of federal science

(Also, leaf-blowers-on-lizards was NSF funded, not NIH, and it was both cheap and clever)

Biologist folk (especially in evolutionary biology and/or ecology, but it don’t matter):

Can you give me your favorite examples of trade offs in biology? Organism or system don’t matter. Primary literature or reviews preferred.

A 3d rendering of a CT scan of a Rio Cauca caecilian with transparent body and bone colored skeleton, showing 7 baby caecilians inside, each rendered in a different color - counter-clockwise from tail to head - red, orange, yellow, green, light blue, dark blue, purple.

Say hello to Florida's newest established species, Typhlonectes natans - the Rio Cauca Caecilian! You can read about their relative abundance, distribution, & natural history, in our brand new paper:

journals.ku.edu/reptilesanda...

Here is one individual I CT scanned that had 7 babies inside!

I normally think about #fire from an ecological perspective, so really enjoyed thinking about the role of fire in the evolutionary past and future with @ltkelly.bsky.social. Take a look, it's a short read!

Rubio’s eyes look dead

Lightning-illuminated night sky over flooded street as people look on

Lightning illuminated night sky over flooded streets, Cape May, NJ

…Maxwell still means ‘good to the last drop’…

This is amazing work. "Golly, why are these insects so funny looking?" leads to research on their electrostatic sense.

One could imagine this leading to better sensors for lightning potential, buried cables, biological processes, and more.

All because of curiosity and funding for basic science. 🧪

Electroreception in treehoppers: How extreme morphologies can increase electrical sensitivity | PNAS The link between form and function of an organism’s morphology is usually apparent or intuitive. However, some clades of organisms show remarkable ...

Why do treehoppers look so weird?! Our latest paper, out this week in @pnas.org, suggests a perhaps unexpected reason - static electricity ⚡ We show that treehoppers can detect the electrostatic cues of predators and that their crazy shapes may boost their electrosensitivity! doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

🔊 Listen Now: Why our state bird loves it here KUNM on NPR One | 3:53

In which i assert that Albuquerque is #1 for urban roadrunners (a claim more suitable for NPR than for peer review) one.npr.org/i/g-s227-664...

Origins and Diversification of the Caatinga Dry Forest Endemic Avifauna Aim Understanding the geographic origin of lineages is critical to comprehending their biogeographical and evolutionary histories and the historical connections among biomes. In northeastern Brazil,...

Have you ever wondered about the origin of birds restricted to specific regions? Led by doctoral student Hevana Lima, we attempt to unravel the origins of birds endemic to the Caatinga dry forests in Brazil. Check our ms out! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

‪Study on black, brown & polar bears shows inbreeding & genetic load vary by population history. Isolated groups face higher risks, while mixed populations hold more diversity (even harmful variants). That's key for conservation! 🐻🐻‍❄️

doi.org/10.1111/eva....

This Columbia extortion is absolutely wild. Amongst other things, they PAID $200 million to the government to get their federal grants back. Insanity.