Christopher Witt

Colombia Declares Its Entire Amazon Region Off-Limits to Mining and Oil Extraction At COP30, Colombia's Minister of the Environment announced that the entire Amazon region would be declared free of mining and oil extraction.

Incredible……

Colombia declares its entire Amazon Biome off limits to mining & oil extraction.

Queue the ‘Streisand Effect’ so the American people become even more knowledgable about the law concerning ‘Illegal Military Orders’ and the oath taken to uphold The Constitution.

Both made by people®️

Late semester pandering for those good course evals 😅

The Ecuadorian Amazon taken from a canopy tower at the top of a Ceiba pentandra tree. CREDIT: Mark Bush

The Amazon Rainforest was shaped by people. Analysis of 262 trees species across 1,521 forest plots reveals that both pre-Columbian Indigenous peoples and European colonists enduringly influenced the forest’s relative abundance of trees. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/VAqY50XuP38

Check out our short warbler hybrid paper out today, including a new unofficial common name. Carotenoid people will find some little tidbits of discussion about how these hybrids can help us understand regulation of yellow feathers.

Figure with a photo of a member of then Solomons Monarch complex, a map of the Solomon Islands (divided into four island groups, Makira being the most isolated), and a principal component analysis highlighting the distinct between-island-group structure, with moderate structure within the New Georgia Group and weaker structure within the Bukida group (highlighted in an inset).

Just out in Systematic Biology, we explore the role of gene flow in island phylogeography of the Solomons Black-and-white Monarch complex. doi.org/10.1093/sysb...

Up first, strong genetic structure between islands groups and weak (but present!) structure between Pleistocene-connected islands (🧵)

Summer Undergraduate Research Experience | HHMI The Cech Fellows Program is a paid, nine-week summer research experience empowering the next generation of scientific leaders.

Our lab from @HHMINEWS & @UCBerkeley is looking for undergrads to come for an internship!
www.hhmi.org/programs/cec...

White House vision of NSF (3.9B) vs. House (7B) vs. Senate (9B), prior budget for NSF 9.06B

Instead, the House and Senate have proposed alternative budget views. If we want science to continue to do more than survive... but thrive, then Congress should pass a budget that enhances America's science portfolio (i.e., closest to the Senate version as in NSF example below).

*all slop 😅

*fools who pay

David dont make the yalies feel bad

College of A&S - Biology - FAC - Robert E. Maytag Chair of Ornithology - Associate Professor to Professor Current Employees: If you are a current Staff, Faculty or Temporary employee at the University of Miami, please click here to log in to Workday to use the internal application process. To learn how to...

‘Endowed Chair of Ornithology’ jobs don’t come along too often, but here’s one: umiami.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/UMFacu...

Graphic showing the paper title “Monk parakeets ‘test the waters’ when forming new relationships” in the journal Biology Letters. Also features photos of the co-authors (Claire, Annemarie, Gerry, and Liz) as well as the issue cover photo of two marked monk parakeets from Claire’s work grooming each other. Also shown are some of the main plots of the paper showing how the parakeets escalate their behaviors from low risk/low investment (like proximity) to higher risk/higher investment interactions (like preening/grooming)

In an increasingly divided world, how do strangers become friends? Parakeets might have something to teach us! New paper on formation of affiliative relationships, led by Dr. Claire O’Connell doi.org/10.1098/rsbl...

Specificity, length and luck drive gene rankings in association studies - Nature Genetic association tests prioritize candidate genes based on different criteria.

How do GWAS and rare variant burden tests rank gene signals?

In new work @nature.com with @hakha.bsky.social, @jkpritch.bsky.social, and our wonderful coauthors we find that the key factors are what we call Specificity, Length, and Luck!

🧬🧪🧵

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Here’s what everyone must say.

Wow. I guess this bolsters the idea that instant-runoff voting is too complex for the electorate 😢

Harlem Congressman Vito Marcantonio is Mamdani’s closing message—and practiced at the Garland Fund’s law firm. Of course. #TheRadicalFund is all around us. @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social

Look at these cosplay cowboys, geared up to wage war against us.

Spelman College receives $38 million ‘unrestricted’ gift from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott The university says Scott’s gift lets it address expanding financial aid and scholarship support and investing in a state-of-the-art technology infrastructure “to enhance the academic experience.”

Again Mackenzie Scott ftw www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2025/11/03/s...

There are five birds with the word "rainbow" in their names.

Let's meet them.

🪶

Flyer for CAMBIUM (Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Through Biodiversity Informatics Education and Mentoring) Graduate Research Traineeship program. Right side shows a scenic photograph of tall saguaro cacti against desert mountains. Program highlights listed in a blue box include: professional development training in communication, teamwork, and professionalism; interdisciplinary research rotations; career and professional development; $34,000 stipend with paid tuition, fees, and health insurance coverage for 2 years; and a Certificate in Biodiversity Informatics. A red box announces an informational webinar on November 18th at 2:30 PM MST with link to the CAMBIUM program website at https://cambium.arizona.edu/. Eligibility requirements include U.S. citizenship or permanent residency, incoming graduate student status for Fall 2026, and acceptance contingent on graduate program admission. Bottom features a 'Register here!' button with registration link at https://events.trellis.arizona.edu/en/f44lNu67/cambium-informational-webinar-4a3UKgGu6U/overview, along with NSF, University of Arizona, and CAMBIUM NRT logos.

Join us on Nov 18 at 2:30 PM MST to learn about CAMBIUM grad fellowships in biodiversity informatics & climate change @uarizona.bsky.social. For incoming Fall 2026 students interested in big data, ecology, evolution, climate adaptation & more. Register: events.trellis.arizona.edu/en/f44lNu67/... 🌵🧬🌐

@ethanofthegulls.bsky.social

Only a few pages into @carlzimmer's new book, but already learned something (something an avian systematist should already know...):

"pedigree" derives from the french "pied de grue", as branching family tree diagrams were thought to resemble a crane's foot.

A graph showing how the global biomass of wild mammals is small compared to that of humans and domesticated mammals.

Amazing. From: The global biomass of wild mammals, PNAS (2023), 120 (10) e2204892120
doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

The Good Samaritan, by Joseph Highmore, 1744, 📸 by @patricksmith04

Figure 1 from the paper, showing (at top) the breeding distribution of greenish warblers in Asia. This is a ring of populations encircling the Tibetan Plateau, with two different species in west and east Siberia, and a ring of gradually changing populations connecting them to the south. In the lower left of the figure is a bivariate plot illustrating genomic relationships of individual birds around the ring. In the lower right is a plot of how the major axis of genetic variation changes with location around the ring.

Pleased to see published today: the Molecular Ecology special issue on "Genomics of Speciation"; many interesting papers: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1365294x...

Included in this issue is our paper on "The Distribution and Dispersal of Large Haploblocks in a Superspecies":

doi.org/10.1111/mec....

SIX cat species >4,200 m?!?! That’s amazing. I don’t imagine there would be more than two at similar heights in the Andes

Think about this for a minute

US citizen, 67, ‘has six ribs broken’ by Border Patrol agents, his running club says The incident unfolded Saturday in Chicago’s Old Irving Park neighborhood, where residents say federal agents disrupted a children’s Halloween parade

"According to his running club, the man, who is a U.S. citizen, was returning from a team run when agents pulled him out of his vehicle, tackled him to the ground and kneeled on top of him, allegedly breaking six ribs and causing internal bleeding"