Michael Jennions

'Gobsmacking': Former ANU chancellor's searing letter blasts university's leadership Professor Gareth Evans shares some advice for Julie Bishop and Genevieve Bell.

Professor Evans … said he hoped the university’s leadership “will recognise the gravity of my concerns, which I know are shared by many others in the University community and am equally sure will be by the Minister for Education ...”

www.canberratimes.com.au/story/902083...

Guilt

Sex ratio theory for facultative parthenogens: from fortuitously optimal stick insects to the origin of haplodiploidy in Hymenoptera Abstract. Sex ratio theory usually assumes obligate sex; rare exceptions with facultative sex typically consider idiosyncratic cases of cyclic parthenogens

Why did bees become haplodiploid & birds didn't? And why are stick insects perfect just the way they are? This is probably the coolest paper from @koraklein.bsky.social‬ 's PhD thesis (though there's Colias butterfly work in the pipeline which I shouldn't diss...)
academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

Field team in Wytham Woods May 2025

Image of the new Biology Building, completed, and opening from August 2025

Lunch with the field team to celebrate another successful season - May 2025

Interested in Postdoc Research here in Oxford? Many projects possible using long-term population studies of birds, field & lab experiments with insect consumers, phenology of trees all in Wytham woods & based in new Biology building
marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/calls/msca-p...

It's publication day of my first book: The Tree of Life. The tree of life is a time machine that can take us back 4 billion years to meet our most distant ancestor. It is the magic that lets us tell the origin stories, beginning with this ancient relative, of everything from mushrooms to man.

Exclusive: NSF stops awarding new grants and funding existing ones US science funder also plans to screen grant applications for compliance with ‘agency priorities’.

Nature reports that the National Science Foundation has stopped awarding new grants and allotting funds to existing ones. All of them. @colincarlson.bsky.social says that unless the freeze is lifted, it “is going to destroy people's labs.” 2/10
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Great news! I will definitely do this course out when I have time. I’ve already watched one video* and found it useful.

* a discussion of the dangers of using LLMs to create lecture content.

Very happy and humbled to have received this award. A huge thanks to all my wonderful colleagues @scienceanu.bsky.social and abroad who made this possible!

And that’s a wrap! My last PhD research is now published 💪💪

Over 9 weeks we made males consistently experience winning or losing fights, with some winners/losers also able to mate, to test the impacts of contest outcome and reproductive investment on reproduction, growth and telomere length.

Hi. Thank you to everyone - all 161 people - who signed the letter in support of nominating @arc-tracker.bsky.social for a Eureka Prize for Leadership in Science. The nomination was lodged last night. Keep your fingers crossed for a good outcome for our masked hero.

Congratulations to @jack-brand.bsky.social , the team and yourself.

Screenshot of a tweet from the ARC providing an email address alternative to the Education Department’s portal for submissions to the review of the ARC grant process.

In case you’re trying to submit your response to the review of ARC grants, the Education Department’s portal is/was borked. Email instead👇

Changes to ARC grants will make it harder for Australia to combat Trump chaos, researchers warn Plan to cut most standalone positions in favour of shorter fellowships will hurt international recruitment, critics say

Guardian Australia @australia.theguardian.com reporting on the proposed changes to the ARC grants system.

There’s concern that getting rid of standalone fellowships will have lots of unintended consequences, especially for Early-Career Researchers.

By @donnadlu.bsky.social

Great to see @nteuact.bsky.social coming right at this to make it crystal clear that academic freedom is not up for grabs in Australia and at ANU. Happy to talk with anyone about the issue who wants to know more.

CONVERGENT EVOLUTION is the independent development of similar traits or features in distantly related or unrelated organisms, often occurring when they occupy similar ecological niches or face similar environmental pressures 🦉 🍏

This year I’m teaching a science writing course. When the course started, I had this exact conversation with the students - Your thoughts are fuzzy phantoms that ping around in your brain. If you want to catch and share those thoughts you need to pin them to the page.

Meanwhile, in Europe👇

No budget increase for the Australian Research Council 😡

The loss of a legend- Kanzi, the language-competent bonobo, has died age 44.
Kanzi was exceptional in so many ways and offered us profound insights into the linguistic & cognitive capacities of great apes. He has taught us so much and will be hugely missed.
www.apeinitiative.org/remembering-...

Screenshot of the linked Quarto website, with input checkboxes to change different conditions for a regression model that predicts economic performance based on US political party, with a reported p-value

I’ve long used FiveThirtyEight’s interactive “Hack Your Way To Scientific Glory” to illustrate the idea of p-hacking when I teach statistics. But ABC/Disney killed the site earlier this month :(

So I made my own with #rstats and Observable and #QuartoPub ! stats.andrewheiss.com/hack-your-way/

Letter of Support for nomination of @ARC_Tracker for a Eureka Prize for Leadership in Science In signing this form you endorse the proposal to nominate @ARC_Tracker for a Eureka Prize in the category 'Leadership in Science'. The list of signatories will be appended to the nomination form. I wi...

Come on folk, get off your butts! Let's thank @arc-tracker.bsky.social. 3500+ of you follow their posts about proposed changes in ARC funding & which schemes remain open for now. But only 135 of you have signed up to support their nomination for a Eureka prize. Sign!

forms.gle/ie7b32rWcZKK...

Vulnerability of amphibians to global warming - Nature A 4 °C global temperature increase would push 7.5% of amphibian species beyond their physiological limits.

@nature.com has just published online our new paper!🎉🐸🌡️Lead by @patricepottier.bsky.social and supervised by myself and @itchyshin.bsky.social: in this massive research effort we overcome several common convictions related to the topics we studied. www.nature.com/articles/s41... Here are take-homes.

We now have 125+ signatures to nominate @arc-tracker.bsky.social for a Eureka Prize. But there should be many more. ARC Tracker has 3000+ followers. Please repost & spread the word. Most signatures are from biologists. Please alert those in the humanities, social sciences, etc to sign. Thank you!

A read today’s e-newsletter from our central administration and the heading of one section was ‘Leave management’. I thought ‘Yes, a few of you really should’ but it turns out it was a noun not a verb. My mistake.

@frankbongiorno.bsky.social
@nteuact.bsky.social

Scientists closer to engineering more resilient food crops Researchers have discovered a powerful “weapon” used by many disease-causing fungi to infect and destroy major food crop staples could offer new strategies to bolster global food security.

A global research team, including ANU scientists, discovered that an enzyme known as a ‘NUDIX hydrolase’ is used by many fungal pathogens as a weapon to cause disease in plants. The findings are published in Science. science.anu.edu.au/news-events/...

Job alert! Lectuter in Evolutionary Biology out now

Job alert!

We seek to appoint a new Lecturer in Evolutionary Biology in the School of Biological Sciences, find out more at the link below!

www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...

Thanks Jon.

Thanks James!

Smart is sexy – new study on fish doing puzzles hints intelligence partly evolved via sexual selection A better brain might help an animal find more mates, have more sex, and eventually have more babies.

A popular account by @cogniivan.bsky.social of our study on sexual selection and intelligence in fish that is now out in Nature Ecology & Evolution. The journal link is in the article.

theconversation.com/smart-is-sex...

Paternity analysis reveals sexual selection on cognitive performance in mosquitofish - Nature Ecology & Evolution The authors find that male mosquitofish with greater inhibitory control and better spatial learning ability gain a significantly higher share of paternity than do more impulsive males, suggesting that...

Here is a link to the paper - sorry it is not open access but at almost AU$20,000 that was far beyond our means. Please email me if you don't have journal access and would like to read the study.

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