Frederic Delsuc

📣 📣 Calling genomics-y and ecology friends, three permanent faculty positions at @monashbiol.bsky.social in Melbourne, Australia! See job listings here.

It’s impossible; it will be a transgenic emu, aka a #GMO, but it does give #ColossalBio more free press and another #DisInformation campaign to fundraise on 🧪

Effort to revive New Zealand’s extinct moa stirs controversy Suggestions that nation’s Indigenous Māori wholeheartedly back project draws criticism

Effort to revive New Zealand’s extinct moa stirs controversy | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

@cnrsecologie.bsky.social regrette profondément l'adoption de cette loi à la vision court-termiste & ses conséquences graves sur l’environnement, qui méprise santé & bien-être de la population & le rôle des espèces sauvages dans la prod. agricole. La communauté scientifique n'a pas été entendue.

The Extinction of Truth Or, a Colossal Pile of Bullshit

Re-upping given the moa deëxtinction nonsense from #ColossalBio and it’s cofounder Ben Lamm, it’s nominally about dire wolf “deëxtinction” but applies just as well to moas

substack.com/inbox/post/1...

Colossal's plans to "de-extinct" the giant moa are still impossible After a controversial project claiming to have resurrected the dire wolf, Colossal Biosciences has now announced plans to bring back nine species of the extinct moa bird

Colossal are likely trying to ‘de-extinct’ the moa by tweaking an emu genome. There’s 62 million years of evolution between an emu and a moa.

For context, there’s only 42 MY between humans and howler monkeys. You simply can’t make a human with a GM howler monkey
www.newscientist.com/article/2487...

Moa "de-extinction" plans announced - Expert Reaction An overseas company has announced plans to "bring back" the South Island giant moa. Colossal Biosciences, working with Ngāi Tahu Research Centre and Canterbury Museum, says it expects to "resurrect" t...

I have serious concerns about Colossal Biosciences, Canterbury Museum & Ngāi Tahu Research Centre pursuing moa de-extinction, incl whether informed widespread engagement w/ Ngāi Tahu rūnanga & South Island iwi was done (many are against de-extinction) www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/2025/07/09/m... 1/3

‘I don’t want my training to go to waste’: the Argentinian scientists working side jobs amid Milei’s sweeping cuts Javier Milei’s government’s punishing budget cuts have forced researchers to take up work as electricians, school teachers or Uber drivers

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

About the tragic situation that the scientific system from Argentina is undergoing

Le monde des revues scientifiques au bord de l’asphyxie Plus de 3 millions d’articles sont publiés chaque année dans les revues scientifiques, les chercheurs étant incités à les multiplier pour se distinguer. Une logique économique perverse s’est installée...

Merci David Larousserie du @lemonde.fr pour cet article sur la publication scientifique en asphyxie
www.lemonde.fr/article-offe...

Four review requests in my inbox this morning. The one I accepted? Society journal.

Our Societies consistently reinvest in our communities in ways the glossies never will. And that makes me invest in them.

Bar chart titled "Matters of Scale" comparing proposed US research budget cuts to the European Union's €500-million (US$571-million) "Choose Europe" fund. The chart shows: * National Institutes of Health (NIH): $8 billion in cancelled grants and $18 billion in proposed cuts by 2026 (long orange bar). * National Science Foundation (NSF): $5.1 billion in proposed cuts by 2026 (shorter orange bar). * EU's Choose Europe fund: $571 million (very short blue bar). The graphic highlights that the EU fund is much smaller in scale compared to the US budget cuts. Text above the chart explains the EU’s intention to attract US researchers in response to policy decisions by the convicted felon and rapist Donald Trump.

If people think American scientists are somehow going to land in Europe, I've got news for you about the difference between millions and billions.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

New preprint: we advertise DAFNEE, a database of academia-friendly eco-evo-archaeo journals. 1/6
#AcademicPublishing #ecoevo #archaeology #EthicalPublishing #SocietyJournals #DiamondOpenAccess
doi.org/10.32942/X24...

In @elife.bsky.social: Effective population size does not explain long-term variation in genome size and transposable element content in animals doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

This is the revised version of our manuscript, which will become the final published version !

The DAFNEE database of academia-friendly journals is now using OpenAlex instead of PubMed to find your papers for the author index.
That's great especially for #archaeology since most are not indexed in PubMed.
Go see the second tab on dafnee.isem-evolution.fr !
@nicolasgaltier.bsky.social 🏺🧪

An episodic burst of massive genomic rearrangements and the origin of non-marine annelids - Nature Ecology & Evolution An analysis of annelid genomes reveals massive reshuffling of chromosomes in the ancestral lineage leading to clitellates, a clade composed of non-marine annelids, with potential implications for the ...

Glad to see this paper finally out! An episodic burst of massive genomic rearrangements and the origin of non-marine annelids
@natecoevo.nature.com @ibe-barcelona.bsky.social @csic.es @erc.europa.eu www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Springer Nature Discovers MDPI – The Strain on Scientific Publishing Home page for the paper ‘The Strain on Scientific Publishing’ by Mark A Hanson, Dan Brockington, Paolo Crosetto and Pablo Gomez Barreiro

Springer-Nature launched a series of "Discover" journals that closely mimic MDPI titles -- sharing *identical* journal names, and likely similar business model.

What is going on, and why researcher will - as always - fall for it?

A 🧵

the-strain-on-scientific-publishing.github.io/website/post...

PCI Psychology is here!! 🎉🥳

After over a year of hard work by so many people, we are thrilled to announce that we are open for submissions! Join us in making publishing more efficient, equitable, and open: psych.peercommunityin.org
#PsychSciSky #scipub

After 15 years of research, we're excited to share that the causative agent of White-Nose Syndrome/Disease is actually two cryptic fungal species, each showing host specialisation. We've also traced the introduction to North America back to Podillia, Ukraine.

Four AI-generated "articles" have now disparaged me, "Colleagues and experts in the field have expressed concerns about the consistency and scientific integrity of his work"

gripeo.com/02/vincent-l...

A Fungus Devastated North American Bats. A New Species Could Deliver a Killer Blow. (Gift Article) Scientists have learned that another species of fungus found in Europe and Asia causes white-nose disease, which has ravaged bat populations in the United States and Canada.

The Last of Us may be over for now, but fungus pandemic news endures. Here's my story on how white-nose disease, which has battered North American bats, may have more devastation in store. 🧪 Gift link: nyti.ms/4mGRyV8

Two distinct host-specialized fungal species cause white-nose disease in bats - Nature The identification of two cryptic species of the fungal pathogen that causes white-nose disease in bats highlights the need to integrate studies of genetic variability in pathogens into disease survei...

Two distinct host-specialized fungal species cause white-nose disease in bats

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

This study shows that there are two distinct lineages responsible for white-nose disease. They co-occur throughout Europe in sympatry but show different host specialisation.

A Fungus Devastated North American Bats. A New Species Could Deliver a Killer Blow.

Beautiful (and scary) new paper on bat fungi from the team that is hosting me in Montpellier! Sebastien Puechmaille, @asfiston.bsky.social and others. Story in the @nytimes.com by @carlzimmer.com .

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/s...

In our latest study, we found that armadillos have lost the cytosolic DNA-sensing genes cGAS and STING1. This is a new approach to publishing for us. We would like to include additional experimental data, but the NIH shutdown has trapped that data in LA. This is a vignette of a larger study...

The Extinction of Truth Or, a Colossal Pile of Bullshit

I've written a Substack about the #ColossalBioSci #DeExtinction #DisInformation campaign; it's focused on polluting the information landscape, rather than the underlying science (except for species concepts, I talk about them)

open.substack.com/pub/devoevom...

🧵5 Top Free Alternatives to BioRender for Scientific Illustrations!

These five websites offer free scientific illustrations for biologists. Great for presentations, research papers and other research communication needs.

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Convergent acquisition of disulfide-forming enzymes in malodorous flowers Identifying the metabolic and genetic changes that confer evolutionary novelty is essential for understanding the factors facilitating or constraining the occurrence of traits. We show that dimethyl d...

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

It is good to see Europe voicing commitment to Science and extending a hand to the scientific community in the US. As a dual french and american citizen leading a research center in Norway since 2021 and after 15 years in the US academia, this all feels quite close to home.

Thrilled to see my first PhD paper finally out in @pnas.org !!!
We investigated the macroevolutionary dynamics of South American #Mammals across the Eocene-Oligocene Transition (~34 millions of years ago) 🦥❄️

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Accueillir les chercheurs américains en France , « une ambition louable, mais irréaliste » TRIBUNE. L’universitaire Théo Besson rappelle, dans une tribune au « Monde », que le manque criant d’investissement ainsi que le niveau des salaires dans la recherche française interdisent de fantasme...

Intéressante tribune sur l'illusion d'une université française attractive pour les chercheurs américains tentés par l'exil.
Ou de l'incapacité de regarder en face les conséquences de sa propre politique. Terrible absence de sens des responsabilités...
www.lemonde.fr/sciences/art...

NEW 🧵

The number of people travelling from Europe to the US in recent weeks has plummeted by as much as 35%, as travellers have cancelled plans in response to Trump’s policies and rhetoric, and horror stories from the border.

Story: www.ft.com/content/6dc1...