Emily Puckett

Can you spot the polar bear?

They often dig 'day beds' by scooping out gravel and sand, making them even harder to spot when hiking along the coast.

#InternationalPolarBearDay

Heather is right, meeting our @uofmemphis.bsky.social colleagues who are experts in lower Miss. River fluvial geomorphology (Randy Cox) and Late Woodland cultures (David Dye) was a highlight of writing this paper.

I was not consulted and as such cannot verify the quality of this article.

🐻Excited that my and @littlemuseums.bsky.social 's paper on the demographic history of American black bears across the eastern range is up!
While I think the phylogeography aspects are interesting, our key point is that named subspecies are unsupported.
doi.org/10.64898/202...

Nothing like a condescending email from the President of the volunteer org you're apart of to make you question those membership dues.

Population specific bottlenecks inflated differentiation measures of Louisiana black bear and negate subspecific status https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.18.706691v1

Developing this course from scratch, incorporating several new recent developments from my lab, including tests of ghost introgression, model development and testing, and inference from Ks histograms. Do sign up! Feel free to DM me with queries.

We are thrilled to announce the first official release (v0.1.8) of #𝗯𝗲𝗱𝗱𝗲𝗿, the successor to one of our flagship tool, #𝗯𝗲𝗱𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗹𝘀! Based on ideas we conceived of long ago (!), this was achieved thanks to the dedication of Brent Pedersen.

1/n

Like, spaces in a lot of places are just totally empty because everyone works from home a lot. And this really sucks! Students are not senior employees who benefit from that flexibility

You too can 'turn your student evaluation results around' by simply changing your gender, ethnicity, or socio-economic background! Students will generously increase their scores if you switch to being a middle-class, white, male. No additional work needed!

I have some more bad news.

If an admissions committee even suspects you used ChatGPT for your application letter, they'll almost certainly decide not to waste a precious admissions spot on you.

Instead they'll give it to, you know, someone who actually likes to write and knows how to do it.

“Restoring real habitat would mean shutting down industries. We aren’t allowed to propose that.”

Someone asked about rewilding.

Someone else replied:

“We talk about it because it sounds hopeful, not because we think it will happen.”

Hundreds of Flowering Species Bloomed Across Britain and Ireland Last Winter. That's Not a Good Thing Citizen scientists in the British Isles documented more than 300 native plant species blooming in early 2025, a phenomenon likely caused by climate change

www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/h... So cool @bsbibotany.bsky.social !!

Not Just Ne Ne-More: New Applications for SMC from Ecology to Phylogenies Abstract. Genomes contain the mutational footprint of an organism’s evolutionary history, shaped by diverse forces including ecological factors, selective

In a new GBE Review, @david-peede.bsky.social et al. overview the SMC model and extensions, discuss examples of discoveries made with the help of SMC-based inference, and comment on the assumptions, benefits, and drawbacks of various methods.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/...

#genome #evolution #compbio

Graphite artwork of a cat holding a small sleeping kitten as if it was a renaissance painting.

I drew my friend’s cats as a Christmas gift. That is her son she is holding

No one says to legit business owners, "hey I see there's an underground market selling toxic knock-offs of your product: how will you incorporate the toxic product AND protect your customers against its harms?" But apparently it's fine to make this suggestion to educators with respect to AI.

It is EXHAUSTING not only being made responsible for coming up with new kinds of assignments for our students; it's also tedious reading op-eds that suggest the core problem is a crisis in teaching. But, as Chris and I lay out here, this isn't a crisis in teaching; it's an attack on learning.

Two Andean bears sitting together in tall grass looking at camera. On-screen text has fact about Andean bear markings.

Andean bear sitting on a rock looking at camera. On-screen text elaborates on this species’ facial markings.

Andean bears have unique facial markings, much like human fingerprints. These markings may change in shape and colour with age, and in some individuals may be absent altogether.

Check out our species pages to learn more about bears: www.bearbiology.org/the-eight-be...

REFERENCE: Peyton, B. 1980.

Students who file disingenuous grade appeals and grievances should be penalized for wasting everyone's time and, in this case, for trying to bully an instructor.

Long ago, the people of Chicago carelessly incurred the wrath of the god of electricity & loincloths. Our ancestors left this record of the events that followed so that we might reflect on our past misdeeds & take care to not repeat them.

Polar bear standing in front of a clump of willows.

You can't see me! Polar bear in willows, Churchill Wildlife Management Area.

Join Us The lab of Nina Overgaard Therkildsen in the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment at Cornell University invites applications for a PhD position starting in Fall 2026. Our group works...

Excited to recruit a new PhD student for Fall 2026 in my lab at Cornell! Looking for someone interested in evolutionary genomics + fisheries/conservation applications. Quick timeline this year—reach out soon. More details: www.therkildsenlab.org/join-us.html

Insertion of an invading retrovirus regulates a novel color trait in swordtail fish For over a century, evolutionary biologists have been motivated to understand the mechanisms through which organisms adapt to their environments. Coloration and pigmentation are remarkably variable wi...

I am so excited to share new work on a TE insertion that regulates iridescence in swordtails, led by fantastic grad student @nadiahaghani.bsky.social and with help from many coauthors! In a time that has been so difficult to navigate, this & other projects have kept my spirits up: shorturl.at/NE65A

Simons Postdoctoral Fellowships in Plant Biology Simons Postdoctoral Fellowships in Plant Biology on Simons Foundation

Great new postdoc fellowship for foundational plant research.
If you’re into genetics and genomics of plant reproductive evolution or adaptive convergence (incl in the cool and charismatic nightshades!) I’d be happy to talk about possible projects!
www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/simons...

There's no consensus. Guardian panned it; Rolling Stone loved it. Fans (casual and obsessed) are split.

My take was it was mean-spirited and out-of-touch pop yacht rock.

Sympathy is a Knife makes me feel so seen.
Because when you go to work and no matter how creative or how much unique energy, when your contributions are overlooked, passed over for leadership and raises and every day you are the less than girly; it is so deeply demoralizing.

Taylor Swift’s Charli xcx hit job misses the point – and underscores her tedious obsession with conflict | Laura Snapes Sixteen months after Charli used Brat to air her anxieties about Swift, the US star’s graceless response is a missed opportunity for growth – and betrays her vengeful side

This says so much better than I'm able why the TS diss track is so deeply tasteless and pure mean girl behavior.
www.theguardian.com/music/2025/o...

The Length of Haplotype Blocks and Signals of Structural Variation in Reconstructed Genealogies Abstract. Recent breakthroughs have enabled the accurate inference of large-scale genealogies. Through modelling the impact of recombination on the correla

Delighted that our paper about the distribution of genomic spans of clades/edges in genealogies (ARGs), and using this for detecting inversions and other SVs (and other phenomena that cause local disruption of recombination) is out in MBE academic.oup.com/mbe/article/... (1/n)

I am begging Canadians to understand that Canada Post, like public transit, should not be a business - it's a service.

Canada Post is a lifeline for rural, remote and Northern communities and overall, we need to re-evaluate why people think they "need" random shit delivered ASAP.