Leipzig U and the MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) have an open faculty position (W2) in evolutionary population genetics! This position is tenured and comes with generous core funding. We are eager to welcome a new colleague! Deadline March 11.
www.uni-leipzig.de/en/newsdetai...
This is an amazing piece of scientific satire by @russcd.bsky.social. The first sentence alone is a banger:
"The defining goal of the academic endeavor is to establish a single perfect value that completely summarizes entire careers’ achievements."
academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...
That's a good name for software:
MKado: a toolkit for McDonald-Kreitman tests of natural selection
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
David Marques was an amazing speciation genomics researcher, a passionate birder, and a wonderful friend, husband, and father. May he rest in peace. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Biergarten nummer elf
Good piece from Jerry Brewer in the Athletic yesterday
The U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team won gold — and then lost the room www.nytimes.com/athletic/706...
Yes, thank you! @docedge.bsky.social gave the same correction. But your drawing is much more helpful
Thanks! I know I shouldn't, but the data have been collected on a wild animal and I have what I have. Of course, all caveats will be included...
Thanks--I knew I was missing something!
A question about Falconer's formula. The standard formula is:
h^2=2*(r_MZ - r_DZ)
My question is: can I replace the mono- and dizygotic twin correlations with terms for full-sibs and half-sibs?
It's the same ratio of genetic relatedness, so I don't see why not. What am I missing?
So excited to share this manuscript led by the inimitable Cara Brand, who discovered that Topoisomerase II evolution causes hybrid female lethality in Drosophila.
Congrats to Cara, @nickbr0wn.bsky.social, Anirban, and
@buszczaklab.bsky.social!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
TIL that some childhood cancers (especially neurological ones) lack obvious driver mutations and are likely caused by misregulation of epigenetic marks. 🤯
e.g. www.nature.com/articles/nat...
The Guerrero Lab at NC State University seeks a postdoc in computational evolutionary genetics. Ideal candidates have quantitative skills. Apply by March 10, 2026, via rfguerre@ncsu.edu. More info: rguerrer.org #postdoc
We (as a society) are good and truly f*cked
I just did the dumbest thing of my entire career to prove a much more serious point.
I tricked ChatGPT and Google, and made them tell other users I’m a competitive hot-dog-eating world champion
People are using this trick on a massive scale to make AI tell you lies. I’ll explain how I did it
My favorite is Chuck Langley's review. A typical quote:
"The book is shallow and untrue to the
science of evolutionary biology. It is a
nuisance to the knowledgeable reader
and misleading to the layman."
BioScience Vol. 27 No. 10 1977
I can't tell if you agree or disagree with the piece
Calibrating and documenting host-switching and evolution of incompatibility loci for two closely related Wolbachia clades https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.13.705778v1
Not sure (I didn't look at data, either), but they say it multiple places!
not just paralogs, either, right? Seems to work for allelic variation
(Amazing, regardless!)
Yes, definitely! Just let me know when
get the kid in the brown hoodie a scholarship
🤠
Relatedly, @mweissensteiner.bsky.social recently told me that the German science foundation (DFG) has changed its policy to allow AI review:
www.dfg.de/de/aktuelles...
(only in German, sorry)
I personally haven't seen an AI-written paper yet, but I know they're coming
That's a great paper. If anything, the reviews they got were *more specific* than the ones I got...
it's crazy. Just don't agree to do the review
Relatedly, @mweissensteiner.bsky.social recently told me that the German science foundation (DFG) has changed its policy to allow AI review:
www.dfg.de/de/aktuelles...
(only in German, sorry)
No specifics--just a template of criticisms one might give for any paper. And weird sounding language (especially relative to the first round of review for the same reviewer)
A reviewer just very clearly used AI to write a review. What do I do (as an author)?
