Matthew Hahn

🌿 Postdoc opportunity in plant evolutionary ecology/genetics!

My lab in the Dept. of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan is recruiting a postdoctoral researcher to start Fall 2026.

We study plant adaptation, using weeds as model systems.

#Postdoc #EcoEvo

Pls RT!

I don’t know about hipster, but we can find it most places (including in the Rewe)!

Akshually…you can see the carrot cake in the upper left

Chocolate cherry! But the carrot cake (not pictured) was better :)

Biergarten nummer zwölf

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...

The core-pivotal index: a geometry-first approach to academic impact The defining goal of the academic endeavor is to establish a single perfect value that completely summarizes entire careers’ achievements. Such an index wo

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

The U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team won gold — and then lost the room (Gift Article) The widespread celebration is over now. And some of the U.S. men's Olympic hockey team's goodwill has diminished.

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...

Epigenomic alterations define lethal CIMP-positive ependymomas of infancy - Nature Although genetically bland, the posterior fossa group A subgroup of ependymomas, found often in infants and associated with poor prognosis, exhibit widespread epigenetic alterations, namely a CpG isla...

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

🤠

Künstliche Intelligenz in der Begutachtung Hauptausschuss der DFG ermöglicht unter Rahmenbedingungen künftig die Nutzung von KI in der Begutachtung

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