An Estimate of the Total DNA in the Biosphere Modern whole-organism genome analysis, in combination with biomass estimates, allows us to estimate a lower bound on the total information content in the biosphere: 5.3 × 1031 (±3.6 × 1031) megabases (Mb) of DNA. Given conservative estimates ...

healthit.com.au/how-big-is-t...
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

The internet contains a staggering 10^14 gigabytes of data, and rising exponentially.

Meanwhile, the biosphere contains at least 10^29 gigabytes of data.
(Links to sources in comment)

Hiring for 3 positions: Research Assistant, Field Research Coordinator, and Postdoc I am looking to hire 3 people into my lab this year. I am still doing the paperwork to get the jobs officially posted but I want to send the word out and screen potential applications right away. R…

I am hiring a research assistant (vampire bats), a Panama fieldwork coordinator (vampire bats), and also considering postdoc apps (social behavior, any species): socialbat.org/2026/02/19/h...

Artificial intelligence tools expand scientists’ impact but contract science’s focus - Nature Artificial intelligence boosts individual scientists’ output, citations and career progression, but collectively narrows research diversity and reduces collaboration, concentrating work in data-rich a...

AI tools advance individual careers but contract the focus of science as a whole. I think that strong individual incentive means AI tools in science will continue to grow in use. The questions remain how we want to adapt by shaping incentives, standards, etc.

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

Thanks to my co-authors @sabarra.bsky.social @cheriebriggs and @markwilber !

Panel A depicts pathogen load increasing over time for an infected host but decreased at all times by constitutive resistance. Inducible resistance reduces pathogen load at high loads while acquired resistance decreases pathogen loads at any time during a reinfection. Panel B shows that evolution of constitutive resistance, over years, leads to lower mean and roughly the same standard deviation of log pathogen load. Panel C shows that evolution of inducible resistance lowers mean and standard deviation. Panel D shows that evolution of acquire resistance lowers mean and increases standard deviation.

We collect pathogen load data all the time to tell what proportion of hosts are infected and also how infected they are. Our new theory shows that trends in the variance of pathogen load can reveal underlying mechanisms, e.g., what kind of resistance frogs are evolving.

doi.org/10.1098/rsif...

Postdoktor i parasiters populationsgenetik Zoologiska institutionen är en av de äldsta institutionerna vid Stockholms universitet och har en lång historia av grundläggande och tillämpad djurforskning, från leddjur till stora däggdjur. I

Looking for a postdoc to work with existing SNP data from parasites of guppies across Trinidad. How do river structure, host specialisation, and host behaviour structure parasite population genetic structure and evolutionary potential? Join me in Stockholm! Email me :D

su.varbi.com/what:job/job...

A picture of Duke Kunshan University buildings on the edge of a large, artifical pond.

I'm thrilled to say that I have accepted an assistant professor position at Duke Kunshan University. I will be moving to Kunshan, China this summer and recruiting a postdoc soon thereafter (Chinese language proficiency beneficial but not required).

Gru from Despicable me is detailing his nefarious plan. Stage 1 is "Write an ambitious paper". Stage 2 is "Submit to a fancy journal." Stage 3 is "Get a major revision decision but the revisions are hard." At first, he is excited about Stage 3 then less so when he considers it.

Hooray! Kind of... mostly... Hooray?

I'll adopt Cherie Briggs' advice that anything besides "We reject this paper forever" is a win.

1/ Anyone else feeling a little low? 🙋‍♀️

The public health news cycle has been heavy lately, but something that’s helped me is intentionally stopping to notice where progress is happening to remind ourselves what sustained investment and science can actually do.Here are a few bright spots👇

How are US and Chinese universities keeping partnerships alive amidst political tensions? QS MidWeek Brief - September 17, 2025. China and the US are collaborating in some surprising ways. And, how is the MBA gender pay gap being addressed?

Couldn't agree more that “Solutions to sustainable development goals require close Sino-US cooperation". I'm curious to see how these partnerships contribute to that over the coming years.

newsletters.qs.com/how-are-us-a...

Editorial: Accountability, voice, and trust - responsible use of GenAI in scientific publishing Over the last few years, the development and rapid advancement of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatG

Thanks @judithmank.bsky.social for this thoughtful piece on GenAI in scientific writing!

academic.oup.com/evlett/artic...

The torso and head of a black flying fox hanging upside down, looking directly at the camera, above the words "PhD positions available in bat viral ecology and evolution".

🦇 Two PhD positions available on our new ARC Discovery Grant: "From Diversity to Disease: Viral Ecology, Evolution and Persistence in Bats"

The project will investigate how viral diversity evolves and persists, with a particular focus on recently discovered henipaviruses in Australian flying foxes.

CDC disinformation about the link between autism and vaccines

The CDC updated its vaccine page to claim "vaccines do not cause autism" is "not evidence-based" and studies were "ignored." This is an outrage. Decades of research have found no link. This isn't science, it's RFK Jr. using the CDC as propaganda. Children will die because of this.

Tagging the co-authors that are on here: @sabarra.bsky.social @dieleviegaslm.bsky.social @michelohmer.bsky.social

We measure ecological resilience in terms of a few variables at a time with widely differing choices of variables for different investigators, with conflicting outcomes. We need strategies to navigate diverse and conflicting resilience variables.

Preprint:
10.22541/au.176219659.90163271/v1

Great article and great point about rural areas.

I've been working extensively with @jfstep.bsky.social 's group on identifying contact-relevant transmission just in an experimental set-up with guppies and it's surprisingly intricate!

#microsky #mevosky @spp2389.bsky.social

A PhD position is available in my lab to work on:

Emergence and self-organisation of bacterial metabolism in consortia of cross-feeding bacteria.

Please RT

Deadline: 12.11.25

More infos 👇
shorturl.at/rAKAT

Every year or two when new wildlife camerasa go up: Here is a new species catching bats!

Plot twist: It's Schrodinger's predation and may or may not be happening before we put up the cameras.

New York confirms 1st locally acquired case of chikungunya virus in 6 years in US The mosquito-borne disease is most common in tropical and subtropical regions.

Locally acquired Chikungunya virus infection on Long Island. Maybe time to dust off my many-times rejected Chik proposal...

www.yahoo.com/news/article...

So useful! Thanks for sharing.

I'm v excited to be recruiting a PhD student to work on badger behaviour and ecology! Starting date is March 2026; see the ad here, or message me for more details: www.gregalbery.me/s/March-2026...

@danahawley.bsky.social @richardlovesbirds.bsky.social Arietta Fleming-Davies

We know that wildlife provisioning can promote or inhibit infectious disease spread, depending on things like food quality.

What about pathogen evolution? Using math with a focus on birdfeeders and house finches, we found that high quality food selects for higher virulence!

doi.org/10.1086/738726

Integrating AI models into ecological research workflows: The case of terrestrial bioacoustics Data collected by autonomous sensors, including camera traps and acoustic recorders, have enormous potential to generate new scientific insights in ecology and related fields. Modern machine learn...

What is the role of AI in ecology? A great piece by a collaborator of mine discusses this thoughtfully, particularly with respect to analyzing sensor data.

doi.org/10.1111/2041...

New article out today. Read it here: open.substack.com/pub/kareemca...

So exciting to see this breakthrough on this fascinating story!

When the same journal immediately loves paper A but rejects paper B without review and you know that paper B fits the journals goals better than A...

A good reminder that so much depends on the editors/associate editors/reviewers that you get and their perception that day! Gotta just try again.

We scientists, like experts in other fields, have to do this all the time. We make arguments and decisions based on data COMBINED WITH our ability to decide which data are most important, how to interpret them, etc..

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Experts are crucial: Data never speaks entirely for itself. You commonly hear things like “her offense is so much more impressive when you consider that she guards the other team’s best player every night” where experts have to interpret the data.

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