Portrait of Bill Wimsatt
I’m excited to finally announce a Festschrift SI at Acta Biotheoretica honoring the work of Bill Wimsatt with the SI’s first publication by @consume.red and @philosofir.bsky.social! The editors (@caitlinmace.bsky.social and I) are delighted! #philsci #hpbio link.springer.com/article/10.1...
A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025.
NSF Update (Awards through 2/27/26)
Directorates to follow
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A psych student once asked me if ducks were birds.
I think the jury is still out on this. These forced-choice binary tests in chicks can sometimes overestimate effects. See this commentary on another study that employed similar methods. www.science.org/doi/full/10....
Scaly breasted munia in flight carrying nesting material (grass)
Be it native or non-native like this Scaly-breasted Munia
Birds don’t ignore their base calling. Spring — a time to come together, sing, and make babies
I don’t see birds putting other birds in detention centers, defining borders or grifting the earth of its natural resources
It’s just love…
📷🌿🪶
Wonderful new paper from @mikehgoldstein.bsky.social 's lab! royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...
Really interesting study!
A great write up of our recent paper funded by NSERC and the Smithsonian Institution that concluded that the extinct Apteribis of Hawaii might have been nocturnal.
#birds 🪶🧠🧪
done in collaboration with @weisbeckerbblab.bsky.social
The Edge’s culture was centered on elitism. The “third culture” promulgated by Brockman split science between great idea generators (mostly white men) and menial data collectors. This is pure idealism, and misinformation that science was just great ideas rather than the messy reality of research.
There is an account on VK that keeps trying to post an inventory of the Russian military from the inside, they keep getting shut down though. I can see if I can grab it next time it pops up.
Sifting through Animal Behavior Society newsletters and came across a castigation of the field made by Dutch ethologist Adriaan Kortlandt in 1990. He states, "Ethology is supposed to be the study of behaviour, but the behaviour has become invisible." He also used to fight goats during lectures.
Curious about revolutionary #Yiddish music? Join DJ Chaia and Daniel Carkner online for a sing-along and a historical adventure tomorrow, February 3 at 7:00 PM ET. Explore five early 20th century Yiddish songs sung by #Jewish radicals as they fought tyrants and challenged #Zionism: shorturl.at/8gUVM
In the foreground, a young American Herring Gull with a drab, worn, brown, "predefinitive" plumage. This bird is probably ~12 months old. Behind, an older, breeding adult in a "definitive" gray and white plumage, which is probably 4 or more years old. We have little information about the ecology and evolution of delayed plumage maturation in seabirds.
A breeding gull attacks a plastic model as part of behavioral experiments at the breeding colony on Kent Island, New Brunswick, Canada.
Coco and Tracey Faber start painting raw plastic models for stimulus experiments, using photo references and museum specimens at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.
Excited that our paper is headed for publication at Animal Behaviour! - "Experimental study of social signaling through delayed plumage maturation in a colony-nesting seabird."
Our experiments show how the unusual, brown plumages of young seabirds can help reduce aggression at the breeding colony.
Cover of book Macroevolutionaries by Bruce Lieberman and Niles Eldredge.
Back cover of book Macroevolutionaries by Bruce Lieberman and Niles Eldredge.
Finished my first book of 2026, Macroevolutionaries by @bruceslieberman.bsky.social and @nilese.bsky.social. It’s a wonderful tribute to Gould, every essay is enlightening, but the one on Kestrels is my favorite.
Sure. But this maintains that universality, heuristic value, and function have theoretical status since they can only be explained via directional selection. I don't think the evolutionary or developmental sciences consider that a reasonable position anymore. gregorykohn.substack.com/p/neophenoge...
I feel like Will’s paper does not convincingly make the case that said hypotheses are drawn from rigorous approaches to evolutionary or developmental science. Leaning on falsifiability to mask this isn’t compelling. I recommend David Moores response to this paper. psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...
This is a personal affront
I don't think it would be beyond the pale to say that almost every biological process (including those outside of genetic constraints) during early development plays a key role in zygote activation.
Interesting new book on the evolution of agency by Álvaro Moreno and Juli Peretó. I've only read the first few chapters, but I am already hooked! link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
How family size influences the early life experiences of young ravens. royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article...
Phylogenetic relationships of the Garrulus jays. anhmw.pensoft.net/article/1687...
Picture of an American Crow, a large black bird, making a vocalization.
Happy to share my new paper w/ @cgershen.bsky.social, just published at @royalsocietypublishing.org Interface!
Open Access🔓: royalsocietypublishing.org/rsif/article...
Instead of proposing a new theory, we offer a synthesis in theoretical biology. Want to know more? Read the full thread./1 👇🧵
Friends, I’m once again asking you to donate. But not to me!
@claireforny.bsky.social is a union organizer, democratic socialist and my former Assembly colleague running for Congress in NY-7.
Chip in today: secure.actblue.com/donate/clair...
Great piece in the NYtimes with quotes from @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social and @sashagusevposts.bsky.social. The misuse of NIH datasets with sensitive personal information for racist aims should be concerning for anybody interested in scientific integrity. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/u...
Have you ever wondered how animals were using affective states to cope with our activities?
Here's our NEW PAPER (and my first) that tells you everything you need to know and how much should we feel concerned by the consequences of our activities besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
This line graph illustrates the percentage change in agency staff levels from the previous year for nine major U.S. federal scientific and health organizations between the fiscal years 2016 and 2025. The agencies tracked include the CDC, Department of Energy, EPA, FDA, NASA, NIH, NIST, NOAA, and NSF. For the majority of the timeline between 2016 and 2023, the agencies show relatively stable fluctuations, generally staying within a range of +5% to -5% change per year. However, there is a dramatic and uniform plummet starting in the 2024–25 period. Every agency depicted shows a sharp downward trajectory, with staffing losses ranging from approximately -15% to over -25%. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows the most significant decline, dropping to roughly -26%, while the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) shows the least severe but still substantial drop at approximately -15%.
This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again.
www.nature.com/immersive/d4...
Tricolored heron (Egretta tricolor)
