Jack Hruska, Ph.D.

1/ Remember when Ted Cruz went to Cancún as the Texas power grid failed? It wasn't just the people of TX left behind, it was also the wildlife. Out now @natecoevo.nature.com, our paper led by @mstager.bsky.social & @treeswallows.bsky.social documents how bad the storms were for birds.

rdcu.be/e7aUy

Marsupials previously thought extinct for millennia discovered in New Guinea The chances of finding one mammal species thought to be lost was ‘almost zero’ and finding two is ‘unprecedented’, biologist Tim Flannery says

😲

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Diagram to illustrate findings from an investigation of genomic and ecological niche divergence in willow tit (Poecile montanus) and marsh tit (Poecile palustris), revealing parallels in their geographic divergence (including divergent lineages, similar gene flow barriers, and unique southwestern clade histories), and enhancing our understanding of species diversification under shared geographic constraints.

🪶Analysis of #genomic and #ecological niche divergence in #bird spp. reveals that geographic barriers and geological historical events play pivotal roles in driving allopatric divergence among closely related spp. 🪶
🔗 doi.org/10.1111/jse.... @wileyecology.bsky.social #FreeToRead #evolution

#JMIH26 Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists 2026

Annual meeting of: Amer. Soc. of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists 🐟, Amer. Elasmobranch Soc. 🦈, Herpetologists' League 🐍 & Soc. for Study of Amphibians & Reptiles 🐸

The abstract submission and meeting website is now open jmih.net

a man stands on a roof with solar panels ALT: a man stands on a roof with solar panels

On top of everything else, oil and gas prices are going to spike because of Trump’s war in Iran.

But guess what doesn’t get disrupted by wars?

Renewable energy. Solar. Wind. Geothermal. Storage.

Forecasting the Next Pandemic Led by scientists from Yale and the University of Oklahoma, the Viral Emergence Research Initiative (Verena) is one of the largest pandemic prevention research

Very special to wake up today to a profile of @viralemergence.org from Yale. We’re in month eight of turmoil right now, and it’s hard to focus on the science, but the truth is: we have a lot more work to do.

ysph.yale.edu/news-article...

Genomic erosion in the assessment of species' extinction risk and recovery potential Abstract. Many species are undergoing rapid population declines and environmental deterioration, leading to genomic erosion. Here we define genomic erosion

Genomic erosion in the assessment of species' extinction risk and recovery potential
academic.oup.com/jhered/advan...

Congress has appropriated the funds to NSF but OMB is delaying the release. When funds are released, NSF, which has lost almost 1/5 of its staff, will struggle to evaluate proposals. Since they have to award the funds, big projects with established PIs will benefit. This is how US science dies.

The first school to market itself as AI free is going to corner the market on people interested in actually learning. And I would not be surprised if rich families and the children of people creating this tech were the first movers.

Acceleration hotspots of North American birds’ decline are associated with agriculture Human activities might have accelerated declines of population abundance, but this acceleration remains underexplored. Using 1033 North American Breeding Bird Survey routes, we analyze abundance chang...

Thrilled to share our new paper out in @science.org, led by François Leroy and Petr Keil! Using the Breeding Bird Survey, we document not only a continent-wide decline in bird abundance since the 1980s — but, crucially, the acceleration of these declines over time. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

New February monthly record high temperature at Pueblo: 83 °F. Numerous locations in southeast Colorado had highs in the 80s today.
#cowx

Eastern Kingbird and American Robin?

Map of locations currently experiencing record or near-record temperatures (from coolwx.com). There are many such locations, indicated in red and orange colors, across the Southwest and Southern Rockies.

After a relatively brief colder & snowier interlude, we've re-entered a period that will be characterized by sustained anomalous warmth in U.S. West. Today, daily record high temperatures are again occurring across portions of Southern Rockies and interior SW. #CAwx #COwx

Using evolution in conservation: Genomic vulnerability of the Little Greenbul Taking into account future climatic changes.

Your daily Avian Hybrids story!

Using evolution in conservation: Genomic vulnerability of the Little Greenbul
avianhybrids.wordpress.com/2022/03/05/u...

#ornithology

Come join me and other great colleagues at @ib_unam !! We’re searching for a new orno 🦅 🦢 🦉 systematics researcher/prof. for the largest bird collection in Mexico. See details herein www.ib.unam.mx/ibunam/Convo... Amigxs ornitólogxs! Habemus búsqueda de nuevx investigadorx! Apliquen!

Excited to share that my first paper is published! 🎉🧬
We compared fecal DNA extraction methods for caribou to identify reliable, non‑invasive workflows for conservation genetics. Read more here: rdcu.be/e5cHu 🦌

logo for SPrOUT: Species Prediction of Unknown Taxa - a line drawing of a plant with two green leaves emerging from a flask containing multiple DNA helices. Logo designed by Lisa Limeri, with images from the Noun Project flask from Noun Project user Humam flower from Noun Project user Vanicon studio DNA from Noun Project user Akhmad Zaini

Figure from the linked preprint, showing the relationship between the number of Angiosperms353 reference genes and Accuracy of detecting plant families in mixed reads. Based on several z-score values, SPrOUT is generally at 98% accuracy with fewer than 100 genes.

New from our lab! Introducing SPrOUT: Species Prediction of Unknown Taxa.

We developed and tested a novel method to ID plants in mixed DNA with Angiosperms353 using cumulative phylogenetic distances. >98% accuracy to family level for in silico and real test data.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

THEY'RE THRIVING

Fried egg jellyfish. A short-lived species that's harmless to humans.

For comparison, we spend $118 million for all geothermal energy R&D for the whole country.

NSF still doesn't have a director or deputy director. We have no idea who's actually running them. Board members have resigned over this and over the political control of the agency by 20-something political hacks.

Yet people persist in acting like everything is normal.

MBE | Phylogeny of waterfowl (Anseriformes) constructed using genome sequences provides insights into topological incongruences

Wang et al. analyzed 24 waterfowl genomes representing all waterfowl families and several subfamilies, presenting a strongly-supported and well-resolved phylogenetic backbone for the major waterfowl lineages.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msag018

#evobio #molbio

Estimating Organism Abundance Using Within‐Sample Haplotype Frequencies of eDNA Data Environmental DNA (eDNA) provides powerful insights into species presence and community composition but remains limited in its capacity to infer species abundance or population structure. Here, we sh...

🧬 My haplotype paper is out!

We show that deviations between within-sample and population-level haplotype frequencies can be used to estimate how many individuals contributed to an eDNA sample.

No tissue references needed, just metabarcoding data and some population genetics.

#eDNA #PopGen

Genomic approaches to accelerate American chestnut restoration More than a century after two introduced pathogens killed billions of American chestnut trees, introgression of resistance alleles from Chinese chestnuts has contributed to the recovery of self-sustai...

Out in @science.org this week, multifaceted genomics approaches to accelerate American chestnut restoration www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

And an accompanying Perspective article here:
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

#genomics
#plantscience
#forestry

There is No Scientific Justification to Revoke the Endangerment Finding The U.S. EPA's decision to repeal the Endangerment Finding will limit the government's ability to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

As I say here, there is no scientific justification to revoke the engagement finding. In fact, over the last 15+ yrs, the evidence of how climate change affects our health has only grown. Higher risk of allergies, dementia, fertility, heart disease, and death: that’s what’s on the line. @nature.org

Excerpt from a book describing the inconsistency of climate denial

I am so tired

Delighted to see our paper studying the evolution of plasmids over the last 100 years, now out! Years of work by Adrian Cazares, also Nick Thomson @sangerinstitute.bsky.social - this version much improved over the preprint. Final version should be open access, apols.
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Happy birthday to one of my favourite haters, Charles Darwin