Blockbuster new study using whole-genome sequencing finds the Rapanui people of Easter Island didn't decimate their population through environmental destruction, as has been claimed by Jared Diamond in his 'Collapse' hypothesis. Even more amazingly, they had genetic exchange with Native Americans before Columbus, sometime after 1250!

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07881-4

Congratulations to Scott Edwards on receiving the SSB Presidents' Award for Lifetime Achievement this morning!

Scott, thank you for all you have done to make our Society and our field better.

#Evol2024

If you're in the market for purchasing stickers, I found a nice alternative to #StickerMule and it's CEO's staunch support of #Trump

Sticker Junkie is 100% #woman owned & operated since 1999.
They currently offering 15% off for everyone jumping off that other company if you use the code ByeDonkey

https://stickerjunkie.com

My #Evol2024 Rainbow Pitta and #PleistoDist stickers have arrived! I’ve only got 150 of each to give away, so come find me early during the conference if you want these. I’ll be giving a talk on the biogeography of the Mangrove and Blue-winged Pittas on Sat (27 July) at the #biogeography III session and showcasing my PleistoDist poster later in the evening during the poster session. #evolution #ecology #montreal

The schedule for the Third Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology is out!

Here's when and where to catch presentations of new research on Joshua trees, their pollinators, and how they respond to climate variation, by grad student Pryce Millikin, postdoc Lea Richardson, and yours truly :joshua_tree:

https://lab.jbyoder.org/2024/07/12/these-yoder-lab-presentations-bring-joshua-trees-to-montreal-for-the-third-joint-congress-on-evolutionary-biology/

#evolution #ecology #genetics #science #JoshuaTree #mutualism #ClimateChange #Evol2024

Pretty amazing documentation of Painted Lady butterflies crossing the Atlantic from Europe-North Africa to South America!
#butterflies #Lepidoptera

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49079-2

@pacific_wren Yup, that's something that worries me a fair bit too since we only sequenced 10 mangrove pittas (tough bird to sample!) relative to 37 blue-winged pittas. I think for the time being I'll treat this plot purely as an exploratory exercise until we have more samples and whole genome sequences.

@pacific_wren Thanks for the advice! I'll play around with increasing the window size and see what happens.

Not sure how much of the science community remains active here, but it's worth a shot. I'm trying to plot the genome-wide divergence between the mangrove and blue-winged pittas with ddRAD data using Fst calculated in 100kb windows across the genome (using pixy) and I'm getting this super noisy Manhattan plot. Is this normal for ddRAD data and relatively deeply diverged species? The massive divergence in the Z (sex) chromosome is super cool, though.

I'm scared how misunderstood LLMs and GenAI truly are; they are so far from a genuine intelligence it's not even funny. They are statistical models for language, trained on a lot of words and sentences, representing the statistical likelihood of words following other words, sentences following other sentences, just with a lot of data and samples to pull from. That's it. There's no intelligence, there's no path to intelligence; it's simply statistics chaining words and symbols together.

Australian biodiversity conservation and 'fighting the government.'

"A rare legal win for an ecologist over a violent confrontation with NSW loggers exposed years of intimidation from corporate forestry representatives and law enforcement ."

"In environmental science circles, state surveillance and persecution of an ecologist whose findings refute or debunk state land management practices surprises no one. Last year, the International Science Council, a body representing more than 250 organisations, summarised that “the findings of environmental scientists … have long triggered censorship, intimidation, harassment and even violence when these challenge economic interests, political agendas, or ideologies”. It reported that scientists “have been physically attacked, wrongfully detained, and killed for their research and advocacy … threats and attacks are widespread in virtually all fields examining human impact on the environment”.

"A 2021 joint university study of Australian environmental scientists found more than half employed in industry or government “are routinely constrained in communicating scientific evidence on threatened species, mining, logging and other threats to the environment”. In some cases, “scientists self-censor information for fear of damaging their careers, losing funding or being misrepresented in the media. In others, senior managers or ministers’ officers prevented researchers from speaking truthfully on scientific matters...In all logged states, time spent fighting the government has overtaken the fieldwork time of ecologists and forest researchers."
>>
https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2024/june/katherine-wilson/combative-nature#mtr
#NSWForestry #NSWLogging #LoggingImpacts #breaches #violence #GumbainggirCountry #activism #ecology #conservation #science #researchers #Koalas #ThreatenedSpecies #extractivism #mining #logging #defamation #surveillance #CivilDisobedience #CoffsHarbour #Gondwana #TheGreatKoalaNationalPark #ExtinctionCrisis #BiodiversityCrisis #democracy #governance #Australia

New genome size record!!! 160Gbp. In a plant, of course.

https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(24)01111-8

Borbs are a thing of the past. All hail the rise of the borblong. Wrentit (Chamea fasciata), Marin Headlands, May 2024.

Was also treated to the unbelievably metal sight of an American Crow eating the brains of another American crow!

I’m running in 2hrs of sleep (thanks to a 6am flight), but I finally got my first lifer since January. The dirt common Oak Titmouse on the Berkeley campus.

First meal in the Bay Area: takeout dim sum from Tao Yuen Pastry in Oakland. The siew mai and chive dumplings were decent, although the dumpling skin was maybe a bit too thick for my liking.

Many people may assume New Zealand’s native birds arrived via Australia. But our new research on the Auckland Island merganser shows they originated from much further away.
https://theconversation.com/ancient-dna-from-an-extinct-native-duck-reveals-how-far-birds-flew-to-make-new-zealand-home-229117?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1716152125

Congratulations to Dr. Andrés Cuervo and Leidy Carolina Martinez, recipients of this year's Burtt Undergraduate Mentoring Grant from the WOS for their project entitled "Unlocking secrets of population divergence in the least known avifauna: Serranía de San Lucas, Colombia"! These special grants fund #ornithology research by mentor–undergraduate teams. https://wilsonsociety.org/2024/05/13/2024-burtt-mentoring-grant-recipients-andres-cuervo-leidy-carolina-martinez/

#Ornithologists discover world's largest #hummingbird is actually two species https://phys.org/news/2024-05-ornithologists-world-largest-hummingbird-species.html

Extreme elevational migration spurred cryptic speciation in giant #hummingbirds https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2313599121

"The northern population stays in the high #Andes year-round while the southern population migrates from sea level up to 14,000 feet (~4,300 m) for the nonbreeding months. The two species appear identical. But looks deceive—their genomes and behaviors tell a different story."

Haven’t made kueh salat (left, sweet sticky rice cake topped with a coconut and pandan custard) in a really long time, so I’m glad this one turned out pretty decent. Also made kueh lapis (right, steamed layered cake made from a batter of tapioca starch, rice starch, and coconut cream) for the first time and used a baking pan that was waaaaay too big, so ended up with really thin and anaemic-looking layers. Will make a better one next time!