Profile avatar
cnanderson.bsky.social
I study evolution, ecology, & behavior and teach at a Hispanic Serving Institution. Interested in Broadening Participation in STEM. Greater Chicago Area. He/him.
193 posts 988 followers 1,940 following
Prolific Poster

Field Guide to the Fishes of the Chicago Region.

Instead of declaring "peer review is broken" and doing nothing about it, improvements are in our control... Review 2-3x the number of papers you submit per year. dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2025/06/10/y...

real bummer finding out that literally everything was on the honor system this whole time

"I didn't take this job to terminate grants" - Jay Bhattacharya, who took this job to terminate grants, unfortunately

Eastern eyed click beetle (Alaus oculatus), Bernheim Forest and Arboretum, Clermont, KY

Just another spectacular lava fountain from Kīlauea this morning: www.youtube.com/live/BqmpkUd...

For example, the #NSF budget request literally (summary table 6) describes 200k fewer people will be supported by the agency's funding streams. Those people are gone, moved on, left the sector. Decent bet none are coming back, especially after 4 years. nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/00-NSF...

So happy for my Maine-eDNA colleagues on their Science paper (& *cover*!). I know we’re not supposed to big-up the big 3, but the fact is these early-career researchers still exist in a system where the big 3 matter, so I’m happy for their success. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

OMG this is so useful! Open software for the win.

WE DID IT, FOLKS A song for the entomologists of the USDA m.youtube.com/watch?v=yYSI...

I have an opportunity to hire a staff scientist for my lab. Looking for someone with outstanding skillset in ML/statistics, genomics applications; interest in mentoring, strong publication record, PD experience required. Email CV to me+cc my assistant (see 'contact' on my website). Ad to follow.

This Princeton prof's op ed is exactly backwards. Enrollment plateaued because the number of American 18-year olds was flat and now SHRINKING. It's not that international students are muscling aside US citizens, they are filling seats that would be empty and forestalling campus closures

Happy Pride to everyone, even the haters and those with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis

Dobsonflies are awesome. Here’s a photograph of a female dobsonfly from Texas.

I keep thinking about how scientists hoped and prayed for increases in funding every year b/c we knew the budgets were already too small. And now the funding is just effectively gone - it's so catastrophic that I can't think too hard about it.

We were told two days ago by NSF about the upcoming CAREER competition; this proposed budget zeroes it out completely. And ADVANCE. And REUs. And RETs. HBCU-* and S-STEM maintain most or all of their funding; TCUP loses over half.

Furiously logging all the new budget news, laughing grimly that it landed *just after* we hit publish. Of course it did. Grateful that the entire point of @unbreaking.org is to give us a durable platform where we can keep integrating new developments. We'll digest, contextualize & update next week.

From 330k to 90k is a 73% reduction in NSF funded scientists. The US is killing ourselves: culture, health, science, memory... Republicans can stop this anytime and won't

Nice talk on speciation in manakins by @elsemikkelsen.bsky.social . Rivers are barrier, but gene flow occurs at headwaters. Highlights centromere regions (meiotic drive?) as differentiated regions between species. Also fun illustrations of manakins complete with crowns #Evol2025

I'm hiring a postdoc! Themes: long-term data, plant reproduction, mast seeding, synthesis, macosystems biology. Also, reproducible tesearch. Target submission deadline: 22 June (for priority review). 1-2 year position, $60K/year. 🌲 🌲 🌲 www.higheredjobs.com/faculty/deta...

My favorite camping game is trying to figure out what kind of bug is on the other side of my tent. I'll post a photo of the other side below. #Invertebrates

Very pleased that our intrepid team of students, curators, and community volunteers has surpassed 100,000 databased specimens, or what we estimate to be about 5% of the UT Insect Collection’s holdings.

President Donald Trump’s global tariffs were deemed illegal and blocked by the US trade court.

Someone has succinctly summarized exactly what is so demoralizing right now.

They also come in some wonderful colors!

We're lucky to have Laci Gehart here at @ucdavis.bsky.social. Really nice write up of her wild davis course. bsky.app/profile/katk...

Sally Otto @sarperotto.bsky.social and I are back with the next installment of “Reflections on the history of modeling and theory”, supported by @smtpb.bsky.social. Bob Holt shares his personal history and stories of his life in science: www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8hX...

This program means a lot to me. We selected students that largely didn’t have research experience & they are presenting, publishing & going on to postbac/grad/prof programs. This was what made me realize where I wanted my efforts to be. In supporting & developing programs to train future scientists

Hey look! Glowing fishes evolved over and over again. Lots of color of glow. @emilycarr.bsky.social led a team that included 5 FHL folks @jmhuie.bsky.social @lampichthys.bsky.social and @karlycohen.bsky.social. The oldest glowy fish is an eel at 100MYA. 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I get a lot of career advice questions that can be slightly rephrased as "how can I do the fun parts of what you do without the annoying parts, while also not working as hard and getting paid a lot more?" My dude, if I knew that don't you think I'd be doing it?

The only reason you love chocolate is because of FUNGUS. Cacao seeds contain high amounts of polyphenols, making them intensely bitter & unpleasant. There are two natural fungi that do the heavy lifting in turning them into chocolate. Let's do a quick tour of the process of chocolate making.

April 26 / May 26

If you are starting to learn ants, this should be your first genus: Camponotus. They are found everywhere in the world, there are a lot of ecologically important species, and you'll always have a point of familiarity in any fauna. The genus includes North America's common carpenter ants.

Real firefly vs firefly mimic. One of the differences you can see is that the firefly can tuck its head below the pronotum (plate structure in front of the wings) and the soldier beetle cannot. Spring Tree-Top Flasher (Pyractomena borealis) left, Soldier Beetle (Podabrus sp.) right

Am I crazy or did we just have a convo about how we can't fund cancer research?

Just want to amplify this opportunity and agree heartily that this is a great community of people to work with (as well as a great collection of bugs, too).

Mesquite 4 beta released! Many new features, esp. phylogenomic. Check out the trailer and longer video on the home page: www.mesquiteproject.org, and use the download link there to get a copy. Feedback welcome! Ask and discuss on our new Google Group (groups.google.com/g/mesquite-p...).

2025 Molecular Ecology Prize goes to Rosemary Gillespie, for harnessing molecular phylogenetics to understand community assembly and ecology 🌿 buff.ly/rbrF1ur

Here is our attempt at summarizing the state of the evidence for the punctuated equilibrium hypothesis. The paper is part of a special issue of Paleobiology celebrating the 50th anniversary of the PE Hypothesis. Work led by Gene Hunt. @lhliow.bsky.social www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

A gift from a student 😂

I was PREP cohort #1. Today was the LAST UNC PREP symposium. Watching Dr. Joshua Hall, who was the Director my year and 11 years after, give the closing keynote was 😭🥹 But what was built cannot be undone. Our community is strong and all 137 of us are not going anywhere 💪🏾

. @pnas.org just published the final version of our manuscript on how generation time and effective population size interact to shape vertebrate germline mutation rates, led by Luke Zhu and Annabel Beichman: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...