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Alec Downie

@aedownie.bsky.social
172 followers 197 following 35 posts

Postdoc studying evolutionary ecology, trait evolution, and immunity at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social‬; he/him

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Reposted by Alec Downie
James Downie @jamescdownie.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
"This 'Trump Transaction Tax,' as one Wall Street analyst called it, as well as his crypto profiteering, his plane from Qatar, the 'anti-weaponization fund' and the many other money-grabbing acts of his second term make his corruption an obvious target for Democrats." My latest for @ms.now:
ms.now
Opinion | A brutal new poll for Trump shows why Democrats must run against his corruption
Running on corruption may be more difficult than many Democrats suspect, but that makes their doing so all the more necessary.
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Reena Debray @reenadebray.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Postdoc position coadvised by me, @jennytung.bsky.social, and Dr. Mercy Akinyi at the @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social to study microbiome transmission between humans, livestock, and wildlife in the Tana River Region of Kenya. More information and application link here: www.eva.mpg.de/career/posit...
eva.mpg.de
Positions available - Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
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Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
NYRB should do their own version of the Criterion Closet for their book publishing arm imo
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James Downie @jamescdownie.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
Trump has said Herbert Hoover "was always [the president] I didn't want to be." But his "Freedom Fuel" promotion echoes the ineffective volunteerism Hoover loved. My latest for @ms.now: www.ms.now/opinion/free...
ms.now
Opinion | Trump’s ‘Freedom Fuel’ push is a flimsy answer to rising gas prices
The stations offered gas for $3.47 for the 47th President. But volunteerism won't ease the economic pain of his war with Iran.
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Vlad Demartsev @animal-sounds.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
Who wants to spend 6 months at the Kalahari Research Centre?
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Beniamino Tuliozi @btuliozi.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Lifetime fitness (lifetime reproductive success) and annual survival are heritable and genetically correlated in wild female baboons! Moreover, nearly all of the genetic variance in LRS can be attributable to survival to first reproduction. Out at Evolution now: academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...
academic.oup.com
Lifetime fitness and annual survival are heritable and highly genetically correlated in a wild primate population
We estimated the additive genetic variance (VA) and heritability of lifetime and time-limited fitness in a wild female baboon population in Kenya. We found
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David Tian @david-tian.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
New preprint from the last portion of my PhD! Despite low masked load, we found evidence for strong inbreeding depression in Devils Hole pupfish. The reason? A recessive lethal haplotype that causes a heart defect among developing embryos. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Long-term small effective population size, inbreeding, and a recessive lethal haplotype drive premature death in the endangered Devils Hole pupfish (Cyprinodon diabolis)
As anthropogenic habitat fragmentation and population decline accelerate globally, growing numbers of species face compounding demographic and genetic threats to long-term survival. Many populations a...
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Andrea L Graham @grahammunology.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
It’s a true honor to be associated with this film #TheEndlessFrontier #StandUpForScience Premiere is this evening @ # #DC/DOX Let’s goooooooo 💪🤓 science!!!
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Daniel Becker @danjbecker.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
we're hiring for a new research assistant to join our group at OU to manage field studies on migratory and Neotropical bats! please see the linked application on our website: beckerlab.weebly.com/join.html. applications will be reviewed in early August and the position can start in January.
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Delphine De Moor @delphinedemoor.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
Does it matter whether you use focal sampling or scan sampling to collect animal behaviour data? We used simulations to find out, testing how accurate and precise each method is across a range of behaviours, study systems, and observation protocols.
Illustration comparing which subset of the true occurences of behaviour is recorded using focals vs. scans.
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Sociable Weaver Project @sociableweaver.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
We are looking for two field managers‼️Starting end of August South Africa 🌍 If you have fieldwork experience and want a job with added responsibility of overseeing the field activities, see below for more information. 🐣 Deadline 15/06/2026 sociableweaverproject.com/recruitment/... #fieldjobs
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American Naturalist / ASN 🐌 @asn-amnat.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
Bacteria already killed by a host's immune response make it harder to handle those still alive. The same phenomenon might also help in tuning the immune response and decreasing the costs of the pathogen. Now available open access ahead of print! www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
The American Naturalist classic cover
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Harald Ringbauer @hringbauer.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
Great to see @annikafreudiger.bsky.social paper published! 🎉 We analyzed how genetic markers are used to estimate relatedness in wild animals - a big field with 2861 relevant publications. 📈🧬 Even in 2026 mainly STRs are used - and we argue for low coverage WGS data and a simple aDNA estimator.
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Quantian @quantian.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
Many people have a vested interest in pretending otherwise, but the US research university is globally dominant to an almost unbelievable degree. The typical state university is a football team stapled to a R&D lab with a budget bigger than the entire nation of Belgium.
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Britt Koskella @bkoskella.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
Please share widely! Abstract submissions open for the 2026 Jacques Monod conference: Ecology and evolution of host-parasite interactions in a changing world! Held in beautiful Roscoff France from November 2- 6, 2026. Abstracts submission deadline : June 6 cjm.sb-roscoff.fr/en/conferenc...
cjm.sb-roscoff.fr
Ecology and evolution of host-parasite interactions in a changing world | CNRS - Conférences Jacques Monod (CJM)
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Dom Cram @domcram.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
🚨Deadline 30/04! PhD opportunity: 🐾 Mapping the Manor: How are the lives of meerkats shaped by their sleeping & breeding burrows? 🐾 💡 Big ecological Qs 📡 Geophysics tech + data 🌍 Fieldwork with me, @geophysics-adam.bsky.social & @aldinafranco.bsky.social APPLY NOW: www.uea.ac.uk/course/phd-d...
A PhD advert collage of 1) a meerkat in the Kalahari desert, wearing a tracking collar while stood beside the entrance to its burrow, 2) a 3D scan of a subterranean burrow, 3) a map showing burrow locations and their usage patterns. The deadline is 30th April 2026 and it is open to UK, EU and international applicants.
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Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology @sicb.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
Student awardee spotlight on the Division of #Ecology and #Evolution 's Ray Huey Awardee for best #student talk: Yeraldi Loera for work on Selection on #alligator ovarian #physiology after generations of xenoestrogen exposure in the wild yeraldiloera.wordpress.com #science #biologist #reptile
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Discovery Immunology @discovimmunol.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
Measuring immune function in the wild is key to understanding resilience and disease. New open‑access research presents a practical immune toolkit for wild ungulates, revealing variation across individuals, populations and landscapes in bighorn sheep. vist.ly/4z6gk
doi.org
Out of the shed and into the field: an immune toolkit for measuring wild ungulate immune phenotypes at multiple scales
Here we demonstrate the utility of our field-tested “immune toolkit” in describing the immune phenotypic heterogeneity of bighorn sheep (Ovis Canadensis) a
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Joyce Wang @joyce-yiyi-wang.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
Our work on the generalizability of polygenic scores (PGS) from the @arbelharpak.bsky.social Lab is now officially out! We examine the accuracy of PGS predictions at the individual level. We make 3 observations that expose gaps in our understanding of PGS “portability.” rdcu.be/e0LAr (1/27)
rdcu.be
Three open questions in polygenic score portability
Nature Communications - Genetic predictors of health outcomes often drop in accuracy when applied to people dissimilar to participants of large genetic studies. Here, the authors investigate the...
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Daniel Bolnick @danielbolnick.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
What happens *after* enemy release? In a new paper, we present 7 years of infection & immune trait dynamics in 16 lake populations of stickleback. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/... This is definitely the longest-scale study I've done in my career, I'm very excited to see it out. 1/6
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Stephen West @stephenwest.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
to all who celebrate...
description from Huntington library:

"A lithograph printed on heavy paper. Satirical "death certificate" issued for the Southern Confederacy. Mourning border, each line in different typeface, with: Died, Near the South-Side Rail Road, / on Sunday, April 9th, 1865, / The Southern Confederacy, / Aged Four Years, / Conceived in Sin, Born in iniquity, Nurtured by Tyranny, Died of / a Chronic Attack of Punch. / Abraham Lincoln, Attending Physician. / U.S. Grant, Undertaker. / Jeff Davis, Chief Mourner. Below in smaller print an epitaph that ends with: And this one line shall grace your grave-- / Your death gave freedom to the slave."

https://hdl.huntington.org/digital/collection/p16003coll6/id/5033
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Jessica Metcalf @jessmetcalf.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
EEB Scholars - run by our wonderful Princeton EEB graduate students, now open for applications: eeb.princeton.edu/graduate/eeb...
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Discovery Immunology @discovimmunol.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
Wild mice show large, robust T‑cell receptor repertoires that stay broad across age and sex, while older mice develop more dominant clones, likely from lifelong pathogen exposure. A fascinating look at how immunity adapts in natural environments. vist.ly/4wxid
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Joel Pick @joelpick.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
New preprint from the fantastic @sarah-dobson.bsky.social !! Worried about assuming causality when estimating selection? Confused about knowing whether selection is hard or soft? We have the solution for you!
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@WildImmunity @wildimmunity.bsky.social · 08/03/2026
#WildImmunology #allegy www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Environmentally driven immune imprinting protects against allergy - Nature
In a mouse model, environmental immunostimulation in early life led to cross-reactive adaptive immune memory and reduced type II immune responses to allergens, indicating a mechanistic relationship be...
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Q-Immuno lab at UCL @qimmuno.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
Excited to share the latest preprint from the lab "Fluctuating environments are sufficient to drive substantial variability in species abundance across locations" now up on arXiv arxiv.org/abs/2603.02403 🎉
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Jenny Tung @jennytung.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
Leipzig U and the MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) have an open faculty position (W2) in evolutionary population genetics! This position is tenured and comes with generous core funding. We are eager to welcome a new colleague! Deadline March 11. www.uni-leipzig.de/en/newsdetai...
uni-leipzig.de
Professorship in population genetics in the field of evolutionary anthropology and medicine (W2)
Faculties & Facilities
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PMC Vanguardist @tylerboschert.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
Waking up in the dark, routinely, day after day, is incredibly, *incredibly* bad for you (people who work night shifts for years on end have health outcomes similar to moderate smokers). Under permanent DST, sunrise in Seattle would be after 8am for 3.5 months a year.
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Max-Planck-Gesellschaft @maxplanck.de · 02/03/2026
The Max Planck #PostdocProgram offers top emerging talents a range of attractive measures and opportunities. The current call for applications is open from March 1st until April 13th, 2026. Please share or consider applying! 🙏 www.mpg.de/en/max-planc... #careerinscience #sciencecareer
Call for Applications - Max Planck Postdoc Program, apply now!
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Luisa F. Pallares @luisapallares.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
Have you ever wondered 🤔... Does phenotypic variance respond to environmental perturbation? Does it have a genetic basis? Are mean and variance regulating loci exposed to different selection pressures? These and more questions are explored in our new preprint 🔥 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Matthew Silk @mattjsilk.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
Just over a week left to apply for this PhD project (unfortunately UK students only). If you're interested then please get in touch!
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Carlota Galán-Plana @carlotagalanplana.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
So happy to have been part of the ARTEMIS Programme last year! Check out this piece to see Imma Mungai and me, plus a brief overview of the programme. The new call is open, if you’re a scientist at an MPI, it’s a lovely opportunity! 👇 tinyurl.com/2wcpvk7f @maxplanck.de tinyurl.com/4ampx26u
mpg.de
When someone believes in you
How the ARTEMIS mentoring programme connects African students and doctoral researchers with scientists of the Max Planck Society — and why mentoring means more than just offering professional advice
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Vlad Demartsev @animal-sounds.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
🧪Before the day begins, meerkats share a unique ritual. After emerging from their burrows, they spend up to an hour "sunning" to warm up for the day. During this quiet time, they produce soft, tonal "sunning calls". Just standing, sunbathing, and calling. But why❓ #bioacoustics #meerkats #kalahari
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Jess Stephenson @jfstep.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
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...
su.varbi.com
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
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Harald Ringbauer @hringbauer.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
(1/2) The preprint of our perspective on genetic estimates of relatedness in animal populations is out! Big Congratulations to Annika! doi.org/10.32942/X28... A systematic review of 2,861 articles shows that, even in 2025, 75% of such studies use microsatellites. And most use only a few! #PopGen
Systematic Literature Review figure of how genetic relatedness estimates are done in the wild.
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Fyodor @fyodor.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
This guy had no illusions of what America had been but believed in what it could be.
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Genome Biology and Evolution @genomebiolevol.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
Guðjónsdóttir, @jcchacond.bsky.social et al. sequenced the genome of a >14kya old woolly rhino from muscle found inside a permafrost-preserved wolf's stomach. Demographic inference suggests a rapid extinction for the woolly rhino. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf239 #genome #evolution #aDNA
GBE | Genome Shows no Recent Inbreeding in Near-Extinction Woolly Rhinoceros Sample Found in Ancient Wolf's Stomach

Autopsy of Tumat
The autopsy of the Tumat-1 wolf puppy, when a fragment of a woolly rhinoceros tissue was found in the stomach. Coauthors Sergey Fedorov and Mikkel Sinding are shown. Location: Vienna, Austria. Date: 2018. Photo credit: Mietje Germonpré.
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Vlad Demartsev @animal-sounds.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
🚨🧪Listening to animals at scale is hard. animal2vec does the listening for you, automatically finding and classifying animal calls in huge datasets. Plus: MeerKAT, a massive new meerkat vocalization dataset, now public. #bioacoustics besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/99RWYS...
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
animal2vec and MeerKAT: A self‐supervised transformer for rare‐event raw audio input and a large‐scale reference dataset for bioacoustics
You have to enable JavaScript in your browser's settings in order to use the eReader.
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Sasha Gusev @sashagusevposts.bsky.social · 13/12/2025
I wrote about the bizarre case of Herasight, the embryo selection company going all in on eugenics.
open.substack.com
Embryo selection company Herasight goes all in on eugenics
...
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Andrea L Graham @grahammunology.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
Thank you so much @profjudiallen.bsky.social 🤩 Thanks also to #BSI2025 & session organizers including @kathelse.bsky.social 🤩 for a fabulous week of talks & lively discussions!! It was my first BSI but I’ll be back 🤓
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Nature @nature.com · 03/12/2025
Nature research paper: Architecture of the neutrophil compartment go.nature.com/3KzY1CV
go.nature.com
Architecture of the neutrophil compartment - Nature
Mapping of the neutrophil compartment using single-cell transcriptional data from multiple physiological and patological states reveals its organizational architecture and how cell state dynamics and trajectories vary during health, inflammation and cancer.
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Luisa F. Pallares @luisapallares.bsky.social · 27/11/2025
***Super cool-project alert***⚠️ Come work with @dirkmetzler.bsky.social and me in trying to understand how transcriptional noise evolves in a phylogenetic context 🧬 Deadline 15th Dec 2025 (Project funded by @dfg.de @gevol.bsky.social)
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Delphine De Moor @delphinedemoor.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
Excited to introduce the Latent Layers Framework – now out in @behavecol.bsky.social – to help think through when and why network differences confound inference in (comparative) social network analysis! 🧵 tinyurl.com/3k3yahwy
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arsweeny.bsky.social @arsweeny.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
Interested in how life history may shape the gut microbiome of a wild mammal? Keen on getting to work with an iconic long-term study system in Scotland? Check out this PhD opportunity with me, Josephine Pemberton and @gfalbery.bsky.social Reach out to chat more! www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
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Sasha Gusev @sashagusevposts.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
I wrote a little bit about the "missing heritability" question and several recent studies that have brought it to a close. A short 🧵
theinfinitesimal.substack.com
The missing heritability question is now (mostly) answered
Not with a bang but with a whimper
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Fernando Rossine @fernpizza.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
When different kinds of mobile genetic elements get together, they become even more powerful catalysts for microbial evolution! In this work we discovered a mechanism by which Insertion Sequences drive their spread across Plasmids, which helps explain this evolutionary potential!
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Michael Baym @baym.lol · 20/11/2025
Hot off the press! Our latest paper led by @fernpizza.bsky.social, understanding how plasmids evolve inside cells. These small, self-replicating DNA circles live inside bacteria and carry antibiotic resistance genes, but also compete with one another to replicate. 1/ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
Intracellular competition shapes plasmid population dynamics
From populations of multicellular organisms to selfish genetic elements, conflicts between levels of biological organization are central to evolution. Plasmids are extrachromosomal, self-replicating g...
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bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
Lifetime fitness and annual survival are heritable and highly genetically correlated in a wild primate population www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
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