iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

So good! Last time I was caught doing this (photographing a fungus) by a passerby, she said, "oh! I thought I was the only one who did that!"

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

It's best to always carry a waterproof camera, just in case.

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Now that I live on the coast, I am having an absolutely DELIGHTFUL time being like "well, on the way home from the store, let me just check what the docks have real quick" and then this is what the docks have:

A white-lined dirona, a transluscent nudibranch with opaque white lines outlining each of its shingled teardrop-shaped cerrata, crawls across brown encrusting bryozoans.

A shag rug nudibranch with numerous gray and white cerata seems to "peer" forward with its chemical-sensing rhinophores. It is wedged between two large barnacles.

A painted anemone with hypnotic peach-colored rings on its stinging tentacles is framed by two white Metridium anemones, and in the bottom, more red pom-poms from feather duster worms fill the frame.

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Basidiolichens and cyanobacteria-hosting lichens are so crazy, I love them

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

(Tangentially, how did you get substrate grain sizes? That sounds like difficult data to access but also an interesting challenge!)

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Wow! Don't have access to the full PDF, so maybe misunderstanding, but larger substrate grain = ear retention? Hypothesis is that an ear isn't required in fine substrate because it acts 'solidly' -> bone conduction of sound? Or is it just super annoying to get fine-grained sand in your ear? LOL

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Anyway, I'm proud of the iNat user community for standing up for themselves, I'm proud of the iNat developers for implementing exactly what the community wanted, and I'm extremely relieved at stopping hallucinatory errors from creeping into GBIF and other key biodiversity datasets from iNaturalist.

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

If you click through to the paper, the specific characteristics they refer to are not present (in my experience). This is even with correct info being available elsewhere on the internet, such as in floral keys.

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

But if you've ever had the misfortune of reading Google AI summary talking about the differences between taxon A and taxon B, you know that LLMs are not..... shall we say..... very accurate in this domain. In fact, the majority appears to be pure hallucination, even when "citing" papers

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Exciting news: iNaturalist is implementing a fully community-based system of ID tips where the community makes tips and then votes on the most useful ones. www.inaturalist.org/posts/132065... This is a big anti-AI victory as before they had planned to use LLM-generated tips trained on comments.

inaturalist.org

New search and sort tool: Identification Tips

Starting today, you can explore Identification Tips: a new search and sort tool for finding the most helpful remarks for identifying various species. Key takeaways Identification Tips is a new tab on...

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

It's more in terms of technique than equipment if that makes sense.

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

Taxidermy is more sculpture oriented. To learn how to make study skins, you can follow YouTube tutorials. In the US, you can legally use pest species like starlings or house sparrows for practice. Or you could work with the remains of a pet. There is actually quite a bit to this, but

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

@halfmoonjoe.com an official Her account acknowledged Bachel???

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Regardless, the topic is chicken diseases.

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Addendum: this was actually from a 1972 USDA publication. Was mixing it up with a 1944 paper!

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

A surprisingly philosophical caveat from a 1944 manual of chicken diseases.

"No attempt will be made to define what we see as either normal or abnormal, that is something that each person must decide for himself,"

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

I didn't know that actually! I know very little about MS. I am actually an ornithologist. But I have immunologist friends who told me about that paper and the work leading up to it. Thanks for sharing, the history of disease is super interesting to me.

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

Fatigue is such an insidious symptom and it really clouds your life. I hope you are doing well. Hopefully in the future, people will talk about MS as a disease of the past, like smallpox.

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

Yes! And your summary was much better :')

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

Summary from the same: "Vaccines that might prevent EBV infection are currently being developed. If effective, these vaccines would be expected to prevent most MS cases."

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

Tbh they came closer than I thought, because there are pre-Columbian glass beads in Alaska that came via Eurasia from Venice. Venice was also the seat of innovation in lenses. If the kind of glass that was traded had been different and even earlier, and made it farther into the Americas...

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

I'm sorry for your pain but also this band sounds incredible. I would see them. I don't think I would want to see mine (Raspberry Sinus Headache)

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

(turns out it's a March Madness thing)

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

I was in the airport coming off a red-eye flight when I blearily saw a backpack emblazoned with the motto "WE SLEEP IN MAY" and my first thought was "I don't know what that is for, but clearly that person is NOT a birder"

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

Nooo I left off Black-and-white Warbler which was inexplicably not on the tierlist maker. I'd put them in "sometimes kind of high but could be worse."

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

IMO participation & engagement have gotten better since college students have now had non-distance high school learning, but the reliance on LLMs really worries me in that it will likely prevent half-baked writing skills from becoming fully-baked!

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

Yeah, "I didn't do the 50-page reading" = classic "I don't know what to do! Can you explain to me what do to on Step 1 of this assignment [which is at the top of the page labeled 'Step 1']?" = new, alarming That's my take on the classroom situation anyway

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

Source: pers. comm. In the email, some person said "about half." (Just jokingly speculating here lol)

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

Yes, me too. It is concerning. A lot of the time it seems like they have the ability but not the willingness to actually read, which is also a problem.

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

I don't doubt that many adults have permanent or transient difficulties understanding complex statements & navigating important written info (e.g. medical, legal), but I don't think this is the best way to assess the scale of the problem

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

The situation is a lot more nuanced than this. This is sort of a zombie statistic based on PIACC scores. Literacy experts and PIACC alike have stated it is inaccurate to assess adult literacy with grade level equivalency. US has the same PIACC as Germany in the middle of the pack for rich countries.

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

This is my take on the situation. Anyone you think should be moved up or down?

A tierlist of north american wood warblers ranked by how painful they are to observe in terms of warbler neck from craning your neck looking up at the tree canopy. Fortunately, this condition is unlikely to affect low-vision birders, whose difficulty is more likely to be based on song characteristics (e.g. how loud, unique, and frequent it is)

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Yes! Also remember that a lot of people resistant to getting rid of their entire lawn are open to shrinking it. Evaluate what is actually needed for a play surface etc. and then expand native plant beds outward over time :)

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Reposted by Shauna Rasband

Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

It’s earth day!! 🌎 plant a pesticide free native 🌱 🌎 switch your energy supplier to a renewable 🌎 take transit instead of an uber 🌎 then make fun of your friends (lovingly) for taking Ubers when the train is right! there! 🌎 heckle your family members. About whatever you want! It’s earth day!!!

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

About to be run out of Maryland by a mob wielding pitchforks and crab pots for saying this, but celery salt is disgusting and so Old Bay is also disgusting. Love crab though!

A blue-and-yellow can of Old Bay Seasoning "For Seafood, Poultry, Salads, Meats: Same great taste for over 75 years" with a pile of reddish-brown seasoning mix in front of it

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

When it's bad it's execrable, but it's incredible when done right. Cincinnati chili on the other hand only ranges from terrible to inconceivably bad IMO

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Ah yeah sometimes dragonflies take a couple of days to get an ID but unlike most bugs they do get a solid ID in the end (a lot of damselflies are stuck at genus due to needing genitalia etc.) Feel free to tag me on iNat any time (@\shauna1)

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Great shot, SK! It appears to be a Lancet Clubtail (P. exilis). The gray-green eye color indicates ♀. Congeners can be ruled out by range and the pale mark on S9 (final large segment) which is dark in the similar Ashy Clubtail. Hope this helps (& I recommend posting your bugs on iNat if you're not:)

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

You can tell not to trust that book bc the author had the goal of stopping himself from frittering away all his time on Reddit and Twitter but failed, so a lot of the sources cited in the book are just random Reddit and Twitter posts instead of research articles! If you can't get YOURSELF to focus..

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

Yes exactly, I think solitary rugose corals. Love finding fossils on buildings

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

Someone is at work making sure there are blueberries later :)

A tiny metallic shiny green and gold bee hangs upside-down from urn-shaped coral-colored flowers. The bee has white pollen all over its little face.

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

This is incredibly cool, reminds me of how the disturbance regime caused by Native American fire management increased biodiversity by creating and maintaining longleaf pine savannah in the Southeast

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Shauna Rasband @concealocanth.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

I am so sorry to hear of her passing and for the loss to your lab and community. She gave a tremendous talk at Evolution 2024 (Montréal) on the Joshua Tree Genomic Inventory. It was so good that it is one of the few I remember in the general academic conference blur.

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