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Daniel Brady Mills

@danbmills.bsky.social
231 followers 340 following 59 posts

Lecturer in Biosphere-Geosphere Interactions, University of Leeds www.danielbradymills.com

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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Very misleading introduction: this "clear story" was never the mainstream view. The "lag" narrative has been the orthodox position since at least the 1970s (e.g., Cloud 1976 Paleobiology), and the field still hasn't explained it, so this is more of the same, not some kind of new development.
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SPP 2404 DEEPDYN @deepdyn.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
🗺️ Lost in the mud? Why evolve your own magnetic sense when you can hire micro-roommates?🤝🧲 Mitali Chitnis & Leon Kaub uncovered a wild 3-way partnership: A single-celled ciliate carrying magnetotactic bacteria & methane-producing archaea! 📄@pnas.org: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... #Microbiology
Electron micrograph showing pearl necklace-shaped magnetosome chains inside the endosymbiotic bacterium. (Elena Sturm / PNAS)
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Interspecies H2 transfer between anaerobic ciliates and H2-consuming bacteria and archaea is fairly common. But here the bacterial partner conveys a new ability to its ciliate host: sensing and orienting along Earth's geomagnetic field. Grateful to have been a part of this! #protistsonsky
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Also, most of it was filmed in Jersey! The exterior shots of the covenant were filmed in Mendham, right next to where I grew up, and the television station scenes were filmed at NJIT.
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
I was hoping for the same!
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
I agree it's probably algae -- I think it'd be bluer if it were cyano-dominated.
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Yes and I will!
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
The relevant preprints from the group: arxiv.org/abs/2510.08410 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
Did not buy the ending for a second -- unearned and unconvincing.
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Been looking forward to this!
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Myxozoa are obligate endoparasites, though, right? They're not free-living, reproducing protists.
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
Interacted with so many Hampshire students when I was an undergrad at UMass -- they were they coolest! Saw a lot of great talks and concerts on their campus, as well. Terrible news.
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
Heat the surface until all liquid water vaporizes! doi.org/10.1038/3607...
doi.org
The life span of the biosphere revisited - Nature
Nature - The life span of the biosphere revisited
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
It's true that this distinction didn't become more widely known until 1962 with Stanier and van Niel's paper, but Edouard Chatton was the first to formalize the prokaryote-eukaryote distinction in 1938 (Titres et Travaux Scientifiques). doi.org/10.1128/mmbr...
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
Lynn did acknowledge these earlier authors (e.g., Merechowsky, Wallin), though, in her 1967 paper. "...these ideas are not new..." This is often overlooked, both by people who claim that she "stole" these ideas, as well as those who claim that she didn't become aware of them until later.
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
Great recommendations!
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Had fun writing this with @glyptocrinus.bsky.social! If multicellularity is ancient and so easy to achieve, then what is it exactly that makes few the multicellular clades that dominate ecosystems today -- plants, animals, fungi -- stand out?
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
Congrats Amelia!
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Will Ratcliff @wcratcliff.bsky.social · 03/02/2026
New paper out! Here's a puzzle: phototrophy, the ability to use light for energy, is one of life's great innovations. It evolved early and transformed the biosphere. But it evolved 2x. Why not just once, why not more? Our work suggests the answer is priority effects. www.nature.com/articles/s44...
nature.com
Priority effects inhibit the repeated evolution of phototrophy - npj Complexity
npj Complexity - Priority effects inhibit the repeated evolution of phototrophy
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
Even better!
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
Please do this!
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
Congrats Jason!
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The Geological Society of America (GSA) @geosociety.bsky.social · 17/01/2026
Bivalves usurped brachiopods as the dominant benthic filter-feeders—the reasons why have been debated. new #Geology paper by Kemi Ashing-Giwa and colleagues support the hypothesis that sulfide played a significant role in the extinction’s selectivity. Read article: geosociety.co/Ashing-Giwa_et_al
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
Not soon enough!
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
I love it too! In the classic sense, in that you have previously free-living organisms (human beings) becoming units in a higher-level organism (the hive mind). Joined humans are to mitochondria what the hive mind is to the eukaryotic cell.
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
I was wondering what you thought of this show! Also whether the joining could qualify as a major transition in evolution or individuality. Not sure if that works on a planetary level, or if this hive mind reproduces at all (are they now transmitting a signal like the one they received?).
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Jeff, Stopping by Woods @jeffontherock.bsky.social · 30/11/2025
Cladonia lichen. #Newfoundland, Canada. #fungifriends #fungi #hiking #lichen
Close up photo of a pale green lichen with brown apothecia. The lichen looks like a musical instrument from a Dr. Seuss book.
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
No worries at all, very happy to see it out!
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 30/11/2025
Grateful to Philip Ball for this thoughtful piece on our recent hard-steps paper! @jmacalad.bsky.social @adamfrank4.bsky.social @astrowright.bsky.social
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H. B. Beryl Rappaport @hbrappap.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
So happy to announce our new preprint, “A geothermal amoeba sets a new upper temperature limit for eukaryotes.” We cultured a novel amoeba from Lassen Volcanic NP (CA, USA) that divides at 63°C (145°F) 🔥 - a new record for euk growth! #protistsonsky 🧵
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David Grinspoon @drfunkyspoon.bsky.social · 22/11/2025
14 years since we lost Lynn Margulis (November 22, 2011). Still can’t believe she’s gone. A giant of biology, through her co-creation of the Gaia Hypothesis, & her endosymbiotic theory, she changed the way we see life, evolution, our planet, ourselves. I feel so privileged to have known her. 🧪
A portrait of a smiling Lynn Margulis.
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Beate Kraft @beatekraft.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
Please apply if you are interested in marine biogeochemistry and microbial dark oxygen production. Deadline: November 17th.
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 07/11/2025
And then some tech bros think to themselves, "What if *I* could be that asshole??"
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 03/11/2025
Preordered! Can't wait!
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
N2 fixation is a great candidate hard step! Not sure if anyone has proposed it as one before.
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
Nooo! Wonder how long it's been there...
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Dr Alison Cribb @alisoncribb.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
New in Trends in Ecology & Evolution: 'Earth system engineers' and the cumulative impact of organisms in deep time 🔓 #ecoevo #openaccess www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... A thread 🧵:
sciencedirect.com
‘Earth system engineers’ and the cumulative impact of organisms in deep time
Understanding the role of humans as ‘ecosystem engineers’ requires a deep-time perspective rooted in evolutionary history and the fossil record. Howev…
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
Was just thinking about this after watching the original The Thing from Another World for the first time. I was surprised that the alien wasn't a shape-shifter like in the remake or novella, but an "intellectual carrot" as one of the characters put it.
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
Mesmerizing!
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
Show them Symbiotic Earth! hummingbirdfilms.com/symbioticear...
hummingbirdfilms.com
Symbiotic Earth - Hummingbird Films
The film, Symbiotic Earth, is about Lynn Margulis, a scientific rebel who challenged entrenched theories of evolution to present a new narrative.
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Jonny Gordon @jonathan-gdon.bsky.social · 04/09/2025
Human-driven extinction event not yet the "sixth mass extinction", but is very likely the largest extinction event of the last 66 million yrs. 🌏 🧪 Read about it in our new paper led by @jackhhatfield.bsky.social and Katie Davis @anthropocenebio.bsky.social doi.org/10.1111/gcb....
doi.org
The Greatest Extinction Event in 66 Million Years? Contextualising Anthropogenic Extinctions
Species and ecosystems are changing rapidly in response to human actions, but how does this compare with the deeper past? We review and compare the current extinction event to those over the last 66 ....
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Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.org · 02/09/2025
Andrea Halling, a grad student at University of Colorado Boulder, recently led experiments with living algae to test how the physical conditions of ancient seawater might have impacted ancient single-celled organisms. quantamagazine.org/the-physics-...
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Adam Frank @adamfrank4.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
Very happy to share this new paper we've recently published. Do biospheres use information in the same way organisms do? Can we think of biospheres as agents? "Exo-Daisy World: Revisiting Gaia Theory through an Informational Architecture Perspective" iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 21/08/2025
Sounds great -- excited to check it out!
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Peter Brannen @peterbrannen.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
In one week my book about carbon comes out, and here's some nice things some nice people have said about it. If you feel moved to do so, the link below provides a means of purchase. Thank you, that is all. www.harpercollins.com/products/the...
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
I've been looking forward to this! Saw Nir present this at Goldschmidt back in 2023.
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Jordon Hemingway @jordonhemingway.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
🚨 Paper alert! 🚨 After >1 year in review and six (6!) reviewers, I'm thrilled that this paper is finally out! Here, we provide the first data-based record of marine dissolved organic carbon in the geologic past. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
The geologic history of marine dissolved organic carbon from iron oxides - Nature
A direct proxy for past dissolved organic carbon signatures using co-precipitated organic carbon in iron ooids enables reconstruction of marine dissolved organic carbon signals dating back to the Pala...
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Daniel Brady Mills @danbmills.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
Fantastic!!
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Philip Donoghue @phil-donoghue.bsky.social · 11/08/2025
The proceedings volume from our Nov24 meeting on the evolution of biospheres is just in PhilTransB @royalsocietypublishing.org delivering insights into how our biosphere evolved - and how other biospheres may evolve
royalsocietypublishing.org
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences: Vol 380, No 1931
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Gaia Vince @wanderinggaia.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
So pleased to be part of this special issue following a wonderful meeting at @royalsociety.org on Chance and Purpose in the Biosphere last year. Do check it out
royalsocietypublishing.org
Planetary system evolution and the extended biosphere: we humans are products of Earth’s biosphere; we have become its co-creators; can we be its regulators? | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
The energy balance of a planet is set by the sunlight entering and the heat radiating back from it. Earth’s biosphere adds new complexity as energy flows through global marine and terrestrial ecosystems altering physical and chemical systems, including ...
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