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Ethan Linck

@elinck.bsky.social
818 followers 611 following 318 posts

Biologist, writer. Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology at Montana State University. Interested in evolution, conservation, genetics, and ecology. elinck.org + ethanlinck.substack.com

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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
fun fact: @cjbattey.bsky.social wrote this (translating Joe Felsenstein's popG from Java) while a TA for Lorenz Hauser's popgen class in grad school
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
a classic
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
2) www.cell.com/current-biol...
cell.com
Extracting AI agent-accessible data from biodiversity literature with corpus
Church et al. present corpus, a tool that converts a library of biodiversity literature PDFs into a searchable knowledge base of text, figures, and references. It connects to an AI agent through a Mod...
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
1) www.cell.com/patterns/ful...
cell.com
Designing reproducible large-language-model-assisted scientific analyses
Researchers are rapidly adopting large language models (LLMs) in their work, but this can create challenges for scientific reproducibility. In this tutorial, the authors offer an organizing question—d...
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
periodic thread of papers on wtf to do about LLMs in science:
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
this, from Butlin & Stankowski (doi.org/10.1111/mec....) on interpreting cline width, is sharp and not intuitive:
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
so good. initially bought it to run studded tubeless as a winter commuter but use it for everything now
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
hey our bikes match
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
bsky.app/profile/high...
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
exciting spouse news: www.hcn.org/issues/58-10...
hcn.org
New leadership for HCN - High Country News
Plus a forthcoming listening tour.
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
👊
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I'm hiring a postdoc to help build tools for inferring complex speciation histories with genomic data. strong computational skills are a must, but this is a training opportunity. 60K$+ salary, 2 years, details flexible. please reach out! (and repost) ad here: jobs.montana.edu/postings/53150
jobs.montana.edu
Postdoctoral Researcher
The Department of Ecology at Montana State University is seeking a Postdoctoral Research Scholar as part of NSF-funded research on speciation under alternating cycles of gene flow and isolation (fundi...
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
sitting bolt upright in bed in a cold sweat as I realize I confused narrow- and broad-sense heritability in a lecture last week
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
this one worked, thanks!
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
broken link! excited to read
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
working on a seminar
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Nico Mongiardino Koch @nmkphylo.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
The PROGressive PHYLOgenetics LAB is now officially open and I'm looking to hire at all levels!! If you are interested in phylogenetics and macroevolution, and enjoy any/all of the following: fossils, morphology, genomics, simulations, or method development, please reach out to me :)
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
fair!
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
trolls will be BLOCKED
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
best I've seen (courtesy of Wikipedia) is "orphaned Neoaves"
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
soliciting alternative terms for the "basal Neoaves" that don't use "basal"
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
yeah, I've thought about variants of this!
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
good ideas—that last point seems important
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
good for course-based research but I'd like the work to contribute to something publishable (not saying these things couldn't be in the right context, but not really my strong suit)
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
"I like birds and want to do science!" here let me show you how to spend 8 hours a day in front of your computer
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
curious how other labs with relatively few hands-on research tasks involve undergrads
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
also this
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
counterpoint: the office is a few blocks from my house and I will invite you to a Barbecue
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
✅ 𝘌𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘓𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘬 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝒎𝒂𝒓𝒌𝒆𝒅 𝒔𝒂𝒇𝒆 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵 𝘳𝘶𝘯𝘢𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨𝘣𝘰𝘢𝘳𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
cool senior forest ecologist job with @wilderness.org, salary 92-108K, location ideally here in Bozeman, Denver, or DC, but other locations considered: thewildernesssociety.careers.hibob.com/jobs/1737380...
thewildernesssociety.careers.hibob.com
Careers
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
yesssssss
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
good idea! I've also thought about pitching a workshop or roundtable for a conference next year (Evolution?)
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
let she who is free of sin cast the first stone
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
anyway, it's the wild west out there, and non-computational-EEB graduate training hasn't even begun to touch best practices (probably partly because of the stigma around it, and the habits of PIs themselves). would love thoughts from others grappling with this
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
I am 100% behind the intention here, but in my (anecdotal) experience it is tricky to figure out how to report (e.g.) 20-30 half-assed prompts to tweak a figure—something that seems to be the MO for grad students with no pre-AI-era programming experience
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
take this, from Evolution (@journal-evo.bsky.social): "If you have used Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, please provide full technical specifications of the LLM used (name, version, model, source) and method of application (query structure, syntax)."
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
journals increasingly require disclosure statements, but these seem out of step with the way a majority of casual AI users in EEB actually work
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
this strikes me as the worst place on the internet to have this conversation, but I'm dying to read smart perspectives on principled use and disclosure of AI / LLM chatbots for scientific programming
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Reposted by Ethan Linck
David Tan @mangrovepitta.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
My 2nd PhD chapter on the phylogeography of the Mangrove and Blue-winged Pittas is now on BioRxiv! Here we used genomic and palaeogeographic methods to show that, despite their similarities, the 2 species are strongly diverged, potentially due to differing ecologies. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Blue-winged PittaMangrove Pitta
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Reposted by Ethan Linck
Rhett Ayers Butler @rhettayersbutler.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Four Melanesian countries are planning a network of marine reserves across one of the world’s richest stretches of ocean. Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, and Fiji announced the Melanesian Ocean Corridor of Reserves in May. Solomon Islands joined in June. news.mongabay.com/2026/07/mela...
Mussau Island in the Manus Marine Protected Area, Papua New Guinea. By Justin Hofman.
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
fascinating—didn’t know the history of the split
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
right! the type was shot on the nest by Hartert
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
no doubt! those GBIF records are already all on the map and in Table 1 (minus the nucleotide sequences), though—note that the type moved from NHM to AMNH when Rothschild sold his collection
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
new paper (my first w/ a Tok Pisin abstract)! our 2024 camera trap record of the rare New Britain Thrush prompted a review of all known observations of the species since its description—a mere 15 total. led by MS student Jason Gregg for the brand-new Journal of Lost Species: doi.org/10.66264/3c8...
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Patrick McKenzie @patrickmckenzie.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Major #Botany2026 FOMO, but the drive MA->OR starts this week. So, sharing from afar: I’m recruiting grad students for my new lab at OSU! Info: www.mckenzie-lab.org . We're going to have FUN with systematics, speciation genomics, methods, natural history, and more in North Am angiosperms. Reach out!
lab logo with a cartoon of white-flowering beebalm and the following text: "McKenzie Lab, Plant Evolution, Oregon State"
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
played hooky and made it up the Villard Spires (12,020’) in the Beartooths last Friday 👍👍
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Reposted by Ethan Linck
Evan Fricke @efricke.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Please help us spread the word about a postdoc position on population and demographic modeling in Tom Miller’s lab at Rice University. It is part of our SERDP-funded project on habitat-based conservation of threatened and endangered species in the Mariana Islands. app.box.com/s/5804wjthga...
app.box.com
M3 demography postdoc.docx | Powered by Box
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
thank you!!
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
👊
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
thanks Sara!!
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