iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Emily Kerns, PhD

SICB journals @sicbjournals.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

ICB "We explored spatial variation in sex-biased #parasitism in #mangrove rivulus, an androdioecious #fish in which simultaneous hermaphrodites can facultatively transition to male." doi.org/10.1093/icb/... Fitzwater et al & subscribe @oceanfilly.bsky.social YouTube www.youtube.com/channel/UCqg...

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Andrew Hendry @ecoevoevoeco.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

To what extent to ancestry and behavior contribute to fish movement in a novel environment? "Correlates of Post-Introduction Displacement in a Conservation Translocation of Threespine Stickleback" Now out in FW Biol led by Alexis Heckley onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

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Fredrik Jutfelt 🐠 @jutfelt.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Come join us, PhD and postdoc positions! Please spread! Supervisor @patricepottier.bsky.social (patricepottierlab.com), me as co-supervisor. Impacts of climate change on different life-stages in fish.🐟🧪 PhD web103.reachmee.com/ext/I005/103... Postdoc web103.reachmee.com/ext/I005/103...

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Reposted by Emily Kerns, PhD

Matt Kustra @matt-kustra.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

New preprint led by amazing undergrad @ogolwala.bsky.social! Within ~10,000 years, sperm traits have diverged between trophic specialists in this young radiation of pupfish. Hybrids are fertile, but show transgressive sperm kinematics and reorganized integration. With @fishspeciation.bsky.social.

Density plots of sperm straightness comparing two species of pupfish (molluscivore and scale-eater) and their hybrids. Hybrids have straighter sperm than the parental species.

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Emily Kerns, PhD @emilykernss.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

I defended my PhD last week!🍾🎉 I’m proud of the work I put into each of my projects. I’ve grown so much as a scientist thanks to guidance from my advisor and lab mates. Also, I was so excited that some of my close friends and parents were able to make it out to my defense! Thank you all!!

I’m smiling while standing at a podium presenting. The slide shows a photo of a map, an aerial image of lakes, and a fish.

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Emily Kerns, PhD @emilykernss.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

I had so much fun at #Evol2026! I met so many passionate people doing amazing work, got great feedback on how to analyze my data, & learned of new opportunities to keep doing exciting and important research after I graduate. I hope I get the chance to go next year!

I’m standing on a small stage at a podium in front of a large screen. The screen is showing the title slide of my talk. In large black lettering, the title says “Testing a novel framework for connecting phenotypic plasticity, epigenetics, & natural selection using experiments in threespine stickleback”

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Reposted by Emily Kerns, PhD

Krystle J McLaughlin @biophyskrys.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

As a scientist, I am here to report that this headline is indeed accurate as I am in fact STUNNED!! Wow. This is incredible. 🧪 "Newly discovered bacterial defense system challenges genetic code’s central dogma.": www.science.org/content/arti...

Screenshot of Science commentary articleL Scientists stunned by ‘fundamentally new way’ life produces DNA.
Newly discovered bacterial defense system challenges genetic code’s central dogma. Image: In a newly discovered bacterial defense system, paired strands of DNA (orange and cyan) are synthesized by two enzymes: One (yellow) uses an RNA template (beige) to guide the assembly of the nucleotide bases that make up DNA, while a second, highly unusual enzyme (light blue) uses its own amino acids as a template."

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Eric Topol @erictopol.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

$2.45 billion NIH grant cuts and ~2300 terminated active research grants were DOGE'd in early 2025 Who were most affected? www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.... Early career and women researchers

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Emily Kerns, PhD @emilykernss.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

A few years ago an undergrad designed & executed an experiment to test quorum sensing in Schistocephalus. Today we published it in @peerj.bsky.social. I’m excited to see this work come to fruition & proud that we published a null result in a respected academic journal peerj.com/articles/206...

peerj.com

No evidence for quorum sensing during egg hatching in the cestode Schistocephalus solidus

Schistocephalus solidus, a parasitic cestode with a multi-host life cycle, reproduces in its terminal host either by outcrossing with similarly sized individuals or selfing. Previous work found that s...

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Emily Kerns, PhD @emilykernss.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

It’s a bit late, but thank you @wisconsinevolution.bsky.social for inviting me to present at the Evolution Seminar Series! It was my first seminar and I had so much fun discussing how we can integrate epigenetics with current evolutionary theory

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Emily Kerns, PhD @emilykernss.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

The sponge-ctenophore debate was one of the first that excited me as an undergrad. It’s so cool to still see new papers coming out on the topic!

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Emily Kerns, PhD @emilykernss.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

2 years ago the first PhD student from my lab graduated. Last week we submitted his second chapter for review, a project that we collaborated on from start to end after the two of us independently converged on the same idea to test thermal tolerance in benthic & limnetic stickleback

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Reposted by Emily Kerns, PhD

bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

Heritable differences in metabolic stability underpin thermal tolerance of threespine stickleback (Gasterostues aculeatus) ecotypes www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…

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Emily Kerns, PhD @emilykernss.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

I wrote an op-ed on the importance of federally funded science for my hometown newspaper as part of the #McClintockLetter initiative. Thanks @cornellasap.bsky.social for organizing this initiative! Here's some action shots of NSF and NIH funded science. www.tbnweekly.com/opinion/arti...

I'm dissecting a fish under a dissecting scope. I'm wearing a light blue dry suit and gloves. The dissection table is in a wood garage. There's a white pickup truck parked behind me and moose and deer antlers on the walls.

I'm working in a fume hood with a student. We're both wearing lab coats and safety glasses. We turned around and are smiling at the camera.

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Emily Kerns, PhD @emilykernss.bsky.social · 24/02/2025

Four photos for the four research jobs I’ve had. Two as an intern for the NPS and USFS, one as a USFS employee, and one as a NIH and NSF-funded grad student. The future is uncertain, but I love doing science and I don’t plan to stop

I’m proudly holding an approximately 7 foot long root of English Ivy. I’m standing in a patch of short grass in front of a metal shed. I’m wearing rain boots and a rain jacket, but it’s a sunny day and I’m smiling

Two people in orange vests and yellow construction hats are resting at the base of an old growth Sitka spruce. They’re looking up towards the forest canopy. Devil’s club and other conifers are visible in the background

A grey and white one person tent in the middle of an aspen stand. It’s autumn, there are yellow leaves on the trees and on the ground

I’m floating on my back in a lake. I’m in the middle of an 10 foot by 10 foot enclosure built with white seine net, black floats, and PVC pipes. I’m wearing swimming goggles and a blue and grey dry suit while smiling and making two peace signs at the camera. There’s another large enclosure in the background.

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Emily Kerns, PhD @emilykernss.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

Wisconsin Evolution is accepting applications for Early Career Awardees! Please pass this along to any PhD students or post docs who may be interested in visiting UW-Madison to give a guest lecture at our Evolution Seminar Series evolution.wisc.edu/seminars/ear...

evolution.wisc.edu

Early Career Award Seminar

The J.F. Crow Institute for the Study of Evolution at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is inviting early-career evolutionary biologists from outside UW-Madison to apply to participate in an early-c...

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Reposted by Emily Kerns, PhD

Will Ratcliff @wcratcliff.bsky.social · 26/10/2024

New preprint up! We sequenced hundreds of samples from across one of Earth's oldest living organisms - the Pando aspen clone - to understand how mutations accumulate and spread in long-lived clonal organisms. Our results were…surprising. 1/30

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Reposted by Emily Kerns, PhD

CoreyWelch_STEM @coreywelch.bsky.social · 26/09/2024

NSF GRFP changed the submission process so that letters of rec. are due ~10 days BEFORE the student application deadline. So dumb. Students need to start their submissions so the recommenders will be notified by NSF about the request. Hyp.: # of 2023 applications > # of 2024 applications

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Reposted by Emily Kerns, PhD

Daniel Bolnick @danielbolnick.bsky.social · 29/06/2024

Excited to share a new preprint: biorxiv.org/cgi/content/... In 2019 we founded 9 whole lake populations of stickleback, as part of a massive eco-evo experiment. Here, we report the first half decade of host-parasite & immune trait dynamics... (thread, 1/N)

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Andrew Hendry @ecoevoevoeco.bsky.social · 28/06/2024

It was cool to arrive in AK after driving for 3 days (from BC) to then receive an email indicating our paper describing the big Alaska stickleback experiment is out. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

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Stacy Farina @stacyfarina.bsky.social · 03/06/2024

Do you work in ecology/evolution? Did you do a study that is too small to publish as a full manuscript? Negative results? Part of a larger effort? Consider publishing in microPublication Biology: EEB! www.micropublication.org/journals/bio... Short papers, one figure. And we peer review! Please RT

micropublication.org

microPublication - Get Your Data Out, Be Cited

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Emily Kerns, PhD @emilykernss.bsky.social · 23/10/2023

I just left the annual Wisconsin Epigenetics Symposium! Listening to researchers from across UW-Mad who study everything cancer to cellular differentiation to evolution, it’s always a pleasant surprise to be reminded of just how broad and cutting edge the field of epigenetics is

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The American Genetic Association @theaga.bsky.social · 19/10/2023

The 2024 AGA Awards round is open! Evolutionary, Ecological, and Conservation Genomics (EECG) Research Awards to grads & postdocs. Up to $6,000 to conclude genomic research projects and prepare results for publication. More info at www.theaga.org Deadline: Midnight EST, 13 Dec 2023

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Thiago Carvalho @cyrilpedia.bsky.social · 15/10/2023

"Coincidently, the DNAm changes observed in aging, cancer, and proliferation share some notable patterns. In general, they tend to be characterized by gains in methylation at promoters (...) and loss of methylation in intergenic regions and repetitive elements"

science.org

More than bad luck: Cancer and aging are linked to replication-driven changes to the epigenome

Cellular replication leaves an epigenetic fingerprint that may partially underly the age-associated increase in cancer risk.

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Reposted by Emily Kerns, PhD

Jukka-Pekka Verta @jpverta.bsky.social · 15/10/2023

Neat! Identifying genes that underlie the development of sensory legs in sea robin.

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