iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

A wild departure in tone from the original report too, I even get called *Professor* Villanea now! 😁 Where did all the acerbity go?!? This is not the same sensationalist language that got everyone's attention three months ago. I am disappointed.

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

My favorite part is Heinrich secretly following up on my career (Hi Joe! 👋). The Vanderbilt report was released June 5th, CU Boulder announced tenure recipients June 11th. So the sub-report was massaged over the past few months, no doubt to make it more palatable given the overwhelming criticism.

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

I think its possible to represent two incongruent trees like this ignoring branch lengths, I've seen it done to drive the eye to introgression, but you're right, it is a mess. But! Just got the tip that cophyloplot does something better:

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Pop gen folk - can anyone suggest a package for drawing joint phylogenies. ie. if I have a large mitochondrial and autosomal trees for the same individuals and can use as input to draw them jointly. Like this example:

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Today I am no longer ass. pro. Now I am asc. pro. with tenure! (I got the letter a while ago but weirdly it goes into effect August 13 for us).

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Someone score please. Do it for Marty.

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

There’s a small enclave of Argentinians in Boulder Colorado. I did not see the goal or the replay from the sea of people cheering between me and the tv.

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Days like today I feel lucky I got the job I got. CUB campus is gorgeous. And feel lucky that Colorado Shakespeare is set on CUB campus.

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

@david-peede.bsky.social talking about the relation between coalescent times and site patters under an introgressed genetic tree to introduce a new statistic D*. D* is an ILS agnostic test of introgression that performs best under unknown demography.

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Today’s game has massive cultural importance for both Japan and all of Latin America #worldcup2026

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Come talk to my students at #smbe2026 in poster session A on the 2nd floor Arkaden 8 Nick Hartman is in 235 and will be talking about the genetic bases for adrenarchy in Neanderthals Michael Orellana is on 226 talking about the demographic trajectory and admixture of South America camelids #smbe

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Ignominious mention to Skechers for doing whatever this is 🤷🏻‍♂️

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

In this highly competitive pink ecosystem, whomever breaks away will truly stand out! And of course that’s Messi! Not only is he having a great World Cup, but his custom Adidas albiceleste cleats stand out miles away in the sea of bright pink. That shoe is going to sell out.

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Are Puma and New Balance doing Batesian mimicry? The type where the signal is not honest and it’s exploiting the signal from the honest signalers.

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

But what about the smaller companies? Is this better for Puma and New Balance - are they benefiting from Adidas and Nike paying to have indistinguishable pink cleats on famous athletes? I honestly don’t know.

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

But for say, Adidas, they want to grab attention and also be distinct. So if famous athlete is wearing the very bright pink cleat you can go buy it…except how would you know is not actually a pink Nike cleat? Seems bad for the bigger companies, they spent a lot of money signaling their uniqueness

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

In Müllerian mimicry two species that share predator populations will evolve to converge on the same signal because it doubles the number of individuals advertising the message, often ‘I’m toxic, don’t eat me.’

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

If you’ve watched any World Cup games you’ve noticed everyone is wearing pink cleats this year. The reason shoe companies settled on that specific pink is interesting on its own but what strikes me as most interesting is that is basically reverse Müllerian mimicry!

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Not quite to Josh’s level yet 😬

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

All publicity is good publicity, I guess 🤷‍♂️ Has anyone heard about this Vanderbilt report on the humanities and have some thoughts? I found it to be really boring to read but since they chose to throw down the gauntlet I should probably educate myself.

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

So far I’ve resisted the syrinx song of bird watching but Merlin is on fire here in Costa Rica.

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

On one hand, canvas outage during an online class is no fun, on another, much nicer, tropical dry forest hand, this is my office for the Maymester.

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

Huh. This is my first time picking a champion. It feels odd #2026MMM

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

Humans are really inbred. We have a lower genetic diversity than gorillas and gray whales, and we have spent the better part of the last 200 years hunting those almost to extinction. Note the log scale on this figure, those differences are much bigger than they appear at first.

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

This is what March Mammal Madness is all about! #2026MMM

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

The department of anthropology at CU Boulder had the pleasure of hosting @gahousman.bsky.social for the last few days. Dr. Housman gave an excellent talk on primate functional genetics and met with many of our trainees and faculty.

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

#AABA2026 the anthropology department at CU Boulder is hosting a get together for friends of the department (that’s you!) tonight at Colorado Campfire. Appetizers provided #aaba2026

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

For my peeps traveling to Denver for #AABA2026 this is the kind of weather whim you should plan for:

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

There is one thing COLOSSAL’s philosophy has right, and that brings us long last to the top of this very long 🧵 “we need to take on the responsibility of managing and stewarding the world” - only we can do it without taking short-cuts to appeal to billionaires. So where should our money and time go?

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

And now Australia is experiencing unpredented declines in mammal species that are not prayed by or pray on cane toads, or even compete for prey directly. It's all driven by complex ecological network interactions, consequences that were unpredictable before the introduction doi.org/10.1007/s105...

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

Just because we understand ecological interactions, doesn’t mean we can predict the outcomes! For example, in June 1935, 102 cane toads were imported to Australia, in March 1937, some 62,000 toadlets were bred in captivity. By 2011 they were estimated to number over 200 million.

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

Ian was a chaotician. Chaos theory studies the unpredictability of complex-deterministic systems. Deterministic systems are not random but can be complex. Complex, deterministic systems, become unpredictable. Ecological systems are complex deterministic systems. Woman inherits the Earth.

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

And that brings us to ecology, and like all things de-extinction, to Jurassic Park. Have you ever wondered why a mathematician like Ian Malcolm was invited to assess Jurassic Park alongside an ornithologist and a paleobotanist (and a lawyer)?

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

COLOSSAL has stated the goal for the woolly mammoth 2.0 is to create a "woolly mammoth-like" elephant that can help restore the Arctic ecosystem and make it more resilient to climate change. The woolly mammoth used to be a keystone species in the arctic 10,000 years ago.

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

COLOSSAL then claimed that a species can be defined by how they look. They also claim that if the animal looks the right way, it will perform the ecological function of the original. And that is their goal (now)! To de-extinct the function of the extinct species, no matter how they get there.

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

Colossal edited 20 genes. 15 are genes related to body size (using known dog genetics), for which they inserted the dire wolf variant. 5 are genes known to affect coat color on grey wolves, to make the modified animals white. But why WHITE??? Because G.O.T. $$$ Let's talk ecology in Part 5!

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

So then, why bring back the Dire Wolf? Because the genome is sequenced. Because dog genetics and genetic effects are very well studied. Because surrogate grey wolf mothers are readily available. Because Dire Wolves are incredibly popular with the public. And because they can raise a LOT of $$$

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

A small detour to introduce the concept of keystone species. A species that is ecologically connected to so many other species is integral to maintain healthy ecosystems. Dire wolves might have been a keystone species 10,000 years ago. Grey wolves are a keystone species today.

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

Now I am being unfair because COLOSSAL sequenced their own dire wolf genome and found the phylogenetic relationship to be closer to grey wolves and some other mystery canid but that preprint has not passed peer-review so I trust the Nature article more for now: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

The dire wolf ancient genome was published in 2022 revealing a lot, including a very distant relationship with living grey wolves. doi.org/10.1038/s415... Given their phylogenetic relationship Dire Jackal, Dire Dhole, or Dire Coyote are equally appropriate.

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

And what better case to illustrate those limits that their “dire wolf” 2.0. You undoubtedly were expose to the media announcing the de-extinction of the dire wolf. It was almost unavoidable for a few news cycles.

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Fernando Villanea @fervillanea.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

Going back to COLOSSAL, because genetic editing is limited to a few targets, is very important to have a complete understanding of the downstream consequences of making those changes and this has proven to be an incredibly difficult problem, even in the best studies organism of all time, humans.

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