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Gavin Leighton

@gavinleighton.bsky.social
1.3K followers 681 following 99 posts

Evolutionary Biologist & Behavioral Ecologist, Associate Professor at SUNY Buffalo State. Studying mimicry in woodpeckers and the evolution of social behavior in birds. Opinions my own. He/him.

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Reposted by Gavin Leighton
Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 03/10/2026
Killed. NSF’s SBE was killed, in violation of law. The President does not have the power to choose to kill programs at a whim by defunding them. The imperial presidency was a mistake and we are in a separation of powers constitutional crisis.
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Jeremy Van Cleve @vancleve.theoretical.bio · 29/09/2026
My group is recruiting a Ph.D student for Fall 2027! We're a friendly group of mathematically-minded and computationally-inspired biologists studying topics including social evolution, host-pathogen interactions, genetics, and demography. See vancleve.theoretical.bio for more info!
vancleve.theoretical.bio
van cleve research group
Van Cleve Research Group – theoretical evolution & ecology at the University of Kentucky
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
NSF has reduced the research budget for all atmospheric, ocean, and earth sciences by ~80%. 80%! A lot of us will not be conducting new research or training new students for the foreseeable future.
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Alex Wild @alexwild.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Ultimately, this letter from NSF is an announcement that universities will be funded a lot less and politically-connected industry will be funded a lot more. Fancy words around old-fashioned corruption.
nsf.gov
NSF leadership in a new golden age of science
The U.S. National Science Foundation was established in 1950 to keep American discovery at the frontier. That mission has not changed. The science and technology ecosystem around it has...
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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Grantmaking has leveled off, so it looks like NSF will make around 6,200 new grants—down from an average of ~11,000. That's a historic low, not seen since the 1980s, when NSF was a far smaller organization. Left was our projection three weeks ago, right is the current data.
Previous plot of NSF new grants projected FY26 would be ~6100Current data for total new grants at NSF
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Nature @nature.com · 20/08/2026
The US National Science Foundation will award about 30% fewer new research grants this fiscal year than in the last one, Nature has learnt. go.nature.com/3UcGoNW
go.nature.com
Exclusive: NSF set to issue lowest number of new grants in four decades
The US science-funding agency is withholding $1 billion of its budget so that the money can go to a special White House project.
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Anna Allen @akallen10.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
New NSF BIO solicitation is live.... this replaces the previous IOS, MCB, DEB solicitation www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...
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Drug Monkey @drugmonkey.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Holy shit. “the final overall impact score or percentile on which the categorization was based would not be released to any of these parties. “
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
He seems to think faculty don't want to talk about class but our SUNY union had faculty fighting for improvements for staff and adjuncts. Perhaps TAH could leave his elite bubble and see that his caricatures are incomplete at best.
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
I don't know man, Tyler Austin Harper is a fairly uninspired reactionary that is respooling grievances from several years ago. If he thinks "Woke 1" is the biggest threat to colleges/universities in the year of our lord 2026 then he's either deluded or an even bigger grifter than at first glance.
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Birds of the World | The Cornell Lab @birdsoftheworld.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
The Cornell Lab invites applications for Edward W. Rose Postdoctoral Fellowships. These competitive awards support innovative, independent research by early-career scholars of exceptional promise. Two to four awards are made in each cycle. academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/32334
academicjobsonline.org
Cornell University, Lab of Ornithology
Job #AJO32334, WDR-00059934 Rose Postdoctoral Associate, Cornell University, Ithaca NY, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, US
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Thank you! Glad it was (mostly) well received.
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
If you're at #AOS26 and want to hear about continent-wide tests of mimicry predictions in woodpeckers and the curious results, I'll be speaking tomorrow (08/06) in the Behavior 3 session at 4 PM (room 163)!
Image of the United States with a color scale of relative abundance of two woodpecker species. Next to it is a stylized dominance hierarchy from a specific location in New York State.
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Dead internet theory but academia.
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 23/07/2026
1. The new Trump / Kratsios plan for US science appears explicitly designed to destroy US universities. Diverting money to tech donors is probably just a bonus. Gift link.
nytimes.com
Trump’s Plan for Science: More Money for A.I., Less for Universities (Gift Article)
Michael Kratsios, President Trump’s science adviser, proposed overhauling how the government funds research. Democrats said Mr. Trump’s actions had weakened science.
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Jake Berv @jakeberv.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Happy to share this 'capstone' project from my time as a postdoc @umich.edu, where we show that hierarchically nested bursts of body-shape evolution may underlie much of perching-bird diversification over ~50 million years. Free access link here: rdcu.be/fuxB1
rdcu.be
Rates of passerine body plan evolution in time and space
Nature Ecology & Evolution - A reconstruction of the evolutionary history of passerine body plans over the past ~50 Myr shows rare bursts of phenotypic innovation near the origin of major...
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Ben Allen @evodynamics.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Congrats we just made it impossible to come here for a PhD www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/16/m...
bostonglobe.com
Trump administration limits student visas to four years, changing longstanding policy - The Boston Globe
The new rule, which also restricts the international students’ ability to transfer schools or change majors without approval in their first year, will go into effect in mid-September.
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Pouring on more and more defenders that aren't there to keep possession will go down as perhaps the worst managerial mistake of this tournament. Only O'reilly was defensible as a sub that could get regain the ball for the team.
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
The submitted grant was squarely within animal behavior so it doesn’t seem likely it would fit better elsewhere under the previous structure.
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Submitted a grant recently to IOS in the NSF and got this recent email. I’ve tried to stay up to date on the how the NSF has had to “restructure” after draconian budget cuts, but has anyone heard if IOS has been closed? The IOS solicitation/webpage is still nominally open.
An email received saying that a submitted grant has been reassigned somewhere else in the NSF
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
So that's one way to connect actual genes/alleles to larger traits that are relevant for fitness. You could also use the foraging gene in Drosophila or the orco gene in Harpegnathos. Though the Darwin's Finch example is more connected from gene to studies in the field/fitness.
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
One option to consider is using a system where at least some of the genetic structure of a trait is known. For instance, you could use BMP4 and CaM genes in Darwin's Finches since thre is evidence they shape beak development. Beak size influences survival and song in Darwin's finches.
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Paula’s donuts
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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 29/06/2026
Sotomayor’s dissent is an obituary for science, NIH, and NSF. “Seldom, if ever, has this Court worked such a profound bait and switch on a coequal branch: For more than 90 years, Congress believed, with this Court’s express approval, that it was allowed to create a workable Govern- ment…”
Today's decision profoundly undermines this reliance and, as a result, undercuts one side of the balance that the political branches struck. Put simply, today the majority reshapes our Government. Dozens of independent commissions are now likely to become purely executive agencies, shifting tremendous power over broad swaths of American life into the President's hands: the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, with responsibility for managing the Nation's energy supply, see 42 U.S. C. §7171(b)(1); the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which protects Americans against harms caused by dangerous goods, see
15 U.S. C. §2053(a); the Chemical Safety Board, tasked with investigating chemical disasters, see 42 U.S. C.
§7412(r)(6)(B); the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, responsible for the regulation of nuclear power, see 42 U.S. C. 885841(a), (c), (e); and the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), charged with ensuring the integrity of the civil service, see 5 U. S. C. §1202. The list of agencies
entially modified by today's decision goes on.
Seldom, if ever, has this Court worked such a profound bait and switch on a coequal branch: For more than 90 years, Congress believed, with this Court's express ap-proval, that it was allowed to create a workable Govern-ment, including by granting certain agencies tasked with certain responsibilities some independence from Presidential control.
In rejecting that project, after decades of prom-
ising the po
ical branches that structures like the FTC's
were permissible, the Court creates an Executive Branch that Congress never dreamed of establishing and that it now has little hope of ever reining in. Cf. Learning Re-sources, Inc. v. Trump, 607 U. S. 229, 244-245 (2026) (opin-
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
'They really do like technology,' Lamm says of the Trump administration. 'They seem to like making money and saving money.' Sure man. The admin is wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on an unnecessary ballroom but they love saving money.
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
"Working with both sides of the aisle, while they have different views on things like climate change, they do agree that a world without species is bad,” he says." Is that really the main takeaway from comparing admins? This sort of stuff from the CEO of Colossal is insufferable unctuousness.
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Has anyone at Colossal provided even a remotely plausible about how de-extinction is supposed to work without habitat protection or restoration? If they don't have some robust plan then you can probably bet on this company going under at some point and all these samples being lost.
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
These are really excellent water color representations. The water color images are surely better than some of the fairly rare but anti-inspiring arrow and line figures you see in some places.
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Genuinely enjoying this PhyloMonet rendering of branches/traits.
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Science Magazine @science.org · 22/06/2026
Exclusive: The National Science Foundation is trimming this year’s budgets for hundreds of its traditional basic science programs by roughly 20% to 30%, even though its overall budget is down just 3%. scim.ag/4xY2KCm
science.org
Exclusive: NSF slashes research programs to support new tech initiative, insiders say
Unexpected shift in funds has meant sharp drop in grants this fiscal year
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Jeffrey Mervis @policyhound.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
NSF uses staffing cuts to strip Inspector General's office of its ability to investigate research misconduct www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
Exclusive: NSF watchdog unit is no longer investigating research misconduct
New policy hands universities the reins in probing allegations against faculty
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Susana Wadgymar🌿🔬 @smwadgymar.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
Truly the death of science as we know it, as well as any societies and journals dependent on funding from U.S. scientists. **Public comments accepted through July 13.** 🧪 🌍 Email and call your representative every day, on top of leaving public comments here: www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...
federalregister.gov
Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) proposes to revise the Guidance for Federal Financial Assistance to improve government- wide policies and requirements related to the management of grants, co...
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 29/05/2026
Of all the harm this administration has done to US science, today's proposed changes to the way federal grants are awarded and administered is the most damaging yet. The text of the federal register document is impenetrably tedious by design, so here's an excellent summary of what it says.
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Ross @rossengineer.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
Worked at JPL while studying at Caltech back in the early 1990s. This is a nightmare-level theft of a planetary science & exploration powerhouse. It makes no sense whatsoever. Republicans' continued vandalism of NASA's science centers is intolerable.
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Jingyi Yang @jyang19.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Happy to see my PhD work on birdsong complexity published today! doi.org/10.1098/rspb... 🐦‍⬛ 🎶 ⬇️ Why are some birdsongs simple and some extremely complex? The answer is long thought to be ‘sexual selection favouring complex signals’. But - really?
doi.org
Song complexity in suboscine birds: evolutionary drivers and ecological constraints
Abstract. Acoustic signal complexity varies widely in animals, from single notes to highly sophisticated vocal displays. In birds, vocal complexity can evo
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Nathan Butterworth @butterworthbugs.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
How do courtship dances evolve? Paper out now in Behavioral Ecology 🪰 "Courtship choreography is stabilized among genetically isolated populations" doi.org/10.1093/behe... Video of our study species the dancing dune fly (Apotropina ornatipennis) below.
youtu.be
The courtship display of Apotropina ornatipennis (Diptera: Chloropidae)
YouTube video by Nathan
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
Here's the screenshot of who to contact for this:
Screen shot of NSF website for X-labs solicitation. Showing that there is no point person and only a shady email for contacting this 'program'
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
If you click through to the 'contact' info for this program you'll see the contact email is "xlabs@nsf.gov" and the contact phone number is "(blank)". The actual text of this solicitation is barely coherent. 100% a scheme to funnel critical NSF money to private companies with no oversight.
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
That behavior is probably a worker carrying her sister to a new nest site or potentially to a new resource. www.antwiki.org/wiki/Social_...
antwiki.org
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
This is basically harassment of scholars willing to question the Trump administration’s targeting of Chinese colleagues. Innes already had the FBI investigate his lab and was given the all clear. Now USDA is shutting down the Lab, which focuses on making fungus-resistant plants.
IU plant microbiologist Roger Innes says the move Thursday evening is the latest instance of retaliation for a letter he wrote last fall on behalf of Yunqing Jian, a plant scientist postdoc at the University of Michigan who had pled guilty to smuggling biological material and making false statements. The letter to Jian's attorney, intended to be used at her sentencing, argued that what the Chinese postdoc had transported was not dangerous, but she was still ultimately deported.
Her conviction triggered an investigation of Youhuang Xiang, a Chinese postdoc in Innes' lab, that led to Xiang also pleading guilty last month to smuggling loops of DNA known as plasmids. He was also deported.
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Thanks Catherine! I’ll extend your congrats to author Catherine as well.
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Thank you! Really stellar work by Catherine as well as this was her undergrad research project.
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
Link to the paper here: rdcu.be/ff1hH [3/3]
rdcu.be
Evolutionary dynamics of size and plumage dimorphism in birds
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
There might be a constraint on increased sexual size dimorphism contingent on nest types. Closed nest types did not see increased sexual size dimorphism whereas open nest types more readily allowed for increased sexual size dimorphism with increasing body size (Bold lines are significant) [2/3]
Graph showing sexual size dimorphism (SSD) on the vertical axis and body mass on the horizontal axis. Lines represent relationships for each nest type, with significant relationships in bold and nonsignificant relationships faded.
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
Research from the lab on the evolution of size and plumage dimorphism in birds! Grad student Catherine Alverson examined how species move between size and plumage dimorphism categories. While those results largely recapitulated previous work, there was an intriguing new finding [1/3]
Phylogeny of bird species in the paper. The rings around the phylogeny represent traits. The silhouettes represent bird species in the paper.
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 28/04/2026
More details on the firing of the National Science Board. The NSF now has no director, deputy director, or board. They have issued almost no new awards in 2026. The plan appears to be to completely destroyed the agency. The details are horrifying and have Russ Vought written all over them.
insidehighered.com
Board Ouster Raises Further Concerns About NSF’s Future
The White House axed all members of the board overseeing the National Science Foundation Friday, leaving the agency with no board, director or deputy director. It finally provided a reason Monday afte...
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Gavin Leighton @gavinleighton.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
I think the unambiguous quantitative evidence is that there were more pieces on Walz and his service than pieces on the dire consequences of Trump launching a war of choice with Iran. You might say journalists didn’t collude to do this but none of the explanations for the discrepancy are good.
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Mike Kaspari @mikekaspari.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
NSF LTER program “archived”. LTER=“Long Term Ecological Research”. This program has been incredibly successful, incredibly frugal for what they accomplish, and…of course…targeted by evil know-nothings. My heart is breaking.
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Vincent J Lynch 🐘🦣🦥 🦇🐋🐢🐍 @devoevomed.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
It was.
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
Are you (or something you know) looking for a PhD? Like trait macroevolution but also yearn for an applied topic? Think plants are neat? Want to live in beautiful northeast Scotland?! 🌊🐬⛰️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 I'm advertising a PhD in my lab! Deadline April 22, email me any questions. www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
findaphd.com
QUARTILES DLA CASE: Trait-based drivers of the ornamental plant trade at University of Aberdeen on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - QUARTILES DLA CASE: Trait-based drivers of the ornamental plant trade at University of Aberdeen , listed on FindAPhD.com
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