iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Did a fun little write up about this book, which (spoiler alert) I enjoyed and recommend

Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

To the #Evol2026 folks, I am recruiting MSc/PhD students (with or without their own funding) - please send people my way if you know of anyone interested in blending ecology & evolution!

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

hmu if you're going to Evolution in Cleveland ✨️

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

What are best practices for citing R packages in papers, given that citations cut into word length? For one we used 17 packages. A separate supplementary package citation list would be nice.

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Five of us are headed to CSEE next week - come hang out with us!

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

My fav memory was a road trip with @tessgrainger.bsky.social and Natalie Jones from San Diego to the Victoria meeting, and running out of gas (like, pedal stopped working) while driving in the fast lane of a highway. How many PhDs does it take to remember to fill the gas tank 🤔

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Who here is going to CSEE in Toronto???

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

March in Northern California - plant phenology is advanced by about a month!

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

A graph articulating my thoughts on hybrid meetings

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

Our paper on how to use niche theory (MacArthur's minimization principle) to understand eco/evo limits to diversity got a shout out from Quarterly Review of Biology: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/... The paper is hard to access but a copy can be found here drive.google.com/file/d/14EGZ...

journals.uchicago.edu

Speciation. Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology. Edited by Catherine L. Peichel, Åke Brännström, Daniel I. Bolnick, Ulf Dieckmann, and Rebecca J. Safran. Cold Spring Harbor (New York): Cold Spr...

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Reposted by Rachel Germain

Aerin Jacob, PhD @aerinj.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

[8 Nov 2025] Another roundup of #ConservationJobs, mostly in 🇨🇦. All postings include salary. I am not involved in these positions. Please share to help others — working to conserve nature is rewarding and needed! www.linkedin.com/posts/aerinj...

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

Looking for a paper for lab meeting/a discussion group? Look no further!

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

I wish there were more (any??) graduate fellowships that are based more on improvement or recent record of success, ignoring an initial rough start

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 17/08/2025

🚨postdoc opportunity at UBC🚨 applications are now open for the Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship, due internally Oct. 15 - www.postdocs.ubc.ca/award/killam... I can nominate 1 person and give feedback on that nominee's materials - if interested plz email me by Sept. 10 - join us!

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

I can't remember the last time I successfully logged into NSERC or the CCV portal without needing support to manually unlock my account, due to being unable to remember which childhood best friend I used as a security question when I made my account 15 years ago

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

Today in lab meeting we are going to do a workshop for each student to develop an organizing conceptual schematic for their thesis (e.g., to be used for the thesis introduction or exit seminar). Anyone here willing to share theirs for inspiration? Here's mine as an example of what I mean 👻

Projects are arranged based on timescale (x axis) and spatial scale (y axis)

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

Ecologists are obsessed with linking process and pattern, but quantifying the core processes of community assembly (and their interactions) in a natural setting is extremely hard. But we've done it! Using a fun new method. Very proud of this paper and of Emilie and Megan's leadership 🥳

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Reposted by Rachel Germain

Lee Sweetlove @leesweetlove.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

Lots of excellent advice in this piece. The core message - only through writing do you really think and order your thoughts into logical sense. Makes a case for not using AI for 1st draft because you bypass the thinking step www.nature.com/articles/s41... @naturebiotech.bsky.social #PlantScience

nature.com

An open letter to graduate students and other procrastinators: it’s time to write - Nature Biotechnology

Nature Biotechnology - An open letter to graduate students and other procrastinators: it’s time to write

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

Reports of USA border officials demanding access to people's devices and denying entry due to evidence of political leanings...this post alone will probably get me banned 😆

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

I simulated a fake dataset with a binomial distribution and used that fake data in a glmmTMB with A. a binomial error distribution and B. a beta error distribution (to test the consequences of my choice) The beta distribution had a hugely lower AIC. Anyone know why??

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

Hot tip for fellowship applications (imo): I see a lot of people being vague about their TAing load/other activities that take up time. Reviewers sometimes use this information to weight productivity. e.g., if two people have the same output but one person TAed way more

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 22/03/2025

$3400 cad to publish a paper with the currency conversion 😬 i.e., 10% of my nserc

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

The default smiley on outlook changes the vibe in a way I don't love - it's almost dead in the eyes, can't put my finger on it

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

Peer review is nothing compared to 300 students carefully scrutinizing every sentence, word, symbol, choice of formatting in a midterm exam

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Gotta love that the reason for threatening tarriffs keeps changing over time 🤔

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

Maybe this is more of a PSA for instructors. YouTube recently changed their policy so all PowerPoint embedded videos now have ads, even of they didn't a year ago. This means your class could get interrupted by an ad for an R rated movie etc. YouTube is aware of the issue but has no plans to fix.

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

Problem of the day: how to get a youtube video to play in lecture without first playing an ad for pants

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

Stats question: without doing math, does anyone know of a package that does inverse predictions for glmmTMB? E.g., I have a fitted equation and I want to know the value of a predictor that yields a specific value for the response

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

Our special feature/passion project at AmNat, "Demystifying fundamental theories in ecology", co-organized with @sebastianschreiber.bsky.social is out now 🤩 www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/an/2025/...

journals.uchicago.edu

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

If anyone needs really good examples of really bad logic/hypotheses for class, watch an episode of Ancient Aliens

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Reposted by Rachel Germain

Marco Festa-Bianchet 🇨🇦 @marcofesta.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

American Eco-Evo types! Looking for a conference where Equality Diversity and Inclusion are celebrated, not hidden? Interested in opportunities for collaborations, grad studies, postdocs, faculty jobs in Canada, a functioning democracy? THIS IS IT: event.fourwaves.com/scee2025/pages

event.fourwaves.com

2025 Annual Conference of the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution

Fourwaves - 2025 Annual Conference of the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

What better time than now to choose @csee-sceemtgs.bsky.social for this year's conference trip 🇨🇦 see you in Sherbrooke, QC!

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Lab meeting hot tip: I bought a box of ~40 international mystery snacks. 3 per lab meeting = a fun surprise for at least 10 meetings

media.tenor.com

a man in a suit and tie is standing in a room and smiling .

ALT: a man in a suit and tie is standing in a room and smiling .

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Reposted by Rachel Germain

Tess Grainger @tessgrainger.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

New paper out today! Lead by superstar @keila-stark.bsky.social as part of a special @asn-amnat.bsky.social issue organized by @gerlame.bsky.social

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

Possibly the best seminar introduction I have yet to experience?? From @llseedsull.bsky.social

A photo of seminar speaker in front of the xfiles

Speaker shows their collection of xfiles memorabilia

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

Fun (?) fact: TIL the "^" symbol is called a "carrot" 🥕

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Rachel Germain @gerlame.bsky.social · 13/01/2025

Interested in resource competition? Check out our just-published paper that, among many other things, translates parameters from LV models into mechanistic terms, and in general is a fun accessible read (imho) - it also provides a super precise definition of what "competition" is

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