iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by John Benning

Molly Przeworski @mollyprz.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

SAVE THE DATE: the yearly NY Population Genetics meeting will be back on March 9 2026, generously hosted by the @simonsfoundation.org. Details to follow. Please RT.

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John Benning @jbenning.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

We're excited to share the final version of our paper, where we demonstrate how confounding remains a thorny problem for claims about causal genetic influences on human behavioral and socioeconomic outcomes. (w/ @jedidiahcarlson.com @oliviarxiv.bsky.social Ruth Shaw @arbelharpak.bsky.social) 🧵👇

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John Benning @jbenning.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

I am the most recent white male evolutionary biologist hired at Cornell. I’d like to provide essential context for readers mulling over Colin Wright’s commentary, “Cornell University discriminated against me.” 🧵

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SCP @10-5.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

I say we start by making it less financially appealing. We need a ruthless anti-scam administration. A total crackdown on robocalls, MLMs, crytpo scams, get rich quick influencers, and fake supplement companies. Steep penalties and enforcement structures with teeth.

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John Benning @jbenning.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

Very stoked to tell y'all that I just started as an assistant prof in Cornell EEB! More to come later, but for now, if you know folks looking to do a PhD in evolutionary ecology, they can chat with me about this awesome fellowship. 2-pg LOI is due July 31! www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/simons...

t.co

https://www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/simons-graduate-fellowships-in-ecology-and-evolution/?tab=how-to-apply

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Seema Sheth @seemasheth.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

We begin reviewing applications next week!

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P(aul) Frazee @pfrazee.com · 17/03/2024

hey hope you were having a good day before you read this

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Julia Kreiner @jmkreiner.bsky.social · 29/02/2024

The Kreiner and Carley Labs at @UChicago E&E are co-hiring a Lab Manager/Research Technician position in Plant Evolutionary Ecology & Genomics! Please see the link for more details and instructions on how to apply: bit.ly/UChiPlantTec...

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Molly Przeworski @mollyprz.bsky.social · 28/02/2024

I have been following the discussion around how best to represent and label human genetic variation, and thought it might also be worth discussing an aspect of the broader context. 1/n

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Kevin Bird @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 19/02/2024

New from @jedidiahcarlson.com and I, and with a personal guarantee that there are no AI images. We discuss conceptual and methodological practices in mainstream human genetics that contribute to misappropriation by scientific racists through their own fringe counter-research & online memes.

frontiersin.org

Frontiers | Typological thinking in human genomics research contributes to the production and prominence of scientific racism

<p>Public genomic datasets like the 1000 Genomes project (1KGP), Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP), and the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD)...

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John Benning @jbenning.bsky.social · 01/02/2024

PSA for ppl sympathetic to hereditarian arguments: it should give you pause that of the academics ascribing to genetic determinism, few are biologists. Exceedingly few are experimental biologists. It's v hard to believe simplistic genetic narratives once you actually... 1/

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Tyler Kent @tylervkent.bsky.social · 18/01/2024

excited to see this out! Haoran put in a *ton* of work on this really cool, classic system

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Cher Chow 周馥溢 @cherfychow.bsky.social · 09/01/2024

Please help spread the word! I made a feed for ecology evolution ECR on all things career-related :) Feed + more details here: bsky.app/profile/did:... 🌏🧪 #AcademicSky #ScienceSky #PhDChat

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Murillo R. @mufernando.bsky.social · 09/01/2024

The Kern-Ralph CoLab is looking for postdocs to join us in Oregon!

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Susana Wadgymar🌿🔬 @smwadgymar.bsky.social · 07/01/2024

Defining fitness in evolutionary ecology A primer we hope will be of use to all learners! #evolution #plantscience 🧪🌍🌎🌏

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John Benning @jbenning.bsky.social · 02/01/2024

made a few updates to the EcoEvo Jobs app -- a lil more data, marginal histograms and, for the masochists, the ability to plot your own stats for comparison 🙃 Check it out here: john-benning.shinyapps.io/shiny/

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Sasha Gusev @sashagusevposts.bsky.social · 29/12/2023

I write about why and how should we talk about behavioral heritability [ gusevlab.org/projects/hsq... ]. A partial response to the Hastings Report [ pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37078667/ ], which I found to be important but also fundamentally flawed in it's proposed solutions. Key points 🧵 :

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John Benning @jbenning.bsky.social · 29/12/2023

trying to think more about how genetic architecture of a trait in a population can change between environments. eg, mainly additive effects in env_1, mainly cytonuclear effects in env_2. anyone have favorite papers touching on this idea? #evolution #genetics

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John Benning @jbenning.bsky.social · 18/12/2023

Do you think about range expansions, dispersal evolution, invasions?? Check out our new preprint: "Environmental gradients mediate dispersal evolution during biological invasions" doi.org/10.1101/2023...

Environmental gradients oppose the evolution of increased dispersal during range expansion. Results of 1000 simulations after 200 generations of expansion. (a) Illustrates the mean dispersal phenotype within core and edge regions plotted against spatial gradient slope. Core and edge regions comprise the five most proximate and distal patches to the founding patch, respectively. The dashed line signifies the mean dispersal of the founding populations at the start of expansion. (b) Depicts the difference in dispersal between the core and edge across gradient slopes, expressed as the absolute increase in mean dispersal ability of the edge relative to the core. To aid in interpretability, (c) shows dispersal difference plotted against dispersal cost instead of gradient slope. Dispersal cost is a function of gradient slope and the strength of selection, and is the expected decrease in P(survival) for an individual perfectly adapted to patch x dispersing to patch x+1.

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Gina Baucom @gbaucom.bsky.social · 15/12/2023

Really excited for Sasha Bishop's defense tomorrow! If you are interested in global change, resurrection experiments, and multivariate trait evolution, you will enjoy this talk!!

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John Benning @jbenning.bsky.social · 14/12/2023

Anyone have any experience with Bayesian hurdle models where there are *two* sequential Bernoulli processes, followed by a Poisson?

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Tom Buckley @tombuckleylab.bsky.social · 13/12/2023

New record: 24 referee invitations on a single ms, with only one accepted. And this is for a "big name journal". If you submit manuscripts, you must review manuscripts. How many? See formula below. (Yes, resubmissions and revisions count in the number of submissions.)

$The number of reviews you owe science this year is greater than or equal to the sum, over your submissions this year (indexed by "i"), of the product of (1) your fractional contribution to submission "i", and (2) the number of reviews you received on submission "i".$

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John Benning @jbenning.bsky.social · 28/11/2023

If you have two or more bug species in one shot, let's see em (you have to look carefully to find #2 here 😉)

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American Naturaliﬆ / ASN 🐌 @asn-amnat.bsky.social · 22/11/2023

Siegmund, Moeller, Eckhart, & Geber leverage long-term demographic observations and experiments in the winter annual Clarkia xantiana to test if bet hedging explains germination patterns in the California winter annual plant. Read now ahead of print! www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

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Sasha Gusev @sashagusevposts.bsky.social · 07/11/2023

A few excellent recent papers on important and often misunderstood population parameters in genetics. A short 🧵:

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John Benning @jbenning.bsky.social · 03/11/2023

Clark, PNAS 2023 (C23) argued that people’s social status is largely determined by genetic variation. Here, we show these claims are unsubstantiated & that C23 tells us nothing about the contribution of genetics to status @jedidiahcarlson.com @arbelharpak.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

biorxiv.org

Clark (2023) and the Persistence of Hereditarian Fallacies

bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution

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Matthew Hahn @3rdreviewer.bsky.social · 10/08/2023

New postdoc position available! Evolution of mutation rates! 🚨🚨🚨 Please apply, but also feel free to get in touch with me--or past and present members of the lab--directly. (RTs [or whatevs] appreciated) indiana.peopleadmin.com/postings/19…

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American Naturaliﬆ / ASN 🐌 @asn-amnat.bsky.social · 20/09/2023

Read now ahead of print: Dittmar and Schemske conducted a multi-year reciprocal transplant study over a microgeographic edaphic gradient, showing that local adaptation varies among years due to variability in annual rainfall. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

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John Benning @jbenning.bsky.social · 19/09/2023

Wide-footed Treehopper looking cute as hell. A beautifully diverse group, treehoppers feed on plant sap, with many producing honeydew that's eaten by their ant mutualist pals. #insects #BackyardNaturalHistory 🌿

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John Benning @jbenning.bsky.social · 15/09/2023

damn UT Austin has a pretty sick faculty roster

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John Benning @jbenning.bsky.social · 14/09/2023

Theo's first camping trip (in the backyard 😂)

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John Benning @jbenning.bsky.social · 14/09/2023

A new wasp species for the yard today -- the Beewolf 🐺 (Philanthus gibbosus most likely), foraging on Ontario Aster. Females hunt bees, which they paralyze with venom before dragging back to their tunnel for their young to (eventually) feast on. #backyardNaturalHistory #insects #phonemacro

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John Benning @jbenning.bsky.social · 13/09/2023

been doing a bit of epistemic trespassing recently, and ran across this incisive quote from Lancelot Hogben in 1938: "eugenics became identified with a system of ingenious excuses for combating the amelioration of working-class conditions" 🔥

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John Benning @jbenning.bsky.social · 11/09/2023

Gonna try to post (near) daily #backyardNaturalHistory from our 1/10th acre lot in Minneapolis. A combination of sci-comm, cultivating a daily nature practice, and advertising for lawn --> habitat conversion

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John Benning @jbenning.bsky.social · 11/09/2023

A classic autumnal scene: Bombus impatiens snoozing on Smooth Blue Aster. Unlike almost all other insects, Bombus are heterothermic -- tho usually functioning as ectotherms, they can elevate their body temperature endogenously when needed. #backyardNaturalHistory

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John Benning @jbenning.bsky.social · 10/09/2023

My little mariposa at the Monarch festival yesterday in Minneapolis

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John Benning @jbenning.bsky.social · 10/09/2023

When folks ask me to recommend sci-fi, the Three Body Problem trilogy is what I tell them will be most assuredly mind-blowing. Incredible stuff

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John Benning @jbenning.bsky.social · 09/09/2023

Oh to be the first bee on the flower in the morning, getting that fresh nectar and pollen

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Karolina Heyduk @kheyduk.bsky.social · 08/09/2023

Not sure who needs to see this but I just realized GOOGLE DOCS HAS LINE NUMBERS NOW

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John Benning @jbenning.bsky.social · 08/09/2023

Parker's Thread-waisted Wasp (Prionyx parkeri) waiting for the sun's warmth this morning in the backyard prairie. Females paralyze grasshoppers and bury them in burrows to feed their developing young 🤘 🌍🧪

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John Benning @jbenning.bsky.social · 06/09/2023

Throwback to when I worked with birds 😂 #ecology 🌍🧪

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John Benning @jbenning.bsky.social · 06/09/2023

Pretty cool how Zootopia confronts the hereditarian narrative so cleverly. Obviously lots of kids movies have morals, but is this the only one that addresses genetics?

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John Benning @jbenning.bsky.social · 02/09/2023

You can find so many different insects sipping from the extra-floral nectaries on Partridge Pea (Chamaecrista fasciculata). Watching my Cf patch while drinking my coffee in the morning is prime natural history entertainment

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