iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Had a great time talking about the origin and control of behavioral novelties at “The Role of Organismal Agency in Biological Practice” workshop this week. Also, I got to see the nice ornithology collection and messel pit fossils at the Senckenberg Naturmuseum.

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Starting a new project with these guys (bengalese finches) on the development of, and thermal consequences of, “cooperative”breeding and communal roosting. They basically form an avian version of a “beit yeladim” that we know very little about.

Group of bengalese finch faces in the middle of a nestbox, in the bottom middle is the face of a young nestling.

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I'm still upset we replaced Lotus 1-2-3 this with excel.

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I rescued a few Yiddish books from heading to the dumpster this summer. I've started to go through them and was excited to find this pristine copy of "World of Science / די װעלט פֿון װיסנשאַפֿט" by Sol Podolefsky that contains, I believe, one of the few discussions of bird song science in Yiddish.

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Reposted by Gregory Kohn

Ammon Perkes @alltheperkes.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Cool paper alert! Lots of other cool stuff here, and you won't believe how many hours of fish video were involved.

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

אַ גוט געזונט יאָר

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I really enjoyed reading this review paper on the function and influence of song outside the breeding season. It moved from individual-level processes to group level consequences, and reiterates that we still have much to learn about why birds sing. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Eastern kingbird (Tyrannus tyrannus) in Keene Valley NY.

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Reposted by Gregory Kohn

Erin Siracusa @erinsiracusa.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Animals are known to prefer kin as social partners. But non-kin bonds are surprisingly common too. So, who forms them, how stable are they & what drives them? In our new @animbehsociety.bsky.social paper we tackle these overlooked questions in free-living rhesus macaques: tinyurl.com/mwsbkjve (1/5)

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

If you look at baraminology, it is clearly pseudoscience and shares many commonalities with the development of race science. They use just enough quantitative analysis and reasoning to seem scientific, but they avoid existing research programs that challenge the assumptions underlying their work.

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Highly recommend Susan Oyama's "Ontogeny of Information" as well. It would fit in well with these books.

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

On this day in 1749 Goethe was born in Frankfurt. I’ve been revisiting Goethe more these days, and his writings on observation and its role in science impacted me deeply. Just recently I found this book of his holiday sketches titled “Reise, Zerstreuungs, und Trostbüchlein”.

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Reposted by Gregory Kohn

RUB History & Philosophy of Science @roto-rub.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Great new open access book by Pim Edelaar: "The Selective Organism: An Expanded Theory of Adaptive Evolution" Check it out here: academic.oup.com/book/63165?l... #HPBio #PhilSci

Front cover of the book "The selective organism: An expanded theory of adaptive evolution" by Pim Edelaar.

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

But those are corrections on research outputs, not programs. I don’t think academia should be afraid to limit research based on shared principles and existing knowledge. I.e. we all accept IACUCs & IRBs can place ethical limits on academic freedom because they arbitrate what studies can be initiated

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Wood storks (Mycteria americana) and Great Egrets (Ardea alba) highlighting their different foraging strategies.

Angled view of a pond with Wood storks (Mycteria americana) with bills in water and Great Egrets (Ardea alba) standing straight up.

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

The thing is, if you remove Cofnas's inflammatory claims you will find no foundation of substance, its all shallow controversy. That's not scholarship, its trolling. bsky.app/profile/kohn...

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Also, for all of Cofnas's posturing about his expertise in genetics and biology of behavior (he has none, his arguments would have been stale in the 1980s) there is only one biologist and not a single molecular geneticist as a signatory. The rest are the standard "heterodox" clique.

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

The whole reason that journalists take legal council before printing expose pieces is to *not* do what Cofnas did. The barometers for accusations in the media vary with context, but in this case there were clear procedures that Cambridge was following, its just a slow process.

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Within a university if a token professor X was to make strong accusations of fraud against professor Y by going online and bypassing official channels meant to protect all parties there would be immediate repercussions. Misconduct, even obvious ones, should not be crowdsourced to the online mob.

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Yellow-crowned night heron (Nyctanassa violacea)

Yellow-crowned night heron with crab in his mouth

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

I can find no evidence of play behavior in Orioles.

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

The reductionism and the simple enumerative differencing is dead in evolutionary biology? Species differentiation by thresholding genetic distance (e.g. 2 %) is just a scientized bullshit? Reminds me the custom of programmers to count lines of code. www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1... 🧪 #EvoBio #PaleoBio

Average measured mean-scaled additive genetic variance

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Reposted by Gregory Kohn

Charles C Roseman @evoroseman.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Here's a better version of my talk on race science. Many thanks to Dwane Monroe (@cloudquistador.eurosky.social) for fixing the audio. Thanks again to Pieter Beck (@ptrbck.bsky.social) for the invitation. youtu.be/NsTg6JlC39w?...

youtu.be

Race science, genetics, & evolution: A scientific evaluation [BETTER AUDIO]

YouTube video by Charles Roseman

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Reposted by Gregory Kohn

The Institute for Bird Populations @instbirdpop.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

🪶Cool new research on female Passerines by @joannaxwu.bsky.social and colleagues at IBP and UCLA. Read more about it here-> bit.ly/4zfjbdY

Photo of a female Black-headed Grosbeak by Richard Griffin. Text on the graphic says: "Female birds are less likely to survive than males, but why?
New study uses MAPS data to explore sex-biased survival in North American Passerines..... Read more on our blog!"

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

It’s amazing how far you can get with peddling controversy over scholarship. It’s clear he doesn’t understand, and isn’t motivated to understand, any genomic or biological research related to his claims beyond Reich. He thinks his colloquial assessments carries more weight than actual research.

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Yeah, that’s it. Beyond restating what Lorenz said, it wasn’t clear that Cofnas has any updated research that supported Lorenzian innateness. He DMed me on twitter after I talked about it publicly, and we had a back and forth discussion. This was before his hereditarianism was obvious.

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Yeah, I’m out of date here so there’s likely there have been changes (I read Boyd and Richerson around 2009ish). I was using more explicit in relation to the other approaches in evo psych that seems to have a more heuristic argument-from-design approach.

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

My info is out of date, but I do know some approaches to cultural evolution (Boyd and Richerson) used well defined models and were attractive to some evo psych alligned folks looking to move away from the Cosmides-Tooby approach.

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

I mean, if you think you can delineate a universal adaptation through Mturk questionaries or aggressive use of a universities sona system you aren’t really getting close to the legit category.

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Kirsty Wan @micromotility.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

What does a single-celled organism tell us about the origins of complex behaviour? Delighted to see the final version of our paper: Embodied behavioural complexity in a ciliated microorganism out in@natcomms.nature.com (Funded by @erc.europa.eu ERC) doi.org/10.1038/s414... #cilia #protistsonsky

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c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

The Long-wattled Umbrellabird (Cephalopterus penduliger) are the weirdest birds, from pompadour/mohawk to long fleshy neck-tie shaped wattle that converts to a feather duster on command. Native to the Pacific coasts of Ecuador & Colombia, these extraordinary accessories are mostly found in males.

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Moving some planters in the garden and suddenly felt something moving against my hand. This could have gone a lot worse. Florida cottonmouth (Agkistrodon conanti).

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Calling my integrity as a scientist into question for getting the time wrong on a Bluesky post is something. The video is stillup after a tragedy, and clearly states that Cofnas’s campaign against Arday was motivated by grievances of not being hired. Any decent person would remove this video now.

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Yeah that’s just nit-picking. It’s obvious that the interview was conducted before. However, the fact that it was posted the day of his death (I got the exact timing wrong as I was going off invidious not YouTube) and was not removed in light of events suggests a level of callousness from the Montz.

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Don’t do this, what’s wrong with you?

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Oh I think he’s motivated by racism, resentment, and narcissism. My speculation, he can’t conceive that his inability to secure a tenure track job reflects how his own scholarship performed in job market, so he doubled down on his racist ideas as some sort of cognitive coping mechanism.

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

I’ve had conversations with Nathan (he wrote a defense of Lorenz a while back). He takes a short sighted approach (which is reflected in the stilted arguments in his papers) and it’s unlikely he mapped out the consequences of insighting a racist mob in contrast to going through official channels.

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

In the wake of Arday's death, Nathan Cofnas (who led the X mob against him) states his motivation. Beyond whistleblowing, he states that after a 'revolution' removes professors like Arday, it will open opportunities for him to become 'head of the department of eugenics and race science at Harvard'.

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

I assume Cofnas may face some legal repercussions over this. How he whipped up harassment on x went beyond mere whistleblowing.

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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 14/08/2026

Monkeys make friends with other species, and that can tell us a lot about how keeping pets came about. Great article by @cyrilgrueter.bsky.social et al., reporting friendly primate interactions with a whopping 55 non-primate species! 🧪🐒🐕 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Examples of affiliative interspecific interactions involving non-human primates. a Adult female white-faced capuchin (Cebus imitator) monkey grooming an adult female black-handed spider monkey (Ateles geoffroyi) in Santa Rosa, Costa Rica; photo by Nicholas Chapoy. b Capped langur (Trachypithecus pileatus) grooming a Phayre's leaf monkey (Trachypithecus phayrei) in Satchari National Park Bangladesh; photo by Sabit Hasan. c A tufted gray langur (Semnopithecus priam) stroking a grizzled giant squirrel (Ratufa macroura) in Yala National Park, Sri Lanka; photo by Senthi Aathavan Senthilverl, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. d Stump-tailed macaques (Macaca arctoides) grooming a domestic dog at Khao Tao Mo temple, Thailand; photo by Neil Challis. e Female northern white-cheeked gibbon (Nomascus leucogenys) holding a mouse at the Shanghai Zoo, China; photo by Cyril Grueter. f Japanese macaque (Macaca fuscata) mounting and riding on the back of a sika deer (Cervus nippon) at Yakushima, Japan; photo by Alexandre Bonnefoy and Cédric Sueur. g Young juvenile black-and-white snub-nosed monkey (Rhinopithecus bieti) playing on a domestic pig at Xiangguqing, Yunnan Golden Monkey National Park, China; photo by Yanpeng Li. h) Ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta) grooming a southern bamboo lemur (Hapalemur meridionalis) in Mandena, Madagascar; photo by Timothy Eppley

A tufted gray langur (Semnopithecus priam) stroking a grizzled giant squirrel.

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Reposted by Gregory Kohn

Complexity Cat 🐱 @amahury.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Machine metaphors built modern biology, but what happens when a useful analogy becomes a rigid ontology? In Part II of our trilogy, we explore these limits by contrasting organicist paradigms and arguments against computationalism./1 🚧 #complexitycat 🐈‍⬛ www.complexitycat.org/posts/machin...

complexitycat.org

Machine Metaphors in Biology II: Limits and Challenges

“By axiomatizing automata in this manner, one has thrown half of the problem out the window, and it may be the more important half. One has resigned oneself not to explain how these parts are made up ...

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Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Donald Griffin, discoverer of bat echolocation, was born OTD 1915. I imagine “small mammals enough like ourselves to feel that I could understand what their lives would be like, and yet different enough to make it a sort of adventure and exploration to see what they were doing.” 🐋🌱🧪 #HistSTM

Fig. 11 from Griffin, Echoes of Bats and Men (1959). “The frequency and wave length of a bat's sound vary during each chirp. This diagram, which is approximately to scale, illustrates the small amount of sound reflected by one insect.”I

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Somebody needs to tell the new parking lot attendants that attempting to get into a vehicle is unlawful (they literally tried to jump right in my car right after this video).

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Reposted by Gregory Kohn

Drug Monkey @drugmonkey.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

I really hope someone checks my math and memory of public university starting salaries. The idea that inflation adjusted numbers reflect starting assistant professors making 20% less now than they did 25 years ago is….. whew.

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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Forest gate in Adirondacks near Lake Placid, June 2026.

Looking at a forest on a lake with a door like opening that is framed by boughs of cedar and hemlock.

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