iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Meig Dickson (ey/em) @kulindadromeus.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

You can tell I am a biologist by how excited I got seeing this card

Meig Dickson (ey/em) @kulindadromeus.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Hooookay Schedule my presentation on Shabbat once, shame on random chance Schedule my presentation on Shabbat twice, shame on me for not making the importance of Shabbat clear Schedule my presentation on Shabbat thrice??? Shame on SVP. Shame. **SHAME.** Shamey SHAMEY shame SHAME.

010 1

Meig Dickson (ey/em) @kulindadromeus.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Shana Tova!!!!! Shabbat Shalom!!!!!! May 5787 be an (extremely long) year of better things for everyone

050 5

Meig Dickson (ey/em) @kulindadromeus.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Today on my spouse’s candid camera…

Two cockatiels taking off in flight. They were previously perched on dinosaur toys, one of which is now falling.

080 8

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Cassandra 🦕🖌 @tenontosaurus.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

"there must be something in our car it thinks it wants"

47228 72

Meig Dickson (ey/em) @kulindadromeus.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

The only problem with it is there isn't a paleontology episode

000 0

Meig Dickson (ey/em) @kulindadromeus.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

I watched it when it came out as a middle schooler, and I'm happy to report after rewatching it now that it holds up and also very much is as awesome as that description indicates, despite the rushed ending.

100 1

Meig Dickson (ey/em) @kulindadromeus.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

If Doctor Who and The Magic School Bus had a child, it would be Black Hole High (Strange Days at Blake Holsey High)

100 1

Meig Dickson (ey/em) @kulindadromeus.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

WHY IS LANCE BASS TRYING TO SELL ME METAMUCIL WHAT EVEN IS THIS REALITY

130 3

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Dynamognathus @dynamoterror.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Quick sketch of a large Terror Bird, something along the lines of Kelenken, Titanis, or Devincenzia. These huge flightless birds were apex predators in South America during the Cenozoic, and had a brief reign in southern North America until the beginning of the ice age. #paleoart #sciart #cenozoic

Black-and-white pencil sketch of a large terror bird (a member of the family Phorusrhacidae) in a walking pose with its head held low and its rounded wings spread out like a defensive owl. It is angled slightly towards the viewer with its head directly facing towards the left side of the page.

110125 101

Meig Dickson (ey/em) @kulindadromeus.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Ftr, the very existence of a paper arguing to go with a gamete definition of biological sex is, by its own admission, proof positive that biosex is a model, and not real, because they’re arguing which model to go with 🤷🏻

031 3

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

oh well would you look at that, a fluorescent red flag

acknowledgements: We are grateful to Peter Thrall for the invitation to write this Viewpoint and Greg Grether for handling our manuscript. We also thank four reviewers, including Jerry Coyne, for their thoughtful comments, and Katharina Bóth for her assistance in preparing the figure. Open access publication funding provided by COUPERIN CY26.

41725 172

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

"sex is binary and just gametes, but also please don't use this paper to take away anyone's civil rights. and actually when you think about it, the real problem is those activists bringing that queer stuff into biology"

In the context of ongoing societal debates, we emphasise that defining biological sex places no constraints on the diverse spectrum of human gender identities and expressions. While biological insights can inform societal debates on sex, they do not prescribe which gender-related traits society should assign, permit, or encourage for different sexes. Conflating human gender identities and expressions with the binary nature of biological sex is therefore not a scientific inference, but amounts to two fallacies: first, not acknowledging the diversity of human gender identities and expressions because biological sex is considered binary (‘naturalistic’ fallacy), and second, denying that biological sex is binary because human gender identities and expressions are not strictly binary (‘reverse naturalistic’ or ‘moralistic’ fallacy).

11628 162

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

just what is even your point then. gametes are the most important definition of sex because everything is downstream of them, but also there's a lot of variation that isn't from gametes, therefore biological sex is gametes i've read better arguments in Intro Bio papers

Challenges can arise when applying the binary definition of biological sex in society under the assumption that biological sex is universally tied to other traits, such as karyotype, hormone levels, the morphology of primary and secondary sexual characteristics, or behaviour. This assumption, for instance, ignores the possibility that genetic variants or differences in sex development can result in a divergence between gametic sex and phenotypic correlates. Crucially, however, the definition of biological sex based on anisogamy neither relies on nor supports this assumption. Therefore, the binary definition of biological sex is fully compatible with the diversity of sexual phenotypes beyond anisogamy

11786 178

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

oh good, my blood pressure wasn't doing anything alarming right now, so i'm sure this will be fine for me to read

Up to this point, we have intentionally refrained from discussing the implications of biological sex for our understanding of sex in humans.

11594 159

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

again, the point of the model is in the flexibility. if you're studying super deep-time evolution of sexual reproduction, gametes are the character to use. but for many of use, the operative traits will be something else.

Given that many proposed traits, such as morphology, behaviour and levels of sex hormones, are expressed only in certain taxa, the multivariate model precludes cross-species comparisons and therefore does not allow us to understand the evolution of sexual strategies at broader macroevolutionary scales.

11616 161

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

our whole argument was that for many organisms, trying to condense all of these characteristics into a single variable was counterproductive and misleading, and the point was to be thoughtful + specific about what sexual phenotypes were driving your classification

420614 206

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

that whooshing noise was you missing THE ENTIRE GODDAMN POINT OF THE PAPER MY GUY

For instance, the multivariate model of sex attempts to incorporate multiple binary and non-binary traits to describe the sexual phenotype (McLaughlin et al. 2023), but it is unclear how different traits should be weighted and combined in a way that is general, biologically meaningful, and grounded in evolutionary theory.

21939 193

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

but your whole cascade model is doing exactly that!!! quit talking out of both sides of your mouth!!!!!!!

As mentioned above, defining biological sex by gamete size does not in itself imply any universal relationship with other morphological, physiological, genetic, behavioural, or life-history traits.

21634 163

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

*rubs temples* no, that's not our argument. we didn't say "oh boy, this is too complicated!" and end there. we said sex is a *complex phenotype* (aka one made of multiple component characteristics that are each subject to their own evolutionary pressures) and gamete size may not be the most relevant

"Proponents of pluralistic approaches argue that sex is not binary because sex-related characteristics are too complex to be confined to gamete size (McLaughlin et al. 2023; Smiley et al. 2024; Velocci 2024)"

120415 204

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

1 and 2 are...well, i mean, they're interesting from an evolutionary perspective. idk whether the first is very useful because there's a lot of other types of differentiation in reproductive roles, and some may be more relevant to understanding specific systems.

11354 135

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

YES THIS IS WHY WE SAY THAT A MULTIVARIATE MODEL OF SEX IS BETTER BECAUSE IT ALLOWS FOR EXACTLY THIS SORT OF THING because the phenotypes associated with reproduction are each being acted on by multiple evolutionary pressures and aren't all simply downstream consequences of gamete size!!!

(all highlighted) Despite the prevailing patterns described above, evolutionary theory also predicts that sex differences in sexual selection can vary (e.g., Lehtonen 2022; Lehtonen et al. 2024; for conditions under which sex-specific selection can reverse) and that sex-specific phenotypes can evolve independently of such differences through ecological character displacement (De Lisle 2019; Li and Kokko 2021).

224220 242

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

the reason we argue to be precise about this is that we use the male/female descriptors for anatomy, physiology, behavior, genetics, etc. so saying "ah but it simply means large/small gamete!" is pretty pointedly hiding the ball imo, seeming to attempt to *encourage* conflation.

422213 222

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

look i fucking hate arguing about terminology but one of the big reasons to steer away from using "egg=female, sperm=male" is that while you can try to set that as a scientific definition, you and i both damn well know that's not what those terms mean in most contexts.

It is also worth mentioning that the gametic definition of biological sex is nothing more than a classification of reproductive strategies. These strategies clearly dominate multicellular life and happen to be historically termed ‘male’ and ‘female’ but they could just as well be called the ‘microgamete-producing’ strategy and the ‘macrogamete-producing’ strategy. From this perspective, the debate is in part terminological, and replacing the long-established terms ‘male’ and ‘female’ seems counterproductive. Importantly, defining sex by gamete size does not imply universal differences in any traits other than the type of gamete produced. Whether the male and female strategies are associated with morphological, physiological, or behavioural traits beyond the dimorphism in gamete size is an important question (see Box 1), but this issue is independent of the definition of biological sex.

320719 207

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

okay so here's where my head explodes. because if you define biological sex as binary based on gametes, but then concede that organisms can produce either, both, or none, and thus do not fall into two classes, then *what is the point of trying to say it's a binary*??????????????????????????????????

" It is precisely this highly consistent occurrence of two distinct gamete size classes across anisogamous species that renders the definition of biological sex based on gamete size inherently binary. [highlight begins] However, defining biological sex as binary does not imply that individuals necessarily fall into two classes, as they can produce male, female, both, or neither gamete class."

1045785 457

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

update: (and if you need it: sci-hub.ru/10.1038/2723...)

sci-hub.ru

Sci-Hub: проверка на робота

321117 211

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

i know i'm being very salty considering i said i was trying to approach this in good faith but i think we just hit where i am having a hard time assuming the authors are writing this in good faith. so.

22344 234

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

hang on i need to grab a soda, we're only two paragraphs in and this is going to be even worse than the dire wolf paper isn't it

42418 241

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Emma Hilton...well, she's currently crowdfunding a cheek-swab SRY test so random transphobes can force people to "prove" they're not trans

google results for "emma hilton crowdfunding sry tests". the results are all about her current crowdfunding.

323924 239

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

(he also had a bunch of his papers retracted, but it was because Pruitt was his advisor and idk the extent to which Colin knew about the data fabrication- plenty of collaborators got hit by that too who didn't know, so i don't actually hold that against his record)

21988 198

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Colin Wright, for those of you lucky enough to be unaware of him, is a failed evolutionary biologist who first rose to fame by his refusal to submit DEIA statements in faculty job applications, and has since mainly used his credentials to burnish anti-trans, anti-queer, and racist pseudoscience

331730 317

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

oh. oh boy. now citing someone doesn't necessarily mean you agree with them (after all, this paper cites me and so far seems like we don't agree!) but umm that sure seems to be complimentary citations of Emma Hilton and Colin Wright, which immediately is red flags over here.

The recognition that biological sex is rooted in anisogamy has been longstanding in biology (Minot 1888; Geddes and Thomson 1889), and there have been several recent accounts illuminating its foundations and explanatory power (e.g., Goymann et al. 2023; Hilton and Wright 2023; Griffiths and Spencer 2025; Wright 2025). Our aim here, without claiming novelty on this well-documented topic, is to (i) explain and support the gametic definition of sex, (ii) take a stand on its most prominent criticisms and (iii) elucidate the association between biological sex and sexual dimorphism beyond anisogamy, as this issue appears to lie at the heart of recent debates.

225615 256

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

how sexual phenotypes and the internal experience of gender overlap is a messy topic that i think the authors aren't quite ready for, but i usually put it this way: gender is how an organism relates to sexual phenotype and roles in a social context. we can only get info on that for humans.

232524 325

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

...we're forced to justify ourselves and examine how our standing influences our practice of science in a way majoritarians aren't usually called upon to do.

232913 329

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

HOWEVER. we *all* are influenced in our practice of science by our own identity and cultural frameworks. it's not just those of us on the multivariate side that do this- all participants in this conversation are, and some of us are more self-aware of that, usually because as minorities...

244130 441

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

here's the thing: this gets brought up to argue against those of us who argue for reconceptualizations of sex, oftentimes pointedly remarking that many of us doing so are trans, nonbinary, intersex, or otherwise gender nonconforming. yes, the fact i'm nonbinary shapes how i consider this topic.

238618 386

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

see i mean there's your first problem. the reason we've offered alternative models is all the places where it turns out things aren't universal.

"Further, we emphasise that evolutionary insights offer a coherent explanation for recurring, though not universal [emphasis added via highlight], associations between biological sex and patterns of sex-specific selection, sexual dimorphism and parental care

139923 399

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Marielle Hellraiser 💀 @mags.colvett.online · 07/07/2026

Raise your hand if you ever tried to warn people in your personal or professional circles about a guy with clear, overt Nazi shit going on and got a “doesn’t look like anything to me”

68814 88

Meig Dickson (ey/em) @kulindadromeus.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

You say this like they wouldn’t deserve it

100 1

Meig Dickson (ey/em) @kulindadromeus.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Controversial take, but using the word “primitive” in 2026 is a giant red flag

120 2

Reposted by Meig Dickson (ey/em)

Palaeoncryptozoologist Briton @raftingzalmoxes.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

🚨SCREENSHOTS FROM THE FIRST TRAILER OF #EvolutionWithChrisPackham , coming 13 JULY! METASPRIGGINA, NUMIDOTHERIUM AND OTHER CREATURES NEVER SEEN ON-SCREEN BEFORE WILL BE FEATURED!

55316 53