iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Pietro Pollo

For learning and doing theoretical physics, AI was great until it was not thetheorygirlie.substack.com/p/ai-was-gre... ; it magnifies some of the problems with academia

thetheorygirlie.substack.com

AI was great until it was not.

A cautionary tale.

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SORTEE @sortee.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

5 days, 90 fun conversations, and 16 new members later, we can definitely say #ISBE2026 was a massive success! ✨🤝🐒 Hit the link below to read our volunteers' reflections on the conference. Hope to see you at the next one! sortee.org/blog/2026/09...

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Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar @asanchez-tojar.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

@shreyadimri.bsky.social et al. “Meta-analysts must lead by example and embrace all FAIR principles” We assessed meta-analyses in ecology, evolution & environmental sciences for methodological & reporting quality, data/code sharing, and data FAIRness. 🔗 doi.org/10.32942/X21...

doi.org

Meta-analysts must lead by example and embrace all FAIR principles

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Shawan Chowdhury @shawan-chowdhury.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Our new Nature Eco Evo paper documents range shifts in 1,758 butterfly species across 105 countries, primarily due to climate change. 🦋80% expanded 🦋27% contracted 🦋22% shifted elevation 🦋342 showed multiple shift types. doi.org/10.1038/s415... @monashbiol.bsky.social @monashscience.bsky.social

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ISBE2026 @isbe2026.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

ISBE2026 final moments, with the Early Career Award presentations followed by the prestigious Hamilton Lecture delivered by Leigh W. Simmons

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Pietro Pollo @pietropollo.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Honoured to be one of the winners of the early research career award at #isbe2026

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Kate Laskowski @katelaskowski.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

For anyone that missed my talk at @isbe2026.bsky.social - never you fear! You can watch my talk and read more about the new Replication Studies section at @behavecol.bsky.social right here! laskowskilab.faculty.ucdavis.edu/2026/07/22/r...

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Pietro Pollo @pietropollo.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Taxonomic bias strikes again!

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Pietro Pollo @pietropollo.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Awesome! Can you add me to the list, please?

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Peter Ellis @pjie2.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Let biological sex be multifaceted, as all biology is. And when you need to be precise in scientific research, be precise. Say ‘gametic sex’ or ‘chromosomal sex’ or ‘anatomical sex’, or whatever is appropriate to your own work.

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Jessica Hullman @jessicahullman.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Fascinating talk on the history of peer review from Melinda Baldwin at @icssi.org, with some parallels to current crises. Also I hadn't realized peer review was such an American thing.

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ASAB @asab.org · 30/06/2026

📚Meta-analyses!⚠️Key pitfalls! 🔬Improved methodology! 🖥️Reliable syntheses! Our #EditorsChoice for the #AnimalBehaviourJournal: “Biological and methodological pitfalls of meta-analyses in ecology and evolution: Lessons from eyespot function studies” Read here: doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123448

Screenshot of article:
Animal Behaviour
Volume 236, June 2026, 123448
Biological and methodological pitfalls of meta-analyses in ecology and evolution: lessons from eyespot function studies
Ayumi Mizuno, Pietro Pollo, Malgorzata Lagisz, Masayo Soma, Shinichi Nakagawa

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Royal Society Publishing @royalsocietypublishing.org · 13/06/2026

This study published in #ProcB shows that comparing cancer across animal species can be misleading if researchers ignore popularity bias doi.org/10.1098/rspb... | #Evolution #Epidemiology

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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

🪼 Your tax dollars paid a scientist to squeeze jellyfish through cheesecloth. Osamu Shimomura processed tens of thousands on an NSF grant to understand why they glow. He found a protein that glowed green under UV light. Called it "green protein." Nobody cared. For decades.

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ASAB @asab.org · 30/05/2026

🕷️Wolf spiders! 💌Courtship! 🦠Infection! 👀Visual receptivity! Our #EditorsChoice for the #AnimalBehaviourJournal: “Infection stress and mate assessment in wolf spiders: female mate choice varies with sensory mode of male courtship” Read here: doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2026.123540

Screenshot of article:
Animal Behaviour
Volume 235, May 2026, 123540
Infection stress and mate assessment in wolf spiders: female mate choice varies with sensory mode of male courtship
Olivia Bauer-Nilsen, George Uetz

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Sam England @samjakeengland.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Out today in @royalsocietypublishing.org - we show that crab spiders (the ones you usually see ambushing pollinators on flowers 🕷️🌸) get worse at hunting if their eyes are covered!🫣 Sounds obvious? It's actually quite surprising, here's why... 👀 (1/8) royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article...

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Pietro Pollo @pietropollo.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

New preprint out! 📢 We analysed 1.38M papers across 612 journals in ecology & evolution. We show the field is dominated by vertebrates: they’re studied more often, in higher‑impact journals, and get more citations + media attention than invertebrates, with little change in decades😵

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Royal Society Publishing @royalsocietypublishing.org · 25/03/2026

Do people react to animals in photographs in the same way as to real, live animals? To find out, more than 560 participants rated 62 invertebrate species for fear, disgust, and beauty: royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article... #RSOS

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Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar @asanchez-tojar.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

📢 New preprint out! tl;dr: Publish your code, add clear README's! 138 participants assessed data & code archiving practices across 1861 papers published at 7 @britishecologicalsociety.org journals, identified gaps & offered recommendations for improvement 🔗 doi.org/10.32942/X26...

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PLOS Biology @plosbiology.org · 16/02/2026

Differences between M & F are pervasive, but we often focus on #SexDifferences in the mean. @pietropollo.bsky.social @danielwanoble.bsky.social @itchyshin.bsky.social &co present #stats tools that allow comparison of #skewness, #kurtosis & correlations b'n groups @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4093nJs

Simulated trait distributions for two groups with different shapes. Top left: distinct skewness. Top right: distinct kurtosis. Bottom: different correlations between two traits for two groups.

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Shinichi Nakagawa @itchyshin.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

Please contact me if you want to be nominated for a postdoc via this scheme - you need to live outside of Canada and I need to do so by 9 Feb (and need to start by March 2027) - www.ualberta.ca/en/graduate-... (I think you do need to have a competitive CV etc) Please email me if you are interested

ualberta.ca

Canada Impact+ Research Training Awards for Postdoctoral Scholars

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

We've got ISSUES. Literally. We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do? arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563 A 🧵 1/n

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Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 04/01/2026

Scientific funding is a net negative: "European taxpayers will have spent more on the funding process than on the funding itself, and the scientific ecosystem has been drained" www.nature.com/articles/d41...

nature.com

Point of no returns: researchers are crossing a threshold in the fight for funding

With so little money to go round, the costs of competing for grants can exceed what the grants are worth. When that happens, nobody wins.

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Pietro Pollo @pietropollo.bsky.social · 30/11/2025

I forgot to share that our paper came out a few months ago! We synthesise decades of research showing that conspicuous traits consistently predict attractiveness, condition, and fitness across animals. Check it out if you’re into sexual selection and signalling! doi.org/10.1111/ele....

doi.org

Synthesis of Nature's Extravaganza: An Augmented Meta‐Meta‐Analysis on (Putative) Sexual Signals

Conspicuous traits like bright colours and elaborate displays are widely thought to evolve through sexual selection, but evidence has been scattered. This meta-meta-analysis of 41 studies across 375 ...

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ASAB @asab.org · 20/11/2025

🪰 Fruit flies! 🌡️ Temperature changes! 💋Mate attraction! 👃Pheromones! Our November #ASABEditorsChoice for the #AnimalBehaviourJournal: "Effects of natural temperature variation on male perception of female scents in Drosophila melanogaster" Read here: doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123352

Screenshot of article:
Animal Behaviour
Volume 229, November 2025, 123352

Effects of natural temperature variation on male perception of female scents in Drosophila melanogaster
Roberto García-Roa, Almudena Castro, Enrique Font, Pau Carazo

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Marko Prokic @proksima.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

🌙🔊 How do we perceive light and noise pollution? Your experience matters! ✨ Take part in this survey 👉 app.onlinesurveys.jisc.ac.uk/s/salford/pl... Your input will help better understand these growing problems. The survey is part of the European project PLAN-B. #lightpollution #noisepollution

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EcoEvoRxiv @ecoevorxiv.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

"The statistical fragility of animal cognition findings: a meta-meta-analytic reappraisal" doi.org/10.32942/X2Z...

Statistical performance of animal cognition meta-analyses at the primary-study and meta-analysis levels. (a) Statistical power: Median power to detect the (true or bias-corrected) meta-analytic effect size; darker red bars indicate lower power. (b) Type M error: Median exaggeration ratio between estimated and true effect sizes; darker blue indicates stronger overestimation (values > 20 shown as “20+”). (c) Type S error: Median probability of obtaining a significant effect in the wrong direction; darker yellow-green indicates higher Type S error. Violin plots above each panel summarise distributions across meta-analyses. Each point represents one meta-analysis (matching a row in the bar plots), and the horizontal line denotes the overall mean.

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Pietro Pollo @pietropollo.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

Do you get confused when reading meta-analyses? Our new paper offers a practical guide to help researchers understand, interpret, and use them properly. We also show that the insights meta-analyses provide are often overlooked by those who cite them.

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Janet Hill @saskajanet.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

UPDATE: I saw it happen! At the Birds Canada research station at the tip of Long Point I watched an expert ever-so-gently and carefully put one of these tiny tags on a monarch. Let me walk you through the steps (1/4)

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franz @franzanth.bsky.social · 29/02/2024

Absolutely nobody asked for this but I reformatted my animal yeetability thread into printable poster & zine files. Introducing, the "Pocket Guide to Responsible & Sustainable Animal YEETING" featuring a revamped rating system. Download links below.

Poster showing various animals and their yeetability rating. For full rating, see the link in the reply. Intro text reads:

POCKET GUIDE TO RESPONSIBLE & SUSTAINABLE ANIMAL YEETING
by franzanth

In this context, YEETING is defined as the act of throwing a “projectile” at a slightly upward angle with low initial velocity. The goal here is relocation, not destruction. Therefore, YEETING is ideally performed toward soft surfaces like leaves to minimize downward acceleration that might result in said projectile's discomfort.

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Pietro Pollo @pietropollo.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

I wish there were more posts like this

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Science News @scinews.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

Insect populations are rapidly declining even in relatively undisturbed landscapes, raising concerns about the health of ecosystems that depend on them. esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

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Bruno Alves Buzatto @brunobuzatto.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

Following funnel-web spiders — amazing work by Caitlin Creak: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Study initially by @braxtonjones.bsky.social, Danilo Harms and I (funded by NatGeo and AusGeo), taken up by Caitlin with Russell Bonduriansky and Mike Kasumovic. Congrats all, especially Caitlin! :)

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Dr. Catherine Scott @cataranea.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

🕷️#Arachnews alert! 🦂 New Foelix (the definitive reference for general spider biology, a must-have for every arachnologist & arachnophile) just dropped. Now called Spider Biology, this is an completely rewritten & updated version of the Biology of Spiders (2011). link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

link.springer.com

Spider Biology

This attractive book covers all aspects of spider biology and will appeal to general readers interested in spiders as well as specialists (arachnologists).

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Valentin Amrhein @vamrhein.bsky.social · 17/08/2025

Sabine Hossenfelder: "Scientific research is broken. This has been going on for decades, and the situation is not improving. It's getting worse." youtu.be/9yPy3DeMUyI?...

youtu.be

Scientific research has big problems, and it's getting worse

YouTube video by Sabine Hossenfelder

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Aki Vehtari @avehtari.bsky.social · 02/08/2024

All three books I've co-authored are freely available online for non-commercial use: - #Bayesian Data Analysis, 3rd ed (aka BDA3) at stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/book/ - #Regression and Other Stories at avehtari.github.io/ROS-Examples/ - Active Statistics at avehtari.github.io/ActiveStatis...

The cover of Bayesian Data Analysis book

The cover of Regression and Other Stories book

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Pamm Santana @pammsantana.bsky.social · 09/08/2025

Our study, conducted with great care and attention, is out! It went through a meticulous community peer-review process under open science practices, and I’m proud to be part of it. The results may not be what we hoped for, but they are what we need to move toward real inclusivity in science. 💜

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iNaturalist @inaturalist.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

No one does fancy appendages quite like treehoppers. Here's a particularly spectacular one, likely in the Genus Hypsauchenia. 📷 sukal on iNaturalist 📍 Thailand 🔗: www.inaturalist.org/observations... #ObservationOfTheDay

A black insect with a long curved appendage coming out of it at the top rests on a leaf.

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Pietro Pollo @pietropollo.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

The behavioural research literature is concentrated on certain taxa. Last chance to help us find out why by participating in a survey that takes only 5-10 min: unsw.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_.... Participation is voluntary and there are no negative consequences for choosing not to participate!

unsw.au1.qualtrics.com

Qualtrics Survey | Qualtrics Experience Management

The most powerful, simple and trusted way to gather experience data. Start your journey to experience management and try a free account today.

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Alex Wild @alexwild.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

The thing about entomology is, there are always weirder bugs than anything you could imagine on your own. Here's Cysteodemus wislizeni, a blister beetle from west Texas.

Photograph of a metallic blue/green beetle with a very spider-like body, a huge fake "abdomen" that is swollen and dented with even pits over its bulbous surface. It is otherwise ant-like, standing on a pure white stylized background.

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EcoEvoRxiv @ecoevorxiv.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

"Ungeneralizable generalizations? A meta-meta-analysis of the influence of taxonomic bias on the study of behavior." - doi.org/10.32942/X2X...

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