iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Ryan McMinds

Brianna Leahy @briannaleahy.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Breaking out the Copic #markers again for some #backyardbird #art :) A doodle for fun to commemorate seeing this guy on our tree! The #redbreastedsapsucker #washingtonstate #wildlife #drawing

Ink drawing of a woodpecker bird. Red marker colors the head, with the rest of the body done in greyscale. Signed BEL

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Reposted by Ryan McMinds

David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈 @whysharksmatter.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

When I was writing this piece about the Ocean Cleanup, I had a surreal experience: They assured me that they only kill invasive species, and sent me a published paper to demonstrate that. But the paper said the opposite! I wonder how many journalists just took their word for it and didn't check?

therevelator.org

Why The Ocean Cleanup Hasn’t Solved the Plastic Pollution Crisis • The Revelator

Global problems are rarely solved by one person or invention. The Ocean Cleanup didn’t work, for the reasons experts said it wouldn’t. What can we learn from this?

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Hi all, let’s talk about selection bias! (no thread follows)

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Funny to have a paragraph hedging on phylosymbiosis. The term is just as ambiguous, misleading, and unhelpful. But I guess buzzwords keep the industry alive.

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 10/01/2026

Personally I think both these phrases still set up the misunderstanding that evolution is deterministic. Not sure what the solution is, but even the ‘fittest’ or those that on average should be ‘good enough’ often get weeded out before others thanks to the randomness of it all.

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 10/01/2026

I would also say that the definition of ‘the fittest’ or ‘the weakest’ is context dependent, and evolution works on a noisy path where the target is constantly changing. There is really no such thing as ‘THE fittest’; a single ideal genotype or phenotype - thus the importance of diversity.

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 10/01/2026

Gotta address the fact that the way it works in nature isn’t a template for how we set up our society. Nature’s mechanisms have no bearing on how we should treat people. Eugenics keeps rearing its ugly head, and it needs to be made clear that we still have morals and can make better choices!

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

I would have put a list of corals but I don’t know the common names, haha

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

Introduce yourself with 5 animals you’ve seen in the wild: Galapagos penguin Kagu Red Sea anemonefish Florida cottonmouth Water ouzel

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Reposted by Ryan McMinds

🕸️ Cobweb Curtains For Zoosha 🦇 @brianvan.bsky.social · 09/11/2025

So it turns out... the US air travel system was incredibly, deeply dependent on federal funding to just run day-to-day all this time, to the benefit of private airline shareholders, when everyone thinks that state-run trains are leeching off the government. Weird!

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Reposted by Ryan McMinds

Benthos - A Game of Underwater Intrigue @benthos-game.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

Ever wonder what role corals play in tropical reef ecology? Find out by taking up the mantle of Team Coral 🪸! Cover the reef with colonies clad in sturdy calcium carbonate 🧪 and fend off dastardly, quick-growing algae! What is your favorite #reef creature you’d love to see in #benthosgame?

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

Not entirely sure about the nuances of photos via link, so here’s a copy with alt txt. Apparently this particular damselfly is a ‘bluet’ – azulilla, portecoupe, watersnuffel! Comparing common names across languages is a great window into how different cultures view organisms. #ArtAdventCalendar

A blue damselfly perched on the tip of a lodgepole pine branch with bokeh blending the light green and blues of the meadow, hills, and sky behind it

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

22 days ‘til Christmas! Damselflies – caballitos del Diablo, demoiselles, juffers – are not a group I’m super familiar with taxonomically. But I do like to be pedantic when certain close family members call them dragonflies. “Actually, …”

inaturalist.org

Bluets (Genus Enallagma)

Bluets from Oregon, United States on August 2, 2009 at 12:38 PM by Ryan McMinds

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

23 days ‘til Christmas! A tree frog – rana arborícola, rainette, boomkikker – another favorite! I’m not entirely sure why I didn’t pursue some kind of tree frog science. They are the best. Ok and those French and Dutch names are also pretty great.

inaturalist.org

Pacific chorus frog (Pseudacris regilla)

Pacific chorus frog from Oregon, United States on July 17, 2010 at 12:12 PM by Ryan McMinds

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Reposted by Ryan McMinds

Brianna Leahy @briannaleahy.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

It’s a late night, but I had to jump on the “art advent calendar” bandwagon as an excuse to carve out more drawing time ;) Thanks for modeling sweet Pika! #artadventcalendar #digitalillustration

Sketchy drawing of a cat, curled up and sleeping peacefully

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

24 days til Christmas! A fern –helecho, fougère, varen – one of my favorite things. I love being surrounded by green, and nothing does that better than a pteridophyte! I hope to visit Opal Creek (Oregon) again soon, and see how it has recovered from a wildfire that occurred while I was away.

inaturalist.org

common bracken (Pteridium aquilinum)

common bracken from Oregon, United States on July 5, 2009 at 12:24 PM by Ryan McMinds

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

I don’t know if something similar is already a thing, but, inspired by #ArtAdventCalendar, I figured it’d be fun to do an #iNatAdventCalendar with some of my favorite iNaturalist observations. This year I’ll use a theme to celebrate my imminent return to the PNW!

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Reposted by Ryan McMinds

Justine Karst 🇨🇦 @j-karst.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

'The secret lives of trees: the theory collapses'. Common mycorrhizal networks exist but we are far away from making conclusions on its function. It's great to see so many people interviewed in this article and challenge a story ahead of the science. www.epsiloon.com/tous-les-num...

epsiloon.com

La vie secrète des arbres : la théorie s’effondre

L’idée est si émouvante qu’elle a conquis le public, Hollywood, et jusqu’aux plus hautes institutions : les arbres communiqueraient via un réseau secret… Sauf que c’est faux. Les scientifiques ont...

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Reposted by Ryan McMinds

Dustin Marshall @djmmeeg.bsky.social · 07/11/2024

I wrote (ranted) on experimental design as I was frustrated as an editor at how little guidance students were getting. I underestimated the interest in the issue: it has been downloaded 10,000+ times! Clearly it’s something we need to be talking about more. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Principles of experimental design for ecology and evolution

Here I argue that we do not discuss experimental design, often until it is too late. This editorial seeks to begin a conversation about how and where to replicate appropriately.

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

It was actually another Cousteau book; The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus – which I read in college – that really moved the needle further for me in seeing the importance of using science to help people directly, rather than an abstract love for nature itself.

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

The Panda’s Thumb. I loved ‘science’ before I read that, probably in early high school, but it was Gould’s books that really got me excited about science as a process and a career; an ongoing debate about theory and concepts and meaning and relevance, rather than a collection of immutable facts.

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

Hi on here and hi soon-to-be-neighbor (ish)!

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

Ahh I bought this and haven’t gotten to it yet - thanks for the reminder!

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Reposted by Ryan McMinds

Billur Bektaş 🍃 @billurbektas.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

Super fun survey for a research to understand what people find beautiful in plants and why. I learned about my own preferences too while answering it:) 🪻🌾🌼🌸🪷🌷 www.biodiful.org#/plantiful_en

biodiful.org

Biodiful

Etude de la perception humaine de la biodiversité. Studying human perception of biodiversity.

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

I haven’t used Seek too much, myself. I usually just take photos during outings, and then upload and ID later. But I’ve had much better luck getting family members (the older ones!) to use Seek rather than the raw iNat app.

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

I suppose it feels odd not to have mentioned coral reefs anywhere in my bio or intro post - they have been a massive part of my life and research for the past ~15 years! But I am very happy to be shifting my focus to ecosystems closer to home, soon.

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

Bluesky academics, lets get to know each other! Quote this & tell me: 1) a project you are working on & 2) an odd idea/theory you aren’t working on but keep thinking about 1) about to move across the country with a baby and dog 2) has anyone thrown those echinoderm-killing ciliates at a coral yet

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

… problem is that each coral, or the ecosystem as it currently exists, might have a ‘tipping point’ that can be estimated, but it’s impossible to predefine a specific tipping point for a single variable that corresponds to collapse in everything that we find meaningful about the system.

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

… to be vulnerable to further rises in temperature. So the whole system is more fragile and closer to a more permanent collapse. So the initial message was oversimplified, and we lost credibility because we didn’t communicate that complexity. In the context of the current thread, I guess the …

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

… have higher tolerance for that particular stressor. So it looks like everyone was wrong to panic. But the problem is that the replacement corals are not functionally equivalent. They don’t provide the same ecosystem services, they are more vulnerable to other stressors, and they also continue…

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

… but when 3/4 of the reefs in a massive ecosystem are devastated in a single event, the messaging impact is later dampened because coral cover, as a whole, recovers rapidly within a couple years. And the replacement corals don’t fit the predictions as well, because they …

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

The main point that I gleaned from that article (perhaps filtered through or misinterpreted due to my own frustrations), is that the current message is too simplified, even if its urgency is warranted. E.g. we talk a lot about loss of coral cover or how ‘corals’ have these warming thresholds, …

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Reposted by Ryan McMinds

Brooke Jarvis @brookejarvis.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

Today in relatable science: Gulls making a mysterious daily trip that turned out to be to a potato chip factory

A map of flight paths emanating from breeding colony of gulls, with this caption: Early on, LifeWatch noticed something odd. Most gulls were making daily trips to Mouscron, a city on the French border 65 km away. They went to investigate and found the birds bingeing on discarded snacks at the Roger & Roger potato factory.

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

Those are both really great; thanks

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

… They didn’t publish the interview, and I decided I wasn’t qualified to take those kinds of interviews anymore :/

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

… didn’t feel comfortable saying ‘yeah definitely the corals will all die if we cross 1.5°’. But like - they’re dying right now, in very large, sudden events? And extinction is permanent? So it’s urgent regardless? But I guess they thought my perspective wasn’t interesting…

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

… here in Florida, where species really are vulnerable to sudden extinction. But they asked me repeatedly about these tipping points, to the point where it seemed they didn’t care about the nuance unless it was framed that way, and I was kind of taken aback. I’m not a climate scientist and …

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

As someone who has really only lurked at the edges of the discourse for a few years, the tipping point thing is definitely odd to me. I’m generally familiar with the ongoing catastrophes in coral reefs, and did an interview with a news station a couple years ago during a massive bleaching event…

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

The tipping points probably exist; we just have no confidence about precisely where they are

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Ryan McMinds @rmcminds.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

I think this is the most plain but nuanced way to state it. If the discourse were to flip 100% anti-tipping-point-framework, it could be equally problematic when a previously unidentified tipping point is crossed (eg irreversible widespread extinction in coral reef ecosystems or AMOC collapse).

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