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Tomos Potter

@tomospotter.bsky.social
1.1K followers 714 following 324 posts

Evolutionary ecologist in the Kokko lab, JGU Mainz. Recovering guppy-botherer, interested in eco-evolutionary processes that generate and maintain diversity. Models, stats, long-term studies. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 in 🇩🇪 Also likes: food, landscapes, guitars

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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 11h
This reminds me of a recurring motto at the field station: remember, we’re not doing this because it’s easy, we’re doing it because we *thought* it would be easy.
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 11h
To be fair, they do speak an odd dialect of Welsh in Patagonia! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patagon...
en.wikipedia.org
Patagonian Welsh - Wikipedia
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Natalie Pilakouta @nataliepilakouta.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
📣 PhD opportunity in my lab 📣 Are you interested in the effects of climate change on social behaviour? 🌡️🔥 This PhD project will examine these effects in the amazing burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides www.findaphd.com/phds/project... Informal enquiries welcome. Please share widely!
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
This one stood out like a sore thumb, hence the photo. Still easy to miss!
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
I’m certain that I have had more close encounters with them than I’ve been aware of! Always amazing creatures to see, but I usually only spot them when I am closer than I want to be…
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Fer-de-lance would like a word
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Bob Wong @bbmwong.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Monash University is offering a fully-funded PhD scholarship to an outstanding student in animal behaviour/evolutionary ecology. Choose from eight project areas. For information about what project I'm offering, please DM me or see application form: forms.gle/ia9t4KPD3FKT.... Deadline: 15 Nov.
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Disappointed with the financial return on their textbook, two theoretical biologists branch out into the lucrative world of German TV sales.
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Odd This Day @oddthisday.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Almost forgot: happy That Tom Hollander Interview Day to all who celebrate
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David Berger @dbergerbiol.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
PhD-position ALERT! Interested in the genomics of local adaptation and the evolution of niche breadth? 🪲🧬🪲🧬🪲🧬🪲🧬🪲🧬 Come join me and @gmkov.bsky.social at @animecol-uu.bsky.social, Uppsala University, by applying here: uu.varbi.com/en/what:job/... Deadline 1st of November!
uu.varbi.com
PhD-student in Evolutionary and Ecological Genetics
Do you want to conduct frontier research in an outstanding environment within evolutionary biology at Sweden’s largest faculty of science and technology? The Department of Ecology and Genetics at Up
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
@depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
hagoromo.shop
hagoromo.shop
Hagoromo, the Rolls Royce of Chalk
"The legend around this chalk is that it's impossible to write a false theorem using the chalk, but I think I've disproved that many times," says David Eisenbud, a mathematics professor at the Univers...
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
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Blake Matthews @ebmatthews.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Three new evolutionary ecology PhD positions are open in Switzerland (Eawag, and Uni. Bern) to work on Greenland lake ecosystems. We are interested in how stickleback and copepods evolve, and how their evolution affects the trajectories of lake ecosystem development. apply.refline.ch/673277/1403/...
apply.refline.ch
3 PhD positions in the fields of Evolutionary Ecology, Evolutionary Genomics, and Ecosystem Science
The Department of Fish Ecology & Evolution (FishEc) has vacancies for
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Pleuni Pennings @pleunipennings.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I am hiring a postdoc! Are you interested to work on population genetics/ drug resistance/ data? Want to work in Montpellier, France? Fastq files don't scare you? PhD required, start date hopefully Nov 1! (end date Sep 30 2028) Please share! abetterscientist.wordpress.com/2026/09/29/p...
abetterscientist.wordpress.com
Postdoc position on drug resistance evolution in Montpellier, France
I have some exciting news (again!). I got money from the region (Occitanie) to hire a postdoc (and later an engineer / technician) to work on drug resistance evolution in malaria (P. faciparum) and…
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
My brain when I sit down to do some writing.
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Adding this to the pile…
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I’m just surprised that a long haul flight with no booze is considered fit for take off from the UK!
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Nevermind chaotic local business - I had a flight from London to Miami with American Airlines, and they announced that they had no beer OR wine immediately after take off. The horror! Wouldn’t happen with BA.
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Oh god
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
This was fantastic - the against-the-odds story of Rosemary’s beginnings as a scientist, a lifetime of fantastic research clearly articulated, and a clear passion for the natural world, advocacy, and equality. Very inspiring talk! Big thanks to Rosemary and the BES EE team for organising.
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Simon Evans @sevans.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
One hour away! And you’re already halfway through the week! So reward yourself with some of the very best of evolutionary ecology, starting in just under one hour: www.britishecologicalsociety.org/content/evol...
britishecologicalsociety.org
Evolutionary Ecology Webinar: Darwin's Finches | BES 2026
Join the BES Evolutionary Ecology SIG webinar with Rosemary Grant on Darwin's finches, natural selection, genetics, behaviour and rapid evolution.
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tomjwebb @tomjwebb.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Here's the guillemot one, by Alex Pansier:
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
You are right, but that doesn’t me we should stop trying: bsky.app/profile/tomo...
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Asher Leeks @asherleeks.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Come work with @viromehunter.bsky.social and myself at UBC! We have a postdoctoral position available for someone with an interest in bioinformatics and genomics, using sociovirology to understand disease dynamics in plant viruses. Advert: ppvlab.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2026/0...
ppvlab.sites.olt.ubc.ca
Browser Verification | UBC Cybersecurity
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Giuseppe, ineptly: “Spaghetti Regretti”
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Modest Mousse
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Rob Jacques @knutcrosswords.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Doctor: "Take a seat Mr Jacques and tell me how on earth you got that terrible cut across your eyebrow". "Well doc, it was this guy in a shell suit"
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Ainsley S @americanbeetles.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Today in great scientific figures: the flight path of two midges, immediately preceding ❤️romance❤️
Hand-drawn figure almost certainly derived from painstaking examination of filmed midge flight. It took them 4 years to publish this. It is indistinguishable from an elaborate squiggle.
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Molly Schumer @mollyschumer.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Help needed! Does anyone know of a lab that has glass (pigmentless) guppies? We are interested in getting them for a project
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Love Darwin being a hater
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Daniela Rößler @roesslerdaniela.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Please spread this talented and wonderful human’s name and work. Maartje @maartjevandenderen.bsky.social just finished her Scientific Illustration Master and is leaping into freelancing next. Got 💰 and #illustration needs? Look no further!! www.maartjevandenderen.nl
maartjevandenderen.nl
Maartje van Denderen
Maartje van Denderen is a Scientific Illustrator, interested in insects, mushrooms, and plants.
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David López-Idiáquez @davididiaquez.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
New preprint out in @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social with @devisatarkar.bsky.social and @sheldonbirds.bsky.social in which we analyse the effects of this summer's unprecedented and severe #heatwave on tit reproduction and mass. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Why commas are useful:
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Good Trailcams @goodtrailcams.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Mauve Woolworths
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Viz Comic @vizcomic.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
subscriptions >>> shop.viz.co.uk/viz358bs
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Interested in developing theory in evolution/ecology? Join our team in Mainz! I've learned so much from this lovely bunch of Kokkonuts.
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Interested in developing theory in evolution/ecology? Join our team in Mainz! I've learned so much from this lovely bunch of Kokkonuts.
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Hanna Kokko @kokkonut.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Come and work with us (the Kokkonuts) as a postdoc! Our research within (theory-evo-eco) is broad; let's say it's implicitly defined by the journal club papers we read. Which is why the application process includes a JC-related task, I hope it'll be a fun one for you! www.evoldir.net/brian/evoldi...
evoldir.net
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Fitting random intercepts essentially "tells" the model that you are including N non-independent groups, where N is the number of grouping factors (i.e. number of unique traps, or wasp species) with an associated variance.
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Fitting random intercepts for groups shifts the estimated group mean up or down relative to the main (fixed) effect, while accounting for non-independence in the main effect. You can extract the random intercepts from the model using ranef(), but you might want to check out the emmeans package!
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
It seems like you might want a GLMM, with random intercepts for trap. Something like glmmTMB(n_wasps ~ forest_type + (1|trap_id)+ (1|species), family=“poisson”) perhaps? This would account for non-independence among samples from a given trap, and non-independence among samples for each species.
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Good question, and yes, it does! You are in mixed-model territory here so you should look at including random effects which account for the non-independence of grouped data. Not doing so is likely to inflate the model’s confidence in its parameter estimates.
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Complexity and Networks CORE @complexity-core.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology | Group Leader in Theoretical Biology - Application deadline 📆 Sep 01, 2026
mpg.de
Group Leader in Theoretical Biology (m/f/d)
Experience in Theoretical Biology, Applied Mathematics, Theoretical Physics
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
My big brother took me to the shop to buy my first CDs - I still listen to one of these regularly!
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Neil Miles @neilsmiles.com · 17/08/2026
29th August 1985 - An excited Michael Fish gets to deploy the rarely seen red number as the temperature gets up to an incredible 26 degrees in London!
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Look at this shiny little beauty 🤩 - a bronze shield bug, I think! Looks quite different from most pics, but apparently the orange bands on the second antennae segments are diagnostic. North Wales coast.
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Joe Brennan @biologyjoe87.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Looking for sci comm opportunities? Join us as a writer for American Naturalist press releases! These write-ups are primarily written by graduate students and other early-career scientists. No experience required; we have editors to help along the way. Apps due Sept 1. Please share widely :D
forms.gle
Looking for Press Release Writers & Editors for The American Naturalist
Sign up for the opportunity to write and/or edit for The American Naturalist! We are seeking authors to write press releases for new journal articles. See examples of recent press releases here. We a...
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Tomos Potter @tomospotter.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
They also tasted a *bit* like dirt
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