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Vanessa Higham

@vanessahigham.bsky.social
395 followers 1.1K following 3 posts

Biologist, PhD Researcher @MonashUni. Interested in mitochondria, sexual conflict, microbiome, diet and life-history evolution

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Reposted by Vanessa Higham
Kon Karapanagiotidis @kkarapanagiotidis.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
If One Nation can raise $4.7 million in 10 days for hate and division, I believe we can raise $1.5 million tomorrow for love. Our World Refugee Day Telethon goes from 7am to 11pm. Let’s send a powerful national message tomorrow that we are stronger together ❤️
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Professor Euan Ritchie FAMS @euanritchie.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Pauline Hanson wants a monoculture. She'd probably offer you chicken loaf on white bread for lunch, with a side of spam, too. Fuck off, Pauline. Diversity is what makes Australia great!
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Vanessa Higham @vanessahigham.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Given the recent findings regarding psychosocial safety in australian university contexts, it is clear that change is necessary. @taralync.bsky.social & @eivimeycook.bsky.social diplomatically discuss academic norms around rejection and resilience blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsoci...
blogs.lse.ac.uk
Rejection in academia is structural not personal - LSE Impact
Unlike other high-profile professions, academia treats rejection as personal judgement, can it create ways of talking about rejection that are more realistic?
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Mehreen Faruqi @mehreenfaruqi.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
When they say the immigration policies of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, you know they mean the White Australia policy.
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Prof Ros Gleadow FAA 💙💚 @rgleadow.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
Long Covid > more blood Tau > increase chance of Alzheimer's. Nice study followed people before/after infection, plus 2 years later, and a control group that managed to avoid getting infected (how?). Not surprising to those of us who've been following the story - terrifying all the same #Covid 🧪⚕️
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Genetics Society of America @genetics-gsa.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
Ever wonder what the carbon footprint of your research is? This latest #GENETICS study presents a systematic life-cycle assessment of the #carbondioxide #emissions generated by a graduate student in a #Drosophila neuroscience lab. buff.ly/hU7pzvs
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Professor Euan Ritchie FAMS @euanritchie.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
A massive shout-out to all women and girls in science, you make science and the world better! www.unesco.org/en/articles/...
unesco.org
2026 International Day of Women and Girls in Science
Join UNESCO on 11 February 2026 for a global event celebrating women in science and shaping a future where science and gender equality advance together
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Edward R. Ivimey-Cook @eivimeycook.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
Thanks to some great comments and suggestions, we've updated TADA! Read it here: ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v... Transferable, Available, Documented, Annotated.
ecoevorxiv.org
TADA! Simple guidelines to improve analytical code sharing for transparency and reproducibility
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Eleanor Bath @eleanorbath.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
We're advertising a PhD project on how social isolation influences aggression in flies. Based at Durham, co-supervised by @clarahowcroft.bsky.social . Despite what the ad says, this is also open to international applicants! Any questions, shoot me a msg! www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
findaphd.com
Angry and Alone: How Social Experience Shapes Female Aggression in Flies at Newcastle University on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - Angry and Alone: How Social Experience Shapes Female Aggression in Flies at Newcastle University, listed on FindAPhD.com
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Bob Wong @bbmwong.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
Size matters. Among the great apes, human penises are unusually large. Why? Check out our new open access paper in @plosbiology.org led by @upama.bsky.social. Link here: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... And read the lay article in @theconversation.com here: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
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Natalie Pilakouta @nataliepilakouta.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
Hot off the press! New paper in Biology Letters (@royalsocietypublishing.org) showing that heatwaves impair female but not male fertility in burying beetles 🐞🌡️ Huge congratulations to Izzy (@izzygrieve.bsky.social) on her first first-authored paper! 🥳🙌 royalsocietypublishing.org/rsbl/article...
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Prof Ros Gleadow FAA 💙💚 @rgleadow.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
Avoid Covid to preserve your brain
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences @pnas.org · 13/01/2026
One of the most-viewed PNAS articles in the last week is “The variability of evolvability: Properties of dynamic fitness landscapes determine how phenotypic variability evolves.” Explore now: ow.ly/XouU50XWiiV For more trending articles, visit ow.ly/AiXL50XWi81.
Schematic representation of fitness landscapes. (A) Orange lines show maximum (dashed) and average (dotted) fitness of a population on a narrower peak (yellow circles), blue lines show the same for a wider peak (blue circles). (B) Trajectory of a population in a periodically changing environment with respect to a given fitness landscape (solid arrow) and with respect to an unseen other fitness landscape (dashed arrow). (C) Hypothetical “trapping” of the population in variable environments.
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Prof Ros Gleadow FAA 💙💚 @rgleadow.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
No. No Just no. We do not want guns in Australia and governments should resist the lobbying #AusPol www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
theguardian.com
‘Blindsided’: father of Port Arthur massacre victims says NSW hunting bill will take a ‘jackhammer’ to gun control
Walter Mikac, who lost his wife and two daughters in the 1996 shooting, warns that Labor-backed Shooters party bill will weaken national firearms agreement
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Vincent Carchidi @vcarchidi.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
Could be treated as a complement to this paper finding that most LLMs tested (9 out of 10) had a tendency to over-generalize clinical trial results in summaries. (Claude was a repeated exception, for whatever reason). royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
royalsocietypublishing.org
Generalization bias in large language model summarization of scientific research | Royal Society Open Science
Artificial intelligence chatbots driven by large language models (LLMs) have the potential to increase public science literacy and support scientific research, as they can quickly summarize complex scientific information in accessible terms. However, when ...
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PapaJ @michiganpapa.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
"Any book worth banning is a book worth reading." Isaac Asimov
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Sarah Tuttle @niais.cryptoanarchy.network · 13/08/2025
Abandoning the vision of liberal arts education is at the heart of how fascism has come knocking. Scientists speaking of abandoning humanities have not learned the core lessons of our history - and by our history I even mean THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE. Science is never separated from society.
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Shahan Ali Memon @shahanmemon.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
An important piece on #AI generated #preprints and why it's important to consider their impact on scientific ecosystem. Some other important considerations related to this that are not covered in the article 👇 🧵1/14 #AI4Science #AI4Research #ScAISci #SciSci
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Joey Bernhardt @joeybernhardt.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
Please help us spread the word! Please amplify! We are searching for an associate or full professor (Canada Excellence Research Chair) in Biodiversity Genomics at the University of Guelph! 🐟🌿🦠🐜🐸🐝 Applications are due October 6 2025. careers.uoguelph.ca/job/Guelph-C... #AcademicJobs #EvoBio
careers.uoguelph.ca
Canada Excellence Research Chair in Biodiversity Genomics
Canada Excellence Research Chair in Biodiversity Genomics
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The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
FlyBase, a Drosophila database, will lose a third of its team in early October because the Harvard grant that covered the employees’ salaries was canceled. Scientists warn that losing FlyBase could devastate fly research. By @claudia-lopez.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/community/ha...
thetransmitter.org
Harvard University lays off fly database team
The layoffs jeopardize this resource, which has served more than 4,000 labs for about three decades.
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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 06/08/2025
🇬🇷 Greece- Ioanna Papadopoulou, Winter Harvest A retelling of the myth of Demeter and Persephone that focuses on the pain and violence done to the women in classical myth (god, Zeus is such a fucking asshole)
bookshop.org
Winter Harvest
Check out Winter Harvest - <p>When her beloved daughter Kore vanishes, Demeter is distraught. Suspecting betrayal and mistrusting of her family, she searches across the world, unable to come to terms ...
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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
A reminder you/your lab can support FlyBase at Cambridge through the following link. Every bit helps. Please share if you yourself can't donate. www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk/give-to-camb...
philanthropy.cam.ac.uk
Drosophila Genetic Database
The Drosophila Genetic Database, FlyBase, is on the brink of collapse due to the sudden termination of the FlyBase NIH grant, which includes salaries for 5 literature curators based at the University ...
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Elegant Sledgehammer FREE LINK @tinyteerex.bsky.social · 10/08/2025
We can't go back in time, but we can change our directory going forward. If you don't mask, you can do so from now on. Kindness is one (pretty important!) way to fight fascism, and i can't think of any kinder act than protecting each others' health.
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Ian Ramjohn @iramjohn.bsky.social · 10/08/2025
There is, of course, no such thing as "PhD level intelligence". PhD level stubbornness ("I'm going to finish this if it kills me") or PhD level sunk cost fallaciousness, sure. A PhD is awarded for the creation of *new* knowledge. Which is one thing that LLMs are incapable of doing.
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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
So you'd like a research grant from @britishacademy.bsky.social but you've got an additional need that makes that difficult? Well we still believe in equality, diversity, inclusion, and so there is a fund you can apply to for help with that www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/addi...
thebritishacademy.ac.uk
Additional needs
The British Academy has set aside specific funding to support any additional needs that applicants and award holders may require. This funding would be in addition to the amount already requested for ...
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Kale Sniderman @muddypollen.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
Rare Australian post-doc for a palynologist/paleoecologist with statiistical skills! jobs.unimelb.edu.au/en/job/91951...
jobs.unimelb.edu.au
Details : Postdoctoral Fellow, Paleoecology : The University of Melbourne
Careers at The University of Melbourne
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Joanna Masel @joannamasel.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
Now seems a good time to mention that I haven't yet filled a postdoc position in phylogenetic methods. If you just lost your job, need something temporary, and know something about bioinformatics/statistics/evolution, talk to me.
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
If you're a non-UK scientist who wants to come to the UK for a postdoc, this year's Newton Fellowships are now open. You'll need a lab to host you (which could be me, but truly, could be any PI, so get in touch with someone you'd like to work with!) royalsociety.org/grants/newto...
royalsociety.org
Newton International Fellowships | Royal Society
This fellowship is for non-UK scientists who are at an early stage of their research career and wish to conduct research in the UK.
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Animal Ecology Uppsala @animecol-uu.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
📣 We are recruiting! Please spread the word! We look to hire an associate professor in animal ecology, specializing in evolutionary ecology. Apply by Feb 7 2025. Come join us in Uppsala, Sweden! Application page and contact info 🔗👇 #ecology #evolution #job www.uu.se/en/about-uu/...
uu.se
Associate Professor in Animal Ecology with specialization in Evolutionary Ecology - Uppsala University
Associate Professor in Animal Ecology with specialization in Evolutionary Ecology , Department of Ecology and Genetics, Uppsala University
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Alessandro Prigione @aleprigio.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
Super interesting article by Martin Picard
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Krish Sanghvi @krishsanghvi11.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
Is low fecundity of old males a consequence of seminal fluid or sperm declines, or female post-mating responses? Our new paper in evolution letters finds some surprising answers! academic.oup.com/evlett/advan...
academic.oup.com
Reproductive output of old males is limited by seminal fluid, not sperm number
What causes an old male to reproductively fail? Is it his sperm or seminal fluid? In fruit flies, old males produce fewer offspring than young males. But s
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Rosa Ritunnano @rritunnano.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
Instead of listing my publications, as the year draws to an end, I want to shine the spotlight on the commonplace assumption that productivity must always increase. Good research is disruptive and thinking time is central to high quality scholarship and necessary for disruptive research.
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Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 19/09/2024
If you hate statistics like I do, then you'll love my free lectures. Putting science before statistics, 20 lectures from basics of inference & causal modeling to multilevel models & dynamic state space models. It's all free, made with love and sympathy. 🧪 #stats www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
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Jess Ewald @ewaldlab.org · 13/12/2024
🎉 I'm starting my own lab at EMBL-EBI (Cambridge, UK; June 2025) 🎉 We will focus on identifying and characterizing chemical hazards to humans and ecosystems using computational biology methods. I am beginning the search for two postdocs now - stay tuned for more details! ewaldlab.org
ewaldlab.org
Ewald Lab
@ EMBL-EBI. We identify and characterize chemical hazards to both humans and ecosystems with cell profiling data, machine learning, and integrative data analysis.
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Christine Beeton @christinebeeton.bsky.social · 08/12/2024
Having a color-blind colleague is a good reminder that we need to be more careful when designing figures for scientific publication 🧪 My lab has found this page especially useful for selecting color palettes, used in combination with different symbols: thenode.biologists.com/data-visuali...
thenode.biologists.com
Color blind friendly palettes for data visualizations with categories
A discussion of color blind friendly palettes for labeling unique catergories in data visualization.
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Andrew Perfors @perfors.net · 09/12/2024
There are few better feelings than when former students go off and do great things, and then write to you and let you know about them. Students: never wonder if you should get in touch with a former teacher or supervisor to share this kind of thing. It is one of the purest rewards there is. /1
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Rob Foley @robfoley.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
King’s College Cambridge has just announced a Research Fellowship on the topic of Symbiosis and/or Coevolution for early career researchers. www.kings.cam.ac.uk/about/work-a...
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David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈 @whysharksmatter.bsky.social · 08/12/2024
Every year around now, I start to see grad students on social media bemoan that they’re going home for the holidays to a family that doesn’t understand their research, or what they do in general, and it breaks my heart. 🧵 🧪 #SciComm
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Dr. Elizabeth Santos @lizmillermacroevo.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
DAY 7 #12daysofanglerfishmas Did you know there are anglerfish on coral reefs? Just like their relatives, frogfishes are sit-and-wait predators who use lures and have an extensible stomach!
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François Leulier @francoisleulier.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
Drosophila and Lactiplantibacillus plantarum in the spotlight (again), what a wonderful model (disclaimer I am biased ;-) ). Congrats Will and team! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
A conserved bacterial genetic basis for commensal-host specificity
Animals selectively acquire specific symbiotic gut bacteria from their environments that aid host fitness. To colonize, a symbiont must locate its niche and sustain growth within the gut. Adhesins are...
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cshells33.bsky.social @cshells33.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
"Swift parrots in a forest being logged now. Stunning images by Rob Blakers show these critically endangered birds within an active logging area in #Tasmania's Eastern Tiers. #SwiftParrots are on the brink of extinction" ... - Bob Brown Foundation bobbrown.org.au #EndNativeForestLogging #Auspol
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Oded Rechavi @odedrechavi.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
Scared to share this after 10 freaking years of waiting, but here we go: We found that temperature *perception* can change the biology of the next generations, even when “it’s just in the parents' head”. Read how C. elegans neurons control epigenetic inheritance! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Perception of Temperature Even in the Absence of Actual Change is Sufficient to Drive Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance
Can processes occurring in one individuals nervous system influence the physiology of the descendants? Here we explored the provocative hypothesis that parents sensation or perception of environmental...
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EMBL @embl.org · 05/12/2024
At its six sites EMBL’s many groups and teams work across the life sciences in interdisciplinary and collaborative ways. Meet and join this community on Bluesky, with this EMBL starter pack 🦋 go.bsky.app/GbCJS2B
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James B Dorey @jamesbeedorey.bsky.social · 17/11/2024
This is my attempt to build a wild bee-researcher starter pack for folks to find awesome people doing awesome wild bee research! Feel free to suggest yourself as I'm sure this'll start out as a pack of my collaborators and other admired researchers! go.bsky.app/PrjzU94
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georgia 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @blahttodea.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
hey everyone! i made a list of some useful starter packs (primarily biology/earth sciences with a few bonus things thrown in) to share with friends who have joined bsky in the last week and thought it may be useful for some people here too! 🌍🧪 #SciSky #BioSky docs.google.com/document/d/1...
docs.google.com
Starter packs
BIOLOGY Ecology Macroecology https://go.bsky.app/GBn9pNZ Global ecology https://go.bsky.app/V6tN4cv Trait based ecology and evolution https://go.bsky.app/PThMXeX Invasion biology https://go.b...
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Meghie Rodrigues @meghier.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
Thank you so much to whoever put this very comprehensive list of #science Bsky starter packs together. This is just amazing: docs.google.com/document/d/1...
docs.google.com
Starter packs
BIOLOGY General Science community https://go.bsky.app/HVYAMEA Research Institutions in Life Sciences https://go.bsky.app/LxXpcvJ LGBTQIA+ in STEM https://go.bsky.app/BFc4wgf LGBTQIA+ in STEM 2 h...
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bioRxivpreprint @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
The propensity of fructose to induce metabolic dysfunction is dependent on the baseline diet, length of the dietary exposure, and sex of the mice. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
biorxiv.org
The propensity of fructose to induce metabolic dysfunction is dependent on the baseline diet, length of the dietary exposure, and sex of the mice. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.26.625441v1
Background/Objectives: Numerous studies have implicated high intake of sugar, particularly fructose,
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Anthony Amend @fungaloha.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
RP PLS! Iʻm hiring 3 postdocs at U Hawaiʻi to study yeast diversity and evolution, marine fungi, and the genomics of microbiomes in experimental foodwebs. All of these projects have existing datasets and LATITUDE to pursue individual interests and "blue sky" ideas www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/5d7u4...
A researcher on a boardwalk in a DANK hawaiian forest on Molokai.
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Laura D'Olimpio @lauradol4.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
Looks like bluesky is going to be added to altmetrics! #philsky #academicsky
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