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Andrew Davinack

@vermiformes.bsky.social
79 followers 62 following 117 posts

Associate Professor of Biology - Wheaton College Massachusetts Marine Parasitologist | Ailurophile | New Yorker | Horror-writer Davinack Lab: departments.wheatoncollege.edu/facu…

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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
To all my #marinebiodiversity peeps, we've developed a new Python package called TaxonWeave which automates reconciliation of species names using the WoRMS and barcode repositories (GenBank). It returns reconciled sequence records with summaries of all the metadata. Looking for beta testers!
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TETTRIX @tettrix.eu · 01/09/2026
Today, TETTRIX officially begins. 🌍 🌿 Building on the foundations of TETTRIs, TETTRIX will strengthen Europe’s taxonomic capacity by connecting knowledge, expertise, infrastructure, and communities to generate reliable, actionable biodiversity knowledge for science, policy and society. 🫱🏻‍🫲🏻
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Hot off the press. Just because Toxoplasma infected hosts are doing weird stuff in the wild, doesn't mean it's Toxoplasma pulling in the strings. Those individuals might just be weird. #parasites #Toxoplasma #mindcontrol doi.org/10.1016/j.an...
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
eDNA cannot solve the taxonomic impediment by sequencing around it. The rapid adoption of eDNA into large-scale biodiversity research is a terrible idea.
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Excited to share that I’ll be taking a leave from Wheaton this December to join NTNU in Trondheim through #TETTRIX. Years ago, I pitched very similar work to NSF and it wasn’t funded. Now I get to do it anyway, just by a different path. Life is funny like that. #biodiversity #taxonomy
cetaf.org
From TETTRIs to TETTRIX: a new chapter for European taxonomy - Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities - CETAF
TETTRIX will bring together 17 partners from 10 countries to build a more integrated, skilled and policy-ready European taxonomic system.
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
I’m so glad I moved to a PUI lol
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
I have an honors student this fall exploring genetic variation in the terminal regions of #monkeypox viral genomes. We’ve been using AI to debug some of the scripting errors we encounter and some of our prompts were flagged by OpenAI. At least there are now guardrails on some of these platforms.
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
When I'm not doing science, I'm writing and publishing American folk horror stories. My first one just came out in Black Hare Press. Here's an interview I did with them: blackharepress.com/blogs/author... #horror #folkhorror #writers
blackharepress.com
Dissecting Drew Davinack
Welcome back to the Black Hare Press Dissecting Author interviews, where we dissect an author to find out who they are, what they write, and what keeps their creative juices flowing.   Today, we slice...
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
I feel betrayed. None of my fellow millennials informed me that Evanescence had released a new album. I had to figure this out two months later??? Disappointed in all of you.
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Visited my hometown of NYC this weekend to see the parents. So much has changed yet so much has remained the same. I have a love/hate relationship with this place like all NYers. Is it still the greatest city in the world? Undoubtedly. Does it often get on my nerves? Always #empirestateofmind
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Two of our long time faculty members retired last year. The powers that be will likely not replace them but rather opt for teaching-track positions. That means we have two research labs now empty. Which means I’ve *inherited* a bunch of cabinets to store my overflow of #worm samples. 🪱
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
My student and I were featured in a recent article by Wheaton College. Rylie helped develop our new python software package pygenoscape, which spatially interpolates genetic distances among individuals to visualize genetic differences across a landscape. #popgen #PUI #undergradresearch
wheatoncollege.edu
Blazing new paths in scientific software
Professor Andrew Davinack and Rylie Seaberg ’26 created software that transforms genetic data into three-dimensional landscapes, allowing researchers to see how genetic variation changes across geogra...
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
They don’t know I’d let the world burn before I see any harm come to them
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
When I’m not playing with worms and parasites I’m teaching grown men how to strangle other grown men. #jiujitsu #weirdhobbies
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Every three years all the #polychaete folks gather to discuss the wonderful world of worms followed by a final night of dinner and dancing and conga lines. And so we end another IPC and part ways. Hope to see everyone again in 2029 in Japan 🇯🇵
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
It has been scorching all week in Germany. I can never understand the Europeans’ aversion to air condition. Good lord 🥵 #summertravels #polychaeteconference
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Yesterday while getting work done at my hotel lobby in Frankfurt I was approached by two police officers who started interrogating me about a stolen cellphone - I was patted down, ordered to unlock my phone and they started searching me. Don’t tell me - I know why… what an introduction to Germany!
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
In my upcoming book I also draw heavily from horror movies. The opening chapter begins with a scene from @realgdt.bsky.social and Chuck Hogan’s “The Strain”. If you haven’t seen the series or read the book, you should - it’s one of the most accurate on screen representation of #parasites.
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
Made it to Frankfurt for a week of only polychaete talks! #IPC2026
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Yummy delicious #microplastics recovered from some wild blue mussels. #undergradresearch #PUI
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
If you wonder why your NSF funding got cut. Now you know: www.yahoo.com/news/politic...
yahoo.com
White House wants to shift billions of dollars of research funding away from ‘slow consensus peer review’ and into individual scientists and AI
Moving funding to individual scientists and AI could undermine US scientific credibility at home and abroad.
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
What's the point of a double or even single-blind peer review if the authors posted a preprint?
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
New publication coming out soon in Mitochondrial DNA Part A. Here I created HapNet - a python package for building haplotype networks from sequence data. Doing my part to win over R users so they too can explore the GOAT programming language. #popgen #python
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
With all the talk about #Cyclospora, this is a good time for some self-promotion. If you want to understand #parasites and how they tick (no pun intended) and why getting rid of them entirely is not necessarily a good idea, check out my new book coming out in the Fall - release date has moved up!
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
My institution, Wheaton College Massachusetts, has a vacancy for a one-year Visiting Assistant Professor position in the Biology Department. A 3/3 teaching load: must be able to teach Intro Bio and Nutrition. Come join us! #academicvacancies #newengland jobs.wheatoncollege.edu/postings/4844
jobs.wheatoncollege.edu
Visiting Assistant Professor
The Biological, Chemical, and Environmental Sciences (BCES) Department at Wheaton College is seeking applicants for a one-year Visiting Assistant Professor position starting Fall 2026 (2026-2027 acade...
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
Remote BLASTing is way slower than manually checking sequence similarities on NCBI. Whudda thought? 🤡
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
July 1st: my first day as an Associate Professor - do absolutely nothing.
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
This summer my undergraduate honors student is exploring whether blue mussels infected with trematodes harbor similar loads of microplastic compared with uninfected mussels. She’s also exploring whether the sporocysts themselves harbor microplastics. #parasitology #PUI #undergrad
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
My undergrad student and I just built a tool that visualizes gradients in genetic composition among individuals distributed across a landscape. New #popgen tool. Works for sanger sequence data or precomputed distance matrices generated from RAD-seq datasets. academic.oup.com/bioinformati...
academic.oup.com
pygenoscape: a Python package for spatial interpolation and visualization of genetic distance landscapes
AbstractMotivation. Spatial genetic structure is central to population genetics and phylogeography, but many approaches rely on discrete population models
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
Me submitting yet another NSF proposal that is not going to get funded.
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
About to submit yet ANOTHER NSF proposal focused on taxonomy. It's the same proposal I've submitted over the past few years, dressed up different to satisfy reviewers who think that more data (aka genomes) actually means more resolution for understudied taxa...when it actually doesn't.
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
Yahtzee! Live trematode sporocysts squirming around inside the mantle of blue mussels collected in Rhode Island. With the amount of people who slurp up mussels raw, it's amazing that this species haven't added humans to their vertebrate host repertoire. #parasites #parasitology #seafood
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Reposted by Andrew Davinack
Carlyn Zwarenstein @carlynzwaren.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
Last year I wrote about northward return of screwworm, banishment of which was a USDA/US-C. America collab triumph. What has put that @ risk (w/a case just found in Texas)? Guess. Or read on. Plus you'll quickly grasp why we really, really don't want screwworm anywhere. www.salon.com/2025/04/28/w...
salon.com
The US could get screwed on screwworm
For years, a multi-country effort kept screwworm at bay. The US picking fights with Mexico isn't helping
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Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
🧵 Public science in the US has taken some heavy hits over the last year, but the White House OMB is proposing a series of changes that will result in a TKO for science as we know it unless we fight back. Here's what's happening, and why it matters. 1/n
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
As a New Yorker I always held steadfast that we have the best #pizza in the country. And I think that claim still holds but since I moved to New England four years ago, the New Haven pies have seriously impressed me.
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
I like transparent and open datasets. I was able to discover a cool little nugget after replicating a research group's #popgen simulation on gene-flooding and its use in #invasive species control. That's science folks. #invasivespecies #genedrives onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Migration Thresholds Govern Allele Collapse Under Repeated Gene Flooding
A recent study proposed gene flooding as a strategy for replacing resident alleles through repeated demographic introduction of inbred individuals. Here we show that the population genetic dynamics u...
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
So I recently signed a publishing contract with Springer-Nature to put together a beginners guide textbook on using Python for Ecological Analyses...geared specifically towards undergraduates with no prior coding experience. I'm deep into chapter 1 and by god what did I get myself into 😬 #python
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
I understand eDNA is the hot and sexy thing to do in biodiversity research now. But so many of the papers I'm reading and grant proposals I'm reviewing have loads of exaggerated claims, inferential gaps and just flawed study designs. #eDNA #taxonomy #badscience
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
Received my NSF proposal reviews this morning (which was not funded....again). A panelist was concerned that relying solely on undergrads would hinder progress. How do I reframe my proposal to let these plebians know that undergrads have pushed my lab forward more than any grad student ever did?
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
My recent piece on the problem of relying too heavily on PCR for identifying parasites in a clinical context.
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
Weakening the type concept and giving species names to genetically distinct clusters are not just cardinal sins of #systematics - it's bad science. Here, we argue why such a proposal that was put forward a few months ago, should be ignored. #DNAbarcoding #crypticspecies doi.org/10.1098/rsbl...
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
Yes our country is falling apart and yes these are terrible times. But a small inkling of joy: In June, my first ever novella, The Harvest, will be published by Black Hare Press. It's of the #horror genre, and my first ever work of fiction. :) blackharepress.com/products/the...
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TK (Takashi DY) Kozai @bioniclab.bsky.social · 04/04/2026
📉 FY2026 is worse. NIH has made 10,195 awards so far. NSF has made 613. Six hundred thirteen. Congress appropriated the money. The agencies are not spending it. Grant freezes. NOFO collapse. Staff RIFs. Review cancellations. You can win the budget fight and still lose the funding war.
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Tom Langen @calocitta.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Some scientists reflected on their values and said no. www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
Meet three scientists who said no to Epstein
The warning signs included a web search, a mother’s doubts, and inklings of a “sexist attitude”
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Dr Lauren M Robinson @drlmrobinson.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
Obsessed with Punch the snow monkey? Me too! I spoke to @npr.org for their Short Wave science podcast about what's going on and gave some insight into snow monkey culture 💜🐒
npr.org
Is baby monkey Punch okay? We asked an animal expert : Short Wave
If you’ve been on the internet in the past few weeks, chances are you’ve seen him: a tiny gray-brown monkey dragging a big, stuffed orangutan around Japan’s Ichikawa Zoo. His name? Punch-kun, or Punch...
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
I've been developing a new python package that I'm calling "Geneland". It takes DNA sequence data or a precomputed distance matrix (if using RAD-Seq) along with GPS coordinates and outputs an interpolated genetic landscape surface. Similar to Alleles in Space (but prettier). #popgen #evoldir #python
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
Clearly some cloud seeding has been going on. This is the most snow Rhode Island has ever received since the blizzard of ‘78. #oceanstate #wintryfun
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
Classes cancelled and Providence, Rhode Island is expected to get a hefty two feet of snow. Will be hunkering down with this beautiful lady for the next 48 hrs #winterstorm #oceanstate
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John Wares @johnwares.bsky.social · 14/02/2026
What a week. But pleased to share new #fish #biogeography paper by PhD student Bryson Hilburn on southeastern stream captures (🐟not 🐿️) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Evidence for Widespread Inter‐Basin Vicariance of Fishes Associated With Quiescent Geologic Features in the Southeastern United States
Aim Stream captures are implicated as drivers of speciation in many groups of lotic fishes. In the southeastern United States, numerous stream-dwelling animals possess restricted trans-divide popula.....
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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 13/02/2026
My recent piece in the Chronicle. I know many other faculty members and colleagues feel the same way. #academia #highereducation #actuallearning
chronicle.com
Assessment Is Ruining Teaching
In trying to routinize education, we’re losing sight of what it can be at its best.
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