iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Andrew Davinack

WP2 of TETTRIX will develop the GHOST framework for integrating dark taxa into biodiversity data and strengthen Europe’s nomenclature services 👻🌱 @cabbageleek.bsky.social @vermiformes.bsky.social #TETTRIXkickoff

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Reposted by Andrew Davinack

Tom Langen @calocitta.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

US has now eliminated essentially all primary research funding for the social sciences, including Anthropology, Archaeology, Economics, Geography, Linguistics, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, and Science and Technology Studies. The only country in the developed world to have done this.

science.org

‘Complete devastation’: How NSF gutted its social sciences research

Agency body that funds sociology, linguistics, and archaeology studies in U.S. gave 90% fewer new grants this year

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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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Reposted by Andrew Davinack

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 · 25/08/2026

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

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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

Good luck. I just got done with them in New York yesterday and it was terrible experience.

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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

That’s why I don’t work, visit or live in places that are hot enough to support things that need to evolve venom…especially when those things make slithering noises.

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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

But on the other hand....our immune systems are getting tested again :)

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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 · 31/07/2026

And that was after 7 months of searching….it truly is rough out there. Hope you get it!

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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

It is. My partner was laid off last October and the amount networking, job clubs attended, applications put in…was exhausting. I felt helpless and exhausted just watching from the sidelines. It took almost 50 apps/6 interviews before a company bit. It shouldn’t be this rough for someone with a PhD.

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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

But what is a PhD though but a qualification of stubbornness. My undergrad was more challenging….

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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 · 21/07/2026

I really hate that I can relate to this….

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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Honestly even before AI - papers, at least in my field, were heavily filled with jargon from the beginning.

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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

It's like nature is healing itself

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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 · 07/07/2026

Journals: don't use AI to review or write papers but we'll use AI for everything.

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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 · 25/06/2026

If I am ever able to afford a house, the first thing I’m doing is planting blueberries. They’re a key feature in my strict diet but they’re so goddam expensive in the grocery stores 😔

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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 · 14/06/2026

Reminds of me of Providence, RI's Atheneum minus the length

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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

Dang thought I could just blame it on cultural differences with the Swiss lol

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Andrew Davinack @vermiformes.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

Apparently they don't get back to you when you apply or respond to queries about the status of your application.

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