iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

We've got ISSUES. Literally. We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do? arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563 A 🧵 1/n

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ZooKeys @zookeys.pensoft.net · 08/12/2025

This is Amazoboea selva, a new species and genus of Darwin wasp. It comes from Ecuador's Yasuní region, one of the most biodiverse areas in the world whose future is unfortunately threatened by the petroleum industry. Read more about Amazonian Darwin wasps here: doi.org/10.3897/zook...

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Adrian Smith @dradriansmith.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

New video today: CATERPILLARS!!! youtu.be/aJNaDyHARNw

youtu.be

Why Are Caterpillars SO AWESOME!?!

YouTube video by Ant Lab

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Guillermo Garcia Costoya @ggcostoya.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

Check our new paper in @evolletters.bsky.social "Live birth in lizards: A process-based model for the roles of temperature, behavior, and life-history" In this study, we develop and validate a model capable of accurately predicting gestation length in lizards! academic.oup.com/evlett/advan...

academic.oup.com

Live birth in lizards: A process-based model for the roles of temperature, behavior, and life-history

To mediate trade-offs between survival and fecundity, multiple groups have independently evolved live birth (viviparity), including 70 transitions in lizar

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing: a 🧵 1/n Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820 Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/... Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below.

1. The four-fold drain
1.1 Money
Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for
whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who
created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis,
which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024
alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit
margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher
(Elsevier) always over 37%.
Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most
consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial
difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor &
Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American
researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The
Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3
billion in that year.

A figure detailing the drain on researcher time.

1. The four-fold drain

1.2 Time
The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce,
with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure
1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material
has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs,
grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for
profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time.
The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million
unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of
peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting
widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the
authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many
review demands.
Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of
scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in
‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow
progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to
volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier,
local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with
limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging
with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks
intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision.

A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below:

1. The four-fold drain
1.1 Money
Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for
whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who
created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis,
which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024
alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit
margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher
(Elsevier) always over 37%.
Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most
consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial
difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor &
Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American
researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The
Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3
billion in that year.

The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised
scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers
first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour
resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 30/09/2025

That's quite the chart annotation. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

A chart of "Major concerns of PhD candidates." The top text says, "Financial pressures top the list of concerns faced by PhD candidates, but concerns differ among the sexes. Those studying in the United States rank the political landscape as their main worry." The chart shows that in the full survey, political landscape is the biggest concern for about 20% of students (a bit higher for women than men) but there's an annotation saying "In US PhD students, this rose to 64%". Overall, the highest-rated concern was financial pressures at around 40%.

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Victoria Peechatt @vpeechatt.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

Here's the first library display I helped set up in Northwest Reno Library: the spectacular diversity of insect interactions in the Sierra Nevada, Great Basin, and beyond

Displays showcasing:
1) the interactions of the monarch-milkweed system and Jaap de Roode's book Doctors by Nature.
2) the diversity of lepidoptera in the Sierra Nevada.
3) the diversity of native bees in the Sierra Nevada and a small box showing differences between bees, wasps, and flies.
4) the diversity of insects in the tropics, small box showing parasitoid wasps.
5) The Carson Wandering Skipper and its host plant distacalus

The diversity of life: there are ~2.1 million described species and insects are ~1.1 million of them. Estimates of the actual number of species range from 8-80 million and a good proportion of them are probably insects that will never be described.

An example of a system of coevolution: the arms race between plants and insects. Plants like the Indian paintbrush produce specialized metabolites such as iridoid glycosides (base of an iridoid structure displayed) while larvae of the Variable checkerspots develop ways to overcome the toxicity of these chemicals by sequestering them.

Display about the art of Maria Sibylla Merian, one of the first naturalists to document the life cycle of insects. Display includes call to action for anyone to become a naturalist with iNaturalist

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Trevor Faske @trevorfaske.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

Very excited to have our study come out looking at multiple plant mosaic hybrid zones and their implications for hybrids to act as "sutures" of species ranges. We use genomic data to project shifts into future climates and discuss impacts on conservation/management. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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Victoria Peechatt @vpeechatt.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

So cool to meet everyone, learn about the precedents set by UAW and Region 6, and plan the next actions for Nevada workers!

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Victoria Peechatt @vpeechatt.bsky.social · 12/07/2025

The absolutely beautiful Sicya macularia, sharp-lined yellow. Cool to find both the adult in the Toiyabe range and the larva feeding on Ceanothus cordulatus in the Sierra Nevada #teammoth #coolcaterpillars

An attempt of a close up of the caterpillar's head

Red and gold geometrid larva with two prominent spines and a blurred face cause we got a dancer! And also cause I'm still practicing my photography skills

A bright yellow and gold geometrid moth on a sheet with a friend

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Gwen Pearson @bug-gwen.bsky.social · 06/07/2025

Just a little Sunday Morning Shitposting. The origin of Lepidoptera might be much older than we thought. www.science.org/content/arti...

science.org

Ancient poop yields world’s oldest butterfly fossils

Tiny wing scales suggest the proboscis evolved 100 million years before flowers

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G Elliott Morris @gelliottmorris.com · 25/06/2025

mamdani wins. gg

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Noam Ross @noamross.net · 14/04/2025

On average 45% of students qualify for Pell grants at these schools. They're minority-serving and rural institutions, many in red states and counties. In terminating these grants, the regime is choking off opportunity for a generation new scientists from the middle and working class. More details:

airtable.com

Airtable | Everyone's app platform

Airtable is a low-code platform for building collaborative apps. Customize your workflow, collaborate, and achieve ambitious outcomes. Get started for free.

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The Hitchcock Project @hitchcockproject.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

🧠🔊 Mountain chickadees aren’t just chirping — they’re communicating! @unevadareno.bsky.social PhD student Sofia Haley produced this story for a Hitchcock Project course and it was now published by @us.theconversation.com!––with a video by reporter Jayanti Sarkar: theconversation.com/mountain-chi...

theconversation.com

Mountain chickadee chatter: Scientists are decoding the songbird’s complex calls

Mountain chickadees follow systematic grammarlike rules to share important information, stringing together syllables like words in a sentence.

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UNR Biology Buzz @unr-biologybuzz.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

"I hope to inspire even just one person to acknowledge insects, be more curious than fearful of them and appreciate them as we coexist on this planet together.” www.unr.edu/nevada-today... EECB student Victoria Peechatt at the 2025 American Beekeeping Federation Conference! 🐝

unr.edu

Pollinator scientists share with local schoolchildren how to 'bee' good environmental stewards | University of Nevada, Reno

The outreach visit was part of a beekeeping conference

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Nate Tice @natetice.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

the Knicks gameplan

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Keerthika Uthayakumar @keerthikau.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

21-2 run for the Knicks, the number one rule this postseason: don't go up 20

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Science Friday @scifri.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

Recently, entomologists reported the discovery of a prehistoric wasp that grabbed its prey with its butt flaps—capturing its booty in its booty. Dr. Lars Vilhelmsen from @nhmdk.bsky.social, joins to discuss the discovery and the wasp’s creative hunting technique.

sciencefriday.com

This Ancient Wasp Might’ve Used Its Butt Flaps To Trap Prey

Taking a cue from a Venus flytrap, this prehistoric wasp had a creative way of getting its meal.

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Dezene Huber 🍁 🌻 @dezene.me · 28/04/2025

Sill need to digest this new meta-review on insect decline. Taxonomic bias: lots of research on bee/ant/wasp decline (mainly on a limited range of pollinator taxa). A fair amount on beetles and butterflies/moths. Virtually none on other groups of insects. 🧪 🌎 🪲🪳 academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...

From the paper: "Figure 4.Taxonomic bias in the treatment of hypothesized drivers of insect declines from 106 articles containing taxon-specific hypotheses. (a) The distribution of hypotheses about broad classes of drivers of decline across insect taxonomic groups. (b) The distribution of higher resolution driver and outcome nodes across taxonomic groups. Each colored point shows a node in the network in figure 2 that was said to affect at least two different orders. The nodes are plotted in the taxonomic section where they are most frequently mentioned. Therefore, all taxon-specific nodes are most associated with Coleoptera, Hymenoptera, or Lepidoptera. The line length from the center indicates how biased a term is. The dashed lines indicate which nodes are mentioned about a given taxonomic group more than 50%, 70%, or 90% of the time. The nodes are colored the same way as in figures 1, 2, and 3 (see supplement for node labels). Insect icons were designed by Suyeon Jang."

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Victoria Peechatt @vpeechatt.bsky.social · 26/04/2025

Silvery blues dancing for attention

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City of Asylum @cityofasylum.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

Check out these revolutionary featured reads and subscribe to Sliding Stacks to keep up with all things City of Asylum Bookstore! 44048774.hs-sites.com/03-20...

44048774.hs-sites.com

Read the Revolution 📕

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News Eye @newseye.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

Extraordinary scenes in Serbia’s capital Belgrade right now. Around 500,000 people are on the streets in what may be the biggest protest in Serbian history. All demanding the resignation of President Vučić & his government. What began as a student protest is now a full democratic uprising. 🇷🇸

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Victoria Peechatt @vpeechatt.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Just a subset of the graduate students who showed up today for the first hearing of AB191 which would make NSHE recognize not just graduate assistant workers, but faculty and staff, if they choose to be a collective. We choose to be a collective. #ngsw #uaw #powertothepeople

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Jaap de Roode @jaapderoode.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

It's publication day! I am so excited that my book is out. This has been a wonderful adventure. I am so grateful to @princetonupress.bsky.social for all their hard work, support and enthusiasm! 🧪

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Victoria Peechatt @vpeechatt.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

Cool work from my lab-mate and friend, Tara: (and also my first co-authorship!)

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Lee Dyer @gusanero.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

These cool herbivores have no idea the chaos all around us... they just keep eating and pooping. Unfortunately, this is kind of like some people I know.

black caterpillar with long black A8 tail and two long black and yellow T3 filaments; dark red head, red legs and prolegs, red A8-A10 splotch, and A3-6 cream saddle with black spots.... cool looking!

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Tyson Wepprich @tysonwepprich.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Enjoyed this conversation with Matt Forister about butterfly monitoring and what they've found in the Western USA from Shapiro's long-term data and NABA 4th of July counts. Warming had worse populations impacts on montane species vs valley species (counter expectations) in part due to voltinism

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Victoria Peechatt @vpeechatt.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

A list of mutual aid orgs in Reno: drive.google.com/file/d/1Yety...

drive.google.com

MUTUAL AID RENO ZINE.pdf

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Brendan Lan @brendanlan.bsky.social · 18/01/2025

an appreciation post for some of the funkiest little lepidopterans very out of my depth with these, so ID's appreciated! all from northern Taiwan check out the bird-dung mimic 🐦...

the dorsal view of a really weird, stout and quite bumpy caterpillar (I think) sitting on a leaf. there are some spines coming off of some of the bumps that don't look fun. the body is dark brown/black and bordered with yellow. it is wider in the middle than either end

a spunky looking caterpillar from the dorsal view. it's pretty stout and rectangular with many projections coming from different points of its body. off of these projections there are 10 or so very itchy looking spines. the main body of the caterpillar is light green with a longitudinal blackish stripe down the middle. two projections are red, two are orange, four are yellowish and the rest are pale green. a lot going on...

a suuuuuper weird caterpillar (and prob my fav of these) from the side that i think might be a limacodid. this one is also stout - kind of semicircle shaped. it has a marbled white and black pattern throughout its whole body that really mimics bird poop quite well. it didn't smell though hahah

another funky caterpillar from a sort of diagonal, posterior(?) view. this one's whole body is pale green with many hairy looking projections coming off of its dorsum. a few of the projections are tipped yellow. it simultaneously looks itchy to touch and like a sweet gummy

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Victoria Peechatt @vpeechatt.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

If you see this, post something orange. Baltimore checkerspot caterpillar

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Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

It's becoming difficult to deal with the news. On the one hand, catastrophes. On the other hand, unprepared decision makers. My reflexions in the #ComplexityThoughts post below, accompanied by the podcast: open.spotify.com/episode/65UH... A short recap 🧵 1/ open.substack.com/pub/manlius/...

open.substack.com

Risks of linear thinking in a complex world

What can go wrong if decision makers neglect that systemic problems need systemic solutions?

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