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Andrew Jackson

@yodacomplex.bsky.social

997 followers 219 following 116 posts

Professor. #Zoology, Theoretical #Ecology & #Evolution, Trinity College Dublin.

Posts Replies Media

Andrew Jackson @yodacomplex.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Garth Marenghi with his quote "I know writers who use subtext and they're all cowards."

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Andrew Jackson @yodacomplex.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

Mecha-streisand effect

The character mecha-streisand from South Park S1 E12

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Andrew Jackson @yodacomplex.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

niche

Using the Dune poster generator it reads "Dunegal" with Donegal GAA footballer Michael Murphy superimposed over Atreides and Chani.

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Andrew Jackson @yodacomplex.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

Well now.. thats quite the offer of a Monday morning.

A screenshot of an email. A person called Denise writes they are "ready to see your insect tissue..."

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Andrew Jackson @yodacomplex.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

Strong vibes i.redd.it/tgsxs3711i18...

A scene from the “polymorph” in Red Dwarf. As an idea to deal with a murderous space alien, Rimmer suggests “Gentlemen, I propose we hit it hard with a major, and I mean major… leaflet campaign”

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Andrew Jackson @yodacomplex.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

Amidst all the deep thinking of all things science, it is still the childlike wonder of new discoveries that makes my day

A giant cornflake in my hand, found this morning in my cereal. It is approximately 5x4cm in size.

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Andrew Jackson @yodacomplex.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

I saw this on LinkedIn yesterday in support of GAMs.

Someone did crimes against maths and statistics. A straight line is fitted to a sine wave as a way to show that GAMs are superior. For good measure they also fitted a neural network model to show that it overfits.

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Andrew Jackson @yodacomplex.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

And our paper is out! One curve to rule them all: a simple universal thermal performance curve for ectotherms that explains at least 2700 datasets across 39 phyla and myriad measures of performance. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Biological performance across the tree of life collapses onto the Universal Thermal Performance Curve (UTPC). Shown are approx. 30,000 performance measurements derived from seven kingdoms, 39 phyla, and 2,710 experiments. Performance is represented by diverse rates including metabolism, individual growth, foraging intensity, voluntary activity, and population growth (see SI Appendix for data grouped by phylum and performance metric). Data are presented on both axes relative to the parameters (Topt, Tc and Pfmax ) estimated by fitting the UTPC equation to each of the 2,710 experiments; the UTPC is overlaid as a yellow line and fits the rescaled data extremely well. Data are colored by the relative density of neighboring points showing very high density of points close to the line and relatively few datapoints further from the line.

Data collapse, and models converge, onto a Universal Thermal Performance Curve (UTPC), which only requires optimal and critical temperatures as parameters. Top panels show empirical data on thermal performance encompassing (A) specific growth rate of proteobacteria (), (B) biochemical rates of photosynthesis in plants (), (C) running speeds of lizards (), and (D) population growth in insects (). Lower panels (E–H) showcase the rescaled data from the processes exposed on top, along with their corresponding alignment to the Universal Thermal Performance Curve (UTPC) equation. Datasets are from Kontopoulos et al. (21) for proteobacteria and from Rezende and Bozinovic (6) for other groups. The upper panels of the raw data show substantial variation in the shape and location of the thermal performance curves. The lower row shows that rescaling the data using the simple model results in the data conforming to a single underlying curve with very little variation from the model.

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Andrew Jackson @yodacomplex.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

Speed 3

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Andrew Jackson @yodacomplex.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

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Andrew Jackson @yodacomplex.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

And if you then apply this correction to the original data we now have a mathematical model (no statistical fitting) that makes sense of the data and means we can very accurately predict the critical temp for an animal based on observing just one heating experiment. Oooh would you look at that fit?

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Andrew Jackson @yodacomplex.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

But if you start thinking about what the temperature is doing to the animal's metabolic rate over the duration of the heat ramping experiment, you can think about a metabolic rescaled duration and temperature tolerance. The red area under the curves for two such experiments is identical

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Andrew Jackson @yodacomplex.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

The pattern is difficult to understand and while there is clearly good correlation and you can use a statistical model to describe it, it means we didnt understand the mechanism underlying it.

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Andrew Jackson @yodacomplex.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

In heat tolerance experiments, animals are often acclimated to one of a number of starting temperatures and then the temperature increased until they give up doing some task (e.g. running). Generally starting at a higher temp means you cant tolerate as big an increase.

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Andrew Jackson @yodacomplex.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

Godspeed everyone involved. But remember: while you _can_ evacuate a person or persons, it’s usually more desirable to evacuate the buildings or regions.

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Andrew Jackson @yodacomplex.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

... but things are in fact definitely *not* normal

screen shot from the Irish department of foreign affairs indicating that the current security status for travel to the USA is "normal precautions"

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Andrew Jackson @yodacomplex.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

5 jobs going in my School of Natural Sciences. In particular, two most relevant to zoology: 1) #Biodiversity Genomics 2) #Biogeography Genuinely very broad search within nothing specific in mind so please apply if at all you can fit under these headings. Access via www.tcd.ie/hr/vacancies/

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Andrew Jackson @yodacomplex.bsky.social · 24/08/2024

We had the pleasure of hosting Georgia Tech at our local GAA club Ballyboden St Endas yesterday. They did a really fun series of training sessions with some of the younger kids in the club.

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Andrew Jackson @yodacomplex.bsky.social · 15/08/2024

We are rather fond of our little zoology dept library

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Andrew Jackson @yodacomplex.bsky.social · 26/04/2024

Hey @darthbluesky.bsky.social Freya’s (short hair) boyfriend Nico is here for a sleep over and the sun is out in Dublin. Much bed-hopping will ensue once the sun goes down.

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