The first duckDNA kits going out! If you haven’t done so, go sign up at duckDNA.com today! ⁦Ducks Unlimited⁩ ⁦⁦⁦Ducks Unlimited Conservation⁩ Mike Brasher, PhD 🦆⁩

NEW: University of Washington violated non-discrimination policy, according to an internal UW report acquired by the National Association of Scholars. nas.org/blogs/article/…

Dan Baldassarre Imagine being a C. American guide dealing w/ birds in multiple languages. The species you learned in Spanish as Zorzalito de Swainson goes frm Swainson’s Thrush to Olive-backed Thrush. Essentially makes life harder so some AOS folks can feel good abt how progressive they are

A scientific consensus could be arrived upon to change the scientific name of a given species, but for an NGO, and an NGO based in one specific country no less, to simply declare "we have now decided these birds should be called something else", is an incredible act of hubris.

Happy to announce that our collaborative effort with Thijs Janzen and Lavretsky has been published! 🥳 SimRestore: A decision-making tool for adaptive management of the native genetic status of wild populations. Here is a little of what we did🧵(1/6): onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/17…

Our response to calls for ‘compassionate collecting’ that amounted to an end to natural history field research. ‘Specimen collection is essential for modern science’ with 100+ authors led by Berkeley scientists - with Michael Nachman in the lead journals.plos.org/plosbiology/ar…

#Peru's congress has legalized illegal logging, knocking down an anti-deforestation law & making it open season for organized crime logging & mining mafias, as well as putting enviro defenders (32 of whom have been killed in the last decade) in even more danger. #QueSeVayanTodos

Ooof. Huge rebuke to the Mormon Church. "Some worried the center might be staffed by Latter-day Saint missionaries, possibly proselytizing to patrons. Others were concerned that their deceased ancestors would be baptized vicariously." sltrib.com/religion/2023/…

Paws on the ground! Colorado's ambitious, voter-mandated wolf reintroduction project began yesterday. How'd it happen, why does it matter, what's next? Here's my breakdown for High Country News. hcn.org/articles/wolve…

Mayday! Mayday!🚨 Biggest fear every day is that this building isn’t resisting much. This is the ICN + Natural History Museum facilities, holding the largest, historical scientific collections in Colombia. It’s falling apart. Structural damage, permanent leaks, fire/ flood risks

'Forever chemicals' (PFAS) are everywhere and can be chronically toxic at just ~1 part per billion (ppb). How is biodiversity affected? In birds & rodents at a New Mexico wetland, we found absurd levels — averaging >10,000 ppb. Check out our new paper: authors.elsevier.com/a/1icAg3Ao67R8u

Nueva especie de pudú endémica de Perú. La 1era especie viviente de cérvido que se describe en este siglo. doi.org/10.1093/jmamma… #Cervidae #taxonomy #newspecies CORBIDI

Fieldwork is also incompatible with impatient colleagues! I continue to strongly support the notion that the people who make the sacrifices to do the fieldwork should always have first dibs on analyzing the information they recover. Fieldwork is really, really hard.

Collections-research integration is now achievable. Check out our new paper: Arctos: Community-driven innovations for managing natural and cultural history collections dx.plos.org/10.1371/journa… If your museum's database doesn't work for you like this, consider joining Arctos

Another paper by “global north” authors ignoring relevant data from the “south”. (fortunately some of the experts they consulted ammended part of their results) So here is another short and grumpy thread on “northerners” boycotting initiatives they have no hands on: 🧵

Thrilled to announce that I will be starting as an Assistant Professor and Curator at the University of Michigan in Jan 2025. My time will be split between UMich Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and UM Paleontology I will soon be looking for graduate students and postdocs. Please spread the word! 📣📣

This is perfect

New preprint up! We sequenced hundreds of samples from across one of Earth's oldest living organisms - the Pando aspen clone - to understand how mutations accumulate and spread in long-lived clonal organisms. Our results were…surprising. 1/30

Breaking: Center for Biological Diversity is calling on AZ Game & Fish Commission to ban dog pack hunting for mountain lions, bears, coati & other wildlife. Currently hunters use GPS-collared dogs to track wildlife for miles via smart phone apps & satellites, putting jaguars & ocelots at risk.