Dr Alison Cribb
@alisoncribb.bsky.social
390 followers 230 following 45 posts
Paleoecologist with a computer 🐚🪱🪸👩‍💻 • Fossils for the future! • On the job market • 1851 Research Fellow at University of Southampton • she/her • atcribb.github.io #paleoecology #evoeco atcribb.github.io
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Reposted by Dr Alison Cribb
danielbolnick.bsky.social
The GRFP announcement from NSF cuts out an entire cohort of 2nd year students from consideration, without warning. This is so deeply unfair that it warrants a formal protest from the scientific community. If someone wants to work with me to craft an open letter and solicit signatures, LMK.
dangaristo.bsky.social
New: After a long wait, the GRFP solicitation is live! Deadlines have been extended to early November, so applicants have a bit over a month to submit. www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)
www.nsf.gov
alisoncribb.bsky.social
I am immensely proud of this team and happy to have been a part of it. I am even more honored that they trusted me enough to lead a small charge on some of these ideas 🥹

For those of you that find this interesting and not totally esoteric... reach out! I would love to chat ☺️
alisoncribb.bsky.social
On a personal note, this paper has been a source of scientific growth and absolute joy to work on. We started working on this when I was still in graduate school, just barely out of my qualifying exams, and it has been a huge source of inspiration for my work since we started.
alisoncribb.bsky.social
abundance, and last on geologic timescales. In the paper, we provide a number of case studies of our favorite examples, but we aren't all encompassing. There are a ton of Earth system engineers out there for us to study. 🦠🌱🌆🌍
alisoncribb.bsky.social
So, here we present a new term and framework: Earth system engineers. This describes organisms that do fall under the umbrella of ecosystem engineers, but have completely outsized impacts on their environments. Their influences are geographically widespread, often surprisingly decoupled from
alisoncribb.bsky.social
and anthropologist (no small feat!) we realized we needed something... new. Something to reflect the profound, permanent, step-change impacts on the planet that we observe from some ecosystem engineers in the rock record – and, of course, that we can directly watch among humans today.
alisoncribb.bsky.social
Over the last four years, this team has been getting together to talk about ecosystem engineers on the ancient, present, and future Earth. Early on in our discussions to agree on a definition of ecosystem engineering that fit this group of palaeontologists, ecologists, geochemists,
Reposted by Dr Alison Cribb
ianhall.bsky.social
🌊 >70% of W. Atlantic coral reefs will transition into net erosional states by 2040. If warming >2°C (SSP2–4.5+), 99% eroding by 2100.

Sea level will rise 0.3–0.5 m above reefs by 2060, 0.7–1.2 m by 2100, boosting coastal flood risk

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reduced Atlantic reef growth past 2 °C warming amplifies sea-level impacts - Nature
An analysis of coral reefs in the tropical western Atlantic suggests that nearly all will be eroding by 2100 if global warming exceeds 2 °C, which will worsen the effects of sea-level rise.
www.nature.com
Reposted by Dr Alison Cribb
joelpick.bsky.social
Interested in simulating the kind of data that you might commonly find in evolutionary and ecological studies?

Then we have the R package for you - squidSim!!

Check our new preprint:
ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...
squidSim: a flexible R package for structured and reproducible simulations in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
ecoevorxiv.org
Reposted by Dr Alison Cribb
kristymferraro.bsky.social
The bottom line: zoogeochemical niche construction offers a way to understand how animals, through their elemental legacies, can influence not just ecosystems—but their own evolutionary trajectories.
alisoncribb.bsky.social
🤩🤩🤩🤩 Absolutely cannot wait to read this!!
Reposted by Dr Alison Cribb
kristymferraro.bsky.social
Animals don’t just live in their environments—they transform them. And in doing so, they may also shape their own evolutionary trajectories. Our new paper in Trends in Ecology & Evolution introduces a framework for zoogeochemical niche construction. A thread 👇
Reposted by Dr Alison Cribb
rebeccasaurus.bsky.social
Really happy to see chapter 2 of my PhD published today in @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social. DeepDiveR is an R package to assist with deep learning inference of biodiversity change through time 🤿🦊 Thanks to @bethanyjallen.bsky.social & Daniele Silvestro for the collaboration

doi.org/10.1111/2041...
Reposted by Dr Alison Cribb
bethanyjallen.bsky.social
Ever wanted to infer a morphological or total-evidence phylogeny in BEAST2?
It’s long overdue, but we now have a tutorial on Taming the BEAST to talk you through the process 💻🌳⚙️
Thanks to Joëlle Barido-Sottani for helping me pull this together!
taming-the-beast.org/tutorials/To...
Total Evidence Tutorial
taming-the-beast.org
Reposted by Dr Alison Cribb
joshuasweitz.bsky.social
The #SCIMaP team announces a major update: an analysis of the economic impacts of the White House's NIH FY26 budget.

Bottom-line, we estimate $46B in total economic loss, 202K lost jobs, and impacts in communities nationwide.

Interactive map and shareable report:
scienceimpacts.org/fy26

a 🧵
Economic loss due to NIH budget cuts by congressional district, scienceimpacts.org/fy26
Reposted by Dr Alison Cribb
bjjwallis.bsky.social
This is also totally inconsistent with action on EDI issues. The more that funding for ECRs is an inconsistent boom and bust, the more it harms those without the opportunities and external resources to ride out the droughts. Lots of my peers are less fortunate than me in this regard.
Reposted by Dr Alison Cribb
bjjwallis.bsky.social
The early career researchers who apply for fellowships like these are usually working on fixed term contracts without much job security. We need consistent, plannable fellowship opportunities, not mixed messages wasting our time. It shouldn't be a big ask.
Reposted by Dr Alison Cribb
bjjwallis.bsky.social
So NERC have quietly announced this afternoon that they're delaying/cancelling/suspending, whatever 'not launched at this time' means, their 2025 Independent Research Fellowship round. After announcing it 34 days ago.

Flip-flopping like this is really detrimental to early career researchers.
alisoncribb.bsky.social
Ah congratulations!!!! 🤩
Reposted by Dr Alison Cribb
daveyfwright.bsky.social
Very sad to learn Richard Bambach has passed away. In addition to his significant contributions to science and the 'paleobiological revolution', I will mostly remember him as a warm and wonderful presence in our paleobiology journal club when I was a postdoc at the Smithsonian
alisoncribb.bsky.social
To be clear, as STEM educators, this is so much deeper than recruiting a diverse workforce. Having ample resources to combat this gap is key to gender equality. This, the viral “girl math” trend, trad wife and manosphere content, and financial coercion are all tightly linked
alisoncribb.bsky.social
The mathematics gender gap has incredibly damaging consequences down the line for women’s rights re financial literacy and independence. For example, you’re more likely to give control of your finances to someone else if you genuinely believe you can’t and never will understand compound interest.
nature.com
Nature @nature.com · Jun 11
When do girls fall behind in maths? Gigantic study pinpoints the moment

https://go.nature.com/4l1nC4g
Watch the mathematics gender gap emerge. The school environment triggers a gender gap in mathematics. Line charts showing test results from all children in France who started school in 2018 reveal the trend. At the start of first year of school boys and girls similar on average with slightly more boys in highest and lowest percentiles. At the start of second year of school the gender gap becomes more exaggerated.