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Sinead English @englishse.bsky.social · 4d

I love this! And there's also Alex Wolf looking out at the blood bath, that's how disagreements were settled back then!

Reposted by Sinead English

Thom Scott-Phillips @thomscottphillips.bsky.social · May 23

New Substack post

It's very personal: my story of a 20-year academic career, and the many challenges of theoretical and cross-disciplinary work

As I put it in the subtitle: There is a lot of success and a lot of pain here, and no happy ending

thomscottphillips.substack.com/p/happy-in-t...

Happy In Theory

This is the short story of my long, 20 year search for a stable academic home. There is a lot of success and a lot of pain here, and no happy ending.

thomscottphillips.substack.com

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Reposted by Sinead English

The Conversation UK @uk.theconversation.com · 19d

Birds aren’t the only creatures that fly south for the winter.

Thousands of flies keep landing on North Sea oil rigs then taking off a few hours later – here’s why

Birds aren’t the only creatures that fly south for the winter.

tcnv.link

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Reposted by Sinead English

Surprised Eel Historian, PhD @greenleejw.bsky.social · 22d

Friends! It's the feast day of St. Hildegard of Bingen, an abbess, polymath, mystic, & eel truth-teller.

Medieval thinkers agreed that eels reproduce asexually. But Hildegard suggested that eels mate at sea, where we can't watch.

No one listened to her. But she was right! 1/2
🗃️🧪

Meme. Painting of St. Hildegard, from the shoulders up. She is dressed up in her nunnish finery. Her wimple is white and very creased, so that she looks a bit like a mummy and her veil is the dusky black of that suggests it's been through the wash many times. She has something like a crown on her head, with little spikes that look for all the world like duck feet. The saint's eyebrows are hard lines like windshield wipers, & her nose is ski-jump smooth.

Her head is surrounded by a nimbus of blue with a white outline, set against an orange background. She is looking up and towards your right, as if she's watching a possum that's about to drop onto the person sitting next to you. Her mouth is set in a tight smile. She's likely thinking about sex again. And maybe not just eel sex.

Hildegard provided us with the first written description of the female orgasm, so it's quite possible that she's got that on her mind.

Meme text reads:
"Medieval Eel Truth:
It's all about the Bingen's, baby!"

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Reposted by Sinead English

Seth Bordenstein @symbionticism.bsky.social · Sep 8

🎙️ Job Announcement: Penn State is seeking an ASSISTANT PROFESSOR in MICROBIOLOGY (any subdiscipline) in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Learn more and Join the Microbiome Jubilee: psu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/PSU_Ac...

Assistant Professor in Microbiology

APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS: CURRENT PENN STATE EMPLOYEE (faculty, staff, technical service, or student), please login to Workday to complete the internal application process. Please do not apply here, a...

psu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com

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Reposted by Sinead English

Schulenburg Lab Kiel @schulenburglab.bsky.social · Sep 8

We are welcoming applications for a full professorship on Molecular and Evolutionary Zoology at Kiel Univerdity, Northern Germany, with fantastic facilities and infrastructure! @uni-kiel.de @crc1182.bsky.social @transevo.bsky.social www.nature.com/naturecareer...

W 3 professorship in Molecular and Evolutionary Zoology - Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein (DE) job with Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel | 12844416

Kiel University aims to attract more qualified women to professorship positions. The Institute of Zoology at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural...

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Sinead English

Nature @nature.com · Sep 3

A common type of ant in Europe breaks a fundamental rule in biology: its queens can produce male offspring that are a whole different species

go.nature.com/4mOb5T9

‘Almost unimaginable’: these ants are different species but share a mother

Ant queens of one species clone ants of another to create hybrid workers that do their bidding.

go.nature.com

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Reposted by Sinead English

PLOS Biology @plosbiology.org · Sep 1

In vitro model of porcine placental development: @crm110.bsky.social &co develop a swine trophoblast #organoid model that mimics in vivo #trophoblast diversity & gene expression, providing a platform for studying #placental biology & #MaternalFetalInteractions @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/47jf3yd

Three-dimensional confocal image of a swine trophoblast organoid immunostained for ZO-1 (green) and actin (purple), with nuclei counterstained using DAPI (grey). ZO-1 highlights tight junctions at the apical borders in the center of the organoids, while actin outlines cellular architecture, revealing organized epithelial polarity within the organoid structure. Image credit: Cole McCutcheon, Duke University.

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Reposted by Sinead English

NightMar on Hicks Street, Part 4: The Rabbit’s Revenge @histoftech.bsky.social · Aug 31

“In the late 1960s, Dr. Rossiter was working on her Ph.D. at Yale, when a comment from one of her male professors puzzled her. Who, she had asked, were the women in science? There were none, he said. Another professor mumbled something about Marie Curie being the exception.”🙃

Monica H Green @monicamedhist.bsky.social · Aug 30

Here's a #GiftLink for those who want to read the full NYT obit of historian of science & gender, Margaret Rossiter. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/29/s... #histSTM 🧪🗃️

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Reposted by Sinead English

medRxivpreprint @medrxivpreprint.bsky.social · Aug 29

Sex differences in associations between adversity and biological ageing https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.28.25334645v1

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Steve Portugal @sjportugal.bsky.social · Aug 26

Come join us in the @biology.ox.ac.uk at @ox.ac.uk! New Associate Professor position in Animal Behaviour, with Merton College:

my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

Job Details

my.corehr.com

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Reposted by Sinead English

Hailey Robertson @haileyrobertson.bsky.social · Jun 17

🧬🦠🌍 What are the big, cross-scale questions shaping the ecology and evolution of emerging viruses?

@torrelavelle.bsky.social and I are building a list of 100 questions + want your input. Help map the future of EEID — fill out & share our short survey!

🔗 airtable.com/appTW4ZoSFjR...

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.

airtable.com

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Sinead English @englishse.bsky.social · Aug 26

Ping for attention colleagues that may be interested to fill survey / share with networks: @joshuabenoit.bsky.social @flodebarre.bsky.social @leondanon.bsky.social @jenniesuz.bsky.social @fleurponton.bsky.social

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IUSSI-NWES @iussi-nwes.bsky.social · Aug 26

📌North-West European IUSSI Winter Meeting 2025

We are happy to announce that our next meeting on the 18–19 December 2025 will be in Leuven, Belgium, hosted by @twenseleers.bsky.social and his team.

Plenary speakers: Ido Pen & Rahia Mashoodh @rmash.bsky.social

More details to follow 🐝🐜🪳🪲

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Sinead English @englishse.bsky.social · Aug 26

Feedback so far talking about this including at #ESEB2025 recently: more conversations about this can help sharing tips on how flexible working can be effective, inspire those to try etc. Very keen to continue the conversation with our expanding working group, please get in touch with me to join!

Sinead English @englishse.bsky.social · Aug 26

Q&A on working part-time in academia with @professor-dave.bsky.social and Dr Zoe Schnepp: www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Q&A on working part-time in academia - Communications Chemistry

Dr Zoe Schnepp and Professor David Smith share their experiences of working part-time in academia, discussing some of the benefits and challenges, and offering advice to those who may be seeking to wo...

www.nature.com

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Sinead English @englishse.bsky.social · Aug 26

Excellent thread building on our @elife.bsky.social article about part-time working in academia: thank you for sharing the paper and these additions @professor-dave.bsky.social! I've recently been made aware of another interesting conversation article on this topic, linked shared below.

David K Smith @professor-dave.bsky.social · Aug 19

Interesting article about part-time working in academia. I'd add
1. Flexi-working can mean you don't have to work '3 or 4 days a week' but instead can accrue time off to align with school holidays.
2. Role sharing can help you do big admin jobs needed for promotion
elifesciences.org/articles/106...

Point of View: To be, or not to be, part-time in academia

Part-time working can be beneficial for individual academics, and also for academia as a whole.

elifesciences.org

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Seirian Sumner @waspwoman.bsky.social · Aug 26

More on the #HamOrJam #WaspPicnicSurvey, how to dine peacefully with wasps and where to submit your wasp observations at picnics:
www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/au...

Ham or jam? Help scientists by recording wasp food preferences

The next time a wasp visits your picnic, if you make a note of whether it goes for protein or sugar, you can help UCL scientists better understand the wasp life cycle.

www.ucl.ac.uk

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Reposted by Sinead English

Tilly S Scott @tillysscott.bsky.social · Aug 22

I attended three great talks from the cancer in an evolutionary framework symposium this morning. Cancer therapies from nature, population genomics of Tasmanian devil cancer, and the tug of war of cancer resistance

#eseb2025 #eseb #sciart

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Sinead English @englishse.bsky.social · Aug 25

Thank you #ESEB2025 for a wonderful week of science interactions, symposia, posters, chats with friends old and new. It's such a fantastic conference, the main challenge being choosing among so many wonderful parallel sessions! I loved being in Barcelona and seeing the energy of the organisers.

View of the 'three chimneys' power station next to the sea, near the Forum in Barcelona

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Erik Postma @erikpostma.bsky.social · Aug 22

With #eseb2025 coming to a close, it is time to start making plans for 2026. Interested in the interface of evolution 🧬 and ecology 🌳? Come to our #ExE conference hosted by @uniexecec.bsky.social in beautiful #Cornwall. Leave your email address at tinyurl.com/EvolxEcol to join our mailing list!

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Sinead English @englishse.bsky.social · Aug 19

Thanks for this very valid point -we'd love to include this perspective too of course and we're collating email addresses of people wanting to discuss further so please DM me if you'd like to join these conversations!

Reposted by Sinead English

Flo Débarre @flodebarre.bsky.social · Aug 14

Folks going to #ESEB2025 : To help people connect on Bluesky, I've started making starter packs. Here is a first one with the names that were available when I started.

Ping me if you want to be included in the next one!

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Gaurav Athreya @gauravathreya.bsky.social · Aug 16

hello to everyone going to #ESEB2025! want to hear about the consequences of age-dependent plasticity in reproducing via sex vs. asex? I will give a talk at 11:15am on Thursday in S15.02. come for the pretty Hydra illustrations, stay for the novel evolutionary insights on facultative sex!

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Shikhara Bhat @shikharabhat.bsky.social · Aug 16

Hey #ESEB2025 folk! I'll be presenting my work on describing evolution in finite populations at 11:30 am on Tuesday in S-03. Drop by to learn how taking ecology and variable population size seriously changes classic pop gen descriptions like the Price eqn, revealing novel directional eco-evo forces.

An illustration with populations on the left and mathematical representations of these populations in terms of birth-death processes on the right

Stochastic differential equations for trait frequencies, mean value of a trait, and the variance of a trait in the population

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