Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 35m

Do I know anyone attending Entomology 2025 next month? I probably won't formally register, but I'll be in Portland.

Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 2d

It Throve on Wounds: addressing the crisis of insecticide-resistant mosquitoes

adaptivediversity.wordpress.com/2025/10/06/i...

It Throve on Wounds

In ancient Greek myth, the hero Heracles (romanized as Hercules) had to complete twelve seemingly impossible tasks. One was to slay the Hydra. This snake-like beast dwelt in a swamp and terrorized …

adaptivediversity.wordpress.com

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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 3d

Now do these:

1. Treasure Island
2. Lord of the Flies

A. British people fighting other British people on an island that isn't British but could just as well have been
B. British people fighting other British people on an island that isn't British but could just as well have been

Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 3d

Match these two classic adventure tales with the exciting climax scene for which they are famous.

Novels:
1. Tarzan of the Apes
2. Robinson Crusoe

Climax:
A. Escaping a forest fire in Wisconsin
B. Fighting bears and wolves in the snowy Pyrenees

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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 4d

"Otter" and "Hydra" are really the same word, modern versions of the Proto-Indo-European *udros for "water creature." You can still hear it in the names.

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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 4d

See e.g. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

and

www.ajtmh.org/view/journal...

A natural resource curse: The unintended effects of gold mining on malaria

This paper studies whether extractive-resource-activities provoke an ecological response on the emergence and proliferation of malaria by altering the…

www.sciencedirect.com

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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 4d

This slick documentary starring Idris Elba is secretly an ad by the World Gold Council. It implies that gold mining companies are leading the fight against malaria.

In truth, gold mining is one of the *worst* practices promoting new malaria cases and drug resistance.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=VS4x...

Gold and the fight against malaria

YouTube video by World Gold Council

www.youtube.com

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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 5d

Right now if you want to separate out the two chromosomes in diploid genomic sequence data, your choices are
1. whatshap (whatshap.readthedocs.io)
2. phasebook (github.com/phasebook/ph...)

How far can the social media theme go? Who can release a Bluesky- or Mastodon-named bioinformatic tool?

WhatsHap — whatshap 2.8 documentation

whatshap.readthedocs.io

Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 6d

What in the Hatch Act is happening to federal websites?

US Forest Service page blaming Radical Left Democrats for some reason

CDC website blaming Democrats for some reason

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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 7d

Today I’m in war-torn Portland (well, Beaverton) visiting the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute at Oregon Health & Science University. Hope to see some primates of the human and non-human varieties.

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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 7d

The importance of beer to vector biology
www.science.org/content/arti...

Does drinking beer make you more attractive to mosquitoes?

Experiments performed at a large music festival suggest the bloodsuckers are more attracted to hedonistic attendees

www.science.org

Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 7d

Biology is Bigger

The penis of a Japanese volcano barnacle is several times longer than his entire body. While remaining firmly attached to a cliff, he can slither his member into another barnacle up to four body-le…

adaptivediversity.wordpress.com

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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 7d

bsky.app/profile/jaco...

Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 8d

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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 7d

Biology is Bigger: There’s more to life than binary sex

Inspiration to write this came from a shirt by @sarahmackattack.bsky.social and a comment by @mousqueton1291.bsky.social

adaptivediversity.wordpress.com/2025/09/30/b...

Biology is Bigger

The penis of a Japanese volcano barnacle is several times longer than his entire body. While remaining firmly attached to a cliff, he can slither his member into another barnacle up to four body-le…

adaptivediversity.wordpress.com

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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 7d

This makes me so happy. Scicomm matters.

Post saying “I really love seeing you in this shirt because a thread of yours about strawberries was my first step into reading about the science of biological sex, which is what I needed to do to find the permission I needed to transition. I'm sure I'm not the only one.”

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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 8d

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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 8d

A nice example of using pop gen to find a new concerning trend with deadly consequences
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A novel locus associated with decreased susceptibility of Plasmodium falciparum to lumefantrine and dihydroartemisinin has emerged and spread in Uganda

Malaria control in Uganda is threatened by the emergence of artemisinin partial resistance (ART-R) and decreasing lumefantrine susceptibility. To identify loci contributing to decreased drug susceptib...

www.biorxiv.org

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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 8d

Tag yourself, I’m anti-capitalism.

If you enjoy John Lennon’s song Imagine, that’s already at least half of these.

eraldo.bsky.social @eraldo.bsky.social · 10d

Indicators of "extremist violence" according to new directive NSPM-7

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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 11d

“Scientists no Longer Find Twitter Professionally Useful, and have Switched to Bluesky”

In other breaking news, water is wet. academic.oup.com/icb/article-...

Validate User

academic.oup.com

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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 12d

(if you like this stuff, check out our preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...)

Population genomics of Anopheles darlingi, the principal South American malaria vector mosquito

Malaria in South America remains a serious public health problem. Anopheles ( Nyssorhynchus ) darlingi is the most important malaria vector across tropical Latin America. Vector-targeted disease contr...

www.biorxiv.org

Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 12d

Two new big mosquito pop gen papers in Science:
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... and www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

1206 genomes reveal origin and movement of Aedes aegypti driving increased dengue risk

The emergence and global expansion of Aedes aegypti puts more than half of all humans at risk of arbovirus infection, but the origin of this mosquito and the impact of contemporary gene flow on arbovi...

www.science.org

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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 12d

The paper goes out of its way to clarify that the pun is not intended

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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 12d

Officially this is still the Holocene Epoch, which began with the great global megafauna extinctions caused by humans over 10 millennia ago. The Holocene is already defined by unprecedented modification of ecosystems by a single vertebrate species, from the start. So maybe we don't need a new word.

Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 12d

Has anyone compiled a list of all the terms for this human-dominated period of Earth's history?
There's:
Anthropocene (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthrop...)
Pyrocene (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrocene)
Plasticene (www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...)
Homoge[n]ocene (orionmagazine.org/article/the-...)

Anthropocene - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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Jacob Tennessen @jacobphd.bsky.social · 14d

Acetaminophen was first used on humans in 1887 yet Jules Verne described Phileas Fogg in 1872 presumably by observing the personalities of real humans who existed at that time.

Phileas Fogg, a fictional character with autistic traits

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