Jeremy B. Yoder 🧬📊🌿🏳️‍🌈🖖🏻
LightNews LightNews
banner
jbyoder.org
Jeremy B. Yoder 🧬📊🌿🏳️‍🌈🖖🏻
@jbyoder.org
7.9K followers 2K following 3.8K posts
Evolutionary biologist, runner, writer, gay. Not necessarily in that order. LAX and SEA


Signal @jbyoder.82
Also ecoevo.social/@jby, jbyoder.org
Posts Replies Media Videos
jbyoder.org
Orchids are famous for specialized flowers that create species isolation by manipulating pollinators— but these ones don't have specialized pollinator relationships. Instead, they're isolated by pollen incompatibilities. 🌿

buff.ly/Ypb77Ir
Flowers of the orchid Anacamptis papilionacea, pink and butterfly-shaped with wide darker wings; photo by Hans Hillewaert via Wikimedia Commons Flowers of the orchid Anacamptis pyramidalis, lighter pink and with big lip-like labellums; photo by Ramin Nakisa via Wikimedia Commons Flowers of the orchid Anacamptis morio hampe, purple with long nectar spurs and big lip-like labellums; photo by Didier Desouens, via Wikimedia Commons
November 28, 2025 at 3:12 PM
jbyoder.org
Always a good time to remember TREASURE PLANET has the best PhD-vs-MD joke this side of BROOKLYN NINE-NINE, delivered as a perfect David Hyde Pierce freakout
Four panel series of screenshots from TREASURE PLANET, Dr Doppler having a panic attack, captioned: Dangit, Jim, I’m an astronomer, not a doctor. I mean I am a doctor, but I’m not that kind of doctor. I have a doctorate. It’s not the same thing. You can’t help people with a doctorate. You just sit there and you’re USELESS
November 28, 2025 at 1:01 AM
jbyoder.org
Obligatory food photography
A plate with mashed sweet potatoes, turkey and gravy, stuffing, green bean casserole, and cranberry sauce A pink cranberry custard pie topped with candied cranberries A slice of the cranberry pie on a plate with a pile of whipped cream
November 28, 2025 at 12:29 AM
jbyoder.org
A sanderling, Calidris alba, probing for prey at the tide line on Asilomar State Beach back in January 🌿🪶

buff.ly/vwaCJYh
A small round shorebird with brown wings, neck, and cap and snowy white underparts, reflecting in the surface of the wet sand as it bends down to probe with its bill
November 27, 2025 at 2:54 PM
jbyoder.org
These butterflies pick host plants where the temperatures are more comfortable, even if they're less nutritious (but it's not clear from this data that the nutritional variation is biologically significant?) 🌿

buff.ly/OKIung0
A small butterfly with club-end antennae, orange forewings with black spots, and sooty hindwings with orange bands at the trailing edge. Photo by Charles J. Sharp via Wikimedia Commons
November 26, 2025 at 2:15 PM
jbyoder.org
Officially done with my little sabbatical trip to Connecticut— two weeks was really not enough, but I got to catch up with a bunch of friends, talk a lot of science, and advance some very cool projects
Three people in warm jackets holding to go cups of coffee, smiling for a group selfie Two men in warm jackets smiling for a selfie A tabby cat sitting at attention on the edge of a coffee table A gothic brick tower next to a paved bike path, lined with autumnal trees
November 25, 2025 at 7:13 PM
jbyoder.org
Columbines, Aquilegia formosa, in Yosemite Valley this spring 🌿

buff.ly/lY1JVTZ
Two downward-facing red flowers with long nectar spurs on each of their five petals and a bundle of long-exerted stamens, in focus against a backdrop of green and brown
November 25, 2025 at 3:54 PM
jbyoder.org
A striped tabby cat with crinkly ears, sitting on a wingback armchair, one paw up on the arm of the chair so it's almost higher than his head
November 24, 2025 at 12:53 AM
jbyoder.org
the speed with which @colincarlson.bsky.social has assimilated the fundamental dynamics of Drag Race
Screenshot of a Messages text: This isn't ru Paul's literacy race
November 23, 2025 at 3:00 PM
jbyoder.org
A western fence lizard, Sceloporus occidentalis, perched on a fence post, along the trail in Yosemite Valley this spring 🌿

buff.ly/teO1Yn8
November 20, 2025 at 2:54 PM
jbyoder.org
These weasels have locally adapted their winter coats to varying snow cover thanks to a million-year-old mutation 🌿

buff.ly/TnOfYWt
Detail from Figure 1 of the linked preprint: a diagram contrasting the two weasel morphs, one of which is brown in summer and white in winter, and the other of which is brown all year; with images of weasels in both forms of winter coat; and then nucleotide and amino acid sequences for the two MC1R variants underlying the two coat types
November 19, 2025 at 2:15 PM
jbyoder.org
A sleepy great blue heron, Areda herodias, in the Seattle Arboretum's Japanese garden 🌿🪶

buff.ly/sooThJE
November 18, 2025 at 3:54 PM
jbyoder.org
zomg
screenshot of an R console with > load_all() i Loading TARDIS >
November 17, 2025 at 9:50 PM
jbyoder.org
Nifty preprint with an experiment coevolving Brassica rapa with pollinating, herbivorous butterflies. With bumblebee co-pollinators or heat stress added, the plants evolved stronger anti-herbivore defense; with both bees and heat, they evolved... to attract butterflies? 🌿

doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Figure 1 from the linked preprint, showing PCA of phenotypic change in the plants and butterflies. Caption: Phenotypic divergence of plants (A) and butterflies (B) after 6 generations of selection under different temperature and biotic/pollination environments. Blue = ambient temperature, red = hot temperature, H = hand pollination (circles in A), Control = Pieris-control (circles in B), Coevo = coevolution Pieris-only (squares), CoB = coevolution Pieris + bumblebees (triangles). Linear discriminant analyses included all plant phenotypic traits (n=19) and all butterfly phenotypic traits. For plants, double centroids per treatment combination represents replicates A and B. For butterflies, only one replicate was used due to replicate extinctions except for ambient Co, for which replicates were grouped to keep treatments comparable. P-values are based on permutational multivariate analysis of variance. Each temperature-biotic environment combination consisted of 68-144 plants and 36-100 butterflies. Characters with high loadings for LD1 and LD2 are shown along each axis.
November 17, 2025 at 3:19 PM
jbyoder.org
your last saved meme is your moral philosophy

Oh. Oh noooo
Sam Reich, captioned: I hate Sam Reich: the taste of my own medicine
November 16, 2025 at 11:55 PM
jbyoder.org
Real possibility that my sabbatical activity report is going to be like 65% photos of Fiorello
Portrait Mode photo of a striped tabby cat with crumpled ears, sitting like a loaf on a coffee table in perfect profile Same cat same setup, he’s doing an INCREDIBLE yawn Same cat now turned to look at the camera
November 15, 2025 at 9:19 PM
jbyoder.org
Autumn colors in the Japanese garden at the Seattle Arboretum this past weekend 🌿

buff.ly/SyzWp2m
A view across a pond to a footbridge and a hillside covered in manicured shrubs and trees, many evergreen but some with bright orange, yellow, and red autumnal leaves. The colorful leaves are reflected in the still waters of the pond.
November 14, 2025 at 3:12 PM
jbyoder.org
Camera-trap study catches nectar-feeding birds breaking into flowers when their beaks don't fit 🌿🪶

Trait matching affects the probability of nectar robbing in plant-pollinator networks

buff.ly/zyJrXa4
Figure 1 from the linked paper, captioned: Camera trap pictures showing diverse types of feeding behaviours recorded in the study area. (a) Diglossa cyanea feeding legitimately on Macleania rupestris by inserting its lower mandible inside the flower tube while the upper mandible is kept out of the flower. (b) Eriocnemis luciani visiting the same flowers of M. rupestris legitimately. (c) D. lafresnayii robbing nectar from a Fuchsia ayavacensis flower. (d) M. tyrianthina robbing nectar from the same F. ayavacensis flower, possibly using the hole previously pierced by D. lafresnayii.
November 13, 2025 at 2:54 PM
jbyoder.org
Beavertail prickly pear, Opuntia basilaris, in bloom this spring at Vasquez Rocks County Park 🌿

buff.ly/r6aH69A
A close view of three just-opening flowers with many bright pink petals, at the tip of a green cactus pad that looks sort of like a flat beaver tail
November 12, 2025 at 2:15 PM
jbyoder.org
The balcony's right behind the dining room table that has been my work-from-home desk, so maybe not so much neighbors as officemates?
The balcony, with three crows perched along the railing Selfie with a view over my shoulder and out the balcony doors to a crow on the balcony railing A crow strutting along the balcony railing, peanuts visible on the table below
November 11, 2025 at 6:20 PM
jbyoder.org
Took a level in #Seattle about a week ago, when I brought home a bag of unsalted shell-on peanuts for the neighbors
November 11, 2025 at 6:17 PM
jbyoder.org
Crater Lake this June, as seen from the parking lot of the Crater Lake National Park visitor center, which was still half-buried in snow 🌿

buff.ly/2ymaOXr
A deep blue arc of quiet lake, ringed by snow-streaked crater walls and a handful of green conifers, with a conical island rising from the water
November 10, 2025 at 3:19 PM
jbyoder.org
I'm sorry I'm sorr
ZOHRAN for NEW YORK but it's THERE ARE for LIGHTS
November 8, 2025 at 8:54 PM
jbyoder.org
CROWS /for/ SEATTLE
November 8, 2025 at 8:38 PM
jbyoder.org
Joshua trees make the cover of @newphyt.bsky.social for the issue with our paper, led by @kheyduk.bsky.social, showing that they use water-saving CAM photosynthesis — but only sometimes 🌿 buff.ly/WnPoRXa
The cover of the December 2025 issue of New Phytologist, with an image of a small western Joshua tree in the soft light of a desert morning
November 7, 2025 at 3:12 PM