Brian O'Meara
@omearabrian.bsky.social
5.4K followers 7.9K following 19 posts
I study diversification, species delimitation, trait evolution & similar questions, often using new methods. Also random coding projects. College prof living in Oak Ridge, TN, USA. Opinions my own. He/Him
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Reposted by Brian O'Meara
lovetheants.bsky.social
Tenure track assistant professor of biology position in my department just posted!

www.schooljobs.com/careers/prov...
Reposted by Brian O'Meara
shastingssimon.bsky.social
My number one tip for researchers that do a significant amount of non peer reviewed paper publication/outreach:

Create an excel table, every time you give an interview, talk, write an oped or white paper, etc. take 5 seconds to immediately note it in the excel.
Reposted by Brian O'Meara
jebyrnes.bsky.social
That's right, folk! THREE TENURE TRACK JOBS IN BIOLOGY AT UMASS BOSTON! You might even be a good fit for more than one! Check 'em out! We'd love to have you!
omearabrian.bsky.social
I've now seen a few conferences for 2026 with no mentions of any sort of code of conduct, let alone an actionable, concrete one. We know with all the power dynamics in academia bad things can and do happen. Shun conferences that officially don't take steps to address this.
Reposted by Brian O'Meara
andrew-ecoathome.bsky.social
Introducing BIRDBASE, which aims to be the world's most comprehensive avian trait ecology database. Article links to open access paper, & data in Excel spreadsheet. phys.org/news/2025-09... #science #environment #ecology #eco #biology #bird #birds #birding #birdwatching #openaccess #datascience
BIRDBASE dataset tracks ecological traits for 11,589 species of birds
Çağan Şekercioğlu was an ambitious, but perhaps naive graduate student when, 26 years ago, he embarked on a simple data-compilation project that would soon evolve into a massive career-defining achiev...
phys.org
Reposted by Brian O'Meara
3rdreviewer.bsky.social
The most important paper in evolutionary biology I'd never heard of:

1/

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Reposted by Brian O'Meara
Reposted by Brian O'Meara
daveyfwright.bsky.social
"AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations"
jbau.bsky.social
This whole section really.
Finally: AI cannot do your job, but an AI salesman can 100% convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job, and when the bubble bursts, the money-hemorrhaging "foundation models" will be shut off and we'll lose the AI that can't do your job, and you will be long gone, retrained or retired or "discouraged" and out of the labor market, and no one will do your job.
AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations:
Reposted by Brian O'Meara
anaserrasilva.bsky.social
Please register or get your students to register!

I do not want to unleash nagging mode!
systassn.bsky.social
The Young Systematists' Forum is nearly upon us!

If you are a student (or postdoc) working on phylogenetics, taxonomy or systematics, join us Nov 14th for this free and friendly online conference!

Abstract submission closes Saturday, October 25th at 11:59PM GMT+1

REGISTER: tinyurl.com/2w5n3e8
YSF2025 Registration Form
Welcome to the YSF2025 Registration and Abstract Submission form. This year the conference will be held online on Friday, November 14th 2025. We look forward to seeing old and new faces from across t...
tinyurl.com
Reposted by Brian O'Meara
martinebotany.bsky.social
Please share! Psyched to bring in a new member of the team. Starting salary $62K.

#postdoc #sciencejobs #plantpeopleFTW
martinebotany.bsky.social
Excited to begin the search for the next (6th) Burpee Post-Doctoral Fellow in Botany here in my lab at Bucknell! Funded research and teacher-scholar training embedded in the primarily undergraduate institution (#PUI) environment.

#iamabotanist

Details (+ application portal) here:

lnkd.in/eVsbe7K5
Photos of past Burpee postdocs with some of our great students at Bucknell.
Reposted by Brian O'Meara
shankothari.bsky.social
The nomination deadline for 2026 @ecologicalsociety.bsky.social awards is coming up on November 13, 2025! This year we're accepting nominations for the inaugural Bazzaz-Pickett Award for inclusive mentorship in ecology. We'd love to see as many nominations as possible! esa.org/about/awards/
esa.org
Reposted by Brian O'Meara
adapalmer.bsky.social
Puffins return to Maine after half a century of absence. Eastern Egg Rock now hosts the only puffin colony in the United States, restored through decades of painstaking work after the birds were hunted out a century ago. buff.ly/RB0Ibz0
#ShareGoodNewsToo
How researchers restored a thriving habitat for Atlantic puffins in Maine
Atlantic puffins face an increasingly precarious foothold due in part to a loss of habitat and to troubles tied to warming ocean waters and climate change. But an effort off the coast of Maine…
buff.ly
omearabrian.bsky.social
Claims it uses papers from various publishers. It’d be very easy for it to be biased towards papers from Springer-Nature when suggesting references (even non-deliberately: the corpus could just be enriched for the papers they can most easily access).
omearabrian.bsky.social
Note for folks using US IPEDS data for colleges: the case of some of the columns in the data dictionary raw files has apparently changed (varname to varName, for example)
Reposted by Brian O'Meara
drugmonkey.bsky.social
Another pause in graduate school admissions for 2026.
UCSD dept of math this time.

www.math.ucsd.edu/students/gra...
UCSD’s Department of Mathematics has paused PhD admissions -- we will not be able to admit new PhD students in Fall 2026.
omearabrian.bsky.social
But yeah, I do worry about focusing on single individuals. I try not to make Darwin a hero but rather relatable (he was a failed pre-med, after all) and show as an example of how science actually works.
omearabrian.bsky.social
For me, I use it to touch on other threads they wouldn't otherwise get:

• How priority and access matter in science (Wallace letter)
• Mental health & rank (FitzRoy)
• What Darwin got wrong
• How human factors affect science (child's illness, etc.)
• Repeated ideas (coral reef/atoll explanation)
omearabrian.bsky.social
One thing I emphasize in the Darwin lecture is the disagreement w Lord Kelvin over age of the earth. Different scientific fields can disagree, but there’s a shared reality, and we eventually converge on the same conclusions
omearabrian.bsky.social
For undergrads, I do have a lecture on Darwin, but just him as there’s such ignorance and popular culture around him. Otherwise, it’s just what we understand in the present about evolution
omearabrian.bsky.social
In my evolution class for grad students, I do a lecture on historical and modern eugenics, but that’s it for history. I have a long list of names to know (Margulis, Anolis, PCR) that I have them learn on their own and quiz on, but not worth class time
Reposted by Brian O'Meara
kevinjkircher.com
Sometimes I think about how from 1935-1975ish, Bell Labs produced an insane amount of revolutionary science and technology, including 11 Nobel Prizes, the transistor, UNIX, C, the laser, the solar cell, information theory, etc. The secret? Provide scientists with ample, steady, no-strings funding.
sites.stat.columbia.edu
Reposted by Brian O'Meara
bioconductor.bsky.social
🌍 Applications now open for our first Bioconductor course in West Africa!

📅 17–21 Nov 2025 | 📍 Abomey-Calavi, Benin
Free, in-person training on R, RStudio & RNA-seq workflows.

Apply by 15 Oct 👉 forms.gle/d32F6xJJbsFa...

More info 🔗 training.bioconductor.org/workshops/20...

#Bioconductor #RStats
Front view of the GBioS building at the University of Abomey-Calavi, Benin, surrounded by palm trees with a sign reading “Genetics, Biotechnology and Seed Science Unit.” Banner text above reads “Apply Now for the Bioconductor Benin 2025 Course!
omearabrian.bsky.social
We need some modern Blaschkas to make these in glass (or 3d printed resin) with LEDs as Christmas tree ornaments.
omearabrian.bsky.social
This is one of the critters whose DNA I sequenced as an undergrad: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/AY13...
whistberry.bsky.social
Happy #Invertober day 4!

Palmetto weevil (Rhynchophorus cruentatus)

Reference photo by nonbinary-naturalist on iNaturalist

#SciArt #art #Invertober2025
Digital painting of an orange and black-patterned weevil with long nose and shiny shell. It is casting a shadow onto an abstract background of light blue stripes with a thin orange highlight against a darker blue background.