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Pedro Brandão-Dias F Pinto

@pedrobd.bsky.social

440 followers 320 following 260 posts

Biologist, molecular ecologist🧑‍🔬 , eDNA nerd 🧬, birder 🐦, coin collector 🪙, insect enjoyer 🐜, Brazilian mineiro, and more. Currently a Postdoc in the Kelly Lab at UW.

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Pedro Brandão-Dias F Pinto @pedrobd.bsky.social · Jul 5

I had an idea—just a hunch, really— on how to link #Popgen and #eDNA.
I was lucky to be in a lab that embraced curiosity, open discussion, and let me run with it.

One year, many equations, and a few too many simulations later, here’s the result:

🧬 Preprint now live: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Estimating Organism Abundance Using Within-Sample Haplotype Frequencies of eDNA Metabarcoding Data

Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding provides powerful insights into species presence and community composition, but remains limited in its ability to quantify species abundance or structure. Here, ...

doi.org

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Reposted by Pedro Brandão-Dias F Pinto

Jonathan C Slaght @jonathanslaght.com · 5d

super cool study found human artifacts in Bearded vulture nests, incl. "weaponry like a crossbow bolt and wooden lance, decorated sheep leather, and parts of a slingshot....a shoe made from twigs and grass is ~675-years-old." link to paper: doi.org/10.1002/ecy..... www.popsci.com/environment/... 🧪🌍🦉

Multi-generational vulture nests hold 700 years of human artifacts

Crossbow bolts, sandals, slingshots, and more.

www.popsci.com

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Reposted by Pedro Brandão-Dias F Pinto

Diogo B Proietti @provete.bsky.social · 3d

Pre-print em português (sorry @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social ) do nosso artigo publicado recentemente na PECON disponível no @ecoevorxiv.bsky.social

ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

Ciclos irregulares de financiamento no Brasil são uma barreira à conservação da biodiversidade e à liderança global do país

ecoevorxiv.org

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Reposted by Pedro Brandão-Dias F Pinto

Susheel Bhanu Busi @susheelbusi.bsky.social · 9d

🚨 New #OpenAccess paper in #Environmental #DNA! 🚨

Led by #TimGoodall @ukceh.bsky.social with @danread.bsky.social we tested whether #soil #eDNA metabarcoding can capture plant #biodiversity & vegetation cover across the UK 🌱

🔗 doi.org/10.1002/edn3...

Deciphering Landscape‐Scale Plant Cover and Biodiversity From Soil eDNA

Biodiversity surveys are essential but challenging to conduct at scale, prompting this study to evaluate soil-extracted eDNA as a proxy for traditional field-based surveys for describing plant commun...

doi.org

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Pedro Brandão-Dias F Pinto @pedrobd.bsky.social · 4d

a cartoon character is sitting on a green couch with his arms crossed

ALT: a cartoon character is sitting on a green couch with his arms crossed

media.tenor.com

Pedro Brandão-Dias F Pinto @pedrobd.bsky.social · 4d

I have gone through Fig 2 of my upcoming paper ~20x now. Every time, I find a small error that I hadn't seen before, which triggers a series of ~10 steps and 5 min of work to update it. It`s a complex figure.

If y`all find an error in it while reading the paper, please DO NOT tell me. Thank you 🥰

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Pedro Brandão-Dias F Pinto @pedrobd.bsky.social · 5d

How many Nanopores is too many Nanopores to have running all at once? Well, @AdenIp has four (!!!!) up here at the @ednacollab.bsky.social right now 💢💢💢💢

Why, you ask?
"Why not?" - he says

Lots of air eDNA data coming out of the oven (literally, these basicalling GPUs warm up the room a lot 🔥🔥🔥)

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Pedro Brandão-Dias F Pinto @pedrobd.bsky.social · 8d

Some call it fashion

Pedro Brandão-Dias F Pinto @pedrobd.bsky.social · 8d

Today the glove box gave me a glove with no thumb and dared me to do science without opposable thumbs. I rejected the challenge 👍

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Pedro Brandão-Dias F Pinto @pedrobd.bsky.social · 9d

I feel like we tend to complain loudly and often when manuscript peer reviews are bad or unfavorable.

But today I got reviews... and they were reasonable and polite!

Faith slightly restored!!

Pedro Brandão-Dias F Pinto @pedrobd.bsky.social · 13d

Toxic trait of bioinfo folks:
Everyone insists on building their own pipeline 👨‍💻

Is it (a) distrust, (b) dreams of citations, (c) tryna prove competency— or all?
Even if it’s a wrapper on a wrapper, god forbid you just use an established one!

I am half guilty as well.
xkcd nailed it long ago.

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Pedro Brandão-Dias F Pinto @pedrobd.bsky.social · 13d

Beta-Binomial and Dirichlet-Multinomial are the GOAT distributions

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Pedro Brandão-Dias F Pinto @pedrobd.bsky.social · 13d

Why are statistical methods so often explained as if the authors are afraid someone might actually understand what they did?

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Pedro Brandão-Dias F Pinto @pedrobd.bsky.social · 19d

The Miseq i100 has a baby now

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Reposted by Pedro Brandão-Dias F Pinto

Scott P. Egan @scottpegan.bsky.social · 26d

The Dept. of BioSciences at #RiceUniversity, in Houston, Texas, invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professor position in Evolutionary Biology, with a preferred focus on organismal responses to environmental change. Please RT!

Apply: apply.interfolio.com/173889

Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio

apply.interfolio.com

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Reposted by Pedro Brandão-Dias F Pinto

Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 20d

Full comic here: www.smbc-comics.com/comic/theodi...
#smbc

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Pedro Brandão-Dias F Pinto @pedrobd.bsky.social · 20d

If you are upset that I am shitposting, please understand: I am on a visa, I cannot not shitpost. I CAN not post, but once I do post, I cannot not shitpost. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Pedro Brandão-Dias F Pinto @pedrobd.bsky.social · 20d

I had a nightmare where I had to correctly identify 2 juvenile winter gulls in the PNW or my eBird lists would be all invalidated. 🦅

#birding

Pedro Brandão-Dias F Pinto @pedrobd.bsky.social · 21d

Define evil you said?👺

Article Publishing Charge (APC): USD 4,200 (excluding taxes)
(Mandatory)

🤡

Reposted by Pedro Brandão-Dias F Pinto

BOU @bou.org.uk · 26d

An Intergeneric Hybrid Between Historically Isolated Temperate and Tropical Jays Following Recent Range Expansion | doi.org/10.1002/ece3... | Ecology and Evolution | #ornithology 🪶

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Pedro Brandão-Dias F Pinto @pedrobd.bsky.social · 28d

@scottpegan.bsky.social should put this one on the lab door lol

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Pedro Brandão-Dias F Pinto @pedrobd.bsky.social · 29d

My new favorite icebreaker:

I have, in fact, sampled #eDNA just next to the (in)famous Epstein Island, near Saint Thomas at the USVI (Christmas cove. Great St. James)

It was back in 2019 for a project looking for invasive seagrass. 🌾🐢

I also had a pizza from a boat pizzeria at the same ocasion.

Pedro Brandão-Dias F Pinto @pedrobd.bsky.social · Sep 5

Fresh Battus 🦋 #rarepuns #punintended

Pedro Brandão-Dias F Pinto @pedrobd.bsky.social · Aug 31

A metal scene to start #birding sunday🦅🐀

Pedro Brandão-Dias F Pinto @pedrobd.bsky.social · Aug 31

This spaghetti squash thing is kinda magic y'all. I am not gonna lie.

The way it just falls apart in little al-dente spaghetti-like strings is so awesome.

I wanna make micro slices of this thing and put it under a microscope like good old plant anatomy classes back in undergrad.