Dr. July Pilowsky

In essence, this is no different than running risky Gain-of-Function research on a dangerous pathogen... Uncontrolled H5N1 outbreaks on mink farms are a global risk, as Mink have α2,6 receptors similar to humans. The virus could evolve that infection route in Mink www.propublica.org/article/bird...

New paper in Glob. Change Biol. compiling a massive dataset on phenology of grassland birds in the Great Plains. Breeding seasons becoming shorter in the arid south but longer in the prairie potholes. Led by @ksellis.bsky.social with a big team of contributors. #ornithology doi.org/10.1111/gcb....

after some in-depth discussions with my lab and also drawing on conversations on here, we've edited our new policy on AI usage in my lab feel free to adapt or re-use with attribution, or to reply to tell me how awful this policy is lol

I have uploaded my latest larp, which premiered at @makeascenemn.bsky.social , in fully boxed and playable form on my larp website. Enjoy! larp.pilowsky.me/project/the-...

In what may be one of Earth’s craziest forms of mimicry, researchers in 2023 reported a species of rove beetle that grows a termite puppet on its back to fool real termites into feeding it. Learn more during #InsectWeek: https://scim.ag/4mM2aS9

Sexier in the city? Urban male great bowerbirds decorate bowers with human-made objects, creating brighter and more varied displays than rural males. Males strongly prefer human-made objects over natural ones, possibly boosting their appeal to females! shorturl.at/lcNY2 @royalsocietypublishing.org

Viruses are highly abundant in the oceans, but there is one place you won't typically find them: in global ocean ecosystem models... until now. Introducing "vDarwin", an explicit integration of viruses into the MITgcm/Darwin global ecosystem framework: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... a 🧵

When life imitates art

I find it fascinating that folks like Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson are having 'Abundance' discussions about NIH while ignoring the pre-2025 state of play, self-critique of scientists, and the many ways in which American science is imperfect and yet (near) the best in the world (or was). 🧵

tl;dr: NIH is running at about 60% of pre-Trump levels and NSF is running at about 20% of pre-Trump levels of funding-outlays (some directorates far below even that). Utterly catastrophic. An unforced disaster for U.S. society, and the world

From the New Yorker.

Can rewilding save the planet? I gave my answer on BBC Radio's The Inquiry — and so did some of my colleagues. Tune in and see if you agree. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

'Cities alter the latitudinal diversity gradient of birds in North America' DOI: doi.org/10.32942/X23...

Problem about the loneliness epidemic is, it's everywhere except in representative survey data. Let's look at where the claim comes from. 1/

An example of how impacts of interventions can differ at individual and population levels, and are conditional on other events. Given a car hits you, the helmet helps. But mandating helmets could lower the # of bikes on the road & thus might increase the chance of getting hit in the first place.

I decided to give one of my most well liked project a bit of a make over, and I wrote about it too! See how I updated the visuals of r-color-palettes emilhvitfeldt.com/post/r-color... #rstats

Wow. This is devastating. www.science.org/content/arti...

First evidence in Europe of highly pathogenic avian influenza virus H5N1 infection in a dairy cow. Antibodies against H5N1 detected in a cow with mastitis and respiratory signs on a Dutch dairy farm at the end of December. A cat on that farm had died from H5N1. www.tweedekamer.nl/downloads/do...

This must be weird news to see if you’re one of the literally hundreds or even thousands of university administrators who preemptively censored faculty, scrubbed websites, changed the names of centers, etc.

Oooh love this. Easiest way to parallelise anything in #rstats. Just add futurize() to your favourite function call www.jottr.org/2026/01/22/f... Thanks @henrikbengtsson.bsky.social HT @rstats.blaze.email

Academics, just use this simple LaTeX macro and you can avoid maintaining a separate CV just for 2026 federal grants.

The red dot is a baby North Atlantic right whale trying to migrate up the east coast of the United states. The blue streaks are fast moving shipping vessels entering and leaving New York City harbor. One collision and the whale is dead. We need *mandatory* speed limits for these vessels! 🧪🦑🌍

This is a serious issue in my field. I am a researcher studying avian influenza and even I am not allowed to access flu sequences in GISAID.

Love having “venture capital” reviewing my grants

I use the NCAR supercomputers to simulate disease outbreaks in wildlife. The impact of this terrible move will spread well beyond climate change research.

My research on elephant conservation in the KAZA TFCA was featured by @mongabay.com in an article that argues for corridors, not culls, as a long term solution for Southern Africa‘s growing elephant population 🐘 news.mongabay.com/2025/12/corr...

Tired: Publishing a ton of papers by breaking stories into small pieces and always shooting too high and working the way down the journal cascade Wired: Publishing complete stories in more substantial papers and submitting them to society journals, and not exploiting the peer review system.

Big new blogpost! My guide to data visualization, which includes a very long table of contents, tons of charts, and more. --> Why data visualization matters and how to make charts more effective, clear, transparent, and sometimes, beautiful. www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/salonis-gu...

Applied to COVID-19 in California, the approach yields more accurate and more stable short-term forecasts than RNNs, LSTMs, GRUs, Transformers, and naïve baselines. 🔗 royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

In times like these, the trans community relies on its community organizers, who bring people together for activism and mutual support. June Lewis is one of these trans community organizers, and she needs help. I just donated; please stand up for us, too. www.gofundme.com/f/stand-with...

The Queer & Trans Field Safety Assessment: a tool for protecting minoritized field scientists doi.org/10.32942/X2W...

am reminded of the old joke: what did James Watson discover? Rosalind Franklin’s notes.

Today we publish a new paper at The British Medical Journal on the links between biodiversity, climate and health in relation to the hashtag#COP30 in Brazil Here we argue that climate resilience depends on nature—and both are vital for the health of people. www.bmj.com/content/391/...

It's important for Europeans, and others from visa-waiver countries, to understand they don't have freedom of speech rights when visiting the United States. The Trump regime is still deporting visitors for critical comments made online, because they can.

Wow. I did not know that Alfred Russell Wallace (co-discoverer of evolution by natural selection) wrote a book in 1904 about the biological potential for life on other planets, and I've just found this extraordinary paragraph setting out the insanity of atmospheric pollution [1/3]. In 1904!

A paper for the #eDNA crowd, in particular those using flies for terrestrial biomonitoring. We show that massive pooling works well, reducing costs + time, bringing us a step closer to scalable terrestrial eDNA biomonitoring. doi.org/10.1002/edn3...

I'm v excited to be recruiting a PhD student to work on badger behaviour and ecology! Starting date is March 2026; see the ad here, or message me for more details: www.gregalbery.me/s/March-2026...

Sadly, the conservation outlook for #BiałowieżaForest World Heritage Site is now "critical" largely on account of state border barriers, #militarization and breakdown in #transboundary cooperation. The IUCN released the assessment some days ago: worldheritageoutlook.iucn.org/explore-site...

Recently came across Lisa Taylor's amazing work on coloration in jumping spiders, including using eyeliner to give them teenytiny makeovers to see whether these colors helped them attract mates/avoid sexual cannibalism. Sometimes in science, there aren't standard tools for the thing you want to do🧪

We are pleased to announce that throughout Open Access Week, from 20 – 26 October, all Royal Society journal content is freely available. Explore our journals here: royalsociety.org/Journals/ #OAWeek #OAWeek25

Very grateful to @nsaphra.bsky.social for making their (successful) job market materials publicly available: nsaphra.net/post/jobmark.... It's very handy to be able see what these things are supposed to look like!

I'm working on a story about this policy change regarding X gender markers on passports. If you have an X gender marker and want to discuss, please DM me! papersplease.org/wp/2025/10/1...