Daniel Becker

bats are immunologically "special", but bat species also differ in their immune response. we gather evidence for interspecific variation in bat immunity, propose hypotheses, and outline future comparative directions. i've really enjoyed working with this ECR team. ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

🦇 Wishing everyone at #NASBR a fab meeting! We are sadly missing it this year, but if you know a student who loves bats and is curious about the genetics of speech and language, my lab has a funded PhD open until 16 Nov. Please share! www.findaphd.com/phds/project... @bat1kgenomes.bsky.social

Ran is cooking with: ‘the only data point I have about this candidate is this: “they had an important task that could determine the rest of their career, but it required a little effort and personal reflection, so they used AI to complete it.”’

My inbox is being flooded with fully AI-generated emails from prospective students. I tried to work out why I can't bring myself to read them, and ended up with some thoughts and advice for writing cold emails in the age of AI. My new post: blekhman.substack.com/p/why-i-am-n...

. @biologists.bsky.social is offering 20 funded places for ECRs from the Global South to attend the Integrative Ecological Neurobiology in Changing Environments Workshop in Argentina, 1-5 August 2027 Application deadline: 6 Nov 2026 Don't miss out! 🔁 www.biologists.com/workshops/au...

Join us through the Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship in EEB! Conduct your own research, mentored by 2+ EEB faculty. $65k salary + research/moving $. All areas of EEB welcome. Apply by 11/1 I co-chair this search and am happy to field questions Spread the word! eeb.msu.edu/initiatives/...

If you missed it last week, we published the largest ever study on emerging infectious diseases. Not really in vogue right now, but the next pandemic will come sooner than you think. Key lessons: nature-based solutions where you can, health system strengthening always. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Great to see our study featured in The New York Times, among other pieces covering the work! 🦇 A thoughtful look at what our new genomic and fossil analyses reveal about the evolutionary history of bats. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/s...

Very happy to see our paper out in Nature! 🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇 A huge collaborative effort to revisit the evolutionary history of bats using 103 reference-quality genomes and an extensive fossil dataset, and to build a genomic resource for many questions still to come. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

1: For every hour you travel from the nearest clinic, the odds of detecting an outbreak decreases by about 1/3. 👉 For policymakers: the best thing we can do to catch and intercept spillovers before they become epidemics is build rural clinics and pay for diagnostic machines and supplies.

What's behind this tidal wave of epidemics? In the largest study ever conducted on emerging infectious diseases, we show that the popular explanation - "our relationship with nature is out of balance" - doesn't hold up. Out now in Nature, after half a decade of work: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Are you interested in using serology to detect hidden infections, model immune responses, and estimate epidemic dynamics? You may be interested in the new 1.2.0 release of the R package, serosolver: seroanalytics.org/serosolver/i...

Princeton EEB is running a very broad faculty search at the Assistant Professor level. Please consider applying to join us! This is a wonderful, collaborative, cohesive department with diverse interests and amazing colleagues. apply.interfolio.com/193474

Natural history on canvas: Brueghel knew about bird-eating noctule bats Just published in @pnas.org, OA for all eyes Led by the one-and-only @romero-vidal.bsky.social, with the amazing @elena-tena.bsky.social and Sonia Sánchez-Navarro @ebdonana.bsky.social LINK: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Men are more likely to accept invitations to review a paper in Ecology and Evolution when the *editor* inviting them is male. Women’s response rate is unaffected onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Please repost! Drexel announced that it will close the Academy of Natural Sciences public museum- the oldest nat history museum in the US. There are 2 petitions to support the academy. Please sign both & come to our rally Tues. actionnetwork.org/petitions/pe... www.change.org/p/the-academ...

Sponsorship for 3 students in #genomics, evolutionary biology, ecology, and related fields with ambitions in innovation and entrepreneurship to attend Integrating Scales in Planetary Biology 2026 in Uppsala, Sweden. Deadline: 14 September 2026 docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Looking for sci comm opportunities? Join us as a writer for American Naturalist press releases! These write-ups are primarily written by graduate students and other early-career scientists. No experience required; we have editors to help along the way. Apps due Sept 1. Please share widely :D

Help us build better data infrastructure and promote open research! Verena is looking for a full stack developer to assist with the maintenance, documentation, and development of the Pathogen Harmonized Observatory (PHAROS) data platform. See the details: www.viralemergence.org/blog/were-hi...

we're hiring for a new research assistant to join our group at OU to manage field studies on migratory and Neotropical bats! please see the linked application on our website: beckerlab.weebly.com/join.html. applications will be reviewed in early August and the position can start in January.

We are now recruiting for a 3 year NERC-funded postdoc to study the transmission dynamics of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in migratory birds. Based in the Wild Microbiome Lab @uniexecec.bsky.social in beautiful Cornwall.

Reminder to register for the Unifying Ecology Gordon Conference by next Monday! Lest you miss out on this incredible line up! www.grc.org/unifying-eco... @jennsunday.bsky.social @ewaldoleitao.bsky.social #GRC #ecoevo

New from the brilliant, brilliant team @viralemergence.org - Do bats gets sick from the viruses they carry? 🧪 Writing for children remains the most demanding type of writing. kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10....

Beyond excited to share that the preprint for the first chapter of my dissertation is up. So grateful to my co-authors and especially my PI, @stephseifertphd.bsky.social, for their support throughout this ambitious three-year project. Here’s to shaking up evolutionary paradigms 🥂

🚨 Ever wonder why some viral reassortants establish and spread while others disappear? Us too! Led by @ricardoriveroh.bsky.social, we studied drivers of viral reassortment across hantaviruses and found that it varies dramatically among lineages (1/3) Preprint: doi.org/10.64898/202...

Ecologists love response ratios for meta-analysis❤️ But… they can’t be converted into other effect sizes—making it impossible to have a unified dataset of all published effect sizes in ecology I fix this with a conversion to Hedges’ d to help unify our data! (Link to Ecology Letters paper below):

The Ebola outbreak in the DRC has renewed scrutiny on bats, but Dr. Paul Webala caution that direct transmission links is unproven. Damaging bat colonies disrupts vital ecosystems & ignores the fact that culling fails to stop zoonotic disease pathways. Learn more in this interview by David Akana.

we're hiring for a new research assistant to join our group at OU to manage field studies on migratory and Neotropical bats! please see the linked application on our website: beckerlab.weebly.com/join.html. applications will be reviewed in early August and the position can start in January.

Thursday position shares- Check out this opportunity with the @danjbecker.bsky.social lab docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... and Katherine Stewart's post www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DRN272/p...

I barely understand immune systems, and it's my job... so how would you talk to an aspiring young scientist about them? Something we've had on the @viralemergence.org wish list from the start, now in Frontiers in Young Minds 🦇🧪 kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10....

Molecular detection of relapsing fever Borrelia puertoricensis in migratory Mexican free-tailed bats 📰 mSphere #Zoonoses #OneHealth #InfectiousDiseases #PublicHealth 🔗 https://doi.org/10.1128/msphere.00085-26

Stop scrolling and click this link! royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3... I'm so excited to share this open-access theme issue on Wild Plant Pathosystems in #PhilTransB Co-edited with Rachel Penczykowski @rachelpenczy.bsky.social Remco Stam @rstam.bsky.social & Emme Bruns @ebruns.bsky.social

New issue of #PhilTransB on 'Wild plant pathosystems' - looking at how plant pathogens spread and evolve and providing knowledge useful in developing more sustainable plant health management strategies. Read OA: buff.ly/oaluRTG

recruiting a couple new grad students to start in january, please share! www.gilbertecology.com/opportunities

The Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Disease Conference (EEID) has made its way to the Asia-Pacific! Come join us in Hobart to open this new chapter and build capacity and networks in the region: eeid-asiapacific.org

So happy to be at @eeid2026.bsky.social! It was a great opening night. The Walsman lab will be hiring a postdoc this fall. If you want to chat about eco-evolutionary disease models and working in China, find me here or at walsmanjason@gmail.com.

The last year completely broke my body and spirit, but we kept fighting, and I'm so glad we did. I can't wait to do some actual science now. Thank you to everyone who has had our back, especially @meganranney.bsky.social, and thanks to @dangaristo.bsky.social for the final nudge that saved us.

Happy pride 🦇🦠🦟🏳️‍🌈

Out now, a lovely tour de force led by Brooke Genovese @brookegenovese.bsky.social. The comp and statistical tools Brooke developed for non-model proteomics work are legit and worth a look. (her periodic calls to discuss methods were a bright spot on my cal) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Scoop: NSF has been quietly blocking new funds and grants to four top universities: Duke, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. Dozens of proposals from PIs at these universities—and their collaborators—have been stuck at the Office of Award Management awaiting finalization for months.

Are you worried about hantavirus? Well research on this virus and other emerging infections is disappearing in real time, right now. My Yale colleague just lost $5 million, which the National Science Foundation (NSF) has refused to release to his group. It is so twisted and sick.

Hi all! The Brook lab is hiring a new lab manager, ideally starting sometime in summer 2026. Please submit a CV and cover letter to the linked application on our website to apply: brooklab.org/join. Application review begins on June 9 and will be rolling thereafter!

We are recruiting 🌟2 postdoctoral researchers🌟 for a NERC Large Grant project on the eco-evolutionary dynamics of badger - bovine tuberculosis (bTB) interactions.

Please share widely! Abstract submissions open for the 2026 Jacques Monod conference: Ecology and evolution of host-parasite interactions in a changing world! Held in beautiful Roscoff France from November 2- 6, 2026. Abstracts submission deadline : June 6 cjm.sb-roscoff.fr/en/conferenc...

New in @science.org ‼️ In the most comprehensive study to date, we show that wildlife trade is driving animal-to-human zoonotic spillover at a planetary scale, with +1 spillover per host every 10 years. Live animal markets and illegal trade pose even greater risks. 🔓 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Out Now! A global-scale assessment of zoonotic virus diversity and spillover potential in urban-adapted mammal species #MicroSky

Really excited to finally share this preprint on using museum specimens @alaskamuseum.bsky.social to study the origins of borealpox in small mammals! 🦠🐀 🔓⬇️ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Hi all. I am very excited that after 6 years I finally got my phylogenetic comparative methods book and online exercises online. Feel free to use and share. The book is here: nhcooper123.github.io/pcm-primer/. Note that it is not finished, we had to abandon it before the sunk costs fallacy broke us

The data is in: the NIH goalposts have shifted. What were once almost certain fundable scores have become coin flips and what used to be likely grants have become aspirational, leading to fewer awards. Another manifestation of how HHS policies have led to fewer awards and less science.

Congress rejected massive cuts to US science budgets for 2026, but much of the money still isn’t flowing to researchers. The culprit? The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is quietly slow-walking the release of funds. 🧵👇

The Senate may choose to vote together on the DHS and LHHS bills. Thus, a filibuster on DHS may mean no funding for NIH. What my colleagues are saying: “Shut it down, public health will understand. I’ll work without pay again.” - anonymous NIHer