Jacob Tennessen

Slug enjoying a jumping spider jack-o-lantern

Portland OR controls its crow population (non-lethally) with hawks. www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts... Curious how portrayal of Portland crows in a popular stop motion animation will affect public sentiment about this.

New paper! We found additional loci impacting snail resistance to schistosome parasites. We re-examined old mapping data by aligning to a new improved reference genome, letting us find new hits. Genome assembly reveals information previously hidden in plain sight. journals.plos.org/plosntds/art...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Black-tailed deer, Leavenworth, WA. Looks like the jungle but this is in someone’s lawn on a residential street.

Happy Indigenous People's Day! I'm grateful for the many Native friends and teachers I have had over the years, starting when I was a baby. I'm actually going to be speaking about my experience as a white kid in indigenous Alaska on Sunday, come join (Vancouver, WA): uucvan.org/services/sub...

So, Nat'ralists observe, a Flea Hath smaller Fleas that on him prey, And these have smaller Fleas to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

On both the left and right, there is a significant association between genotype (GG / AG / AA) and phenotype (red vs blue). But to odds ratio per allele on the right is more than double that on the left (5.2 vs 2.1), even though visually they don't look all that different.

It's the Eocene. You're told that in 45 million years all of these lineages will remain but only one figures out DNA sequencing. On whom do you place your bet? And what are realistic odds for each one if you could run the experiment 1000 times?

Hey Olympia, Washington! Come hear me talk about the science and humanity of gender this Sunday: www.ouuc.org

Reviewing another paper. There’s an AI generated figure with at least ten distinct errors easily seen just by comparing it with the accompanying table. It’s just a map of collection sites, nothing sophisticated. If AI is this bad and authors this lazy in these simple cases, what else is wrong?

Countries that share the last four letters of their name (in English)

I don't believe in astrology but I do think it affects people's behavior when mercury is in scombridae

What should we call this protein that affects your fatty acid metabolism? Oh I know

This week's bittersweet accomplishment: getting a grant proposal approved by a federal agency with no money to actually fund it.

Just realized I've peer-reviewed for 75 journals in my career thus far. Feels like a milestone.

New paper! We looked at how clinical metrics are correlated with disease severity in a cohort of malaria patients in Goa, India. More parasites = worse disease, but it's not as simple as counting cells in a blood sample since the sneaky parasites hide in other tissues. www.ajtmh.org/view/journal...

“The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the church.” -Robert Ingersoll

Needless to say, I rejected it

Reviewing a paper, and I'm pleased to see that they cite me. Less pleased to see it's a paper that I never wrote. Chatgpt is ruining science.

How ancient diseases were named Italians: This one’s probably caused by the influence of the planets, so we’ll call it influenza. And I bet that one’s from bad air, so it shall be known as malaria Egyptians: I went to pee and blood came out! ĀĀĀ!

A couple of books I’ve read recently that made me believe, not in God, but in humanity and our path forward

Visited here recently. Turns out the real apes were the friends we made along the way. #cladistics

“What’s your Myers–Briggs?” “Oh, I’m non-hexadecimal”

Made some buttons with kids this morning

Mosquito population genomics continues to deliver bad news. Please keep funding us if you want additional discouraging updates! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The team of element men remains pretty meager and I think there’s room to add more.

When I was in elementary school it would have seemed laughable to teach “smoke” alongside rain, snow, etc. as a standard type of weather. Now it seems laughable not to.

When I was a kid, a friend rejected evolution because he equated "mutant" with "diseased" and didn't want to descend from a "sick monkey". But now that "sick" has a positive slang meaning, maybe we should embrace the term. I'm proud to be descended from a sick (complimentary) monkey!

iNaturalist just updated the genus Bison to merge with Bos, as in cattle, reflecting recent genetic analysis and the fact they can readily interbreed. In fact all living American bison are directly descended in part from domestic cattle; the original wild bison is gone, and only Bos hybrids remain.

In a single generation, the default repetitive melody associated with sharks has changed from dun-dun dun-dun dun-dun to doo-doo doo-doo-doo-doo.

Background info for the audience prior to a production of Taming of the Shrew

A suctorial organism lives by sucking. That is, its whole strategy for life is just to suck. Consider adding this word to your regular vocabulary.

Two of the most iconic Pacific Northwest species are the Pacific chorus frog (Pseudacris regilla) and the Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii). Both are “false” (pseudo-). It’s the land of real organisms with fake names.

Hello, I am a brain. I crave dopamine above all things. I can freely administer dopamine to myself and I alone control it. However I can only do this according to arbitrary rules I have made up. Sometimes my rules don’t allow me to give myself as much as I want. This is the source of all anguish.

I mourn poetry's prominent role That internet acronyms stole. Because I don't know how To pronounce "lmao" So I can't write a verse with it, lol.

I just commented on the OMB's Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance and you can too (due TODAY)! If enacted, I'd lose my first amendment right to even make these comments, since I'd live in fear that I'd lose my grant-supported salary if I said the wrong thing. www.aps.org/initiatives/...