Brian O'Meara

There's more to discover in UTK's natural history collections! Dr. Jessica Budke's Natural History Collections Research students visited the Entomology and Bird and Mammal Collections to explore how specimens help scientists understand biodiversity across generations. #NaturalHistoryCollections

New CRAN Policy revision just dropped (per my cronjob posting only to @CRANPolicyWatch@fosstodon.org) and now I want to of course know which #Rstats package at CRAN was the offender 🤯

Something I wish more people would realize.

Hear me out. AI-written articles go to journals for AI-writing edited by AI and get AI-written peer review. Human written articles go to human-edited journals and get human peer review. Let the market decide which journals beings with attention spans and money want to invest in.

I'm pleased to announce version 1.0 of `tact`, an app for stochastic polytomy resolution on phylogenies using taxonomy. A decade after the first line of code, scientists are still using `tact` to build complete trees of fish, termites, magnoliids, and more. Thank you! (🧵1/3)

Still amazed to be in a part of the world with giant leaves like this magnolia. Taken on Gentlemen’s swimming hole trail near Rugby, TN, USA

The 5-year cancer survival rate is up to 70% SIDS deaths have decreased by over 50% 89% decline in tornado deaths All thanks to federal investment in science and OUR tax dollars at work!

Just heard that apparently 72% of Integrative Biology seniors at UIUC graduating last year that responded to a survey participated in undergraduate research, which is kind of wild One wonders the numbers that @prairieresearch.bsky.social contributes to that which I don't think are currently tracked

“The strain is so virulent that if a single chicken tests positive, the U.S. government requires farmers to kill the whole flock” “And in studies using ferrets, a close relative of mink, the virus acquired mutations that let it attack human-type cell receptors.”

two people at my event last night couldn't wait in line to get their books signed so they went up to my DAD and asked HIM to sign their books so if you ever find a copy with "ALEX (FATHER)" written with palpable discomfort on the title page......that's why 😂

Ohio State is searching for an arthropod biologist (e.g. entomologist) at Associate/Full Professor level. They will join our Museum community and oversee the Triplehorn Insect Collection. osu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/OSUCareers/j...

Three years ago, my dad said that all fish are the same shape. Out of spite, I decided to draw all 478 families of bony fish listed in Nelson 2016. There's still some stuff I need to edit and some fish I want to redraw but, after 985 days, I finished my big dumb fish project last night.

Can birds help restore tropical rainforests? With support from the Breedlove, Dennis Fund, EEB graduate student Nicole Lussier studied how forest restoration practices affect seed dispersal in Ecuador's Chocó rainforest. Her findings could help improve reforestation efforts. #SeedDispersal

Nominations are due November 1st for speakers for the SSE Education and Outreach Symposium at #Evol2027: “Evolution in the Changing World.” Learn more and apply: www.evolutionsociety.org/news/display...

“as predicted…, there was a trend for more derived species to have lower rates” for coeval species on a phylogeny that has been pruned by both extinction and lack of sampling. Even IF speciation events led to effects, the vast majority are missing. (Subtweeting a paper) #BasalThinking

Keeping a copy of this for next time imposter syndrome hits.

Enormous news. A melanoma vaccine, one of the most deadly cancers out there. Science is good and helpful and there should be more of it. www.washingtonpost.com/health/2026/...

From the field to the database! Dr. Jessica Budke's EEB 330 Field Botany class visited TENN to learn how botanical collections support research and conservation. Students also tried crowdsourced transcription, which helped make specimen data accessible to researchers! #FieldBotany

My cover letter: “I’m a good fit for this position. People call me crusty, my hair is often described as ‘fruticose’, and like an endolithic lichen I’ll burrow deep into your institution but scatter my academic progeny to conquer the world. I won’t just bring a symbiosis: it’ll be a mutualism”

🚨Palaeoverse Lecture Series🚨 🗓️29th October 2026, 15:00 UTC🗓️ Next Thursday, @basantakhakurel.bsky.social from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München will talk about “Accounting for Rate Heterotachy in Morphological Phylogenetics: An overview in RevBayes”. Sign up: palaeoverse.org/training/lec...

This position is special: it comes with a significant endowment that generates annual interest that the future Lichenology Chair can use to fund research or personnel. It also is tenured (or w/ fast-track to tenure if the candidate is not in a tenure-track position). A sweet gig, that is for sure!

Exciting news!! I'm chairing the search in my department @lsubiosci.bsky.social for an **Endowed Chair in Lichenology**! The candidate should be tenured (or equivalent), and have a documented track record in excellent in collections-based lichen research. lsu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/LSU/jo...

Applications are due Nov. 1st for the International Travel Stipends, which provide support for registration, travel, meals, and lodging at #Evol2027 in Puerto Rico next June for early-career researchers from eligible countries. www.evolutionsociety.org/content/soci...

The Emily Dickinson Museum & the Amherst History Center are pleased to announce The Preferred Flower, an exhibition illuminating the expressive botanical paintings of Mabel Loomis Todd, the primary editor of Emily Dickinson’s posthumously published poetry www.emilydickinsonmu...

Please help spread the word -- our UM-EEB museums is hiring a digital artist/graphic designer to work with our communications team and create scientific illustrations for publications. Come work with us! careers.umich.edu/job_detail/2...

"I did not talk to anyone who worked in or with this Directorate, but my impression..." "Alternatively, the NSF could look outside of science for potential grant selectors, like McKinsey/Boston Consulting Group-style consultants or even prediction markets" Hard to take seriously for NSF "reform"

We're hiring a bird or mammal biologist (TT faculty position). Experience with collections is a huge plus. I'm not on the search committee, but happy to answer any questions. Come join us in Los Angeles! careers.pageuppeople.com/873/nr/en-us...

BREAKING: Major shakeup in NSF leadership. Brian Stone, who has been performing the duties of NSF director since April 2025, is retiring on Dec. 31. Rebecca Keiser, who has been acting chief of staff, is also retiring, Oct. 31. Unclear who will replace Stone, since O'Neill's nom hasn't moved.

I wrote up my "it's like finding your hat preference" analogy for MCMC: brianomeara.info/posts/mcmc/ -- it helps students understand burnin, hot and cold chains, RJMCMC, etc. #Teaching #Bayes 🧢 👑 👒 🎩 🪖 🎓

It is done. My magnum opus. My legacy.

I'm running MiSSeGreedy (#rstats, hisse package; similar use case as clads and BAMM). It's funny to see how the CPU usage cycles as it tries a bunch of models, finishes them, decides to do some more complex models, etc. Decisions I made coding it ~5 years ago becoming apparent from fan noise now!

Together with other scientists I’m suing the 🇺🇸 US National Institutes of Health for violating our 1st Amendment rights & censoring our health science. I’m ready to shine a light on the darkest days. Buckle up, read on. This gets pretty wild… THREAD

[tapping the sign] less money less science. more money more science.

Latest from the lab: brachiopod relationships by @mingzhuyang1412.bsky.social under the guidance of Sandy Carlson, Erik Sperling and Davide Pisani @bristolpalaeo.bsky.social, with hindrance by myself and others

“Keep going! Go back and tell your entire herd how much fun swimming is!!” Silly, but I remember an article that suggested some carnivorous plants attract and reward an ant early in the day, only to harvest the nest mates who come later. But I can’t find the reference at the moment.

🚨🚨🚨 ACTUAL ART JOB FOR HUMAN ARTIST🚨🚨🚨

When I was an undergrad, our physics prof made sure to show the dancing baby gif during her lecture (I think she had to leave powerpoint to fire up a web browser), so we all could get to see it. Imagine ~200 Harvard undergrads raptly watching a gif. Now you can, too! Thanks @archive.org

Hello all NSF GRFP Letter Writers - just a reminder they are due TODAY!!! #academia #academicsky #professors

I figured I would make a PSA since NSF GRFPs are due soon. Make sure to follow all the formatting requirements exactly as written, and have "Intellectual Merit" and "Broader Impacts" on their own separate lines. I'd hate for anyone to get auto-rejected! www.nsf.gov/funding/init...

targets is one of my favorite things in #rstats.

We’re developing a database of opsins—light-sensitive protein. One reason is to simulate the evolution of color sensitivity. Seth Frazer and I joined student journalist Momin Ahmed Khaki to discuss our work in this SICB interview: youtu.be/MIEy79nv5N8