Rod Page

Someone on iNaturalist thinks this incredible moss-mimicking katydid I photographed in Ecuador is an undescribed species, no idea if that is true, but definitely possible, would be so cool if a taxonomist someday used these photos to describe a new species! www.inaturalist.org/observations...

Getting ready to soft launch something this week in Ottawa..

this is an excellent piece and I encourage all academics to give it a read: it articulates more clearly than I've seen elsewhere the reasons underlying the anxiety many of us in science have regarding the risks that commercial AI presents to the public goods we spend our lives creating

Live: STM - Frankfurt 2026 - Knowledge Infrastructure Responsible AI And that's a wrap from me (I'm about to run out of battery, but I've made it throgh the day) and what a fantastic day it's been… https://blog.mulvany.net/posts/stm-frankfurt-2016-knowledge-infrastructure-responsible-ai#live-blog

Out in MEC! Salis et al. studied DNA preservation in museum specimens by comparing frozen tissue, dried skins, skeletons, and fluid preserved across a variety of taxa. How does each work for genetic research? @wileyecology.bsky.social 🔗: buff.ly/zR7vva0 📷️: Christopher J Raxworthy

I would also add that if the Kenyan national lab hadn't sequenced the cases and made the genomes available publicly, this connection could not have been made in time to actually act on the information and potentially save other lives. The Nigerian labs have also shared their genome within hours.

Last day to register for the free math phylo autumn school at vietnam institute of advanced study of math, hanoi viasm.edu.vn/hdkh/Mathema...

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.

The National Library of Australia has quietly decommissioned its MapSearch service: https://mapsearch.nla.gov.au Links to GeoTIFFs and georeferencing data are now all broken. #maps #GLAM

Yup.

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 have written to @theguardian.com to ask them to correct their false claim that "just 19% of [English Wikipedia]’s biography entries are for women", made in two separate articles in recent days. The 20% mark was reached in December 2024 and the % continues to rise en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...

We've had a good spread of responses, but more data means more insight into libraries' decision-making processes when choosing to support #OpenAccess initiatives - so please take a few moments to complete our survey or share with colleagues! Consider it your contribution to #OAWeek! 📚

Gustaf Oskar Andersson Malme https://bionomia.net/Q429017 collected the holotype EUPHORBIACEAE: Julocroton humilis var. malmei Croizat in Brazil https://gbif.org/occurrence/1999019038 #TypeSpecimenToday

I used Claude and my actual reading data to project the likely point at which I will no longer be able to read all of my to-read list before I die

Saving Knowledge It turns out, what I "knew" about the Library of Alexandria was junk history, springing from the intersection of ancient and urban myths. I didn't realize that till recently. The library wasn't a collection in a single giant building, and it never held all the knowledge of ancient…

A presentation about a proposed #Wikidata type specimen data model I recently gave at the Wikidata WikiProjects Days event. Slides and script can be found here doi.org/10.5281/zeno.... Slides have also been uploaded into Wikimedia Commons commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mo...

They did it, those crazy bastards!

❔Do you want to get involved in biodiversity data standards at the global level? ❓Advance the state of biodiversity informatics? 🌞This is your opportunity to shine, apply for one of the open positions for the TDWG Executive Committee. 🗓️ Apply by Nov 13th, 2026 🔗 tdwg.link/executive-no...

On the way to the #openalex community meeting https://openalex.org/events/paris2026 . Happy to discuss and collaborate around the coverage of #openaccess (especially #diamondopenaccess ), #openscience, #mathematics, #biodiversity, #Wikimedia / #WikiCite as well as non-traditional publication […]

it seems to shock the New Zealand government that Peter Jackson, Taika Waititi, and the Conchords etc all emerged from the same city in the same span, which coincidentally is when Wellington rent was dirt-cheap and there were heaps of empty industrial buildings around

PhD position in arctic protists at the Natural History Museum in Oslo #arctic #marine #protists #diversity #ecology #metabarcoding

Wikidata Service Query Days starting 1600 UTC today. A week on the migration of Wikidata SPARQL from Blazegraph to QLever. www.wikidata.org/wiki/Event:Q...

A rare opportunity to work on natural history collections with a great team at National Museums Northern Ireland. Curator for vertebrates, closing 27 October, £37,694 to £38,990 per annum ce0568li.webitrent.com/ce0568li_web...

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

Just leave me in here. I'll be happy.

I'm thrilled to share my first foray into nature writing. I describe my travels through Aotearoa New Zealand to see the country's rarest birds—and use this as a vehicle to tell the stories of the islands' evolutionary history and the bold conservation efforts that saved these creatures. Gift link

@rdmpage.bsky.social DId you have anything specific in mind here, or just a general miasma of disappointment?

The Folders Programming Language https://danieltemkin.com/esolangs/folders https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50114342

Meet the French seamstress turned scientist who solved the ancient mystery of the argonaut, pioneered the aquarium, and paved the way for the study of octopus intelligence www.themarginalian.org/2022/12/26/j...

A squid banquet with worm fillings - I've written a post about the parasites which infect oceanic squids and use them as a way to climb up the food chain. 🦑🦈🐋 Not even the giant squid is spared as these worms used them as a way to reach sharks and whales 🧪 dailyparasite.blogspot.com/2026/10/anis...

Professorship (W2) of Computational Plant Systematics (6 years/tenure track). New job offer in our biology department @lmu.de 👇. Please apply and help to spread the word. www.nature.com/naturecareer... #PlantSciJob #PlantScience

Speaking from both having directly assessed edtech apps for kids' learning outcomes, AND having a nonverbal family member, AND as a psychologist interested in AI and technology empowerment, AND years of ed&tech efficacy work: this rules

Major milestone for open data metrics! Make Data Count and @digital-science.com released an open collection of connections between research data and papers, that gives the community a shared foundation for understanding how data is reused...and for building open data metrics! doi.org/10.60804/yg9...

Kind of hilarious

We love it when people use BHL's #OpenAccess images in creative and beautiful ways. These are stunning! #SciArt 🧪📔🌱

From BHL's new chapter to new collaborations in biodiversity informatics! BHL's @nicolekearney.bsky.social reflects on #TDWG2026 and @gbif.org #GB33 in Oslo, including our BHL symposium, workshop, and the connections that make it all possible: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2026/10/tdwg... 🧪 🔗 🌱 🌏

Great, all the LLMs are going to become advocates for (human, orangutan). 😉