Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Eliot Miller

Dr Alex Bond @thelabandfield.bsky.social · 4d

Well, it's official. After our paper last year (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....), the Slender-billed Curlew is officially declared Extinct today.

Scientists dream of describing new species, not writing their obituary and epitaph, knowing that they are gone forever #ornithology

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Reposted by Eliot Miller

Kyle Horton @kyle-horton.bsky.social · 6d

Another massive movement of migratory birds underway tonight — nearly 1 Billion Birds! With the full moon, you might be able to see some silhouettes zipping by. You can make your own flow maps here (just hit record): aeroecolab.com/uslights

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Reposted by Eliot Miller

Katie Langin @klangin.bsky.social · 17d

Today was a hard day for Ph.D. students who found out that they can no longer apply for NSF's prestigious Graduate Research Fellowship Program. "Devastating“ was how one student described it to me. #GradSchool #NSFGRFP

www.science.org/content/arti...

‘Completely shattered.’ Changes to NSF’s graduate student fellowship spur outcry

The announcement comes months later than usual, leaving many would-be applicants stranded

www.science.org

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Reposted by Eliot Miller

Elizabeth Hobson @elizabethhobson.bsky.social · 20d

**PhD POSITIONS** I am recruiting 1-2 PhD students to work on sociality and cognition in Monk Parakeets, starting Fall 2026. Full ad is here: hobsonresearch.com/index.php/20... (please help spread the word!)

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Eliot Miller @eliotmiller.bsky.social · 22d

I had no idea there used to be a marine-based mink species in eastern North America! Super interesting, also sad. Only recently pushed to extinction en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_mink

Sea mink - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Reposted by Eliot Miller

Lyn Heideman @heidelyn.bsky.social · 29d

How many species have been rediscovered? Which were surprising? What are the prospects for finding the remaining lost species? Learn more in a free webinar from @birdsoftheworld.bsky.social on Sept. 18 @ noon ET: birdsoftheworld.org/bow/news/sea.... #birds 🌎

Birds of the World - BOW Seminar: Lost & Found - The Race to Rediscover Lost Birds

Lost & Found – The Race to Rediscover Lost Birds Date/Time: 18 September 2025 – 12:00 pm ET Speakers: John Mittermeier (Search for Lost Birds Director) and Alex Berryman (Sr. Red List Officer, Birdlif...

birdsoftheworld.org

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Eliot Miller @eliotmiller.bsky.social · Sep 13

We've curated some exciting new phylogenies, and those will be incorporated in v1.6, which should be released within the next two months. That'll be available in the new unified global avian taxonomy, aka Avilist www.birds.cornell.edu/home/avilist...

AviList: A Unified Global Checklist of the World's Birds is Now Available

AviList, a unified global checklist of birds, that provides the most current and authoritative taxonomy of birds around the world was released today by experts in taxonomy, nomenclature, and bioinform...

www.birds.cornell.edu

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Eliot Miller @eliotmiller.bsky.social · Sep 13

We just pushed a new version of the global bird phylogeny to Github. Updated topology (v1.5), and now in the most recent Clements/eBird taxonomy. We'll push to CRAN soon too, but head over and grab the most recent clootl version now. @snacktavish.bsky.social github.com/eliotmiller/...

GitHub - eliotmiller/clootl

Contribute to eliotmiller/clootl development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

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Reposted by Eliot Miller

Casey terHorst @ecoevolab.bsky.social · Sep 8

The GRFP lives!! (due end of October)
www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)

www.nsf.gov

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Reposted by Eliot Miller

Darren Irwin (he / him) @darrenirwin.bsky.social · Sep 8

Like woodpeckers? Or population genomics? Or three-species hybridization? Or selective sweeps?

Then this is for you!

The typeset version of "Evidence for ancient selective sweeps followed by differentiation among three species of Sphyrapicus sapsuckers" is published today:

doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

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Eliot Miller @eliotmiller.bsky.social · Sep 8

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Reposted by Eliot Miller

Alexander Lees @alexanderlees.bsky.social · Sep 5

Some validation for my recent efforts in uploading some old images of unidentified species to @inaturalist.bsky.social – turns out I photographed an undescribed poison-dart frog in the Western Amazon 18 years ago 🌎 🧪🐸🪶 #ornithology #herpetology 🧵1/21

Photo of Metallic Poison Frog (Ranitomeya aquamarina)

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Reposted by Eliot Miller

Neil Gilbert @gilbert-lab.bsky.social · Aug 21

our paper on how light pollution affects bird vocal behavior is out today in Science!!

w/ @brentpease.bsky.social

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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Eliot Miller @eliotmiller.bsky.social · Aug 26

Goes for walk. Sees medium-sized healthy gray dog thing. Yup, all well here. Nothing a little first aid cream won't fix.

* Shots. Good point. Still definitely get them!

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Eliot Miller @eliotmiller.bsky.social · Aug 26

#ivermectin #walkitoff

Eliot Miller @eliotmiller.bsky.social · Aug 26

Bad plan. Definitely get a rabies shot.

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Reposted by Eliot Miller

Andre Moncrieff @andremoncrieff.bsky.social · Aug 25

🐦🔬 Recruiting PhD students! 🌎🧬
I’m looking for 1–2 PhD students to join our team starting Fall 2026 at the Sam Noble Museum & University of Oklahoma.

Our research: 🐦 birds • 🌍 biogeography • 🌴 Neotropics • 🧬 population genomics • 🌱 speciation

👉 Learn more: www.moncriefflab.org

Please share!

Moncrieff Lab | Bird Evolution

The Moncrieff Lab is a research lab based at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History on the campus of the University of Oklahoma. Research in the lab involves museum specimens, fieldwork, and...

www.moncriefflab.org

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Reposted by Eliot Miller

Jonathan Myers @jamyersecology.bsky.social · Aug 19

A big congratulations to William Farhan-Rios on this paper in @pnas.org, featuring a study of tropical-forest change over four decades along the Amazon-to-Andes elevational gradient in Bolivia and Peru 🌴 ⛰️ 🌐

@mobotgarden.bsky.social @livingearthcollab.bsky.social

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www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Amazonian and Andean tree communities are not tracking current climate warming | PNAS

Climate change is shifting species distributions, leading to changes in community composition and novel species assemblages worldwide. However, the...

www.pnas.org

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Eliot Miller @eliotmiller.bsky.social · Aug 18

Poison sumac is like poison ivy. Only worse.

Reposted by Eliot Miller

Diego F. Morales-Briones @dfmoralesb.bsky.social · Aug 14

Happy to see this one out. We did a phylogenetic analysis of African Sesuvium using herbarium collections and genome skimming. We assembled ~9000 loci from orthologous genes identified from transcriptome data. We also described a new species! 🌿 #evobio #iamabotanist

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Phylogenomics and Systematics of African Sesuvium (Aizoaceae)

Sesuvium (Sesuvioideae-Aizoaceae) comprises leaf succulent annual and perennial herbs distributed in coastal or saline sites of subtropical and tropical regions. Some species of the genus tolerate hig...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Eliot Miller

Tom Kimmerer, PhD @tomkimmerer.bsky.social · Aug 13

One of our most beautiful native trees is Franklinia, Franklinia alatamaha. First seen on the Altamaha River in what is now Georgia in 1765 and transplanted to the northeastern US, it is now extinct in the wild. Read the amazing story of this tree at Our Trees.

Franklinia and Tree Extinction

How a tree became extinct in the wild, but was rescued.

open.substack.com

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Eliot Miller @eliotmiller.bsky.social · Aug 9

Don't be me!

Fairly new to Python, transforming data, and I discovered log1p, a "more numerically accurate way to compute log(1+x) when x is very close to zero".

Genius! The number of times I've had to hand-code this in R, and it's more accurate?!

Just realized log1p is also a base fxn in R 💩

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Eliot Miller @eliotmiller.bsky.social · Aug 8

Great graphics and article, featuring a highly technical and very scientific quote by a sassy bird doctor

www.allaboutbirds.org/news/birds-d...

As Birds Decline, High-Precision eBird Models Offer a Vision of Hope

Five years after the 3 Billion Birds Lost research, a follow-up study published in the journal Science showed how eBird Trends can reveal the patterns behind America's bird declines—and pinpoint areas...

www.allaboutbirds.org

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Reposted by Eliot Miller

Margarita @margarita.bsky.social · Aug 4

It's nice to see more discussion about the origin of pigeons that, like gentle and humble dandelions, follow in the dismissive wreckage of human history, without any fault of their own.

We once loved pigeons. We might not remember that, but they do | Joseph Earp

The gentle, beautiful curiosity of humans led to the discovery that these birds are able to differentiate between paintings by Monet and Picasso

www.theguardian.com

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Eliot Miller @eliotmiller.bsky.social · Aug 3

It's all fun and games til someone gets poked in the bird book