Chris Anderson
@cnanderson.bsky.social
I study evolution, ecology, & behavior and teach at a Hispanic Serving Institution. Interested in Broadening Participation in STEM. Greater Chicago Area. He/him.
Reposted by Chris Anderson
To simplify: the thing that made American higher-ed unique was the institutional organization around education as a PUBLIC GOOD, rather than as an elite training ground, or job training.
This aspect is nearly dead, killed by a thousand budget cuts.
This aspect is nearly dead, killed by a thousand budget cuts.
Really important to stress that the Crown Jewels of the US higher education system were never the Ivies or elite SLACs (other countries have equivalents of these) but the well-funded, large, cheap, and excellently staffed public state university systems bringing high quality education to the masses.
One of the bragging rights that the US ed system had in the 20th century is that we didn't have education tracks. Essentially, any kid could go to a CC or state school & major in whatever they wanted to (obviously an oversimplification). I fear this aspect of the American dream is dying.
November 23, 2025 at 5:56 PM
To simplify: the thing that made American higher-ed unique was the institutional organization around education as a PUBLIC GOOD, rather than as an elite training ground, or job training.
This aspect is nearly dead, killed by a thousand budget cuts.
This aspect is nearly dead, killed by a thousand budget cuts.
Reposted by Chris Anderson
Going on record:
My posts are a SAFE ZONE FOR PEDANTRY. Being corrected on "minor details" continues our learning & it's a humbling, useful experience.
Some of my most pedantic positions:
Apes are monkeys.
Dolphins are whales.
Tortoises are turtles.
Let's talk about taxonomy & nested hierarchies.
My posts are a SAFE ZONE FOR PEDANTRY. Being corrected on "minor details" continues our learning & it's a humbling, useful experience.
Some of my most pedantic positions:
Apes are monkeys.
Dolphins are whales.
Tortoises are turtles.
Let's talk about taxonomy & nested hierarchies.
November 23, 2025 at 3:12 PM
Going on record:
My posts are a SAFE ZONE FOR PEDANTRY. Being corrected on "minor details" continues our learning & it's a humbling, useful experience.
Some of my most pedantic positions:
Apes are monkeys.
Dolphins are whales.
Tortoises are turtles.
Let's talk about taxonomy & nested hierarchies.
My posts are a SAFE ZONE FOR PEDANTRY. Being corrected on "minor details" continues our learning & it's a humbling, useful experience.
Some of my most pedantic positions:
Apes are monkeys.
Dolphins are whales.
Tortoises are turtles.
Let's talk about taxonomy & nested hierarchies.
Reposted by Chris Anderson
Kestrels are such handsome birds. Lots out and about today, their plumage even more striking than usual. This shot captures the colors and patterns well.
November 22, 2025 at 11:08 PM
Kestrels are such handsome birds. Lots out and about today, their plumage even more striking than usual. This shot captures the colors and patterns well.
Reposted by Chris Anderson
Proud of @emmasbacon.bsky.social who defended yesterday (co-advised @paqlab.bsky.social). 6 months of fieldwork, countless doors knocked on, 28000+ trees IDd, & an incredible MSc thesis on Montréal’s urban forest! While playing in an orchestra & publishing 3 side projects 🤩. Someone hire her ASAP! 😉
November 22, 2025 at 11:06 PM
Proud of @emmasbacon.bsky.social who defended yesterday (co-advised @paqlab.bsky.social). 6 months of fieldwork, countless doors knocked on, 28000+ trees IDd, & an incredible MSc thesis on Montréal’s urban forest! While playing in an orchestra & publishing 3 side projects 🤩. Someone hire her ASAP! 😉
Reposted by Chris Anderson
I wrote a little bit about the "missing heritability" question and several recent studies that have brought it to a close. A short 🧵
The missing heritability question is now (mostly) answered
Not with a bang but with a whimper
theinfinitesimal.substack.com
November 21, 2025 at 10:34 PM
I wrote a little bit about the "missing heritability" question and several recent studies that have brought it to a close. A short 🧵
Reposted by Chris Anderson
Hot off the press! Our latest paper led by @fernpizza.bsky.social, understanding how plasmids evolve inside cells. These small, self-replicating DNA circles live inside bacteria and carry antibiotic resistance genes, but also compete with one another to replicate. 1/
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Intracellular competition shapes plasmid population dynamics
From populations of multicellular organisms to selfish genetic elements, conflicts between levels of biological organization are central to evolution. Plasmids are extrachromosomal, self-replicating g...
www.science.org
November 20, 2025 at 9:42 PM
Hot off the press! Our latest paper led by @fernpizza.bsky.social, understanding how plasmids evolve inside cells. These small, self-replicating DNA circles live inside bacteria and carry antibiotic resistance genes, but also compete with one another to replicate. 1/
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Reposted by Chris Anderson
Big news: I’m writing a book!!
I’ll be writing & illustrating a beginner’s guide to appreciating wildlife in cities/suburbs, & how all of us can make our neighborhoods better for those animals.
Thank you to my book agent @ericsmithrocks.bsky.social & the folks at Storey for believing in this book!
I’ll be writing & illustrating a beginner’s guide to appreciating wildlife in cities/suburbs, & how all of us can make our neighborhoods better for those animals.
Thank you to my book agent @ericsmithrocks.bsky.social & the folks at Storey for believing in this book!
November 20, 2025 at 2:26 PM
Big news: I’m writing a book!!
I’ll be writing & illustrating a beginner’s guide to appreciating wildlife in cities/suburbs, & how all of us can make our neighborhoods better for those animals.
Thank you to my book agent @ericsmithrocks.bsky.social & the folks at Storey for believing in this book!
I’ll be writing & illustrating a beginner’s guide to appreciating wildlife in cities/suburbs, & how all of us can make our neighborhoods better for those animals.
Thank you to my book agent @ericsmithrocks.bsky.social & the folks at Storey for believing in this book!
Reposted by Chris Anderson
Rafflesia hasseltii: a plant seen more by tigers than people. Watching this flower open by night was the closest thing to magic:
November 19, 2025 at 1:36 AM
Rafflesia hasseltii: a plant seen more by tigers than people. Watching this flower open by night was the closest thing to magic:
Reposted by Chris Anderson
I am recruiting graduate students to my genomics-focused lab in EEB at Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Please spread the word if you know any students with an interest in a computational focus to genomics research! evol.mcmaster.ca/brian/evoldi...
https://evol.mcmaster.ca/brian/evoldir/GradStudentPositions//UIllinois.EEB.Genomics
The Catchen Lab (https://catchenlab.life.illinois.edu/), in the Department
of Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign is recruiting graduate students to join...
evol.mcmaster.ca
November 18, 2025 at 2:14 PM
I am recruiting graduate students to my genomics-focused lab in EEB at Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Please spread the word if you know any students with an interest in a computational focus to genomics research! evol.mcmaster.ca/brian/evoldi...
Reposted by Chris Anderson
Well this is super cool!! 🦋
#Monarch #butterfly tagging advances in the NY Times, they are arriving in #Mexico
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/17/s...
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/17/s...
We Can Now Track Individual Monarch Butterflies. It’s a Revelation.
www.nytimes.com
November 17, 2025 at 9:02 PM
Well this is super cool!! 🦋
Reposted by Chris Anderson
Reposted by Chris Anderson
A cluster of, I think, earwig eggs (although I didn't see the mother, who typically would be guarding them). What I especially like are the micro-droplets of condensation; each egg is at most 1 mm., so the droplets are incredibly small. Shot at 2X, ten handheld images stacked. 🐙🌿📷 #Bugsky 🥚
November 17, 2025 at 6:51 PM
A cluster of, I think, earwig eggs (although I didn't see the mother, who typically would be guarding them). What I especially like are the micro-droplets of condensation; each egg is at most 1 mm., so the droplets are incredibly small. Shot at 2X, ten handheld images stacked. 🐙🌿📷 #Bugsky 🥚
Reposted by Chris Anderson
Good news: If you would like to watch Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants on YouTube I have done a painstaking 4k upscale of this. www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0gW...
November 17, 2025 at 2:06 AM
Good news: If you would like to watch Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants on YouTube I have done a painstaking 4k upscale of this. www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0gW...
Reposted by Chris Anderson
Y'all wanna see a bot fly??? I hand collected this mothertrucker right out of the air when it was hovering at me at Natural Bridge State Park in Virginia. My first bot fly! No mouth parts cause the adults don't feed. Soooo wacky! www.inaturalist.org/observations...
November 17, 2025 at 2:37 AM
Y'all wanna see a bot fly??? I hand collected this mothertrucker right out of the air when it was hovering at me at Natural Bridge State Park in Virginia. My first bot fly! No mouth parts cause the adults don't feed. Soooo wacky! www.inaturalist.org/observations...
Reposted by Chris Anderson
After years of being curious but lazy, I finally got around to documenting what's inside the black walnuts in my yard. In the process I became obsessed with the strange wasp that hunts down the pupae of the resident flies. 🌿 #wasps #diapriidae #nature #diptera colinpurrington.com/2025/11/life...
Life inside rotting walnut husks » Colin Purrington's blog
There’s an eastern black walnut (Juglans nigra) on my neighbor’s property that rains down fruit every fall, and I finally got curious about what species might be inside. So far I’ve found four flies, ...
colinpurrington.com
November 16, 2025 at 10:26 PM
After years of being curious but lazy, I finally got around to documenting what's inside the black walnuts in my yard. In the process I became obsessed with the strange wasp that hunts down the pupae of the resident flies. 🌿 #wasps #diapriidae #nature #diptera colinpurrington.com/2025/11/life...
Reposted by Chris Anderson
The Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT, has a new exhibit: Ants - Tiny Creatures, Big Lives. We went today, and here are some impressions. It’s not a massive exhibit, but well done and certainly worth checking out if you’re in the area. The exhibit runs through May 17.
November 16, 2025 at 10:31 PM
The Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT, has a new exhibit: Ants - Tiny Creatures, Big Lives. We went today, and here are some impressions. It’s not a massive exhibit, but well done and certainly worth checking out if you’re in the area. The exhibit runs through May 17.
Reposted by Chris Anderson
I can attest this practice was common, and let me disabuse anyone who thinks practice went away because people realized the obvious unsafe working environment issues—it was Zoom that ended the conference hotel room interview.
If you are not in academia, you might not know this, but job interviews used to be held at conferences IN HOTEL ROOMS. Women candidates in a hotel room alone with often all-male committees. People sitting on beds! The horror stories I've heard.
I thing I sometimes thing about is that university departments were still doing job interviews in hotel rooms in the mid aughts
November 16, 2025 at 8:19 PM
I can attest this practice was common, and let me disabuse anyone who thinks practice went away because people realized the obvious unsafe working environment issues—it was Zoom that ended the conference hotel room interview.
Reposted by Chris Anderson
Pileated Woodpeckers are the largest woodpecker in North America and are nearly the size of a crow. They excavate deep into rotten wood to get at carpenter ant nests and leave behind rectangular holes. This is a female busy looking for food. 🪶
November 16, 2025 at 8:40 PM
Pileated Woodpeckers are the largest woodpecker in North America and are nearly the size of a crow. They excavate deep into rotten wood to get at carpenter ant nests and leave behind rectangular holes. This is a female busy looking for food. 🪶
Reposted by Chris Anderson
[FDR stares directly into the camera]
Bessent on tariffs: "This is one of President Trump's signature policies, and traditionally the Supreme Court does not interfere with a president's signature policy."
November 16, 2025 at 6:49 PM
[FDR stares directly into the camera]
Reposted by Chris Anderson
"Honestly, we met the frog like twice, tops, and didn’t really remember much about him. That’s why he’s only in the first verse of the song."
We Must Clarify That the Bullfrog Jeremiah Was, in Fact, a Mere Acquaintance
With apologies to Three Dog Night. - - -In the wake of recent events, we feel it’s time to speak up. We’ve heard your calls for a statement on the ...
buff.ly
November 16, 2025 at 5:45 PM
Reposted by Chris Anderson
This study is WILD - some dinosaurs (reptiles) had hooves, and this is now the earliest known fossil of a hooved animal. Even crazier, mammals may have secondarily LOST their hooves through evolutionary adaptations (the origin of hooves is still kinda murky) www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
November 16, 2025 at 3:25 PM
This study is WILD - some dinosaurs (reptiles) had hooves, and this is now the earliest known fossil of a hooved animal. Even crazier, mammals may have secondarily LOST their hooves through evolutionary adaptations (the origin of hooves is still kinda murky) www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Post your favorite Star Trek character. Wrong answers only.
November 15, 2025 at 3:42 PM
Post your favorite Star Trek character. Wrong answers only.
Reposted by Chris Anderson
Beautiful afternoon at the Botanic Garden.
November 14, 2025 at 11:10 PM
Beautiful afternoon at the Botanic Garden.
Reposted by Chris Anderson
Up close with a Texas cave scorpion from UT Austin's Brackenridge Field Lab.
November 14, 2025 at 9:48 PM
Up close with a Texas cave scorpion from UT Austin's Brackenridge Field Lab.