Bryan Gitschlag
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bryangitschlag.bsky.social
Bryan Gitschlag
@bryangitschlag.bsky.social
1.1K followers 480 following 350 posts
Evolutionary biologist | postdoctoral fellow at Cold Spring Harbor Lab | predictive modeling | cooperation & conflict | animal physiology & behavior | evolution of biological diversity & complexity 🧬🏳️‍🌈✊
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bryangitschlag.bsky.social
"Are Americans becoming desensitized to violence?"

Just want to share this response from @raeshandalias.bsky.social

(By the way there have been more than 300 mass shootings in the USA so far in 2025, defined as "4 or more people killed or injured")

Quote source:
www.instagram.com/raeshanda_li...
Quote by RaeShanda Lias: Becoming? Desensitized? Are we not in the same America? Did you all forget that they used to take their children to lynchings? …they used to take their children, put them on their shoulders, and watch somebody else die, from a tree. They made a whole day out of it. So I’m not even sure what this question is about. This country has been desensitized to violence.
September 11, 2025 at 3:38 PM
bryangitschlag.bsky.social
NEW PAPER! Some kinds of genetic mutations are more likely to arise than others. Such "biases" in mutation vary between species.

Analyzing data from 14 species, we show that this variation explains species differences in the genetics of adaptation!

(1/3)

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Graph showing a positive correlation between "bias in adaptive outcome" on the vertical axis and "mutation bias" on the horizontal axis, with 14 data points representing 14 respective species, with a line of best fit equal to a slope of 0.82 on the log-scale axes. Each data point contains horizontal and vertical error bars to illustrate the uncertainty in both the mutational and adaptive data. The 95% confidence interval of the slope is shown in parentheses (0.44 to 1.24), based on 10,000 simulated data sets, where the simulated data sets are based on statistical resampling of the empirical data (i.e. "bootstrap" data sets). Regression lines based on these bootstrap data sets are shown as light gray lines. The type of bias reported here refers to the ratio of transitions versus transversions, where transitions are a DNA mutation that preserves the basic structure of the DNA base (i.e. a purine-to-purine or pyrimidine-to-pyrimidine mutation), and transversions are mutations that alter the structure of the DNA base at a particular site (i.e. replacing a purine with a pyrimidine or vice versa). In other words, this graph shows that transitions contribute more toward adaptive evolution in species where transitions arise at a higher rate.
September 8, 2025 at 7:38 PM
bryangitschlag.bsky.social
If the worm even so much as perceives starvation (e.g. if you deactivate the insulin receptor, DAF-2), resources are diverted away from germline development and toward maintenance of soma (e.g. higher fat storage), bringing a 2-fold lifespan extension.

(2/3)
Comparison of wild-type worms (an experimental control) versus mutant worms (defective for the insulin signaling receptor DAF-2) with respect to fat staining, showing the DAF-2 mutants to score higher for fat storage. Comparison of the germline of wild-type worms (an experimental control) versus mutant worms (defective for the insulin signaling receptor DAF-2) with respect to DNA staining that illuminates cell nuclei, showing the DAF-2 mutants to produce fewer oocytes (female gametes). Comparison of wild-type worms (an experimental control) versus mutant worms (defective for the insulin signaling receptor DAF-2) with respect to survival over time, showing the DAF-2 mutants to live longer.
July 29, 2025 at 3:34 PM
bryangitschlag.bsky.social
Oh that sounds fascinating!

Incidentally, you reminded me of this meme I made during the end of grad school…
June 15, 2025 at 1:23 PM
bryangitschlag.bsky.social
We’ve sunk sooo much money on green lacewing larvae 😳

Sharing our living room fig tree, morning glories, and kitchen window (in that order) for context.
Window as viewed from inside, with a shelf on the left half adorned by bonsai trees and a fig tree with queen of the night cactus in the right half. Purple morning glory flower being held in front of the camera with miscellaneous plants in the background. Window as viewed from inside, with plants filling nearly the entire surface area of the window.
June 13, 2025 at 1:42 PM
bryangitschlag.bsky.social
One of the @cshlnews.bsky.social resident deer making herself at home, just outside the auditorium.🥹
May 30, 2025 at 1:51 PM
bryangitschlag.bsky.social
What progressives want for trans people is safety & equal rights.

Focusing on stuff like leftwing “language policing” trivializes & misleads about what is at stake.

It seems @thirdway.bsky.social co-founder Jonathan Cowan is repeating rightwing talking points.

1/
Screen shot of part of the third paragraph from the Politico Op-Ed being responded to in the OP, with highlighted text that reads “progressive activists police our language, attempting to shame those who step out of line or do not agree with every item on their agenda.”
May 30, 2025 at 12:41 AM
bryangitschlag.bsky.social
It's been 10 years since we brought home Phyllis Domesticus 🥰

(While you're here, use this link to find the contact info of your congress people:
www.congress.gov/contact-us
Donation page for Rainforest Trust:
www.rainforesttrust.org?form=donation
Раlestіne Children's Rеlіеf Fund:
www.pcrf.net)
Tortoiseshell cat (black face with varying brown and black across the body) resting on a fuzzy blanket and sticking her tongue out.
May 14, 2025 at 10:48 PM
bryangitschlag.bsky.social
Made this one in April 2017 for the first March for Science. So disheartening to think it would be relevant again.
Protest sign in favor of science (in protest of anti-science government policy), featuring a cartoonish depiction of an oversimplified linear progression of human evolution from left to right, followed by symbols of scientific advancement including a space shuttle, a diagram of an atom, and a microscope. Text above and below the image reads “we’ve come too far to give up now.”
March 3, 2025 at 8:09 PM
bryangitschlag.bsky.social
Happy Darwin Day!

Enjoy some of my favorite excerpts from 'Origin'...

1st: he came this close 🤏 to figuring out Mendelian genetics. If only he had put numbers on those observations!

2nd: proposed the basics of inclusive fitness theory, now a leading explanation for evolution of animal altruism.
Highlighted excerpt from Darwin's book On the Origin of Species, which reads: "The offspring from the first cross between two pure breeds is tolerably and sometimes (as I have found with pigeons) extremely uniform, and everything seems simple enough; but when these mongrels are crossed one with another for several generations, hardly two of them will be alike,..." Highlighted excerpt from Darwin's book On the Origin of Species, which reads: "Thus I believe it has been with social insects: a slight modification of structure, or instinct, correlated with the sterile condition of certain members of the community, has been advantageous to the community: consequently the fertile males and females of the same community flourished, and transmitted to their fertile offspring a tendency to produce sterile members having the same modification."
February 12, 2025 at 8:44 PM
bryangitschlag.bsky.social
One (4) more…
February 7, 2025 at 11:46 PM
bryangitschlag.bsky.social
As long as we’re sharing our favorite psychonaut memes…
February 7, 2025 at 11:44 PM
bryangitschlag.bsky.social
Maybe I’m seeing things but these look like they could be vertically flipped versions of each other.
January 29, 2025 at 11:24 AM
bryangitschlag.bsky.social
The Birdcage (arguably one of the best rom-coms).

Armand: "Katie Archer, or is it Mrs. Something?"

Katharine Archer:
January 17, 2025 at 8:10 PM
bryangitschlag.bsky.social
3. I collect sand from places I've been. Well, places that have sand, anyway. (I store them in test tubes).
Wooden test tube rack containing a row of eight test tubes, each of which is about one-third filled with sand and labeled with a location (from left to right: Iraq, Zanzibar, Tanzania, Jamaica, Mexico, Haiti, Cayman Islands, Saint Thomas).
December 4, 2024 at 4:10 PM
bryangitschlag.bsky.social
Our cockatiel Cici waltzed onto the cutting board.

On Thanksgiving.

Lookin’ at us like “hey! so what are we having?”
November 28, 2024 at 5:02 PM
bryangitschlag.bsky.social
Hi Connie! 🥹

Our (male) cockatiel is named Cici, and his partner was named Spike. I’m guessing their previous humans had a similar thing going on with the naming as what you described 😅
Cockatiel on a wood and rope perch as seen from slightly below. Cockatiel and human resting on the same pillow.
November 24, 2024 at 7:55 PM
bryangitschlag.bsky.social
Oh I should add we also have feral quaker parrots here in NYC!

I took this video of them in Brooklyn, hanging out in a crabapple tree and fighting over pieces of fruit 😆
November 24, 2024 at 12:19 AM
bryangitschlag.bsky.social
Meet Lapis, our quaker parrot.

Before having parrots I had never appreciated how mind-bogglingly intelligent these animals are. They don’t just mindlessly mimic; as social animals, their vocal behavior has a social function and they often learn the appropriate context for the sounds they make.
November 23, 2024 at 11:51 PM
bryangitschlag.bsky.social
Title and first few lines of the 1971 paper “Selection and Covariance” by George R. Price.
November 21, 2024 at 4:26 AM
bryangitschlag.bsky.social
I used to do pet photography (here’s a bit of my work) 🙂

What’s something you enjoy doing (or used to do) besides your current profession?
November 20, 2024 at 2:13 PM
bryangitschlag.bsky.social
Some of my photography from over the years.

If you have a creative side, I'd love to see your work!

#art #photography
Close-up of a nearly full moon surrounded by a black sky. Members of the Hadza Tribe (about 15 to 20) dancing in a circle outdoors on a sunny day in a wooded area of northern Tanzania. A wave in the foreground washing onto the white sand of a beach in northern Zanzibar with a sunset on the horizon and a sailboat about 100 meters from the shoreline. A waterfall spilling over an overhanging ledge into a rocky stream below, surrounding by a wet, mossy green forest in the Pacific Northwest.
November 15, 2024 at 4:42 PM
bryangitschlag.bsky.social
Y’all think I’m joking. They have a bite force roughly equivalent to that of the peregrine falcon, a bird that is six times larger…

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
November 13, 2024 at 11:23 PM
bryangitschlag.bsky.social
Bird fact: your chances of being murdеrеd by a quaker parrot are low, but never zero.

#birds
November 13, 2024 at 4:31 PM
bryangitschlag.bsky.social
Aww! Beautiful…Samoyed? (I’m guessing).

I don’t have a doggo but here’s our quaker parrot Lapis.
November 12, 2024 at 11:38 PM