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doc-brock.bsky.social
Kinsey Brock
@doc-brock.bsky.social
2K followers 500 following 790 posts
Artíst 🐸 Asst. Professor 🐊 Curator of Reptiles & Amphibians at San Diego State University 🦎 Wild 4 wallies 🦎 Eco-evo in new and ancient cities 🐍 www.kinseybrock.com 🐢

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doc-brock.bsky.social
Kinsey Brock @doc-brock.bsky.social · Feb 1
Me, your PhD advisor:
A still of David Lynch hunched over looking into the camera w sunglasses on “I hope you are all having fun working on your favorite projects”
Reposted by Kinsey Brock
tressiemcphd.bsky.social
It’s blowing my mind that schools, universities, public services would run headlong into this. We spent 15 years documenting black boxes. This is a black box in a black hole!
hbcompass.bsky.social Heather Bryant @hbcompass.bsky.social · 4d
I don't understand how anyone can watch how blatantly Grok is manipulated to answer the way ownership desires it to and then act like the other LLM chatbots couldn't possibly be similarly but less obviously compromised to produce responses in whatever way corporate interests and priorities dictate.
November 23, 2025 at 11:16 PM
Reposted by Kinsey Brock
socalleslie.bsky.social
Bird humor. 😎🪶
November 21, 2025 at 10:11 PM
Reposted by Kinsey Brock
dghaskell.bsky.social
We are deep into word-by-word censorship. Not only are universities purging/rewriting their websites based on centralized edicts, they are sending lists of forbidden words to guest speakers...
littlebadger.bsky.social Darcie Little Badger @littlebadger.bsky.social · 7d
This week, I withdrew from a speaking engagement at a public university because they sent me a list of prohibited “words & concepts.” I will not humor this censorship. It does a disservice to the stories I’m discussing & the audience, who deserve unfettered access to information & conversation.
“Prohibited words and concepts: Equity, diversity, & inclusion; anti-racism; Bias; Critical race theory; implicit bias; oppression; intersectionality; prohibited discriminatory practices; racial privilege; promoting stereotypes based on personal identity characteristics.”
November 21, 2025 at 12:15 AM
Reposted by Kinsey Brock
judithmank.bsky.social
Team fish - we need your help! We are trying to build a database of all the fish chromosome-scale genomes where sex chromosomes have been identified. Have you build one or some? Do you know someone who has? Can you post the link in the comments? Please spread the word and repost! Thank you!
November 20, 2025 at 4:44 PM
Reposted by Kinsey Brock
deepakveerappan.bsky.social
New species 🚨, not one, not two, 13 new bush frogs from Northeast India!!!
One of the exciting revisions I've been involved in for a few years now is out today. It is led by @bitupan-herp.bsky.social, a PhD. student who will soon be a doctor.
November 20, 2025 at 9:13 AM
Reposted by Kinsey Brock
jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social
There are so many immensely talented paleoartists and scientific illustrators this cover could have been done by. Disgraceful for a journal to go with bad AI images instead.
November 20, 2025 at 1:55 AM
Reposted by Kinsey Brock
jbyoder.org
These weasels have locally adapted their winter coats to varying snow cover thanks to a million-year-old mutation 🌿

buff.ly/TnOfYWt
Detail from Figure 1 of the linked preprint: a diagram contrasting the two weasel morphs, one of which is brown in summer and white in winter, and the other of which is brown all year; with images of weasels in both forms of winter coat; and then nucleotide and amino acid sequences for the two MC1R variants underlying the two coat types
November 19, 2025 at 2:15 PM
Reposted by Kinsey Brock
miriamposner.com
WE JUST KEEP WINNING. (UC President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program RESTORED!!!!)
On official UC letterhead: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA James B. Milliken President Office of the President 1111 Franklin Street Oakland, CA 94607 universityofcalifornia.edu CAMPUSES Berkeley Davis Irvine UCLA Merced Riverside San Diego San Francisco Santa Barbara Santa Cruz MEDICAL CENTERS Davis Irvine UCLA San Diego San Francisco NATIONAL LABORATORIES Lawrence Berkeley Lawrence Livermore Los Alamos DIVISION OF AGRICULTURE AND NATURAL RESOURCES November 18, 2025 Dear Chancellors: I'm writing with regard to the President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (PPFP) and the program's associated faculty hiring incentive. As you know, for more than 40 years, PPFP has provided postdoctoral research fellowships, professional development, and faculty mentoring to scholars in all fields whose research, teaching, and service advance the academic and research missions of the University of California. Since 2003, UC campuses that hire current and former PPFP fellows into ladder-rank positions have been eligible for a hiring incentive funded by the University that provides support for newly hired fellows for five years. Since the creation of the incentive, more than $162 million has been invested by the University to support PPFP faculty hires. This commitment has enabled our campuses to successfully recruit and retain outstanding faculty across a range of disciplines. Given the myriad challenges currently facing UC - including disruptions to billions of dollars in annual federal support, as well as uncertainty around the state budget- reasonable questions were raised in recent months about whether the University could maintain the commitment to current levels of incentive funding. After considering a recommendation to sunset the incentive program due to these significant fiscal constraints, I consulted with all of you as well as faculty and campus academic administrators and systemwide Academic Senate leadership. [continued on next image] After learning more about the history and success of the program and weighing the thoughtful perspectives that have been shared, I have concluded that barring extraordinary financial setbacks, the PPFP faculty hiring incentive program will continue while the University continues to assess the program's structure as well as its long-term financial sustainability. As a result of our continuing consultation and review, there may be consideration of some changes to elements of the program including the total number of incentives supported, a number that has fluctuated significantly over the years, and how the awards are distributed among campuses. In the meantime, the University will continue to fund the PPFP faculty hiring incentive program and campuses may continue to take advantage of these incentives. We will have an opportunity to discuss any potential changes prior to adoption. As we look to the future, I will continue to engage with faculty leaders, program stakeholders, and UC community members about this important program. I especially appreciate the thoughtful perspectives shared in recent weeks by Academic Council Chair Palazoglu and Vice Chair Scott, the Council of Graduate Deans, UC faculty members, and you as our campus leaders. Sincerely, James B. Milliken President
November 18, 2025 at 10:34 PM
Reposted by Kinsey Brock
alexwild.bsky.social
Screen cap of the xkcd cartoon, "Welcome to the Biology Department. It has been three days since we discovered something existentially horrifying about bugs that makes you question your whole reality."
November 17, 2025 at 5:50 PM
Reposted by Kinsey Brock
avianbiology.bsky.social
NEW PAPER: Introduced house sparrows showed more numerous, larger, and more variable DNA-methylation changes after simulated infection than native birds, suggesting distinct epigenetic responses that may aid introduction success.

➡️ vist.ly/4eq4a

#ornithology #birds #plasticity #stress 🪶
Fig. 1 from the article: introduced house sparrows had more sites with significant change in DNA methylation and a larger magnitude of change in DNA methylation between 0- and 8-h after lipopolysaccharide injection.
November 16, 2025 at 2:04 PM
Reposted by Kinsey Brock
tommysiegel.bsky.social
ok this one’s a little niche but if you get it, you get it
November 15, 2025 at 6:55 PM
Reposted by Kinsey Brock
joshuafoust.com
One reason why elite schools (Columbia, Brown, Cornell) caving to Trump’s illegal impoundment and extortion is so galling — a betrayal, really — is that they would have won had they fought. By giving up, they guaranteed every other school will have to fight harder.
Judge bars Trump from immediately cutting funding to the University of California | CNN Politics
The Trump administration cannot immediately cut federal funding to the University of California or issue fines against the school system over claims it allows antisemitism or other forms of discrimina...
www.cnn.com
November 15, 2025 at 1:02 PM
Reposted by Kinsey Brock
ljrissler.bsky.social
NSF is open again!

A few comments:

*Please be patient.
During a shutdown NSF employees cannot open computers or respond to emails.

*Merit review will continue. However panels won’t resume until after Dec 8th.

*POs remain excited and committed to advancing science and the scientific workforce.
November 13, 2025 at 5:58 PM
Reposted by Kinsey Brock
aaronhgriffing.bsky.social
New preprint from my postdoc work! Using fluorescent imaging, scRNA-seq, and ATAC-seq of mouse, anole, and chicken embryos, we provide evidence that birds have co-opted vascular smooth muscle to generate the pulmonary smooth muscle in their lungs. More on this later!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Immunofluorescence of mouse, anole, and chicken lungs showing epithelium in green and smooth muscle actin in magenta
November 14, 2025 at 12:28 AM
Reposted by Kinsey Brock
jgpausas.bsky.social
Rapid postfire color shift in a Mediterranean lizard
@jzoology.bsky.social

#Lizards inhabiting recently burned areas display lighter coloration, as a #thermoregulatory response
zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🧪🌍🔥🦎📏 #trait #fauna #zoology #wildfire #fireecology #fire
Infographics: Mediterranean lizards in recently burned areas rapidly develop lighter coloration, as a thermoregulatory response Nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) ordination of adult lizards in ~1-year postfire showing dissimilarities between burned and unburned in terms of coloration.
November 12, 2025 at 11:41 AM
Reposted by Kinsey Brock
jevbio.bsky.social
By combining mark-recapture and genetic parentage data from wild #lizards, we show that the offspring of older parents do not have lower survival or reproductive success than the offspring of younger parents:

doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

Crain et al. 2025
Parental age effects on offspring fitness in a wild population of a short-lived reptile
Abstract. As organisms age, the fitness of the offspring they produce can decline, which is often attributed to parental senescence. However, few studies h
doi.org
November 11, 2025 at 10:34 AM
Reposted by Kinsey Brock
kjmacleod.bsky.social
Very cool to see this "Research Highlight" of our recent @animalecology.bsky.social paper that tested the potential for social buffering of maternal glucocorticoids in a facultatively social lizard. Grateful for this feature by Lange & Aracena! besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
Maternal glucocorticoid exposure drives social tolerance and growth with limited evidence for long‐term social buffering
Research highlight of MacLeod, K., Bouffet-Halle, A., Wapstra, E., Uller, T. and While, G. (2025). Maternal glucocorticoids have persistent effects on offspring social phenotype irrespective of oppor...
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
November 11, 2025 at 2:21 PM
Reposted by Kinsey Brock
cocchino.bsky.social
"Hiring professors with PhDs is meaningless if administrators are the ones deciding what gets taught,” he said. “Faculty will start asking not, ‘Is this accurate?’ but ‘Will this get me in trouble?’ That’s not education, it’s risk management.”
#HigherEd
texasaaup.bsky.social Texas Conference of the AAUP @texasaaup.bsky.social · 17d
Leonard Bright, president of the Texas A&M Chapter of the AAUP said faculty were not consulted on the proposed changes, which he called “a direct violation” of their expertise + freedom to teach. “If that’s the case, there’s just going to be a further black eye on higher education here in Texas.”
Texas A&M to vote on banning “race and gender ideology”
The proposal appears to mark the first time a Texas university system offers definitions of what kind of instruction related to race and gender should not be permitted.
www.texastribune.org
November 11, 2025 at 12:57 AM
doc-brock.bsky.social
My citrus trees are starting to produce. I love this time of year. 😍
Mexican limes from my backyard 🍋‍🟩
November 10, 2025 at 4:39 PM
doc-brock.bsky.social
SWOB2025 was such a great meeting - blown away by the student talks in particular! Thanks @sicb.bsky.social and @funecology.bsky.social for the support.

Proud of my student @amberlsingh.bsky.social who gave a nice presentation of her first PhD chapter ! 🦎 🌆
South Western Organism Biology 2025 conference opening slide @ UC Riverside
November 9, 2025 at 3:35 AM
Reposted by Kinsey Brock
wildwallacephoto.bsky.social
A terrestrial adult Coastal Giant Salamander (Dicamptodon tenebrosus) crossing a road last night
November 6, 2025 at 4:35 PM
doc-brock.bsky.social
A big day for the lab! Feeling very happy for my first MS student, Alyssa Head, who put together a great written proposal and oral presentation of her thesis research. ! 🦎
Alyssa's proposal defense flyer - featuring her catching introduced wall lizards in LA. "Lizards in the hot seat: examining the evolution of thermal traits in an introduced population of Podarcis siculus"
November 7, 2025 at 1:57 AM
Reposted by Kinsey Brock
arunsethuraman.bsky.social
Congratulations to @doc-brock.bsky.social on advancing her first MS student to candidacy! Such cool work with introduced Italian wall lizards across native and invasive ranges - looking forward to seeing what Alyssa and Dr. Brock will discover!
a person is holding a lizard in their hands
ALT: a person is holding a lizard in their hands
media.tenor.com
November 7, 2025 at 1:49 AM
Reposted by Kinsey Brock
lollardfish.bsky.social
This program has spread nationwide, with many institutions, including my own, following this model. It’s been spectacular for my department and for my college.
tessahill.bsky.social Tessa Hill @tessahill.bsky.social · 22d
A devastating set of decisions on the part of UC leadership to withdraw support from our nationally recognized postdoc program that prioritizes research excellence combined with addressing our university public service mission. www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...
UC to Stop Funding Systemwide Postdoc Program
Established in 1984 to encourage women and minority Ph.D.s to pursue academia, the program has attracted right-wing criticism for prioritizing diverse candidates.
www.insidehighered.com
November 5, 2025 at 9:36 PM
Reposted by Kinsey Brock
markscherz.bsky.social
Today we described three new toad species that give birth to fully formed toadlets, from the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania! 🇹🇿🧪🐸

vertebrate-zoology.arphahub.com/article/1670...
A fine black toad with bright white fingers, toes, and lips, and brown pustular blobs along its legs, resting on a dark green leaf. A black and white toad on a green fern frond. The head and limbs are grey, and the body black. A toad looking at the camera over a brown leaf, its black body splotched with yellow and white. It is very Halloween-core. A black toad with huge yellow glands on its legs, head, arms, and parts of the back. Jack Skellington himself could hardly have painted a more Halloween-flavoured toad.
November 6, 2025 at 8:38 PM