Jessica E Beyer
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jessicabeyer.bsky.social
Jessica E Beyer
@jessicabeyer.bsky.social
170 followers 130 following 74 posts
Aquatic ecologist, data junkie, microbiome researcher

Research Assistant Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at University of Oklahoma

(she/her)

https://www.jessicabeyer.org
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jessicabeyer.bsky.social
Some garden friends from the past week
A tree frog (maybe Hyla versicolor) perching on the edge of a terracotta pot A large praying mantis sitting on the underside of a Ficus on our back porch A sweet, little monarch caterpillar grazing on the vining milkweed on our chainlink fence. Small, orange aphids are visible on the underside of a leaf behind the caterpillar
September 15, 2025 at 5:43 PM
jessicabeyer.bsky.social
Looking up some gene functions using a kegg orthology number- this doesn't seem like the right answer...

For reference, this is what I'm looking for: "ferredoxin--NADP+ reductase"
AI overview from google: "The term "Metabolism 02641" is likely referring to a zip code in the context of metabolism research or a specific study. "Metabolism" generally refers to the chemical processes that occur in the body to sustain life, including how the body converts food and drink into energy. The number "02641" is a US zip code, suggesting the research might be focused on a specific geographical area or population in that region"
June 3, 2025 at 5:40 PM
jessicabeyer.bsky.social
Here’s what the wettest April in Oklahoma looks like- field sites under huge amount of water at Lake Thunderbird. For reference, there’s supposed to be a long pier in the second photo…
Photo of shoreline of Lake Thunderbird in Norman, Oklahoma. A large portion of the dock is underwater and the disabled parking spot is now ten feet from the shoreline. Flooded shoreline of Lake Thunderbird. There’s a sign for a fishing pier and a path to the shore of the lake, but the pier is completely submerged in water.
May 13, 2025 at 8:03 PM
jessicabeyer.bsky.social
The average American has three friends.

(+ Acanthocephalans too, I guess...)
Phylogenetic tree of rotifers taken from Luo, C., Parry, L.A., Boudinot, B.E., Wang, S., Jarzembowski, E.A., Zhang, H. and Wang, B., 2025. A Jurassic acanthocephalan illuminates the origin of thorny-headed worms. Nature, pp.1-7. Note that I have cropped out Acanthocephalans because I still don't think of them as rotifers
May 2, 2025 at 2:16 PM
jessicabeyer.bsky.social
I think the same goes for harvest gold, too!
A beautiful harvest gold microbalance
March 21, 2025 at 12:37 PM
jessicabeyer.bsky.social
Just reading a paper and looked up one of its citations. Found out the cited paper was published in the ANNALS OF EUGENICS. According to WOS, it has 7,488 citations. The paper: Fisher's description of LDA. There's value in citing the original method, but surely there's a better option here?
Bar graph showing number of citations of the paper in question over time. The y-axis ranges from 0 to 400. The x-axis ranges from 1936 to present. There is an exponential increase in citations over time. Data come from Web of Science.
March 11, 2025 at 2:43 PM
jessicabeyer.bsky.social
In light of everything, maybe you need a puppy?

(my sister just got a new dog!)

Also: call your reps!
Two golden retrievers. There is a squishy-looking puppy laying with legs spread out and sleeping. A larger golden retriever is laying her head on the puppy and staring at the camera. All together, very cute.
January 29, 2025 at 5:43 PM
jessicabeyer.bsky.social
Posted this on the other site eight years ago: "I donated to @ppfa.bsky.social , @nrdc.org, and @aclu.org this morning. It's going to be a long four years. Let's do this."

Doing it again now.

Also, here are some cats:
Two cats laying on a white, knitted blanket on a grey chair. They're snuggled together. One is a brown patched tabby (Aster) and one is a gray tabby (Todd).
January 20, 2025 at 7:07 PM
jessicabeyer.bsky.social
Today's finding: #cats are necessary for successful #microbiome analyses. 🐈 🧫
Me, looking at a camera, with Todd, a gray tabby cat looking at my face. He's wearing a periwinkle blue color. There's a bookshelf in the background
January 16, 2025 at 3:44 PM
jessicabeyer.bsky.social
Some friends (Daphnia, calanoid copepod) captured from Lake Thunderbird this morning. A bit chilly, but a beautiful day to be outside.

#zooplankton #lakes #invertebrates
Photo of aquatic invertebrate captured on a microscope. This is a Daphnia. She is roughly oval shaped with two branched antennae. She is carrying two eggs inside of her carapace. Photo of aquatic invertebrate captured on microscope. This is a calanoid copepod. It has two long antennae and an extended cylinder shaped body. Some of its legs are sticking off the sides.
January 15, 2025 at 7:39 PM
jessicabeyer.bsky.social
Do these two paragraphs in the Nature article help? It seems the original source is very unclear.
On the basis of the citations we tracked in our literature review, the earliest potential source for the 80% claim that we could identify is a chapter in the 2001 edition of the Encyclopedia of Biodiversity7. Three documents cite this publication, including a 2009 report by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN (FAO)8. It states: “Approximately 80 percent of the world’s remaining biodiversity is found in indigenous peoples’ territories.” But the encyclopedia actually asserts that “nearly 80% of the terrestrial ecoregions are inhabited by one or more indigenous peoples”7. In other words, the original statement, along with the analysis underpinning it, merely quantified the proportion of the 136 terrestrial ecoregions identified as conservation priorities in the WWF’s ‘Global 200’ list in which Indigenous Peoples were living. The influential World Bank report6 does not cite the encyclopedia, but instead gives the source as a 2005 publication by the World Resources Institute (WRI), a global non-profit research organization in Washington DC. However, the closest the WRI publication comes to supporting the statement is the observation that seven Indigenous communities in the Philippines were “maintaining over 80 percent of the original high-biodiversity forest cover”9.
January 14, 2025 at 9:01 PM
jessicabeyer.bsky.social
For people with backyard chickens: how are you handling #H5N1 (bird flu)? We usually let ours free range when we’re home. We also have a relatively large enclosed run. Would it be better to keep them “cooped up”?

I’m in Oklahoma, if that matters.

#BackyardChickens #Chickens #H5N1 #BirdFlu
Photo of a chicken standing on leaves next to a bowl containing treats. She is black and white striped with a pink comb and wattle. She is giving the camera a skeptical look A photo of a chicken standing on a wood deck. She is grey with subtle contrast of dark and grey stripes. She has some funny feathers on her feet. She is looking at the photographer to identify if treats will be provided.
January 4, 2025 at 2:40 PM
jessicabeyer.bsky.social
The beauty of working from home!

(also: for those worrying, I'm working today because I'm taking all of next week off)

#plants #homeoffice
A photograph of plants in my home office. The room has wood paneling, with two windows in the middle of the frame. A short dresser is covered in plants, including some figs, split rocks, and others (my husband is the plant person, IDK the IDs). Three plants hang from the ceiling.
December 31, 2024 at 7:59 PM
jessicabeyer.bsky.social
This is why I think memorization is a stupid approach in undergrad classes. I'm a 'grown up' and I search for the same basic line of R script nearly every day.

#R #statistics
Google search result for 'drop legend title ggplot'. The top hit is a stack overflow page titled 'Remove legend title in ggplot [duplicate]'. Google has added its own label to the search result: "You visit often". This feels judgmental.
December 31, 2024 at 2:43 PM
jessicabeyer.bsky.social
Saturday #caturday
Two chickens are in the middle of the frame. One is grey with a funny little beard and the other one has a majestic pink comb and brown and white stripes
December 21, 2024 at 6:50 PM
jessicabeyer.bsky.social
Happy #FluorescentFriday! Autofluorescence of cells embedded within a #Microcystis aggregate.

Taken by Tingting Gu at the Samuel Roberts Noble Microscopy Laboratory at OU.
Background of magenta circles packed into one layer. In the middle of the image, we see yellow filaments made up of rectangular cells surrounding five large green cells.
December 20, 2024 at 3:38 PM
jessicabeyer.bsky.social
I've been having problems finding palettes with lots of colors (> 12) that are colorblind safe. Today I stumbled on fantastic resource from @martin-krzywinski.bsky.social. Let's all admire this 15-color palette!

mk.bcgsc.ca/colorblind/p...

#graph #data #color
Image shows a 15-color palette for color blindness with sRGB and HEX codes are both provided. There are panels simulating the view for deuteranopia, protanopia, tritanopia, and grayscale.
December 11, 2024 at 8:32 PM
jessicabeyer.bsky.social
Cold day out on Lake Thunderbird! We found mats of algae on rocks at one of our sites. I'm thinking Stigeoclonium sp. Could any #algae experts weigh in?
Photo of branched algae seen under microscope. Close up view of branched algae under microscope. Ends of fragments are narrow and tapered. Four pennate diatoms are also in the field of view.
December 10, 2024 at 6:52 PM
jessicabeyer.bsky.social
I'm very excited to announce our new paper in Harmful Algae! We tracked the accumulation of blue green algae toxin across a food web in the lab and tested how those toxins are transferred. This is great work coming out of the master's thesis of Dani Glidewell.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Graphical abstract of our new paper. Left hand side shows experimental design. We fed Microcystis to Daphnia (water fleas), which we then fed to damselfly larvae. In half of the treatments, the water fleas cleared there guts, allowing us to identify if toxins were transferred from gut contents or tissue contents. On the right hand side, we have a graph showing the results. Toxins were found in all organisms, but the concentration steeply decreased across trophic levels. It didn't matter whether guts were empty or full- toxin transfer was equivalent between the two.
November 25, 2024 at 3:37 PM
jessicabeyer.bsky.social
Loving the smell of #compost on a Sunday morning.
A view of my compost bin. Very much still in process- some woody bits are visible, like sunflower stems. In the center of the photo is some beautiful dark-brown compost.
November 24, 2024 at 5:19 PM
jessicabeyer.bsky.social
Happy #Caturday to all!

Sweet Muppet came to us as an injured stray and now spends all his time curled up on the couch.
A fluffy white cat lays on a white couch. The cat has cute orange patches on his head and tail. He’s curled up on his side like a little croissant with his feet tucked up against his belly. Very very cute!
November 16, 2024 at 2:32 PM
jessicabeyer.bsky.social
Requisite voting selfie!
Photo of me with an I voted sticker!
November 5, 2024 at 6:43 PM
jessicabeyer.bsky.social
Looking at the top of our couch, covered in a white flannel sheet with blue snowflakes. There are two pillows, and two cats nestled between them. One cat is a brown and orange tortoiseshell , and one is a grey tabby. They're very cute
November 5, 2024 at 3:24 PM
jessicabeyer.bsky.social
But then we get things like this:
Truly stunning sunset. Standing in our alley looking west across train tracks. The sky fades from a salmon color to pale blue. There are potholes in the road that reflect the sky. There are silhouettes of four trees in front of the sunset
November 3, 2024 at 11:51 PM
jessicabeyer.bsky.social
The combination of a 2 AM tornado warning plus election anxiety is TOO MUCH. I’m going to at least need Oklahoma weather to chill out.
Radar map of the state of Oklahoma. A bright red squall line moves across the state, with severe weather warnings marked with yellow and red borders. Photo captured at 2 AM while waiting out tornado warning in my bathroom with 6 cats.
November 3, 2024 at 6:17 PM