Studying biodiversity and comparative genomics with a focus on the evolution of parasitism in algae and protists. Department Chair. Co-Editor, J Phycol.
University of Rhode Island
Joined June 2012
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It's just amazing to me that our senators, @SenWhitehouse and @SenJackReed talk about caring about America's military but can't find the fortitude to call for resignations in light of the recent Nat Sec scandal. When will they meet the moment?
Senator Reed, please stop tweeting tough and then voting for Trump appointments, as you did again yesterday. Your RI constituents would like some adult supervision on your recent voting record.
Chris Lane retweeted
New tribe-level classification of Loricariidae by Jon Armbruster and myself now out in Neotropical Ichthyology. We also assign these two upper Orinoco endemic species, formerly in Pseudancistrus, to new genera and a new tribe.
#NewGenusAlert - New tribe-level classification of #Hypostominae (#Loricariidae), with descriptions of three new tribes, #Peckoltini, #Pseudancistrini and #Stellantini with two new genera, #𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑚𝑦𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑥 and #𝑆𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑎.
🔓 scielo.br/j/ni/a/Ds3Z4ckbjc7…
ALT Armbruster, J. W., & Lujan, N. K.. (2024). New tribe-level classification of Hypostominae (Loricariidae) based on optimization of morphological states on DNA-based relationships, with descriptions of three new tribes and two new genera. Neotropical Ichthyology, 22(4), e240108. https://doi.org/10.1590/1982-0224-2024-0108
I know everything is on fire, literally and existentially, but I'm really proud of this paper out today, led by Kristina Terpis, with some amazing collaborators. We expanded sampling in photosynthetic stramenopiles and show total plastid loss twice!
cell.com/current-biology/abs…
Man, I would like one year as Department Chair where the college and/or university is not facing some existential crisis, but this is not the year. Luckily everything at the national level should be chill....
It’s already published. I’ll send a link when I’m not on my phone, but I think @fburki has an even more comprehensive analysis than the one we did on SAR. Those papers are out there.
You’re conflating different things.
Nevertheless, my original point was that a paper on taxonomic bias that ignores 70% of eukaryotic diversity is simply perpetuating the problem and is a ridiculous way to highlight a real issue.
Which is why teacher training and classroom visits are important. But we also can’t escape the fact that federal research dollars overwhelmingly go to animal work. NIH only funds non-animal research on parasites that infect animals.
But there are absolutely biases stemming from the fact that people relate better to what they see on a regular basis. And part of that is education. Some of us are doing the work to get K-12 kids looking at the real diversity of life instead of dismissing it.
For one, we stop using the absurdity of “top to bottom” because animals or not the “top” of anything in evolution.
I also think that federal agencies, like NSF, and doing great work to fund non-model organism research.
People are literally “doing it”. But those amalgamating research for major reports ignore the information.
And your argument about public engagement is super weird when using brown algae as an example. Find me a person who doesn’t know what a kelp forest is.
Do papers in Cell about the global importance of lineages you ignore excite you? sciencedirect.com/science/ar…
I’m sorry I treated you like a serious person for a minute.