Alex Meyers
banner
almeyers.bsky.social
Alex Meyers
@almeyers.bsky.social
PhD Student in the Cox Lab at UVA 🦎 Davidson College Alum
Reposted by Alex Meyers
Former UVA president Jim Ryan, who resigned over the summer due to pressure from the Trump Administration, just shared this 12-page letter with the Faculty Senate, detailing his experience with the Board of Visitors and DOJ.

It's a surreal--and troubling--read.

drive.google.com/file/d/1Is6x...
November 14, 2025 at 2:15 PM
Reposted by Alex Meyers
There's a word for learning from evolution's inventions: bioinspiration. Here's my interactive story on the way animals and plants fuel technological creativity. Gift link: nyti.ms/4otNQyl
How Inventors Find Inspiration in Evolution (Gift Article)
Soft batteries and water-walking robots are among the many creations made possible by studying animals and plants.
nyti.ms
November 10, 2025 at 3:37 PM
Reposted by Alex Meyers
@raularayadonoso.bsky.social @kenrokusumi.bsky.social @anthonygeneva.bsky.social et al. compared the genomes of Anolis species, finding evidence of structural variation and signatures of selection associated with phenotypic diversity.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf196

#genome #evolution #anolis
November 10, 2025 at 8:53 AM
Reposted by Alex Meyers
Thank you, Virginia! It is the honor of my lifetime to be elected your next Governor.
November 5, 2025 at 3:09 AM
Reposted by Alex Meyers
Warning. ⚠️ If you are writing an NSF GRFP, new this year, you need official transcripts to apply. Beware. They will not review applications without official transcripts. ‼️
November 4, 2025 at 8:50 PM
Reposted by Alex Meyers
The November cover of Genome Biology and Evolution features @raularayadonoso.bsky.social @kenrokusumi.bsky.social @anthonygeneva.bsky.social et al., who studied how structural rearrangements and selection promote phenotypic evolution in Anolis.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf196

#genome #evolution
October 31, 2025 at 11:48 AM
Reposted by Alex Meyers
Fewer grad students means less science, but many STEM PhD programs in the US are cutting back on admissions this year due to federal funding uncertainties. Words by me for @nature.com:

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

@emsque.bsky.social @ucsdcooperlab.bsky.social @julieposselt.bsky.social 🧪
US PhD admissions shrink as fears over Trump’s cuts take hold
Some doctoral programmes are admitting no students at all amid uncertainty about federal science funding.
www.nature.com
October 21, 2025 at 8:47 PM
Reposted by Alex Meyers
Hundreds of people gathered as Davidson College dedicated With These Hands: A Memorial to the Enslaved and Exploited on Thurs., Oct. 23. Visit the story to hear from the descendants of those whose labor helped build the college & listen to a poem written by author Clint Smith '10 for the dedication.
‘With Their Hands, This Place Was Made’: Davidson College Dedicates Memorial to the Enslaved and Exploited
Hundreds of people gathered as Davidson College dedicated With These Hands: A Memorial to the Enslaved and Exploited on Oct. 23. Renowned artist Hank Willis Thomas designed the bronze sculpture in col...
www.davidson.edu
October 24, 2025 at 9:43 PM
Reposted by Alex Meyers
BREAKING: UVA rejects the Trump Administration's Compact.
October 17, 2025 at 8:40 PM
Reposted by Alex Meyers
Jane Goodall, ethologist and conservationist, has died. She was 91
October 1, 2025 at 6:02 PM
Reposted by Alex Meyers
This only happens to you once
September 26, 2025 at 7:39 PM
Reposted by Alex Meyers
"More professors in the United States have been fired for controversial views in the past week than any other week in all of American history."
www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...
Censorship Is the Authoritarian’s Dream
The right to free expression must include the right to say horrible and evil things.
www.insidehighered.com
September 19, 2025 at 10:24 AM
Reposted by Alex Meyers
I wrote:

“Jefferson dreamed of forging a grand, vibrant Athens on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. Instead, in its third century, the United States seems a lot more like Sparta.”

newrepublic.com/article/1973...
UVA President James Ryan Caved to MAGA—and They Forced Him Out Anyway
Ryan had not fought Trump on DEI and other matters. His forced ouster proves that no capitulation is enough.
newrepublic.com
June 27, 2025 at 9:01 PM
Reposted by Alex Meyers
Saw today for the first time a seriously brilliant way to cut wildlife roadkill: virtual fencing! These devices, installed every 25m for $10K km warn wildlife by detecting approaching vehicles and emitting a flashing light and a beep. Has cut deaths by 90%! #WildOz
www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06...
June 8, 2025 at 6:56 AM
Reposted by Alex Meyers
Proposed cut to NSF Biology budget is 70%.

70%. Seventy.

Call your senators & reps nonstop. Give them numbers on NSF impact for state/district. tableau.external.nsf.gov/views/NSFbyN... explain this will decimate the economy if their districts, especially if it has a major research univ. 🧪
May 31, 2025 at 12:58 AM
Reposted by Alex Meyers
Great article about the stakes facing museums and other public entities telling inclusive narratives. Free article for you. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/06/u...
Trump’s Order to Sanitize Black History Meets Institutional Resistance
www.nytimes.com
May 6, 2025 at 11:58 PM
Go Dr. Baran! 🧪🐣
Excited to have this out in the world and to share my thoughts! Birds 🐣 have so much to teach us about sexual differentiation and diversity, which is so desperately needed in this moment. #neuroendocrinology
I believe that it is important that my students learn about the dynamic, complex process by which sexual differentiation occurs because it is the truth, writes @nmbaran.bsky.social.

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/sex/what-bir...
April 22, 2025 at 3:42 PM
Reposted by Alex Meyers
Nature Isn’t Binary: Discovering the World’s First Intersex Southern Right Whale

What you think you know about the world depends on how you’re looking. Check out the latest from @the-revelator.bsky.social ⬇️
Nature Isn’t Binary: Discovering the World’s First Intersex Southern Right Whale • The Revelator
What you think you know about the world depends on how you’re looking.
therevelator.org
April 11, 2025 at 9:41 PM
Reposted by Alex Meyers
Bad media science takes can kill off whole species.

Gene edited puppies are NOT actually dire wolves, any more than an especially hair mouse is a mammoth.

Endangered Species Act is NOT rendered moot by this publicity stunt

www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...
Trump team cites wolf ‘de-extinction’ as it seeks to cut endangered species list
The interior secretary hailed a biotech company’s claim to have brought back the dire wolf, while the administration and GOP push to roll back species protections.
www.washingtonpost.com
April 11, 2025 at 10:41 AM
Reposted by Alex Meyers
BREAKING from @science.org: The Trump admin is seeking to kill nearly all climate research at NOAA, its climate science agency.

Its near-final budget proposal would end all NOAA research labs, academic institutes, and regional climate centers. And it wants to fully end the NOAA Research division.
Trump seeks to end climate research at premier U.S. climate agency
White House aims to end NOAA’s research office; NASA also targeted
www.science.org
April 11, 2025 at 3:20 PM
Reposted by Alex Meyers
Colossal didn't make a dire wolf. This is not a dire wolf! Stop saying it is!! I feel like I'm going mad!!!
April 7, 2025 at 4:25 PM
Reposted by Alex Meyers
“De-extinction” is to biodiversity loss what “Mars colonization” is to climate change—wishful thinking that is at its core impossible but nevertheless sucks up attention and resources from actual solutions to these crises (which, ultimately, might be the whole point)
April 8, 2025 at 9:00 PM
Reposted by Alex Meyers
It’s 9am TFT time here, and citizens are already gathering to protest Tariffs by the United States. Our plain clothes Officer Penguins are attempting to maintain calm, but unfortunately we keep losing them in the crowd.
April 3, 2025 at 4:13 AM
Reposted by Alex Meyers
Signal's founder
March 25, 2025 at 8:45 PM