Helen Stec
helen-stec.bsky.social
Helen Stec
@helen-stec.bsky.social
PhD Student in the Sandkam Lab @ Cornell NBB | Interested in the Mechanisms and Evolution Driving Mate Choice | GRFP Fellow | Free Palestine 🇵🇸 | They/Them
Pinned
Follow all the Cornell NBB peeople here: go.bsky.app/Hw9BkqK
Reposted by Helen Stec
I was going to tell you a joke about sodium, but then I thought, “Na.”
February 1, 2025 at 5:24 AM
Reposted by Helen Stec
My favorite "they were roommates" comes from V. Geist, biologists HATED the idea that bighorn sheep could be kinda gay in 1966:

"a large ram will treat a sub-dominant ram like an ewe, performing sexual behavior, although this term serves as *no more than a nametag!* "

🐏 🏳️‍🌈 🧪
December 18, 2024 at 4:19 PM
Reposted by Helen Stec
🚨 Our paper is finally online! 🚨
🖥️🐭 Are you a head-fixed VR user? Interested in integrating VR and eye tracking into your setup? Check this out! 👀💡

🔍 Don’t miss it! 🙌 #Neuroscience #VR #Research
Our paper on MouseGoggles - an open-source mini VR headset for mice - just came out! Really excited about finally integrating eye-tracking into the headset. Nice working with you @hongyuchang.bsky.social!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
github.com/sn-lab/Mouse...
#neuroskyence
December 12, 2024 at 2:33 PM
Follow all the Cornell NBB peeople here: go.bsky.app/Hw9BkqK
December 14, 2024 at 1:13 AM
Reposted by Helen Stec
Calling biologists, historians, and archeologists! Do you know of texts or images depicting headbutting in rams, goats, muskox etc? Also woodpeckers.
I'm writing a historical review and don't have anything before 1720 except an illuminated manuscript and rock art. Please share! 🧪🏺🗃️
December 12, 2024 at 3:15 PM
Reposted by Helen Stec
The blue-eyed ensign wasp is known for its parasitoid lifestyle, specifically targeting cockroach egg cases (oothecae). The wasp's unique eye color might play a role in its ability to locate and identify suitable host egg cases, although this is speculative without further research. 🧪
December 12, 2024 at 11:58 AM
Reposted by Helen Stec
Another thing I made this year. Pigeon history!
December 10, 2024 at 3:07 PM
Reposted by Helen Stec
Hello world, I'm here to let you know that we're out of funds for food, medication and other necessities, and we're kindly begging everyone who is reading this to help and donate to us or share with friends, co-workers any kind of help is highly appreciated 🙏, gofund.me/2e0fc72f
December 1, 2024 at 4:07 AM
Reposted by Helen Stec
a thread of some of my dumbest bird comics to date
December 3, 2024 at 3:43 PM
Reposted by Helen Stec
cool study (with clever experimental design) about the evolutionary significance of individuals choosing habitats based on their own phenotypes. 🧪🌍 #evolution

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Performance-based habitat choice can drive rapid adaptive divergence and reproductive isolation
Theory predicts that performance-based habitat choice1,2,3—where individuals select environments based on their local performance—should be widespread…
www.sciencedirect.com
December 2, 2024 at 7:40 PM
Reposted by Helen Stec
And an open access 🧪 review:
The remarkable complexity of the brain microbiome in health and disease
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
The remarkable complexity of the brain microbiome in health and disease
Microbes in human brain and their potential contribution to neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) have long been debated. We recently developed a new method (the electronic tre...
www.biorxiv.org
December 2, 2024 at 12:17 PM
Reposted by Helen Stec
Here are the latest and most up-to date figures on how many species of sharks and their relatives are threatened. These animals are some of the most threatened vertebrate animals in the world.
December 2, 2024 at 11:43 AM
Reposted by Helen Stec
can I code fast? no. but can I code well? also no. but does my code work? alas, no
November 30, 2024 at 9:39 PM
Reposted by Helen Stec
I'm currently working on human relationships with pigeons and discovered something wild.
Did you know that throughout human history, there have been "games" of pigeon stealing (and it's still happening apparently) ?
www.nytimes.com/1985/07/28/n...
November 30, 2024 at 9:43 AM
Reposted by Helen Stec
Around this time every year, I share a list of ways to support Native people. From supporting Indigenous people seeking abortion care to defending Native voting rights and keeping Native families together, here are some causes worth supporting. 🧵
November 28, 2024 at 1:51 AM
Reposted by Helen Stec
I was in New York twice this year and I really miss their famous pizza.
November 28, 2024 at 12:32 PM
Reposted by Helen Stec
“What radicalized you?” Bro I was told to treat people the way I would want to be treated in kindergarten and it made sense idk what else there is to say
November 19, 2024 at 3:56 AM