Matthias H. Weissensteiner
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mweissensteiner.bsky.social
Matthias H. Weissensteiner
@mweissensteiner.bsky.social
500 followers 610 following 12 posts
Bioinformatician and Researcher at the Institute of Avian Research
| evolution | birds | genomics | structural variation | non-B DNA | repeats
https://ifv-vogelwarte.de/en/institute/staff/dr-matthias-h-weissensteiner
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Reposted by Matthias H. Weissensteiner
charleswlogan.bsky.social
👀👀👀👀
olivia.science Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 20h
Love to see community action against this AI nonsense! neighborhoodview.org/2025/11/13/d...
As one Massachusetts school administrator recently said; this moment with AI is remarkably like the moment when we were introduced to asbestos. Yes, it had some remarkably promising characteristics – fireproofing! – and had some real utility in science, research, and industrial applications. But a profit-driven industry bullied us into inserting it everywhere; into our homes and schools and public spaces, before we really understood the risks. This resulted in decades, if not centuries, of illness, injuries, deaths, and the astronomical financial burden of trying to remove the stuff. As you, the leaders and policymakers in our schools, craft an AI policy for our district, we the undersigned call on you to: 1. Ban AI tools into the classroom, protect our students and teachers from de-skilling and allow them the space and time to engage in assignments themselves. 2. Resist any direct financial relationship or contracts with AI providers, as well as the “training” they might offer. 3. Provide a digital literacy curriculum to help students navigate the current digital landscape, and promote critical engagement with technology. 4. Guarantee that anywhere generative AI has already entered our classrooms or curriculum, an opt-out will allow students and teachers to refuse the use of these products at no risk to their grades, progress or employment.
November 14, 2025 at 2:47 PM
Reposted by Matthias H. Weissensteiner
merondun.bsky.social
Our new @science.org paper is out! Cuckoos and hosts are locked in a coevolutionary arms race over egg mimicry.

But how are these egg types inherited, and could this drive speciation? We sequenced hundreds of genomes to find out!

doi.org/10.1126/scie...

🧵1/6
Genomic architecture of egg mimicry and its consequences for speciation in parasitic cuckoos
Host-parasite arms races facilitate rapid evolution and can fuel speciation. Cuculus cuckoos are deceptive egg mimics that exhibit a broad diversity of counterfeit egg phenotypes, representing host-ad...
doi.org
October 30, 2025 at 7:15 PM
Reposted by Matthias H. Weissensteiner
thorstn.bsky.social
“When someone says we can’t miss the boat, I ask: where is the boat going? What exactly will this technology improve? That’s rarely discussed. Since when did we become Big Tech's free PR department?”
— says Nicky DRIES, Future of Work Lab at the Catholic University of Leuven
October 28, 2025 at 10:46 AM
mweissensteiner.bsky.social
I personally have donated to Wikipedia before and will, even without the very good reason explained below, do so again.
bpavuk.neocities.org Bohdan &%@#ing Pavuk @bpavuk.neocities.org · Dec 26
if you see this post, your actions are:
- if you have a spare buck, give it to Wikipedia, then repost this
- if you don't have a spare buck, just repost

your action is mandatory for the world's best source of information to survive
joshuaholland.bsky.social Joshua Holland @joshuaholland.bsky.social · Dec 25
I’ve never donated to Wikipedia before but I set up a small monthly donation as a fuck you to the world’s richest psychopath.
October 27, 2025 at 1:13 PM
Reposted by Matthias H. Weissensteiner
guyleonard.bsky.social
"‘Am I redundant?’: how AI changed my career in bioinformatics"

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

No.

Also pls tell me that guy isn't uploading patient data to the internet. JFC.

tl;dr "Consult a pro."

But really - teach people fundamentals. AI is the last thing you should consult.
October 14, 2025 at 10:35 AM
Reposted by Matthias H. Weissensteiner
popgroup2026.bsky.social
Exciting news!
The next #PopGroup meeting will take place in Lille 🍟, France, 7–9 January 2026 – just 1 hour by train from London, Brussels, and Paris.

This year, PopGroup will also host ALPHY, the annual meeting of Evolutionary Genomics.

More info: populationgeneticsgroup.org.uk

See you there !
Population Genetics group 59
populationgeneticsgroup.org.uk
September 29, 2025 at 8:52 AM
Reposted by Matthias H. Weissensteiner
jomichell.bsky.social
Looks like a useful reference piece.
olivia.science Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Sep 6
Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n
Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues. Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA). Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe. Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
September 21, 2025 at 1:41 PM
Reposted by Matthias H. Weissensteiner
commonternproject.bsky.social
When we hypothesised female terns to have lower mercury levels than males due to egg laying, @matteobeccardi.bsky.social et al designed an elegant experiment to prove the effectiveness of this pathway. That proof just got published & the open access paper can be found here: doi.org/10.1016/j.en...
September 18, 2025 at 1:19 PM
Reposted by Matthias H. Weissensteiner
jbonfield.bsky.social
Heads up: ignore samtools dot org, similarly minimap2 dot com and likely others. It's owned by a known phishing site and while the binaries they offer look valid currently (but note they may be serving us different binaries to others), that could change.

Ie: it's not us (Samtools team)! Be warned
September 15, 2025 at 8:40 AM
mweissensteiner.bsky.social
Congratulations Anna! What a fantastic PhD with tremendous amounts of work and exciting results! All the best for your future trajectory!
commonternproject.bsky.social Common Tern Project @commonternproject.bsky.social · Aug 29
Look at that! @genmig.bsky.social, @gullbilledterns-de.bsky.social and I fledged this supercool chick at the @ifv-whv.bsky.social on Wednesday. Let us proudly present to you: Dr Anna Schnelle.
August 29, 2025 at 7:01 AM
Reposted by Matthias H. Weissensteiner
roxanegay.bsky.social
Oh well. I am making my claim and every author should.
arstechnica.com Ars Technica @arstechnica.com · Aug 27
AI advocates have warned that if every author in the class action filed a claim, it would "financially ruin" the entire industry.
Authors celebrate “historic” settlement coming soon in Anthropic class action
Advocates fear such settlements will “financially ruin” the AI industry.
arstechnica.com
August 28, 2025 at 12:19 AM
Reposted by Matthias H. Weissensteiner
stervander.com
#EOU2025 #ornithology folks and friends liking #birds and #mammals, this is the position I just highlighted. Join us! Cool collection and very active continuous preparation of new specimens. Deadline soon...

Happy to chat with anyone curious today!
stervander.com Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · Aug 12
Join us as Assistant #Curator of Vertebrates @ 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿NMS! Large collections of #birds & #mammals + very active specimen prep = cool place! The ad doesn't say, but I say there's a good chance of prolongation beyond 1y. Hurry up and apply/spread the word: careers.nms.ac.uk/job/748553!

🪶🧪 #museumjobs #job
Yours truly and our mounted Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis) specimen The bird collection store, busy with visiting researchers, mounts, and in the background our volunteers who capture data from the specimen labels. It's not always this packed, but we do have a fair number of volunteers and visitors. Blue Tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) in trays in the cabinets. The collections spaces are pretty new, fresh, and functional, which is not always the case for museum collections... A tray of African raptor eggs to illustrate the breadth of the bird collection, which holds som 70K skin specimens, 60K egg clutches, and 10K skeletons.
August 22, 2025 at 9:16 AM
Reposted by Matthias H. Weissensteiner
jaime-muriel.bsky.social
📌 I really enjoyed @pablosalmon.bsky.social’s talk at #EOU2025! 🐦
Exploring how #mitochondria may shape avian #migration — lessons from Eurasian #blackbirds with different strategies.
Great insights into the energetic basis of life-history strategies!
August 19, 2025 at 10:46 AM
Reposted by Matthias H. Weissensteiner
trstngnthr.bsky.social
The @scilifelab.se ancient DNA unit is looking for an bioinformatician placed at Uppsala University. This is a great way to be part of diverse #aDNA research projects as a staff scientist with permanent (!!) employment:

www.uu.se/en/about-uu/...
Bioinformatician - Uppsala University
Bioinformatician, Department of Organismal Biology, Uppsala University
www.uu.se
August 12, 2025 at 7:10 AM
Reposted by Matthias H. Weissensteiner
luisapallares.bsky.social
Rant of the day: why are people still submitting manuscripts for review without line numbers? We all review papers, we all know that referring to line numbers makes easier to write the review. So, why do people keep doing this!?
July 28, 2025 at 11:25 AM
Reposted by Matthias H. Weissensteiner
genmig.bsky.social
Congratulations, Dr. Andrea. What a very special day. Happy, proud and honoured to see you fledge 🐦‍⬛🧬🏝️🧪 - fly on @mpi-evolbio.bsky.social
Andrea wearing her PhD hat after successfully defending her thesis.
June 24, 2025 at 3:18 PM
Reposted by Matthias H. Weissensteiner
trishgreenhalgh.bsky.social
Thanks for the reminder @janemunday.bsky.social. Every summer, I repost this article DROWNING DOES NOT LOOK LIKE DROWNING. To date, I know of FOUR kids who were saved after someone who'd clicked on the link learnt how to spot actual drowning. Take time to read and pass on.

slate.com/technology/2...
Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning
Drowning is not the violent, splashing call for help that most people expect.
slate.com
June 19, 2025 at 4:22 PM
Reposted by Matthias H. Weissensteiner
amdioncote.bsky.social
New preprint from the lab led by former masters student AJ Roussel in collaboration with Alexander Suh and @fjruizruano.bsky.social. We found a ~4-fold accumulation of a Neptune #transposon in asexually reproducing "F1" fish hybrids. An unexpected and fascinating finding! #TEsky
Accumulation of a biparentally-inherited Neptune transposable element in natural Killifish hybrids (Fundulus diaphanus X F. heteroclitus)
Transposable elements (TEs) are abundant selfish genetic elements that can mobilize in their host genome, causing DNA damage, mutations and chromosome rearrangements. TE silencing is thus critical, an...
www.biorxiv.org
May 28, 2025 at 11:09 AM
Reposted by Matthias H. Weissensteiner
moosblom.bsky.social
🚨 Wanted: PhD student excited about population genomics, Natural History Collections and birds!
📍 Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, Germany
🕒 3 Years, fully funded by the Leibniz Junior Researchgroup program

Details and Application portal 👇

jobs.museumfuernaturkunde.berlin/jobposting/8...
14/2025 PhD student (f/m/d)
jobs.museumfuernaturkunde.berlin
May 22, 2025 at 2:25 PM
Reposted by Matthias H. Weissensteiner
genmig.bsky.social
over the moon happy and grateful! on my way to @lundvision.bsky.social I followd the announcement of #ClustersOfExcellence by the @dfg.de on the floor of a crowded train. #NaviSense 🦋🧭🧬🧪🧠🐝🪲🔬 in all its beauty flew high! such a fantastic team, amazing spirit and wonderful vision - ready for take off!
Home - NaviSense
NaviSense - International Cluster of Excellence Proposal for the Sensory Basis, Mechanisms, and Impacts of Animal Navigation.
navisense.org
May 22, 2025 at 9:07 PM
Reposted by Matthias H. Weissensteiner
vekutschera.bsky.social
The next GenErode version is available (0.6.3)! 🎉 github.com/NBISweden/Ge...
GitHub - NBISweden/GenErode at 0.6.3
GitHub repository for GenErode, a Snakemake pipeline for the analysis of whole-genome sequencing data from historical and modern samples to study patterns of genome erosion. - GitHub - NBISweden/Ge...
github.com
May 13, 2025 at 12:03 PM
Reposted by Matthias H. Weissensteiner
dickmerrill.bsky.social
Interested in a PhD connecting sensory ecology and evolutionary genetics? Applications are now open for a project on the Speciation Genomics of Eye Size Variation in Heliconius Butterflies in our lab at LMU Munich: www.evol.bio.lmu.de/research/mer... Please repost!
May 6, 2025 at 11:40 AM
Reposted by Matthias H. Weissensteiner
dickmerrill.bsky.social
Really excited that our DFG grant on the Speciation Genomics of Eye Size variation in *Heliconius* has been funded :) In the next weeks, I will post an advert for a PhD, but if you know of good students, please suggest they get in touch. Please repost.
April 22, 2025 at 7:28 AM
Reposted by Matthias H. Weissensteiner
matteobeccardi.bsky.social
I'm very happy to announce our new pubblication out now in @animalecology.bsky.social🥳
Many thanks to @oscarvedder.bsky.social and @ifv-whv.bsky.social.

Read the full text if you want to know more about this work👇
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
Poor developmental conditions decrease adult body size and egg size, but not egg laying rate and survival throughout adulthood: A long‐term experiment in a precocial bird
You have to enable JavaScript in your browser's settings in order to use the eReader.
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
April 10, 2025 at 12:16 PM
Reposted by Matthias H. Weissensteiner
ifv-whv.bsky.social
New publication in @animalecology.bsky.social by @oscarvedder.bsky.social & @matteobeccardi.bsky.social 'Poor developmental conditions decrease adult body size and egg size, but not egg laying rate and survival throughout adulthood: A long-term experiment in a precocial bird'
doi.org/10.1111/1365...
Poor developmental conditions decrease adult body size and egg size, but not egg laying rate and survival throughout adulthood: A long‐term experiment in a precocial bird
This research experimentally manipulated the quality of early-life conditions in Japanese quail, and monitored individual performance over the complete adult lifespan under standardized conditions. I...
doi.org
April 10, 2025 at 12:34 PM