@alexwild@mastodon.online
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alexwild

@alexwild@mastodon.online

Curator of Entomology at the University of Texas at Austin. Photographer of more living ant species than any other person, and still hasn't reached even 10% of them.

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alexwild, to Texas
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This is what a billionaire-funded, partisan Republican academic unit looks like:

https://civicleadership.utexas.edu/

alexwild,
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All this talk of "Liberty" from people whose main goal is the forcible subjugation of women into breeding cattle to produce a stock of white Christian children.

alexwild,
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Awfully strange for a bunch of "small government" types to suck down millions of public dollars in a government-mandated department, dedicated to ruling party propaganda for which no real scholarly demand exists.

alexwild, to SciComm
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Several of us overly online biologists spent years quietly doing an experiment on Twitter, trying to find out if tweeting about new studies from a set of mid-range journals caused an increase in later citations, compared to set of untweeted control articles.

Turns out we had no noticeable effect; the tweeted papers were cited at the same rate as the control set.

Our paper, headed by Trevor Branch, was published today in PLOS One:

#X

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0292201

alexwild,
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We were able to increase the amount of views and downloads those papers got, though. We could get eyeballs on the science.

I guess you can lead a horse to paper, but you can't make him cite.

alexwild,
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The good news is, if you thought Twitter's descent into Musk-filled madness might be detrimental to your efforts to get other scientists to cite your work, fear not. In this regard, Twitter was not actually that useful.

alexwild,
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There have been several studies showing that the highly-tweeted papers are also highly-cited.

I think that's right. But not because tweeting causes citations.

In light of our results, it seems more likely that both social media communicators, and publishing scientists, recognize impactful work when they see it. Good science just gets talked about more, regardless of the medium.

That scientific research impact can't easily be gamed by social media I find quite reassuring.

alexwild, to random
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NYTimes headline “Even away from home Trump thinks of family”

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2024/03/19/stormy-daniels-documentary-trump-sot-ebof-vpx.cnn

alexwild, to photography
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Queen ants aren't the rulers of a colony so much as the ovaries, in some species laying hundreds to thousands of eggs per day. Here's a gallery of ant queens from around the world.

https://www.alexanderwild.com/Ants/Natural-History/Queen-Ants

alexwild, to evolution
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New study suggests that modern ants owe their diversity and perhaps even existence to flowering plants.


https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2317795121

alexwild,
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I'm also pleased to have one of my ant-plant photographs featured in the Science magazine write-up.

https://www.science.org/content/article/amazing-diversity-today-ants-tied-rise-flowering-plants

alexwild, to random
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Texas sky update.

alexwild, to random
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We have lots of great reasons to change from fossil fuels to renewables, but one underappreciated one is that oil money funds a disproportionately large portion of the resurgence of white supremacy.

alexwild,
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The white supremacists like Chris Rufo who are attempting to purge non-whites from universities aren't pulling their 6-figure salaries and flying all over the country from thin air. It's money from places like Heritage.

alexwild, to random
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Lots of nature happening in Austin this week! Found these katydids (Microcentrum sp.) hatching on a lacey oak.

alexwild,
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Taking a first look at the world.

alexwild, to spiders
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The Aphantochilus crab spider mimics the color, shape, size, and texture of the turtle ants it preys upon. Ecuador.

alexwild, to random
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Do not defend Israel’s ongoing, intentional mass slaughter of Palestinians in my mentions, unless you enjoy an insta-block.

alexwild, to austin
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Republicans tried to ratfuck the Austin DA primary and failed so hard you could hear it from space.

https://www.kut.org/politics/2024-03-05/jose-garza-jeremy-sylestine-travis-county-district-attorney-2024-democratic-primary

alexwild, to random
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Myrmicaria natalensis, photographed in Uganda.

alexwild, to random
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The United States is divesting from its future. 8% cut to NSF’s budget.

https://www.science.org/content/article/final-u-s-spending-bills-offer-gloomy-outlook-science

alexwild, to random
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Dengue outbreak in Brazil.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2024/03/04/1235795657/dengue-brazil-state-of-emergency-vaccine

alexwild, to random
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What a coincidence. I’m also seeking funding to protect my family from the Supreme Court.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-seeks-security-funding-protect-justices-homes-2024-03-04/

alexwild, to random
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Today’s gardening project: put up trellises at the new house with the hopes of covering the whole wall with butterfly plants by summer.

Now I just need to source some Passiflora and Aristolochia.

alexwild, to random
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Friday night. How are we holding up, Mastodon?

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