@ashinonyx@scholar.social cover
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ashinonyx

@ashinonyx@scholar.social

She/her ♠️

I want to be the very best cat lady, like no one ever was. Postdoctoral fellow at the Canadian Museum of Nature and University of Ottawa studying what intrinsic traits made large Arctic carnivores go extinct at the end of the Pleistocene.

I am interested in how life history affected extinction risk in the past and what that can tell us about extinction risks and conservation today.

Ask me your questions about cats!

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. For a complete list of posts, browse on the original instance.

loren , to random
@loren@flipping.rocks avatar

watch out for sky kittens! they are small and cute but also fearsome hunters!

ashinonyx ,
@ashinonyx@scholar.social avatar

@loren I have friends who did some fieldwork with kest-ahem sky kittens. Apparently they have a reputation for being extra ferocious when handled, even though they are smol.

futurebird , to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Can some real biology people weigh in on how you feel about calling a stem group, now extinct "evolutionary dead ends" or "dead branches on the tree of life" etc?

To me it's clear and evocative, but it also feels like the kind of glib phrase that is perpetuating some misconception about how evolution works.

ashinonyx ,
@ashinonyx@scholar.social avatar

@futurebird @nev to me, “evolutionary dead end” makes it sound like the adaptations that group had were unsuccessful and doomed to fail. But often these adaptations are very successful ones and therefore are repeated throughout evolutionary history. An example close to my heart is the sabre-toothed adaptation, which had evolved repeatedly. It’s weird that we don’t have any sabre-toothed predators now because they’re so common in past faunas.

loren , to random
@loren@flipping.rocks avatar

just when you think nuthatches can't get any smaller or cuter the pygmy nuthatch shows up

ashinonyx ,
@ashinonyx@scholar.social avatar

@loren I love encountering your commentary when I’m going through my feed in reverse chronological order. It’s like “I wish I could picture a nuthatch in my he- ah there we go!”

ashinonyx ,
@ashinonyx@scholar.social avatar

@loren they are pretty stinking cute! I gotta get some more bird-sperience

loren , to random
@loren@flipping.rocks avatar

I saw the opossum!!

ashinonyx ,
@ashinonyx@scholar.social avatar

@loren such noble creatures

ashinonyx ,
@ashinonyx@scholar.social avatar

@loren I think I’ve only seen one(maybe two?) in person. I gotta see more opossums!

loren , to random
@loren@flipping.rocks avatar

no one wanted to hear about the frogs at work yesterday 😞 hahaha

ashinonyx ,
@ashinonyx@scholar.social avatar

@loren sounds like your work colleagues suck. Frogs are awesome

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