Stress Physiology in a Stressful World
While I was in graduate school, I fell very ill from what we ultimately determined to be issues with my adrenal glands, a pair of tiny hormone- (signal) producing glands on your kidneys. These glands are most famous for producing our healthy stress responses, but chronic stress can make these stress responses way less healthy for us. I talk a lot about stress physiology online, but I also wanted to share tips in one place along with links to other resources. Standard disclaim
What is #TenMinMerlin?
Y ellow-rumped Warbler ("Butterbutt") in an urban Columbus (Ohio, USA) park, April 2025 Growing up as a young birder, I knew that I could go to a few magical parks to see migrating birds, like brilliant colorful warblers. I would beg my parents to drive me two hours to Magee Marsh in Northwest Ohio to see the birds with thousands of my fellow birders, but obviously we could not go very often. It was only once I started getting better at birding that I realized that those ve
Parakeet Dreams
The recent news on so-called "de-extinction" inspired me to consider what true de-extinction would actually look like, especially for scientists who study the ecology and conservation of at-risk species. I had a good time speculating (on BlueSky) about a hypothetical fantasy story chronically the rediscovery of spontaneously and mysteriously de-extinct Carolina Parakeets (a species native to eastern North America which was declared extinct in the 1930s). That inspired me to a
