Jonathan Tonkin

Biodiversity on the Brink: Ecological Rhythms & Human Urgency - Jonathan Tonkin | RR #20 YouTube video by Jesse Damiani

"We have to learn to operate under extreme levels of uncertainty."

Te Pūnaha Matatini Principal Investigator @jdtonkin.bsky.social joined @jessedamiani.bsky.social on @urgentfutures.bsky.social to discuss his pivot toward solutions for biodiversity loss 🧪

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTv7...

It's such a shame they do this!

I'll forgive you too ;) ;)

Nice -- yep, good strategy!

Nature Comms is the one journal I've boycotted for years.

Totally nuts!

So frustrating!

Haha -- Ten reviews a year and you're doing very well! Sounds easy. :)

Yep, I've taken that stance for years w/ Nature Comms. But I can't withhold the options for other Nature journals for my group members, who are judged by where their work lands. It's tough.

Shocking huh!

Shocking eh!

Fair -- the challenge is when you have students/postdocs coming up who are judged on where their papers land.

😱🤯 -- Just looked up the cost to go gold open access at Nature Eco Evo: US$12850! That's $21,600 NZD. That's the same cost as a Royal Society Master's Scholarship!
This has gone too far. Absolutely bonkers.

Insane!

So dumb! Don't worry I wasn't even considering it. I was curious and subsequently dumbfounded!

It's outrageous isn't it! I would never pay such an amount. I made a vow to never even submit to Nature Comms years ago because of this.

😱🤯 -- Just looked up the cost to go gold open access at Nature Eco Evo: US$12850! That's $21,600 NZD. That's the same cost as a Royal Society Master's Scholarship!
This has gone too far. Absolutely bonkers.

Nine ways we can future‑proof rivers against extreme events How we can protect river biodiversity from the increasing threat of extreme floods, droughts and heatwaves

6. Identify and protect high‑resilience catchments
7. Use frameworks that help prioritise decisions
8. Implement anticipatory, catchment‑scale planning
9. Anticipate the future with models

These 9 are far from exhaustive, but are among the most consistent, evidence-backed tools.

Full explanation👇

Nine ways we can future‑proof rivers against extreme events

1. Restore natural flow and temperature variability
2. Protect and enhance refuges
3. Reconnect fragmented river networks
4. Prioritise Nature-based Solutions: let rivers roam free
5. Reduce underlying stressors that amplify extremes

Peatlands cover just 3–4% of Earth's land, yet they store twice the carbon of all the world's forests combined. Protecting peatlands is rated an Emergency Brake climate solution, one of the fastest-acting tools we have.

Learn more 👉 drawdown.org/explorer/protect-peatlands

GitHub - dhercar/gdmmTMB: An R package for fitting Generalised Dissimilarity Mixed Models (GDMM) with TMB An R package for fitting Generalised Dissimilarity Mixed Models (GDMM) with TMB - dhercar/gdmmTMB

R package for fitting Generalised Dissimilarity Uniqueness Models: github.com/dhercar/gdmm...

Code: github.com/dhercar/GDUM

Accounting for the Influence of Community Turnover Along Environmental Gradients on Compositional Uniqueness Compositional uniqueness is commonly quantified using the Local Contribution to Beta Diversity (LCBD), which is typically regressed against environmental predictors. However, LCBD–environment relatio...

If you’re interested in modelling community turnover and/or community uniqueness (i.e. LCBD: local contribution to beta diversity), make sure you check it out.

Paper: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

New paper from my group out in Ecology Letters, led by PhD student Daniel Hernández-Carrasco revealing a new method to account for the influence of community turnover along environmental gradients on compositional uniqueness.

7. When events combine they have disproportionate impacts
8. Underlying pressures amplify impacts
9. Impacts propagate through entire river networks

Dig in for the full explanation 👇

4. Heatwaves can push species beyond physiological limits
5. Floods and droughts reorganise ecological communities, with impacts that can last for years
6. Extremes open invasion windows for non-native species and can exacerbate their impacts

Nine ways extreme events reshape river biodiversity How floods, droughts, heatwaves, and compound events are impacting life in rivers

Nine ways extreme events reshape #river #biodiversity

1. They cause selective mortality that erodes genetic diversity
2. Droughts fragment rivers and refuges can become ecological traps
3. Long‑lasting physical legacies reshape habitats

After a lovely morning in the water yesterday, we were greeted by the news that the Naval frigate in the Akaroa Harbour had been leaking oil. Thankfully the response was quick but these aren’t the sorts of further stresses our Navy should be inflicting on our beautiful ecosystems.

I’d love to see where NZ sits