Lily Leahy

Birds are vanishing from tropical forests. Is another ‘silent spring’ coming? As mysterious bird declines crop up in the Amazon and beyond, scientists suspect climate change may be to blame

tropical lowland birds aren't doing well -- this is an excellent article on what's happening featuring a slew of fantastic research projects
www.science.org/content/arti...

Here's how the records stacked up during the recent heatwave over central and southern Australia. All-month maximum temperature records at individual stations with 25+ year histories are highlighted.

⚠️I saw an ancient ant⚠️
@hanrisk.bsky.social's epic field and lab survival study of ants! We found worker lifespans varied 23-394 days and were predicted by body size but not phylogeny🐜
Congrats Hannah on the 1st PhD chapter out!
See more @royalsocietypublishing.org #ProcB:
doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

Our new paper is officially out in Proceedings B! 🐜

It’s the first chapter from my PhD thesis, where we combined field mark-recapture with lab survival assays.
Huge thank you and congrats to my co-authors, Kirk Stodola, Lily Leahy, Ian J. Wright, and Heloise Gibb.

doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

Why has live birth evolved repeatedly in lizards? A mechanistic model linking behavior, thermal physiology, and life history shows cold climates favor viviparity, providing causal support for the classic cold-climate hypothesis. Image credit: Wikimedia
academic.oup.com/evlett/advan...

Nitrogen deposition reveals global patterns in plant and animal stoichiometry - Nature Communications Organisms vary in their nitrogen and phosphorus content, shaping ecological and evolutionary processes. This study shows that nitrogen deposition is a consistent global factor associated with plant an...

Thrilled to share our new #stoichiometry paper on the environmental correlates of plant and animal stoichiometry. This was a fantastic collaborative work supported by #idiv www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Analysing the metabolic rate of tiny organisms (ants) at a macro-geographical scale

Fascinating work by @lilyleahy.bsky.social !

#ESA2025

Looking forward to joining @pattfinnerty.bsky.social @hollykirk.bsky.social, Dr Samantha Lloyd, Dr Perpetua Turner, @dieterhochuli.bsky.social & Dr Katherine Moseby, on today's #ESA2025 panel:

'The Ups, Downs, and Sideways of an Ecology Career'

2pm, Regattas. Come along! @ecolsocaus.bsky.social

Venn diagram of how Indigenous land management intersects with western principles.

Tiahni Adamson's keynote is speaking to how cultural capability can be deepened in ecological orgs.
@ecolsocaus.bsky.social #ESA2025

Begin by looking at this paper
link.springer.com/article/10.1... which looks at how western and Traditional knowledge overlaps but also does not!

Testing the thermal physiology, habitat and competition hypotheses for elevational range limits in four tropical songbirds | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Restricted elevational ranges are common across tropical montane species, but the mechanisms generating and maintaining these patterns remain poorly resolved. A long-standing hypothesis is that specia...

Check out our new paper in @royalsociety.org testing mechanisms behind elevational range restriction in tropical montane songbirds! ⛰️🦜🌳

Backstory: when i first visited Central America in the early 2010's i was struck with elevational ranges of birds..

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Global distribution of forest landscapes covered by airborne LiDAR

Only a pre-print for now, but after 4 years of hard work I couldn't resist sharing this!

The Global Canopy Atlas: analysis-ready maps of 3D structure for the world's woody ecosystems

📜: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Huge team effort led by the brilliant Fabian Fischer!

Metabolic traits are shaped by phylogenetic conservatism and environment, not just body size | PNAS Metabolic rate dictates life’s tempo, yet how ecological and environmental factors integrate to shape metabolic traits remains contentious. Conside...

Awesome to see our paper exploring competing hypotheses in macro/metabolic ecology out in PNAS.

Led by the all star @lilyleahy.bsky.social with a range of amazing folks including @funkyant.bsky.social @natejsanders.bsky.social @ianjwright.bsky.social.

Check it out!

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Myrmecia ant carrying an Isopod, photo: François Brassard

Hot off the press: Metabolic traits are shaped by phylogenetic conservatism and environment, not just body size

Our article in PNAS explores several controversies in metabolic theory in a macroscale study of 🐜 #aridity #temp #SMR #DGC 📸:François Brassard

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2501541122

The critically endangered possum species, thought to be isolated to Victoria, has been found in Kosciuszko national park, at least 250km away from the nearest sighting.

#ConservationOptimism

www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

The top 10 flying insect clades rule the skies—but defy the rules. Weak or inverted latitudinal diversity gradients leave biogeographers puzzled. Entomologists? Mildly amused. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🚨🐜!!! Check out our new paper where we investigate the impact of a soil level (SoilTemp) dataset on niche shifts of introduced ant species globally — using soil temperatures often lessens the extent of niche shifts between native and introduced ranges! 🐜 🐜 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

My final PhD chapter published in FEE (Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment): re-mapping Köppen-Geiger climate zones, but now using microclimate! Very excited to have this one out:
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Why Editors At Scientific Journals Are Resigning En Masse Publishers want to put out more papers with less editorial staff, all while charging scientists more to publish. Editors have had enough.

There have been at least 20 mass resignations from scientific journals since 2023.

Dr. Andrea Taylor and Ivan Oransky join us to discuss what is behind these resignations and what they mean for scientific publishing.

Climate change and the cost-of-living squeeze in desert lizards Climate warming can induce a cost-of-living “squeeze” in ectotherms by increasing energetic expenditures while reducing foraging gains. We used biophysical models (validated by 2685 field observations...

@kristoffer-wild.bsky.social @mikekearney.bsky.social and team used meticulously collected historical datasets and biophysical models to predict climate warming impacts on Aust. and African desert lizards, congrats on a great piece of work! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Details : Research Fellow in Mammalian Movement Ecology and Energetics : The University of Melbourne Careers at The University of Melbourne

Please circulate: Postdoc position on responses of Australian mammal pests to climate change. Part of my ARC Laureate Fellowship research. Lots of hands-on fieldwork. Learn about biophysical models. Remote locations. Collaboration with #EcologicalHorizons and #AWC jobs.unimelb.edu.au/en/job/91880...

(PDF) Large-scale and long-term wildlife research and monitoring using camera traps: a continental synthesis PDF | Camera traps are widely used in wildlife research and monitoring, so it is imperative to understand their strengths, limitations, and potential... | Find, read and cite all the research you need...

New research! Authors examine camera trapping trends in Australia, finding strong taxonomic, geographic, and analytical biases, but also new ways to meet big conservation objectives. Great stuff! Glad to play a very small part. Congrats Tom and WildObs! ⚡️

www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Faster than expected: release of nitrogen and phosphorus from decomposing woody litter Deadwood represents globally important carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) pools. Current wood nutrient dynamics models are extensions of those developed for leaf litter decomposition. Howe.....

Little Christmas surprise: check out our new paper out in @newphyt.bsky.social, we investigated nutrient release dynamics in wood. Takeaways: what is known from leaf litter does not apply to wood! Time to consider wood and their decomposers different to those of leaf litter. doi.org/10.1111/nph....

A group of longhorn crazy ants (top) and a group of people (bottom) tackling scaled versions of the same geometrical maneuvering puzzle. CREDIT: Ofer Feinerman

Researchers challenged longhorn crazy ants and humans with the same task: maneuvering a T-shaped object through two consecutive open doorways. Single humans always outperformed single ants, but ant groups could beat human groups. In PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

PhyloPic PhyloPic is an open database of free silhouette images of animals, plants, and other life forms, available for reuse under Creative Commons licenses. Download silhouettes for use in educational materi...

Ok people. I’m drawing silhouettes this afternoon. If you have a paper coming up and you are in need of a #silhouette please let me know and I will have it ready today. As always I upload all my silhouettes to phylopic.org

I also have tutorials on how to put a silhouette in a plot in R.

It was a great talk! Super interesting results

Great time talking about the role of our little Australian critters #termites, in the carbon cycle and the insights we can gain from studying them! #ESAus24

Great work thinking about applying trait economic spectrum to the world’s little social insects by @lilyleahy.bsky.social #ESAus24

Hi! Would love to be added, work on functional traits, ecophysiology, ants, climate change, currently in Naarm!

Hi! Would love to be added if there’s still room, thanks!

Hi! Would love to be added 🌳🐜😊