How do we know our research results are REAL? We replicate them! Most folks agree but lament on how hard it is to publish these replications.
My dearest gentle reader, lament no more! Delighted to unveil: Replication Studies, a new section of Behavioral Ecology 1/
academic.oup.com/beheco/artic...
⚠️ Editorial Expression of Concern for the Report : Meta-analysis reveals declines in terrestrial but increases in freshwater insect abundances 🪲 DOI:10.1126/science.aax9931
🔗 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
🌐🧪🌍🦤
🌿📢 Join the Conservation Impact Evaluation Virtual Seminar Series!
🗓 Tue, Oct 7 | ⏰ 10 AM ET / 4 PM CET
🎤 Ben Groom (Univ. of Exeter)
📖 “The Impact of Overlapping Environmental Policies in Tropical Rainforests”
🔗 Register: conbio.org/groups/worki...
#ConservationScience #ImpactEvaluation
🌿 Call for Nominations — IEWG Board (2025–28)
SCB’s Impact Evaluation Working Group is seeking new board members:
• Community & Engagement Lead
• Conference & Events Lead
• Secretary
📧 Apply by 12 Oct: teamcounterfactual@gmail.com
#Conservation #ImpactEvaluation
GiveWell sought an independent check on the evidence supporting >$1 billion it has granted to its top charities. This fall, Alex Cohen asked whether we could obtain the datasets needed to reproduce the underlying RCTs. We said yes; charging only a modest fee to cover our time.
🧵 + 🐀 + blog post!
We're now accepting applications for The Interdisciplinary Conservation Network (ICN) 2025! ICN provides an opportunity for ECRs to hone key skills, build networks + work collaboratively to develop cutting-edge research in conservation.
Apply here: app.onlinesurveys.jisc.ac.uk/s/oxford/app...
A recent paper claims, opposed to what conservation science has known for decades, that there is no evidence that foxes and cats were a major driver of Australia's mammal extinctions. Turns out there are quite a few issues here. Strap in for a looong thread 🧪
academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...
Two fully-funded PhD scholarships @BangorUni
in conservation social science. Deadline 5th May. If you have conservation scientists, geographers, economists, sociologists in your network do share. Details in thread below (1/3)
www.bangor.ac.uk/conservation...
📢New volunteering opportunity 📢
BES Macroecology Group is looking for a committee chair to join its team!
As part of the group, you will coordinate the committee’s activities, including events and communications. This is a perfect opportunity if you are a macroecologist and an active researcher.
For more information, please go to tcd.ie/hr/vacancies/ and search the 'School of Natural Sciences'.
You will see that we also have several Assistant Professor positions open at the moment.
Please pass this on to any early career academics / postdocs, especially those who are new to this platform!
A few more days to apply! Together with @jcsvenning.bsky.social and as part of @econovoau.bsky.social we're offering this fab 2-yr postdoc position: international.au.dk/about/profil...
Funded PhD! Interested in nightjars? Interested in radio tracking and GPS tracking? We are looking for a PhD student to study the movement and cognitive ecology of this enigmatic crepuscular species with me and @dmitrykishkinev.bsky.social Link below - message or email for info. 3 days to apply!
[please share widely!]
We have two PhD positions available at the Swedish Museum of Natural History:
[Position 1] Birds, hybridization, genomes, island biology, biogeography, sexual selection 🦚, w/ me, Knud Jønsson, Martin Iredstedt and @stelkens.bsky.social et al
recruit.visma.com/spa/public/a...
Foundations and future directions for causal inference in ecological research, forthcoming w/ @katherinesiegel.bsky.social: tinyurl.com/4mm57zzd.
We wrote it based on our experience teaching causal inference to ecologists w/ some stuff we wish other papers had reviewed to share w/ the students
1/n
Here is our OA review of the overlooked yet significant consequences of #languagebarriers in #conservation. An outcome based on 5 years of work at our translatE project, supported by over 130 collaborators around the world.
@cp-trendsecolevo.bsky.social
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
1/4
Join the CurveBend Project! We're hiring 8 PhDs and 2 Postdocs to promote biodiversity restoration and a nature-positive future through collective action at the landscape scale in the Netherlands, Argentina, Kenya and Tanzania. shorturl.at/nOdhb #JobAlert #PhDpositions #PostdocJobs #Biodiversity
ALA Labs frontpage & text logo. ALA LABS text is in white, formatted as off-centre stacked text. Underneath is smaller text, "Experiments in code, data analysis & visualisation from the Atlas of Living Australia." The background is green grass with a Southern Brown Tree Frog in the middle, hanging onto the grass. It has a darker brown top and lighter brown underside. The frog's eye is a rich dark yellow, with a black pupil in the shape of an oval, stretching from the left to right side of the eye
An animated scroll through an ALA Labs post, showing code, text and visuals to make a data visualisation in R. The article is on how to make a hexagon map of Australia, where each hexagon is an area of Australia, and each point in the hexagon is positioned and coloured to represent a species.
Examples of dataviz that ALA Labs posts show how to make in R. They are colourful and fun. One of them is even 3D!
✅ Do you use R or Python?
✅ Are you an ecologist/biologist?
Then you might find our website ALA Labs useful!
ALA Labs is full of how-to articles to visualise or analyse biodiversity data. Some are for beginners, others are advanced/experimental 😀
labs.ala.org.au
🧪🌏 #rstats #python #quartopub
New paper alert! What is a unit of #nature? Design choices & challenges for #biodiversity #credits methodologies, with @juliajones.bsky.social & other amazing colleagues. Hope you enjoy it! royalsociety.org/blog/2024/12...
Scalloped hammerhead sharks (Sphyrna lewini) IUCN Critically Endangered © Masayuki Agawa_Ocean Image Bank
New #GlobalSharkTrends study published in @science.org reveals #overfishing has more than halved shark & ray populations over the past 50-years causing widespread erosion of ecological function and exceptionally high extinction risk
👉Full article bit.ly/GlobalSharkTrends
🧵1/20
Improper data practices erode the quality of global ecological databases and impede the progress of ecological research The scientific community has entered an era of big data. However, with big data comes big responsibilities, and best practices for how data are contributed to databases have not kept pace with the collection, aggregation, and analysis of big data. Here, we rigorously assess the quantity of data for specific leaf area (SLA) available within the largest and most frequently used global plant trait database, the TRY Plant Trait Database, exploring how much of the data were applicable (i.e., original, representative, logical, and comparable) and traceable (i.e., published, cited, and consistent). Over three-quarters of the SLA data in TRY either lacked applicability or traceability, leaving only 22.9% of the original data usable compared with the 64.9% typically deemed usable by standard data cleaning protocols. The remaining usable data differed markedly from the original for many species, which led to altered interpretation of ecological analyses. Though the data we consider here make up only 4.5% of SLA data within TRY, similar issues of applicability and traceability likely apply to SLA data for other species as well as other commonly measured, uploaded, and downloaded plant traits. We end with suggested steps forward for global ecological databases, including suggestions for both uploaders to and curators of databases with the hope that, through addressing the issues raised here, we can increase data quality and integrity within the ecological community.
1/ Important read for anyone using, contributing, or building large databases by aggregating data sources. Discusses issues with data quality, duplication, credit attribution, etc, and includes recommendations for improvement
doi.org/10.1111/gcb.... #ecopubs
I made this starter pack to connect all early career researchers (ECR) interested in conservation biology topics! 🌍🌱🐼
If you would like to be added DM me or comment! 🔊
Let's grow it to increase connections 🌐
go.bsky.app/KXiSj3j
#ConservationBiology
#EarlyCareerResearchers
#Conservationists
[6/6] Lastly, we wish to say we SUPPORT the EU's funding of these conservation projects! Our goal has always been to improve how these funds operate so that they're more useful for both scientists and practitioners.
Shout-out to my co-authors; Matt Muir, Thomas B. White & @juliajones.bsky.social
[5/6] We know our study has its limitations and that these documents and their evaluations might exist behind closed doors, however, their inaccessibility can actively hinder both scientific evidence-synthesis as well as practitioners in the field.
Heatmap distribution of invasive red swamp crayfish in Malta after the eradication attempt with the ERDF-funded ecological restoration project. We found invasive crayfish in their highest abundance within the excavated area.
[4/6] The outcomes of the restoration project had never been documented elsewhere, and mechanical excavation was not documented within scientific literature. So, how many important lessons and case studies are we losing from all these ERDF projects?
Before-after comparison photos of an ecological restoration projects in Malta funded by ERDF. One of the goals of the project was to eradicate invasive red swamp crayfish (procambarus clarkii) by mechanically excavating the stream bed during the summer months. In total, over 53,000m3 of silt and sediment had been removed.
[3/6] It isn't clear why ERDF projects aren't publicly documented. Earlier this year we looked at an ecological restoration project funded by ERDF that used mechanical excavation for invasive crayfish eradication and found that it was unsuccessful.
doi.org/10.1002/2688...
The distribution of conservation-related projects among member states funded by LIFE (a, 435 projects; c, €1300 M in total funds) and ERDF (b, 1376 projects; d, €760 M in total funds).
[2/6] ERDF isn't as well known as the LIFE programme in conservation, however it still funds a lot of conservation projects in Europe. Between 2014 - 2024, ERDF funded €760M across 1,376 projects while LIFE funded €1.3B across 435 projects.
Summary statistics concerning the information available online about our stratified random sample of conservation-related (a) LIFE (n = 109) and (b) ERDF (n = 345) projects. Overall, ERDF 95% of our sample of LIFE-funded projects were found online with 61% being mentioned in peer-reviewed publications. There is no mention of most of our sample of ERDF-funded projects (68%) on Google's search engine and only 1% (n = 4) were mentioned in any peer-reviewed publications found on Google Scholar.
[1/6] NEW STUDY - We looked at how much evidence is generated by two EU programs: LIFE and the European Regional Development Funds and found that while LIFE performed well, ERDF had significant shortcomings, with barely any publicly available documentation.
doi.org/10.1111/csp2...
Hello #seabirds PhD students in the UK and Ireland. We are a supportive cross-university group of ECRs. Online get togethers on the last Friday of every month on Teams. Contact email below 👇 Develop collabs; share data, methods, problems, code; guest speakers... come say hi! Please share - thanks!
