Nick Deere

Best practices for moving from correlation to causation in ecological research - Nature Communications Different scientific traditions offer seemingly disparate approaches to inferring causal relationships in ecological systems. This Perspective unifies the causal assumptions and methods from...

Excited to share our new paper in @natcomms.nature.com We synthesize causal discovery & inference approaches across traditions (regression adjustment, quasi-expts, SEMs, Granger causality, convergent cross-mapping, and more) into a unified workflow for ecologists. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Bird communities follow alternate recovery trajectories two decades after wildfire Wildfires are altering forested landscapes across western North America. These wildfires are increasingly burning with high severity across large area…

Fascinating new research:

2+ decades later, bird communities in northern New Mexico are more biodiverse in patches that experienced low-severity fire when compared to nearby high-severity patches

A mind map diagram showing 5 complementary strategies for transformative change in nature conservation. The central hub reads "5 COMPLEMENTARY STRATEGIES TO BRING ABOUT TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE" with five main branches: "Conserve and regenerate places of value to nature and people" (TCA 28%) "Drive systemic change in the sectors most responsible for nature's decline" (TCA 30%) "Transform economic systems for nature and equity" (TCA 13%) "Transform governance systems to be integrative, inclusive, accountable and adaptive" (TCA 10%) "Shift views and values to recognize human-nature interconnectedness" (TCA 31%) Each main branch has 4-5 specific action items numbered accordingly (e.g., 1.1-1.5, 2.1-2.4, etc.). Orange connecting lines indicate the proportion of term occurrences associated with each strategy or action, with a scale bar shown at the bottom (0-50%). The design uses teal green for main concepts and white rounded rectangles for specific actions.

🎯 5 key strategies for transformative change: From conserving vital places to shifting values.

Together these create pathways to just and sustainable futures.

IPBES #TransformativeChange Assessment: https://www.ipbes.net/transformative-change-assessment

Phylogenetic Evidence Supports the Effect of Traits on Late‐Quaternary Megafauna Extinction in the Context of Human Activity Aim The late-Quaternary extinctions, which affected primarily large mammals, are strongly connected to the migration of modern humans out of sub-Saharan Africa and tropical Asia (the Palaeotropics),...

🦣 New paper: Megafauna with large size & flat-footedness + less related to tropical African/Asian fauna were more likely to go extinct in recent prehistory; consistent w direct hunting including pre-sapiens human filtering👣👉 doi.org/10.1111/geb....
#Megafauna #Extinction #TraitEcology #Palaeoecology

Screenshot of LinkedIn’s menu: “How LinkedIn uses your data”. Near the bottom, is the option to turn off “Data for Generative AI improvement”, shown with a red arrow.

🤖 If you use LinkedIn, please be aware that they automatically use your profile to train their GenAI. To turn off, go to Settings > Data Privacy > Data for Gen AI improvements.

Spatio-temporal variability in forest biodiversity associated with human well-being across socio-economic deprivation gradients - Nature Ecology & Evolution Applying a combined social science and trait-based ecology approach, the authors identify ecological traits in forests eliciting positive or negative well-being among human participants in England and...

New paper out today in
@natecoevo.nature.com on biodiversity & human wellbeing in UK forests, both seasonally and along a gradient of socioeconomic deprivation

Funded by @erc.europa.eu and Woodland Trust 🌳, with lovely @dice-kent.bsky.social team

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Delayed recovery of seed-dispersal interactions after deforestation Landim et al. show that seed-dispersal interactions require about two decades to functionally recover in tropical forests in Ecuador, but the recovery time of seed-dispersal functions is delayed in pa...

Excited to share that the second paper of my PhD is out in @currentbiology.bsky.social 🍈🦜🍒🐒🍊🐿️

We show that the functional diversity of seed-dispersal interactions in tropical forests takes circa 20 years to recover after deforestation.

You can read it here: www.cell.com/current-biol...

Assessing Vulnerability of Relevant Sites for Amphibian Conservation Through Spatiotemporal Analyses of Global Change Factors in Europe Sites for amphibian conservation in Central and Eastern Europe face intense temperature increments and expanded droughts Sites in the Mediterranean experienced a slower pace of temperature increm...

European amphibian hotspots in the hot pot. Published in Earth’s Future

doi.org/10.1029/2025...

Central & Eastern Europe sites: intense temperature increments & expanded droughts

Mediterranean sites: Increasing floods

Mediterranean coast, France & Italy vulnerable: low fecundity+high threat

Conceptual overview of the deepSSF neural network used to predict animal movement.

📖Published📖

Forrest et al. present deepSSF, an approach to fit and predict animal movement data using deep learning 🐃 🌍 🧪 Read the full article here 👇

buff.ly/BWQ3Oni

Increasing global human exposure to wildland fires despite declining burned area Although half of Earth’s population resides in the wildland-urban interface, human exposure to wildland fires remains unquantified. We show that the population directly exposed to wildland fires incre...

🔥 Our new research in @science.org shows that people are increasingly exposed to fires globally, driven by overlapping shifts in where #fires occur and where people live.

But changes in exposure vary hugely by region and are shaped by different population dynamics.👇

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

INVITED COMMENTARY
Integrate Remote Sensing Into Ecological Research to Realise Its Potential for Monitoring in the Antarctic

🔗 buff.ly/3a2OFU6

1/ Nice article just published summarising our recent paper exploring the distribution, ecology and #conservation of #kerangas #forest in Kalimantan 🌳. Under-appreciated but incredible forests, with important conservation potential and much still to learn! Paper OA and linked 👇

Fire in focus: Clarifying metrics & terminology for better ecological insight 🔥🧪

This framework can help researchers & practitioners to
👉select fire metrics for research & management 📊
👉interpret previous studies 💭
👉form a growing body of knowledge 🌏

🔗 doi.org/10.1111/1365...

Out today! ‘Quantifying coral reef–ocean interactions is critical for predicting reef futures under climate change’ in @natecoevo.nature.com
#EcologicalOceanography #InterdisciplinaryResearch #CoralReefs #OceanicSubsidies

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

@sosbangor.bsky.social

Large reductions in tropical bird abundance attributable to heat extreme intensification - Nature Ecology & Evolution Climate change poses a growing threat to biodiversity, but disentangling its overall impact from other anthropogenic stressors is challenging. Here the authors use a data-driven climate attribution fr...

Kotz, Amano & Watson show that exposure to heat extremes is associated with declines in bird populations, especially in tropical regions

@tatsuya-amano.bsky.social ‪
@pik-potsdam.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We need a new ethics for a world of AI agents The deployment of capable AI agents raises fresh questions about safety, human–machine relationships and social coordination.

The authors of a Comment article in Nature explore key challenges that must be addressed by scientists, scholars, engineers and policymakers to ensure that interactions between humans and AI agents — and among agents themselves — remain broadly beneficial. 🧪

iNaturalist is shaping the future of biodiversity research. See our recent paper, published in Bioscience. doi.org/10.1093/bios...

Drivers and solutions to Southeast Asia’s biodiversity crisis Nature Reviews Biodiversity - The terrestrial ecosystems of Southeast Asia are both globally important reservoirs of biodiversity, and a provider of resources and livelihoods for millions of people...

Southeast Asia covers multiple global biodiversity hotspots — but is experiencing a biodiversity crisis.

Our new article in Nature Reviews Biodiversity asks: What’s really driving the losses, and what can we do about it?
👉 rdcu.be/expy6 1/7

Biodiversity conservation requires integration of species-centric and process-based strategies | PNAS Conservation science and policy are geared primarily toward the preservation of species and habitats, with priority often given to the rarest, most...

Conservation has always focused on the most threatened species

But what keeps our planet habitable is functioning ecosystems

Since society refuses to properly fund an ark, and it's an emergency, that needs a rethink

Maybe we need to save the game, not the players

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

I am excited to share new work led by Bob McCleery and with a wonderful group of co-authors.

Experimental evidence for the massive role that megaherbivores play in savannas...

And it is not just through their effects on vegetation...

Check it out here:
authors.elsevier.com/c/1lVgw_9CgT...

New online! Addressing disparities in global biodiversity data

Drivers and solutions to Southeast Asia’s biodiversity crisis Nature Reviews Biodiversity, Published online: 23 July 2025; doi:10.1038/s44358-025-00064-7The terrestrial ecosystems of Southeast Asia are both globally important reservoirs of biodiversity, and a provider of resources and livelihoods for millions of people across the region. This Review summarizes the threats to biodiversity in Southeast Asia, and the conservation solutions required to ensure successful outcomes for biodiversity and people.

New online! Drivers and solutions to Southeast Asia’s biodiversity crisis

Monitoring population extinction risk with community science data 💬🌎

Leveraging 'the power of people' allows estimating local persistence probability as a risk-based population viability, closely aligning estimation from standardized, systematic monitoring 🧪

🔗 doi.org/10.1111/1365...

Ozzy Osbourne, the people’s Prince of Darkness, took heavy metal into the light Having escaped a life of drudgery in Birmingham, Ozzy became the rare rock frontman you could relate to – and then, against the odds, a national treasure

Ozzy Osbourne, the people’s Prince of Darkness, took heavy metal into the light

Read our latest paper on the application of macroecological theory to better understand human impact on biodiversity, great collaborative work led by @pierregauz.bsky.social
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

A spotted hyaena with a snare around its neck. Photo credit: big5photos.com

Predicted snare hotspots in Kruger, with the right side image showing predicted presence/absence of snares with sites of known snare detection

Happy to share our new paper, led by Cornelia Warrer, investigating large carnivore snaring rates & drivers of snare occurrence across Kruger NP!

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

We found that carnivores were highly susceptible to being caught in snares & predicted snaring hotspots in Kruger

Knowledge from non-English-language studies broadens contributions to conservation policy and helps to tackle bias in biodiversity data 📈🧪

Data from local sources strengthens databases by adding species not previously included in international datasets 🌏

🔗 doi.org/10.1111/1365...

As part of our series exploring how the private finance sector can support national biodiversity strategy and action plans (NBSAPs), we share key highlights from Indonesia 🇮🇩.

Download the country outlook to learn more about these instruments: tinyurl.com/5642un4f

Our new #paper is out!

Sahul’s large-bodied animal #communities have drastically changed since the Late #Pleistocene.

#Mammals and #herbivores were the hardest hit, leading to major shifts in the structure and function of #ecosystems over time. @beamuts.bsky.social @globecoflinders.bsky.social

Dimensions underlying the representational alignment of deep neural networks with humans - Nature Machine Intelligence An interpretability framework that compares how humans and deep neural networks process images has been presented. Their findings reveal that, unlike humans, deep neural networks focus more on visual properties than semantic ones, highlighting divergent representational strategies.

Research published in Nature Machine Intelligence reveals that deep neural networks prioritize visual properties over semantic ones when processing images, contrasting with human representation strategies. 🧪