Anthony Ricciardi

If you mean so-called "de-extinction" I have a blog post about it.

eternalscientistmusings.wordpress.com/2026/01/30/a...

Voluta ebraea

Voluta musica

Scaphella junonia

These are a few of my favorite volutes on my shelves:

Voluta ebraea (massive 17 cm in length!);

Voluta musica (a knobby form that has a pattern so busy, it looks like it writes a symphony);

and one of my junonias (which, in addition to its striking spots, has a perfect unfiled lip).

Invasive alien species are a top driver of global nature loss. Yet whenever it's an animal, a segment of people fanatically resists their control.

They believe it's okay to sacrifice whole native ecosystems, with 1,000s of interconnected species, rather than tackle the problem.

They're very wrong.

My view of the #deextinction hype, encapsulated below.

Here is the pdf: redpath-staff.mcgill.ca/ricciardi/Gr...

The Null Hypothesis is Always Wrong No two populations are identical for any trait. No two communities have the same species composition. No detectable phenotype is ever compl...

The Null Hypothesis is Always Wrong!

New blog post - check it out.

ecoevoevoeco.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-...

Pines had good PR, back in the day.

SARS-like WIV1-CoV poised for human emergence | PNAS Outbreaks from zoonotic sources represent a threat to both human disease as well as the global economy. Despite a wealth of metagenomics studies, m...

Over 10 years ago, it was known that there existed SARS-like viruses (residing in Chinese horseshoe bats) that could infect human pulmonary tissue. So we don't need to invoke a 'lab leak' theory to explain the emergence of this zoonotic disease.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

As did South Africa, where introduced pine trees (which consume more water than native vegetation) threaten water supplies and fuel wildfires.

This importance also applies to freshwater benthic data, which are used to evaluate changes to water quality and responses to human disturbance.

As present, invasion science cannot predict the impacts of the release of novel biological entities (genetically engineered organisms, synthetic cells, hybrids) sufficiently to avoid ecological disasters. Such predictive power might be unattainable. Without it, this is reckless ecological gambling.

"It will be a mammoth because it will look like a mammoth and it will act like a mammoth, and it will restore interactions to that ecosystem that mammoths had with other species," Shapiro says.

So now they claim to know how their engineered facsimiles are going to behave in the wild?
#de-extinction

New from our lab: Using the invasive round goby as a model predator, we show how model selection in functional response experiments is affected by context (habitat complexity; mobile vs immobile prey).
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Nonnative forestry plantations: invasion epicenters? Nonnative plantations offer economic benefits but increase the risk of biological invasions worldwide. This risk is primarily driven by frequent anthropogenic disturbances and autocatalytic processes that can lead to an invasion meltdown, creating hotspots that amplify ecological impacts. This underscores the urgent need to balance economic benefits with ecosystem sustainability.

Online now: Nonnative forestry plantations: invasion epicenters?

Trying to manage ecosystems without the power to recognize distinct life forms is akin to trying to navigate through a world without having access to a map. theconversation.com/taxonomy-the...

Taxonomic capacity is essential for enhancing ecosystem services (by allowing the discovery of new foods, biofuels, medicines), effective conservation (identifying species at risk) and managing biosecurity (identifying invasive pests & diseases). newsroom.co.nz/2019/04/21/t...

Quote: "Taxonomy rarely gets the credit, but its work to date has already contributed to the rise of agriculture, the discovery of antibiotics, and the idea of evolution."
zenodo.org/records/3648...

Opinion | To Save Life on Earth, Bring Back Taxonomy (Published 2024)

Quote: "We need to be able to interpret genetic data in a way that humans can understand and use. That's taxonomy's job. And if we want to save what's left of the vast diversity of life on Earth, we'll have to reinvest in this science."
www.nytimes.com/2024/07/07/o...

It's the funding of taxonomic research & training that's dying out. Without an ability to identify life forms, we can't recognize/quantify invasions & extinctions and their impacts on ecosystems. Imagine trying to repair a complex steel structure if you can't distinguish different types of bearings.

I have a small collection of seashells - alongside fossils, skulls, meteorites, and insect specimens on shelves around the house. A few examples are shown below. You'll probably recognize several of these species. I'm partial to cowries, cones, and volutes. #molluscmonday #malacophile

Globalization of the Arctic, driven by declining sea ice cover, is predicted to facilitate bioinvasions across the northern hemisphere.
See our 2017 horizon scan:
www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

A reminder. bsky.app/profile/ecoi...

Wild pigs, giant goldfish and bugs that won't die: Invaders 'absolutely everywhere' in Canada How can we manage the species that are devastating Canada's natural ecosystems and shouldn't even be here?

vancouversun.com/feature/wild...

A mathematical exploration of some increasingly worrying trends in peer review. Some sensible recommendations, including encouraging AEs to STOP sending out just about everything for re-review after the first round. It's become systematic and annoying. Editors should make decisions.

A Mysterious Salmon-Killing Affliction is a Mystery No More - bioGraphic In California, scientists tracked the source of a severe vitamin deficiency that’s killing endangered fish.

This exemplifies perfectly an inherent inability to predict eco-evolutionary trajectories. Ecology and evolution used to be called Natural History. In hindsight it is possible to explain what happened, but we often make the mistake to think we can then project what we know to predict the future. 1/

Your lab assistant looks tired.

bsky.app/profile/ecoi...

bsky.app/profile/ecoi...

This is actually utter 🐂 💩, @aeon.co. For those playing at home, here's why theconversation.com/yes-feral-ca....

Santana and co's arguments have more holes than a block of swiss cheese.