New paper out! Great tits face distinct challenges from extreme weather during development, based on 60 years data from >83k nestlings in Wytham Woods 🐣 Cold snaps & heavy rain can stunt growth, but earlier breeding may help buffer this! By @devisatarkar.bsky.social et al.
doi.org/10.1111/gcb.70794
Some of my favorite books pictured here! Congratulations on your new book, looking forward to it!
fantastic paper by @kimholzmann.bsky.social & colleagues presenting data on ~2300 insect species along two tropical mountain slopes
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#NewPaperAlert! So incredibly proud of Katy Silber, former PhD student & post-doc for publishing ALL of the work she did in the lab. This last paper @pnas.org answers the question, how and why does rain matter to bird reproduction, *generally*? Here is the graphic summary... details below.
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Figure showing how the correlation between mass and recruitment in Wytham Great Tits depends on environmental conditions - in particular note switch from almost none to very strong with increasing population density
New research just out in J Evol Biol: led by @lbliard.bsky.social with @jsmartin.bsky.social @dzchilds.bsky.social @paniw.bsky.social & Arpat Ozgul using the very cool Covariance Reaction Norm approach to test environmental dependence of trade-offs in great tits
academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-...
Figure from preprint showing temporal chage in mass of great tits. In (A) plot is of average mass each year for adult birds during breeding season. In (B) the mass of nestlings in each year. The lower, purple line, are data for all nestlings; the green points and line for those nestlings which survived to be breeding adults. The increasing gap between the lines shows that selection on fledging mass has slowly become stronger over this period.
Young male Great Tit in the hand after processing to collect biometric data
Some new research from us, led by @davididiaquez.bsky.social. Using data from the past 47 years, we show that mass of adult great tits has declined by ~1 sd, which seems to result largely from an environmental effect on nestling growth linked to higher pop density
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
The answer to tomorrow’s conservation challenges may lie in the past. Long-term ecological records from Wytham Woods show why decades of data are vital for understanding biodiversity change, guiding policy, & improving nature recovery outcomes. Short-term data can mislead—history matters. Watch now
We face two potential missteps in ecophysiology: 1) measuring animals under socially unrealistic conditions & 2) extrapolating results to nature, where social dynamics alter trait expression, plasticity, & evolutionary outcomes. Our new commentary in @jexpbiol.bsky.social : doi.org/10.1242/jeb....
why do males defend territories in some species while pairs or family groups defend territories in others?
then-undergrad Shreyas Arashanapalli did a fantastic project to find out, analyzing 3177 playback experiments on 264 species
the best predictor?
latitude
academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...
How an ancient evolutionary bond morphed into a modern urban crisis.
Please share share share! I launched a crowdfunding for my project, I need your help!
Note: if you become a backer, you will be notified with bonus avian encounters at the parks! Wanna see spoonbills, cranes and bald eagles? Even a tiny donation will help me <3 experiment.com/projects/cit...
Book cover for Reproducible Code guide. The cover has a red background with a large yellow-bodied black-headed stag beetle.
Excited to launch the new improved Reproducible Code guide from @britishecologicalsociety.org @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social FREE online here! www.britishecologicalsociety.org//wp-content/... Amazing work by some very talented ECRs. We hope it’s useful!
Fascinating new paper by @andrewabraham.bsky.social on how salt starvation shapes the abundance of large animals in Africa - the thread below explains the science … 🌐
🧵1/5
🌍🔬 Our new paper is out! We identify the global mechanisms shaping the elemental composition of organisms — and the results overturn long-standing assumptions in ecology.
👇 Thread ↓
doi.org/10.1038/s414...
See our new study led by @ninadm.bsky.social in Nature Sustainability: 16 yrs of data show invasive #plants in #India expanding fast as passengers+drivers of change—reshaping #habitats, #fire & #livelihoods while creating novel ecosystem🌿🐅Collab w/ WII & NCBS.
➡️ doi.org/10.1038/s418... #alienplants
My first PhD thesis paper is out now in Hormones and Behavior "Corticosterone predicts double-brooding in female savannah sparrows (Passerculus sandwichensis)". Open access here: doi.org/10.1016/j.yh... [1/7]
Newly expanded version of my guide to scientific writing -- known as the “15 steps” -- published in PLOS Computational Biology. Special thanks to Éric Marty for creating a fantastic visualization.
Check it out: journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
#ScientificWriting #PLOSComputationalBiology
As the vulture population plummets, dogs multiply and rabies spreads.
The sequence, triggered by human action, carries a warning that many scientists consider to be a sixth mass extinction: When we endanger other species, we endanger ourselves.
“Choosing to write is also choosing to make meaning. Studies suggest that having a sense of agency is both a prerequisite for, and an outcome of, writing.”
ChatGPT isn’t mentioned once in this article but it’s impossible not to read it as a powerful critique.
Syntopic diet divergence inferred from metabarcoding in two parulid warblers: Setophaga virens (Black-throated Green Warbler) and Seiurus aurocapilla (Ovenbird) | doi.org/10.1093/orni... | Ornithology | #ornithology 🪶
On a busy day I had a TED talk published. This talk is about the energy flows of the living world, and how we need to centre this vibrancy as a core value when thinking about working with nature for climate change and other challenges
www.ted.com/talks/yadvin...
New paper today in Proc B @royalsociety.org. We explored nest architecture in 3,685 species of birds, modelling the multivariate nature of nests, i.e. how shape, location or attachment co-occur. Then we explored how the environment affected nest architecture evolution. Spoilers in the title! 🪺🐦🌍
Putting this here, partly to remind myself to read it (🙄) but also because it looks important and useful
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
The brains and social lives of animals shape predator-prey interactions. We explore the extent of this relationship in our 2024 @cp-trendsecolevo.bsky.social review.
www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...
How do broomrapes find their hosts? How can they specialise on different hosts? Enter the astonishing world of strigolactones
. youtu.be/mUp9n_RW2eg?...
How does personality shape ecological roles?🐦
A new Galápagos study shows that more exploratory birds use a broader foraging niche-linking consistent behavior with ecological flexibility.
📄 García-Loor et al.2025
doi.org/10.1111/btp....
#BirdBehavior #ForagingNiche #Galapagos
📸 Kleindorfer, Ploderer
not an average american, but living without a car and complaining about the terrible public transportation everyday
you might think N American species are getting common at their north range limit and rare at their south range limit as temps get warmer
but you would be wrong
new paper in GEB w/ @eliotmiller.bsky.social & Matt Strimas-Mackey, eBird Status & Trends ftw
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
NEW BOOK JUST DROPPED. All chapters are free!
science.peregrinefund.org/state-of-wor...
📢 🐾New paper: We developed robust methods to monitor snow leopard population. By implementing it across 59000 sq.km., we found one of the world’s largest snow leopard population and highest densities in Indian Trans-Himalaya. All thanks to local communities and a wonderful collaboration
