Who is making jokes at scientific conferences? Which type of joke land?

To find out, we collected quantitative data on jokes at 14 scientific conferences – now published OA in @royalsociety.org ProcB:

doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

w/ @rcorreia.bsky.social @andreasantangeli.bsky.social and more

The landmark IPBES Business and Biodiversity Report found that global economic growth occurs at the expense of biodiversity, the loss of which poses a critical, systemic risk to the economy & human wellbeing.

🎥 Watch this short video to learn more.
🔗 https://www.ipbes.net/bba-report/media-release

Klimatförändringar driver fåglarna högre upp i de svenska fjällen I genomsnitt har många fåglar flyttat knappt tio meter högre upp sedan millennieskiftet. Förändringen sker snabbast i den svenska fjällvärlden.

Our research was picked up by the top Swedish newspaper! @dagensnyheter.bsky.social interviewed @josephinecouet.bsky.social on elevational shifts of birds in the Swedish (and other European) mountains.Utmärkt!
www.dn.se/varlden/klim...
@hkilabornithology.bsky.social @helsinki.fi @nathist.bsky.social

Bird feeders have caused a dramatic evolution of California hummingbirds

Evolution doesn’t always take thousands or millions of years. Sometimes it happens right before our eyes.

Such is the case with the Anna’s hummingbird, a species that has undergone a dramatic transformation in a few generations, thanks to the advent of hummingbird feeders: https://scim.ag/3YMuQQu

Many indigobird species look alike, so their songs are the best way to tell them apart. In Nigeria, an undescribed firefinch species was discovered after an indigobird was recorded mimicking its song, later identified as the Rock firefinch. #AfricanOrnithology
doi.org/10.1111/j.14...

More than half of researchers now use AI for peer review — often against guidance A survey of 1,600 academics found that more than 50% have used artificial-intelligence tools while peer reviewing manuscripts.

Just decline the peer review invitation.

What are you people even doing?

The call for abstracts for #ECCB26 is now open!

Researchers, policymakers + practitioners are invited to submit their abstracts for oral presentations, posters, or speed talks by 15 Feb, 2026.

We hope to see you in Leiden!
#conservation #networking #conference

Relying on ChatGPT to teach you about a topic leaves you with shallower knowledge than Googling and reading about it, according to new research that compared what more than 10,000 people knew after using one method or the other.

Shared by @gizmodo.com: buff.ly/yAAHtHq

New paper out about elevational shifts in European birds lead by @josephinecouet.bsky.social: "Solar Radiation Affects Bird Distributions but Not Elevational Shifts in European Mountains"

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
@emmamarjakangas.bsky.social @andreasantangeli.bsky.social @ebcc.info

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!

Grazing cattle at low intensities could sustain biodiversity on modern farms | University of Helsinki A new study conducted by researchers at the University of Helsinki emphasises the important role of low-intensity cattle grazing in maintaining biodiversity on modern farms.

Grazing cattle at low intensities could sustain biodiversity on modern farms: new paper out in AGEE doi.org/10.1016/j.ag...

www.helsinki.fi/en/news/envi...

@aksulehikoinen.bsky.social @irinaherzon.bsky.social @johanekroos.bsky.social @andreasantangeli.bsky.social et al.

"Health losses attributed to anthropogenic climate change," a brief communication in the journal Nature Climate Change. There's a map showing regions of the world, and pie charts of relevant studies as they apply to different health impacts like "heat-related deaths" and "maternal and child health"

🚨 NEW: Climate change is already causing 30,000 deaths per year - a global annual economic loss of $100-350B USD - but the true damage is probably 10x higher. Out TODAY in Nature Climate Change: the first systematic look at the science of "health impact attribution" 🔓 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Drones with thermal cameras are revealing the secrets of elusive Australian forest wildlife The new technology will help scientists monitor and protect some of Australia’s most iconic and threatened forest species.

Happy to be able to share that our work investigating the efficacy of thermal #drones for nocturnal #wildlife surveys is finally published in @esajournals.bsky.social Ecological applications: doi.org/10.1002/eap..... Find a summary in @theconversation.com here: theconversation.com/drones-with-...

‘We’ve done it before’: how not to lose hope in the fight against ecological disaster Some days it can feel as if climate catastrophe is inevitable. But history is full of cases – such as the banning of whaling and CFCs – that show humanity can come together to avert disaster

How not to lose hope in the fight against ecological disaster

Reboot Development: The Economics of a Livable Planet New World Bank report: Find out about how policymakers can connect the dots across land, air, and water sectors to drive strong, sustainable economic growth at the national-level and unlock major glob...

The economics of a livable planet

How do we perceive biodiversity? We can see it & hear it In the verdant and melodious depths of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where the songs of birds match the murmur of leaves, several Indigenous people affirm the results of research that…

A recent study shows that people are able to perceive biodiversity through sights & sounds, and those perceptions correlate with the actual biodiversity of a natural place.

The study adds to a growing body of research on biodiversity perception & its connections to human mental health & well-being.

How is this possible?

This ant can lay eggs of two different species, birthed by the same mother

It was fun analysing birding data instead of bird data! Read on to find out the predictors of where eBirders go birding around the world!

New on conservation science:

Coexistence with large carnivores is a conservation challenge. Revisiting Volterra principle (more mortality on both prey and predators leads to more prey & fewer predators) can inform modern conservation strategies.

Boyce et al. in Cons. Biol. doi.org/10.1111/cobi...

Identifying opportunities toward conflict transformation in an Orca‐Salmon‐Human system We examine stakeholder conflict over endangered killer whale protection, determining identity-based roots of conflict and opportunities towards transformation.

In this article, Eckert et al examine stakeholder conflict over endangered #killerwhale protection, determining identity-based roots of conflict and opportunities towards transformation. 🌊Learn more at doi.org/10.1111/csp2...

#conservation #science

Very happy to share that our paper presenting a framework for optimal movement decisions in complex landscapes has just been published in TREE @stephharris.bsky.social @jacobnabe.bsky.social tinyurl.com/d45s36y5

Under-five mortality burden in low- and middle-income countries set to increase under future warming Zhu et al. provide the global perspective that high-temperature exposure increased the under-5 child mortality in low- and middle-income countries (LIMCs). The child mortality burden attributable to c...

Under-five mortality burden in low- and middle-income countries set to increase under future warming: www.cell.com/one-earth/ab...

@geda-imedea.bsky.social @imedea.bsky.social @theperegrinefund.bsky.social @conservnamibia.bsky.social @africanornithology.bsky.social

Mass poisoning is decimating African vultures. We quantified cost-effectiveness of GPS-tagged sentinel vultures to mitigate this threat. Few sentinels can save lots of vultures—but fast ground response is key. Super relevant study led by Teja Curk: besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

An R package for working with generalized additive models Graceful 'ggplot'-based graphics and utility functions for working with generalized additive models (GAMs) fitted using the 'mgcv' package.

🚀 gratia 0.11.0 is out!

Now has a paper in JOSS — please cite 📄 doi.org/10.21105/jos...

Experimental parallel processing ⚡

New assemble() for building plots 🎨

Better support for complex families + new diagnostics 🧪

Lots of bug fixes + polish ✨

👉 gavinsimpson.github.io/gratia/

#Rstats

Scientists’ role in defending democracy The United States’ democratic leadership, commitment to freedom of expression, and investment in the pursuit of knowledge have long enabled its preeminence in science and technology. Yet today we are ...

When democracy falters, science is among the first casualties—truth silenced, data erased, expertise sidelined. But history shows us: scientists can build independent institutions that preserve truth, counter misinformation, and defend both knowledge and democracy. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Correcting environmental sampling bias improves transferability of species distribution models Sampling bias is an inherent problem in widely available biodiversity data, undermining the robustness of correlative species distribution models (SDMs). To some extent, subsampling occurrence data c...

Important paper!
nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

A systematic review evaluating the performance of eDNA methods relative to conventional methods for biodiversity monitoring vist.ly/4372j #eDNA #Metabarcoding