I am happy to share this again!
🎓 PhD done!

I’m sincerely grateful to my amazing supervisors, @peteecology.bsky.social, @mschleuning.bsky.social and @margot Neyret for their guidance, support, and encouragement throughout this journey.

Cheers to the next step✈️.

Hi all. I am very excited that after 6 years I finally got my phylogenetic comparative methods book and online exercises online. Feel free to use and share. The book is here: nhcooper123.github.io/pcm-primer/. Note that it is not finished, we had to abandon it before the sunk costs fallacy broke us

BIEN: A biodiversity informatics ecosystem advancing open and reproducible workflows for plant observation, plot and trait data The rapid expansion of biodiversity data presents new opportunities to understand and forecast biosphere dynamics. However, disparate and dispersed data, taxonomic and geographic inconsistencies, ...

Our new #BIEN biodiversity data workflow paper is out! BIEN is an ecosystem of modular, open-source BIEN tools for collecting, harmonizing, and validating biodiversity data -- and an integrated global database (BIEN db) of plant occurrences, traits & geographic ranges. doi.org/10.1111/2041... 🧪🌐🌾🌵

The change to CC-BY follows discussions as part of the #OpenNature (www.open-nature.org) group and a recognition of the urgent need to make biodiversity data more widely usable.

BIEN: A biodiversity informatics ecosystem advancing open and reproducible workflows for plant observation, plot and trait data The rapid expansion of biodiversity data presents new opportunities to understand and forecast biosphere dynamics. However, disparate and dispersed data, taxonomic and geographic inconsistencies, ...

New BIEN article out! This one digs in to the details of the BIEN #plant database, but importantly, also announces that BIEN is now #CC-BY (see the SI for details on that)!

doi.org/10.1111/2041...

A map of Corsica showing the output of a SDM using a Value Suppressing Uncertainty Palette. The legend shows the wegde, with model training points overlaid, showing that the model has rather high convidence.

Start treating legends as information! This (work in progress) is a VSUP with model training points overlaid, and it shows that on the training dataset, most points are predicted with low uncertainty.

The 1939 dictionary laying down some data truth …. “Data. As a Latin word it should be pronounced day'ta-first a long. Many do not seem to know that this word is the the plural of datum-a word seldom seen or heard.” #DataAre

Global functional shifts in trees driven by alien naturalization and native extinction - Nature Plants This study finds that native tree extinctions and alien naturalizations are pushing forests towards fast-growing, resource-demanding species. This global shift could affect carbon storage and ecosyste...

Fast-growing trees are set to dominate the #forests of the #future — but at a cost🌳
Our Nature Plants (@natplants.nature.com) study shows a global shift toward "sprinter" tree species, while slow-growing, functionally critical #trees face elevated #extinction risk. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The late-Quaternary megafauna extinctions: Patterns, causes, ecological consequences and implications for ecosystem management in the Anthropocene | Cambridge Prisms: Extinction | Cambridge Core The late-Quaternary megafauna extinctions: Patterns, causes, ecological consequences and implications for ecosystem management in the Anthropocene - Volume 2

The evidence for Homo sapiens playing the dominant role in the global #megafauna #extinctions constitutes one of the clearest, well-supported patterns in #ecology. See our 2024 review www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #paleobiology #archeology #hunting #ecosystem #Pleistocene #defaunation #rewilding

🧪 Figuring out the right way to represent interactions as a network is a really difficult task, makes a big difference on the interpretation.

In a new preprint by @tanyadoesscience.bsky.social we attempt to provide a hierarchical framework for network ecology:

ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

Beyond species ranges: How functional diversity and integrated life history can inform conservation priorities | PNAS Beyond species ranges: How functional diversity and integrated life history can inform conservation priorities

doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Rare Florida scrub millipedes reproduce in captivity for the first time Before scientists even knew how many Florida scrub millipedes were left in the wild, a quiet breakthrough happened in a University of South Florida lab. The rare, giant millipedes reproduced in captiv...

phys.org/news/2026-01...

This #openaccess work was a collaborative effort with Robbie Richards, Ben Carlson, @jdrakephd.bsky.social, and Cory Merow. All code and data are freely available on Github (github.com/bmaitner/sma...) or Dryad (doi.org/10.5061/drya...).

We also highlight the challenges associated with identifying the best-performing algorithm, and show how using ensembles of algorithms varying along a sensitivity-specificity gradient can be used to capture uncertainty in species' ranges or different sampling assumptions.

Flexible methods for species distribution modeling with small samples Species distribution models (SDMs) predict where species live or could potentially live and are a key resource for ecological research and conservation decision-making. However, current SDM methods o...

How do we model ranges for rare or poorly sampled species? In our new paper, we compare methods for modelling rare species. We show that several algorithms designed for small sample sizes outperform more general approaches when modeling rare or poorly sampled species.

doi.org/10.1002/ecog...

Super important paper showing the startlingly low number of active plant taxonomists in the world, and in particular in some of the most biodiverse regions! Definitely a study I'm adding to my reference manager!

Sonoran Desert landscape looking west across Avra Valley from Tucson Mountain Park. In the foreground, a desert trail winds through cholla cacti, saguaros, ocotillo, and native shrubs. The valley stretches to distant mountain ranges on the horizon under a dramatic sky of blue patches and white cumulus clouds with rays of light breaking through.

Please pass along - We've extended the CAMBIUM fellowship deadline to December 15! Our NSF NRT supports new grad students to harness biodiversity big data to adapt to & mitigate climate change impacts. Great fit for evolutionary genomics, bioinformatics, ecology & more. cambium.arizona.edu 🧬🌐🌎

Congrats @vvandvik.bsky.social , well deserved!

Ecological winners: Why some species dominate the planet Analyzing plant dispersion data from across the globe, researchers at the University of Arizona found that the most abundant species have adapted to tolerate a wide range of climates. Their findings c...

news.arizona.edu/news/ecologi...

Totally rad study! Maybe once I'm tenured I can write the action figure equivalent....

General laws of biodiversity: Climatic niches predict plant range size and ecological dominance globally | PNAS A longstanding question in ecology asks whether or not species that achieve large geographic ranges also have large climatic niche breadths. Using ...

in "General laws of biodiversity: Climatic niches predict plant range size and ecological dominance globally", we provide key insights into species’ vulnerability to environmental change and the processes that structure biodiversity at global scales.

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

We are glad to share our recent article pulbished in @pnas.org, where we we demonstrate that plant species that occupy larger geographic ranges tend to have broader climatic niches and are more likely to achieve high local abundances.

dplyr but make it bussin fr fr no cap `genzplyr` is an alternative syntax for `dplyr` that replaces boring old function names with GenZ slang. Your data wrangling is about to hit different.

@hadley.nz , you’re so real for this 😭🙌

Lowkey spent my whole day glowin’ up my code with the new `genzplyr` pack — it’s giving ✨clean syntax✨ fr.

hadley.github.io/genzplyr/ind...

@tanyadoesscience.bsky.social just told me about this today. Just in time for my lecture on #tidyverse this week. But I'm going to need a #xennial version as well.

USF told us how much they think we’re worth: an extra $15-22 per paycheck. That’s insulting, unacceptable, and after inflation amounts to a pay DECREASE that keeps Masters GAs BELOW the federal poverty line. We deserve better, and we’ll keep fighting for it📢📢📢

USF’s proposed raise of 2% can’t buy much: here’s a few things this money CAN’T buy. If you think we’re worth more than half a tank of gas every two weeks, drop something else you can’t buy with 2% in the comments⬇️⬇️⬇️

BREAKING: Graduate Assistants at USF deserve more, and people are noticing. Check out this article about our fight for fair wages in the @tampabaytimes.bsky.social this morning!🗞️

Awesome! This will be super useful!

The updated Global Naturalized Alien Flora (GloNAF 2.0) database GloNAF is a continuously updated, curated compilation of alien naturalized vascular plant inventories for geographic regions worldwide. Building on its predecessor, GloNAF 2.0 now contains 16,429 tax...

▶️‼️𝐀 𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐥𝐲 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐆𝐥𝐨𝐍𝐀𝐅, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐥𝐨𝐛𝐚𝐥 𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐞𝐝 𝐀𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐧 𝐅𝐥𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐬 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐧𝐨𝐰‼️◀️
esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

1️⃣ it now contains 16,429 plant taxa
2️⃣ removal of outdated data & errors
3️⃣ 117,229 new records
4️⃣ 31% increase in the number of geographic regions