Biodiversity at risk in Colombia’s tropical dry forests A study of changes to the habitats of more than 700 species reveals massive biodiversity loss—but also possibilities for restoration.

Very nice write-up of Maria Isabel's research on the biodiversity trends in Colombia's Tropical Dry Forest

nouvelles.umontreal.ca/en/article/2...

Go read the full preprint on @ecoevorxiv.bsky.social !

ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

But this hides one of the most fascinating differences across the Global North/Global South divide: the role of stakeholders and experts in this research is different. This difference is not only about whether categories intervene as stakeholders or experts, but also whether they intervene at all.

global distribution of papers

At the global scale, looking at the use of socio-ecological indicators for decision-making seems to remain a rich country game.

Stated v. revealed preferences

Second, stated v. revealed preferences differ, and economic data are still largely dominating the body of evidence mobilized for these papers.

List of publications by framework -- MEA still dominates

First, we have never, collectively, published as much on socio-ecological indicators and decision making. But a lot of these publications still use the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment as their reference framework, with even the UN SDG struggling to catch up.

New paper and blog post by the one and only @crcruzr.bsky.social - are socio-ecological indicators ready to provide guidance for concrete biodiversity action?

epic-biodiversity.org/blog/2026/01...

The answer is: partially, but there are all sorts of interesting lessons for the future. 🧪🌎

Species' habitat change over twenty years in Colombia's tropical dry forests Countries worldwide are working together under the Convention on Biological Diversity to tackle biodiversity loss. As part of this effort, the monitor…

Read the paper:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

🧪🌎 Only 12% of Colombia's Tropical Dry Forest is located within protected areas, which puts over 750 species of plants, birds, and mammals at risk of habitat loss.

Read more about our most recent paper, where we also tie this trend to national-level biodiversity commitments.

Last week, during the lab meeting, we adopted a position statement (and lab rules) on the use of generative AI.

epic-biodiversity.org/generative-ai/

In a nutshell: "The use of GenAI is disallowed-by-default", but we also go to great length to justify why.

🧪 New @mdcatchen.bsky.social preprint!

Here's how we can decide where to look for wildlife disease, based on combinations of biodiversity, uncertainty, and prevalence data. This is a really cool paper, that is pushing the boundaries of what we can do with sampling and monitoring techniques.

GBIF occurrences of Mastomys natalensis in Tanzania

using SpeciesDistributionToolkit const SDT = SpeciesDistributionToolkit using CairoMakie # Get the data const DATA_DOI = "10.15468/dl.7ddsb7" presences = GBIF.download(DATA_DOI) # Get the country-level data borders = getpolygon(PolygonData(ESRI, Places))["Country" => "Tanzania"] # Make a plot poly(borders, color=:grey95) lines!(borders, color=:grey40, linewidth=0.5) scatter!(presences, color=:white, strokecolor=:forestgreen, strokewidth=1) current_figure()

We have added support for ESRI administrative areas to our species distribution #JuliaLang package — a lot more stable than GADM (although limited to level 1 divisions).

📗 Read more: poisotlab.github.io/SpeciesDistr...

The impulse to use generative AI as a tool for computational ecology is just another form of statistical machismo (and will destroy the world).

We're a little more nuanced in the actual article, and encourage all ecologists to think about the possible footprint of _every_ computation.

🧪

Today we'll be at the #OneHealth symposium of @umontreal-en.bsky.social - @ctrlalttim.com will moderate a panel on biodiversity and health, and @francisbanville.bsky.social will talk about the alignment between indicators for biodiversity and the OHHLEP action tracks, part of our @geobon.org work.

This work is the output of the excellent Honors thesis from Ariane Bussières-Fournel, and for now, you can read all about it in @ecoevorxiv.bsky.social -- ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

This is because, although both species respond to, more or less, the same climatic variables, they respond to them differently. The potential to see their responses to climate change becoming decoupled is real!

Habitat becomes increasingly polarized in its suitability to either reservoir, with raccoons benefiting the most from more pessimistic scenarios: the places in which we expect the two reservoirs are different over time, and different under the four scenarios.

Long-story short, both species will gain potential habitat in the North, and this does not really slow down unless we manage to stick to SSP2-RCP4.5. Even SSP1-RCP2.6 is a fairly dramatic increase in potential habitat. Most densely inhabited areas in Québec are reached by 2100.

Climate change may dramatically increase the range of raccoons and skunks in Québec. Good news? Nope. They are two reservoirs of the raccoon rabies virus. In a recent preprint, we discuss how this might play out over the next 80 years. 🧪🧵

👋 Bonjour hi!

We've built a whole new website, and @ctrlalttim.com has thoughts about the long-term dynamics of research groups to share.

epic-biodiversity.org/blog/2025/11...