Ausvet is thrilled to launch our new initiative!

🧫 Clinical Epi Solutions 🔬
A dedicated epidemiology consulting service for clinical and research vets.
Our vet epidemiologists can help you design studies, analyse data, validate diagnostics, and support your journey.
ausvet.com.au/clinicalepis...

Resurrecting habitat fragmentation as a process over time Habitat loss and fragmentation occur over time. Despite this truism, understanding the effects of habitat fragmentation has, in recent years, predominantly focused on interpreting snapshots of current...

Excited to share a new article from the lab & wonderful co-authors.

We argue that habitat fragmentation research needs to be recalibrated to focus on changes over time.

We hope that doing so will advance understanding, isolate attribution, and diminish heated debate.

www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

Great couple of days at the University of Sheffield for the UK DNA working Group & Ecological Genetics 70th Anniversary meeting 🧪🧬🌍. Lots of great #eDNA work going on. Proud to have group members Nimna Wickramasingha and Isna Aziz presenting their research #EGG2026. @bioscienceleeds.bsky.social

Simon presenting his poster.

Poster describing disagapp by @simonsmart.bsky.social.
App: disagapp.le.ac.uk
Code: github.com/simon-smart8... #RStats #EpiSky

Hadiqa Tahir presenting her work on directly including movements models into environmental epi regressions.
#EpiSky #StatsSky
@hadiqa-tahir.bsky.social

New paper out: Artificial selection for increased reproductive effort accelerates actuarial senescence and reduces lifespan in a precocial bird url: royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article... @uniexecec.bsky.social @erikpostma.bsky.social @joelpick.bsky.social y.social @oscarvedder.bsky.social

New paper out! 🦟 💧☀️

Seasonal variation in aquatic habitat availability and use by the malaria vector, Anopheles funestus

🔗 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

👏 Dr #NajatKahamba for leading this work on this crucial #malaria vector
👏 to the whole team #IfakaraHealthInstitute & @sbohvm.gla.ac.uk

Hmmm, that's an interesting pattern.🤔
Intrigued?
Best read my next blog then.
Hopefully out in the next 24h hours or so.
Feel free to sign up at virologydownunder.com to get pinged as soon as it's published.
(wow, that's so shameless it hurt!)

🦟 New paper accepted!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Dr #RogerSanou led work using mid‑infrared spectroscopy + machine learning to identify species and age of male #mosquito Anopheles gambiae s.l.

Proud collaboration led by #IRSS-BurkinaFaso with #IHI & @sbohvm.gla.ac.uk + @uofgchem.bsky.social

Ecological and socioeconomic factors associated with globally reported tick-borne viruses - Communications Medicine Sambado et al. examine how environmental and social conditions shape where tick-borne viruses are reported worldwide. Using machine learning, they find that both ecological and economic are important, and that wealthier nations are more likely to report these overlooked diseases.

NEW: "Ecological and socioeconomic factors associated with globally reported tick-borne viruses", led by @samsambado.bsky.social, in which she applied BRT modelling to a global database of TBVs to pick apart the complicated pathway from transmission to reported cases!
www.nature.com/articles/s43...

In preparation for the next iteration of my data science class, I've made many updates to our #JuliaLang species distribution package. There's now a "Getting started" tutorial that, I think, is pretty good, and is meant to get you started within 20 minutes!

🌏

poisotlab.github.io/SpeciesDistr...

PM @albomp.bsky.social, FM @senatorwong.bsky.social, DM Richard Marles, what will it take for your Labor govt to stop militarily & politically supporting Israeli-US war-mongering, mass civilian slaughter & genocide❓

Don't be afraid to take your lead from Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez👇👇👇

Upcoming | GSIDD

👇 Upcoming opportunities for the Infectious Disease Dynamics community!

ℹ️ View deadlines for open opportunities ranging from training programs to conferences & calls for article contributions.

📧 Have opportunities to add? Please reach out to info@gsid.org

#IDsky #EpiSky #PublicHealth #OneHealth 🧪

At least 254 killed after Israel hits Lebanon with massive wave of airstrikes ‘Largest coordinated strike’ against Hezbollah since war began prompts warnings Iran could pull out of ceasefire

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

A cover to the March 2026 edition of Trends in Parasitology, showing a yellow-brown snail infected with bright green Leucochloridium worms in its eyestalks, perched on the leaf of a plant. The background is black and speckled with droplets of rain or mist. "Trends in Parasitology A Cell Press Journal Parasite coloration Volume 42 | Number 3 | March 2026 | ISSN 1471–4922"

A screenshot of the header of the article as it appears on the Science Direct website. "Opinion Parasite conservation now: turning knowledge into action Skylar R. Hopkins, Chelsea L. Wood https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pt.2026.03.009"

The Parasite Specialist Group has published a new paper on assessing and conserving wild parasite species! The first link below is a DOI, while the second link will allow you to view and download the whole paper until May 23rd.
doi.org/10.1016/j.pt...
authors.elsevier.com/a/1mtNP5Eb1x...

Australia’s alpine ash forests are now officially endangered. Can we save them? One of the most widespread types of forest in Australia’s high country is facing an existential threat. We need bold action before it is too late.

The Alpine Ash ecosystem of mainland Australia has been listed as endangered. This is pretty serious for such a widespread forest type. In this article we go into the reasons for the listing, and how active approaches to management can help with stewardship.

theconversation.com/australias-a...

Excited to share a new paper doi.org/10.1098/rsbl...

We suggest that tradeoffs between infection costs and the benefits of sociality are dynamic, context-dependent, and likely asymmetric within dyads. We then propose hypotheses about how these tradeoffs might shape social responses to parasites...

Detecting disease progression from animal movement using hidden Markov models We demonstrate how (H)HMMs can be tailored to different epidemiological scenarios and provide a template workflow for developing and selecting Hidden Markov models to infer disease status from animal...

Published in @jappliedecology.bsky.social!😀

We show how (Hierarchical) Hidden Markov Models ((H)HMMs) can be tailored to different epidemiological scenarios to infer disease status directly from animal movement data.

🔗 ttps://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2664.70323

WorldPop researchers improve mapping accuracy for rare habitats WorldPop researchers describe the novel ERF model, improving geospatial mapping accuracy by capturing rare habitats critical for biodiversity and conservation planning.

A new ERF model from WorldPop improves geospatial mapping by capturing rare habitats often lost in traditional methods 🌱📍

Better data = better conservation decisions.

Learn more: www.worldpop.org/blog/worldpo...

#GIS #Biodiversity #Environment #DataScience

New discoveries are showing how human anatomy is far from settled We think the human body is fully mapped. In reality, anatomy is still incomplete, and shaped by who was studied, and who wasn’t.

"Understanding anatomical diversity is therefore central not only to surgery, but also to diagnosis, medical imaging, biomechanics and the study of disease itself."

theconversation.com/new-discover...

If we want to conserve evolutionary history, we need to think about this: change the phylogenetic methods, and you change the conservation outcomes. New paper led by honours student Mina Kearns, with @alexskeels.bsky.social & @keaghanjames.bsky.social

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Comparison of maxent and logistic models

Do you like Maxent? You can now use it within SpeciesDistributionToolkit.jl 🎉

We have also added a bunch of dataviz functions, including bivariate and value-suppressing maps. Oh, and conformal prediction for uncertainty quantification. And more coming soon.

poisotlab.github.io/SpeciesDistr...

🌏

Congratulations!

Really excited to finally share this preprint on using museum specimens @alaskamuseum.bsky.social to study the origins of borealpox in small mammals! 🦠🐀

🔓⬇️

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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

Our Log-term Work!!!!

#NewPublication:

We evaluated #biodiversity #co-benefits of #Gola #REDD+ initiative using a #quasi-experimental study. #Bioacoustics and DNA metabarcoding revealed that REDD+-financed #PAs were associated with additional biodiversity benefits compared to control areas.

tinyurl.com/45pcasnv

Schema of themes from qualitative systematic review

Recommendations to support work from clinical teams, employers, governments

New paper in @ajkd.bsky.social #qualitative #systematicreview on paid work for people on #dialysis, led by Adam Martin & Ao Zhang. We detail barriers/enablers for work, and recommend actions by clinical teams, employers & governments to support work and provide a safety net doi.org/10.1053/j.aj...

Ecological and demographic drivers of Oropouche virus transmission - Nature Health Nationwide analysis of 30,086 confirmed Oropouche virus cases in Brazil between 2014 and 2025 shows that rural municipalities had over 11-fold-higher incidence than urban areas and identifies demograp...

Our new study bit.ly/4srWRKd looks beyond “where could the virus survive?” and asks a more practical question: if Oropouche is introduced into a community, where is it most likely to ignite an outbreak. #orov #arbovirus #brazil

Annual survival of waders versus adult body mass, migration distance and year of study

New article in Oikos with a global review of annual survival for waders comparing estimation methods and phylogeny. Survival increases with body mass but decreases with migration distance and during past 40 years. Team led by @dillensegerg.bsky.social. #ornithology #waders doi.org/10.1002/oik....