Torpor-assisted migration: Regular use of shallow torpor reduces rest-phase energy expenditure for songbirds during migration🐦‍⬛ 🎶

🔎 Find out more: buff.ly/ARrm6Ia

Fancy a permanent lectureship in ecology at a great little uni in Aotearoa New Zealand?

We have TWO roles available as part of our Joint Institute programme with Huazhong Agriculture University in Wuhan, China; 16 weeks teaching there, the rest at LU.

careers.lincoln.ac.nz/jobdetails/a...

🚨NEW SCIENCE ALERT!🚨Read our new, open-access publication in Scientific Reports (@nature.com) describing #biofluorescence in #cassowary casques! Very excited to unveil this after keeping it secret for 5 years⬇️
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
NYITCOM @akiopteryx.bsky.social @jonathanberman.bsky.social

For millions of years the traits of predators and prey have dictated their interactions. In the Anthropocene, humans are altering these traits. In @cp-trendsecolevo.bsky.social, we explore how human-induced traits shifts reshape predator-prey interactions.

tinyurl.com/TREEshifts

Statistical Rethinking 2026 is done: 20 new lectures emphasizing logical and critical statistical workflow, from basics of probability theory to causal inference to reliable computation to sensitivity. It's all free, made just for you. Lecture list and links: github.com/rmcelreath/s...

Thinking like a mountain in the age of AI Click on the article title to read more.

In a sea of opinions about the role of LLMs in academics I offer my own.

Apart from being harmful, exploitive plagiarism machines, LLMs rob us of the opportunity to experience the gift of friction in writing, which changes how we think.

We must not give away that gift.

doi.org/10.1002/fee....

Megafires in Mediterranean Europe: the compound role of fire weather and drought - npj Natural Hazards npj Natural Hazards - Megafires in Mediterranean Europe: the compound role of fire weather and drought

🔥 New paper in npj Natural Hazards.
Analysing 11,403 wildfires across Mediterranean Europe (2008–2022), we show that megafires emerge when drought aligns with extreme fire weather, especially warm nights and strong winds near ignition.

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

#Wildfires #ClimateChange

Global south countries publish less with open access

Open access makes the rich get richer
#science #publishing #academia 🧪🗺️

nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Wolves kill—and ravens remember where Do ravens follow wolves to feed on their kills? For decades, biologists assumed they did. Ravens are often seen flying with wolves, following their tracks, or gathering quickly at fresh carcasses A t...

Wolves kill—and ravens remember where | EurekAlert! www.eurekalert.org/news-release... #raven #wolves #scavengers

Breaking: APVMA suspends sale of persistent owl poisons in Australia! We have fought tirelessly for years and after meeting with them last week this is not an outcome we had anticipated! www.apvma.gov.au/news-and-pub...

PhD opportunity: Maximising the resilience of grasslands in an age of rapid environmental change

Brief Project Summary: This project aims to address the significant knowledge gap of how species composition may change due to extreme rainfall events (droughts and flooding rainfall), grazing and…

How and why does cognition vary so greatly between individuals and species? In @natrevbiodiv.nature.com, we propose the "Predatory Intelligence Hypothesis" which posits that the cognitive challenges associated with predator–prey interactions drive a cognitive co-evolutionary arms race

rdcu.be/e5KIj

Mapping Your Data with ggplot2 in R with Basemaps and Insets | Oliver C. Stringham Personal website of Oliver C. Stringham

Mapping Your Data with ggplot2 in R with Basemaps and Insets
oliverstringham.com/blog/data-vi...

Exposure of western United States bird communities to predicted high severity fire - Nature Communications Changing fire regimes, leading to higher likelihood of high severity fire, are having unknown impacts on biodiversity. This study identifies regions of high avian biodiversity and individual bird spec...

Where will novel fire regimes threaten birds? Our paper in @natcomms.nature.com shows that most bird diversity hotspots facing future high-sev fire occur in places that historically burned at low severity - a critical mismatch. These are the spots to focus restoration.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Common myna suppression reduced myna relative abundance, but not bird richness or diversity. Species responses were varied, including an increase in noisy miners. This suggests suppression can reshuffle dominance dynamics rather than deliver straightforward community recovery doi.org/10.1071/WR25...

Humans alter the daily timing of animal activity, potentially reshaping predator–prey interactions. This meta-analysis reveals that large predators overlap less with their prey, and large prey overlap more with their predators.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Does human disturbance disrupt predator-prey temporal niche partitioning? Today in @natcomms.nature.com
we show that while there is no overall effect, the larger species of the dyad "loses" the temporal response race to humans.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Looking back at the fire year that was. The map-graphic shows the ten biggest fire events across Australia in 2025. Two "Terra" fires (>1million ha) burnt over 3.7 million ha. The combined total, including the 8 other "Giga" fires (>100k ha) burnt close to 10million ha in 2025.

A spotted quoll sits in the sun on a rock. A caption invites us to read an open access article titled 'Wiminyji in the Western Desert: Martu knowledge reveals historical declines of northern quolls in arid Australia' in Wildlife Research. The photo is credited as being by CraigRJD, Getty Images Signature.

A new #OpenAccess paper in @wildliferesearchj.bsky.social documents accounts by Martu Elders of wiminyji, the northern quoll, incl. distribution, habitat use & threats, revealing declines in arid Australia, previously undocumented by Western science.

connectsci.au/wr/article/5...

#WildlifeResearch

Using multiple lines of evidence, we show that feral cats and red foxes are strongly implicated in most Australian mammal extinctions and in the ongoing imperilment of numerous extant species. academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...

A large collaborative effort to rebut Wallach and Lundgren (2025).

176 tiny maps (1850-2025)

Maps of temperature anomalies for each year. The progression to warmer, redder colours is evident over virtually the entire planet.

This 'small multiples' #dataviz approach is effective to show that nowhere is escaping from the warming due to us burning fossil fuels.

Numerous fires ignited in the state of Victoria in southeast Australia last week, persisting through this past weekend as they leave behind large burn scars.

The Line scan outline of the two major fires in Victoria overlaid over the base map of Melbourne at the same scale to show the scale of the fires.

Here are the Walwa and Longwood line scans (as of 3:30pm 10 Jan) to give you an idea of the scale of the fires when overlaid on the base Melbourne map.

Yikes!

#VicFires

Hi, bushfire survivor here and NSW RFS volunteer.

If you think you are going to stay and defend your property...Don't.
You are not prepared for the intense radiant heat, the ember showers, the smoke, the collapse of all of your energy.

If you have been instructed to leave.
Leave early.
#Bushfire

'So, I had this idea': Scientists dispense insecticide-coated feathers for birds to build nests Donning a helmet and a well-equipped harness, Dr Fernanda Alves looks like she is set to take on an extreme sport. Instead, she is climbing trees to check nesting boxes for a tiny and very rare bird.

Check out the fascinating work that @febiologia.bsky.social is doing to protect forty-spotted pardalotes!!

www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01...

William Bond, defender of grasslands In recent years, one of the loudest ideas in environmental policy has been that trees are the planet’s universal remedy. Plant enough of them, in enough places, and carbon will be soaked up, water wil...

"Bond’s work leaves behind an inconvenient lesson for an era of climate urgency: that speed is not a substitute for understanding, and that good intentions, applied without care, can erase ancient worlds as efficiently as neglect." A beautiful tribute to William Bond. Forever missed by many.

Have you ever wondered what you would find if you could keep your eyes on a bee for more than a few meters? Us, too!

preprint (with videos!) + thread 🧵

Precise, individualized foraging flights in honey #bees 🐝 revealed by multicopter drone-based tracking

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

1/9

Opportunities ***PhD and MSc openings – Movement ecology and conservation*** I will periodically support graduate students, postdocs, and other staff through the Biology Department at the University of New…

I’m recruiting a PhD and MSC student for fall 2026 working on the movement ecology and conservation of Mexican spotted owls in SW forests and rocky canyonlands. Exciting partnership with Los Alamos National Laboratory. Great vibrant lab group, high impact research! 🦉

gavinmjones.com/opportunities/

Evolutionary dynamics of dietary specialisation – insights from Neotropical mistletoe‐dependent frugivores Mistletoes occur worldwide, with most relying on birds to disperse their sticky seeds to suitable hosts. There has been considerable ecological research on these interactions, emphasizing those birds....

In time for the festive season, my latest paper charts the 25 million year story of how mistletoe and songbirds somersaulted across the Americas, diversifying as they went.  Strap in for an epic ecological tale #MistletoeMunchersFromWayBack 1/12
nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

🚨 🦎 New paper out exploring shingleback lizard movement ecology and habitat selection in a fragmented agricultural landscape

🌳 Main takeaway: retaining small patches of native vegetation is crucial to provide habitat and maintain landscape connectivity

link.springer.com/article/10.1...