📣 New paper out in @plosbiology.org

What drives global patterns of species richness? 🌍 Using a unified framework across 129 tetrapod clades 🐸🦎🐦🐘, we find:

👉 Productivity-driven equilibrium dynamics largely explain biodiversity patterns ⚖️🌱

doi.org/10.1371/jour...

#Macroecology #Biogeography

Food Web Similarity Increases With Productivity Similarity at a Continental Scale Here, we test how plant productivity and anthropogenic fragmentation predict the pairwise similarity of food web networks within and among regions for 127 protected areas spanning deserts to rainfore...

Excited to be part of this collaborative effort tackling a longstanding question: how does productivity shape community assembly from simple species co-occurrence to complex trophic interactions? Check out what we discover!

#foodweb #communityassembly #africa #plantproductivity #macroecology

Birds That Don't Exist: Niche Pre‐Emption as a Constraint on Morphological Evolution in the Passeroidea We use topological data analysis to reveal a persistent morphological gap in a major group of songbirds (superfamily Passeroidea). The gap remained unoccupied for millions of years, even though nearb...

The "birds that don't exist" paper is out in Ecology Letters! 🍻 We found a viable body form that has never evolved in a big clade of songbirds, and tested a series of hypotheses to figure out why.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Management matters: homogenized plant–soil linkages constrain carbon cycling in urban green spaces - Urban Ecosystems Urban Ecosystems - Urban green spaces (UGSs) have been promoted as nature-based solutions for climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation. Most UGS planning and studies use vegetation...

My paper just came out! Urban parks and green spaces are widely known for their environmental benefits in mitigating climate change. However, my study reveals that managements can interrupt the natural connection between plants, soil organisms, and microbes that keep soils healthy and carbon-rich.

A map showing the probability of movement for terrestrial animals across Canada and the USA.

Now published: Landscape connectivity across Canada and the USA. A seamless, high resolution connectivity map across both countries. 🧪🌎 Open access in Facets, including open data www.facetsjournal.com/doi/full/10....

These award-winning papers highlight excellence in ecological and evolutionary biology, making broad contributions to theory, conservation, management, and policy. Their originality, creativity, and strong engagement with key research questions are especially impressive!

I’m excited to share the winners of the Outstanding Publication Award in EEB at MSU! I’m truly grateful to have served on the selection committee together as Presidential Postdoctoral Fellows, Becca and Nichole, and inspired by the outstanding, insightful work of our EEB graduate students.

January 2026 Funk Biogeography Seminar — Pedro Peres-Neto Ecology & Evolution in Spatial Structured Environment Ecological and evolutionary dynamics occur in environments that are intrinsically spatially structured, yet spatial environmental heterogenei...

For the first Funk lecture of 2026, @biogeography.bsky.social will be hosting @comecology.bsky.social. You do not want to miss this! Register under the link below. www.biogeography.org/news/news/ja...

As we get into the final parts of the amazing meeting that #TIBS2026 was, a reminder to follow and share the starter pack for ECRs in Biogeography:
go.bsky.app/KvnmdnK

And a reminder to check it again, as we've had many new additions over the conference.

See you all at the dinner!

New paper out! 🐦📊

We realease AVONICHE, a global dataset with detailed information on the proportional use of 32 foraging niches, combining dietary categories with the behaviours and substrates used to access resources.

Openly access the paper and data in GEB: doi.org/10.1111/geb....

rOpenSci Champions Second Cohort: Projects Wrap-Up | R-bloggers As we welcome the third cohort of the rOpenSci Champions Program, our second cohort has now completed the second phase of the program. In this article, we share each Champion’s project, their achievem...

BBS Taiwan is listed! Check out handy R packages that can boost your research.

#Ecology #OpenScience

Join at 🌏 Species on the Move in Taiwan! A global forum where researchers, practitioners & policymakers share insights, innovations, and strategies shaping the future of biodiversity.

#Ecology #ClimateChange #RangeShift #Biodiversity #Conservation

Global variability in LGM cooling amongst paleoclimate datasets affects biome reconstructions in mountains Downscaled paleoclimate datasets are widely used in biogeographical research, aiding our understanding of past environmental shifts and species’ responses to climate change. Numerous datasets exist, v...

Which paleoclimate dataset do you use for your research?

In my latest research, I compared temperature estimates from five well-known paleoclimate datasets to proxy data and found that inter-dataset variability can strongly affect temperature-delimited reconstructions. 🧵

➡️ doi.org/10.21425/fob...

Some butterfly species have declined in the Midwest; none has increased, MSU study finds In the last three decades of data from butterfly counts in the Midwest, none of the butterfly species increased in population. More than 40% declined in number.

Lab’s publication came out!

Bye-bye butterflies? Insects are in 'precipitous decline' in Midwest.

#ZipkinLab #Ecology #QuantitativeEcology #Conservation

First postdoc paper just dropped! Using 50 years of Breeding Bird Survey data, we found that the unexpected functional shifts of bird communities in North America do not track species-level expectations, and these unexpected shifts can be explained by just 5% of “hyper-dominant” species.

Quantifying functionally equivalent species and ecological network dissimilarity with optimal transport distances Quantifying the structure and dynamics of species interactions in ecological communities is fundamental to studying ecology and evolution. While there are numerous approaches to analysing ecologic...

Quantifying similarity among ecological network is getting feasible to understand assembly processes from communities to species interactions. Upcoming publication using this for African mammal food webs is under revision now. Stay tuned!

#Ecology #EcologicalNetwork #Macroecology #Biogeography