How a philosopher completely changed the way I think about learning Education should be an active pursuit, believes the lecturer and researcher Daniil Scheifes. This opinion is inspired by ideas of the American philosopher and educational reformer John Dewey. After al...

Education starts when we struggle: dub.uu.nl/en/news/how-...

Joining the locals: Plant invaders shift leaf defenses to match native neighbors Local adaptation is common in invasive plants, but there is no consensus as to whether shifts in functional traits between invader “home” and “away” ranges contribute to their success in competition ...

Great study: doi.org/10.1002/ecy....

Nutrient niche differentiation among European herbaceous species reflects an extinction to invasion continuum www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08....

Opinion: students behave like consumers Some students are quick to complain when a lecturer makes a mistake or fails to present the material in bite-sized chunks. After all, they are paying for their education. To Daniil Scheifes, a lecture...

for english see dub.uu.nl/en/opinion/o...

Ben geen consument studenten / Don't be a consumer students!

Plant functional traits & the entangled phenotype Sandra Díaz This is a plain language summary of a Functional Ecology Calow-Grace Review article which can be found here. Focusing on plants, I review concepts that have long been at the core of eco…

⭐️2025 Calow-Grace Review⭐️

Plant functional traits & the entangled phenotype -
Sandra Díaz reviews concepts that have long been at the core of #ecology & #evolutionary #biology but are at risk of being increasingly ignored
🌎🧪

We combed through old botanical surveys to track how plants on Australia’s islands are changing Stories of how the data was collected were fascinating. Some people camped on islands for weeks. Some scaled cliffs or jumped from helicopters onto remote islands.

@aunz.theconversation.com featured a new piece about our recent A-Island paper in @jvegsci.bsky.social
Some more insights on the fun process of assembling such a dataset.
Check it out here:
theconversation.com/we-combed-th...

#ecology #islands #plants #botany #Australia

Exploring R Package Usage in Academia I am running a quick survey to find out which R packages academics use the most in their research and teaching. The goal is to see which tools are essential, spot any gaps, and maybe even discover som...

Hi there, my student is making a survey about the use of R packages in Ecology, could you please spend two mins on filling it 🥹 Very appreciated! And if you could spread it further (RT), that would be just awesome. ❤️

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

For long I've had a dislike for the concept of "ecosystem services" and here Arne Næss perfectly expressed it in his book Ecology of Wisdom: "Opponents often argue that we defend nature in our rich, industrial society in order to secure beauty, recreation, sport, and other nonvital interests 1/2 🌍

Nice database paper, useful for many follow-up questions!

This is just a great great great study.

Spatial patterning of riverine sand on concrete pavement.

A nutrient-enriched world is slowly altering our European plant species compositions. In our (still unpublished) work, we show that this affects global invasion patterns as well. Work that is hopefully soon out!

In dystopian times, I am reading ecological utopias by Marius de Geus. Important in times where revolutionary ideas and dreams are lacking.

The Oldest Ecosystems on Earth What they teach us about resilience.

The Ship of Theseus model applied to ecosystems: The oldest ecosystems on Earth today differ from their earlier versions in borders & species composition, but have maintained their essential characteristics. Might they inspire a new conception of an ecological 'baseline'?
nautil.us/the-oldest-e...

Ferns’ ability to evolve ‘backward’ offers insights into the meandering path of evolution Evolution is often depicted as a steady forward march from simple to complex forms. But new research shows that certain ferns can evolve ‘backward.’

Ferns’ ability to evolve ‘backward’ offers insights into the meandering path of evolution theconversation.com/ferns-abilit...

Although, I believe that some populations within a species are more likely threatened or invasive than other species.

Interesting.

I am, my first time!

Aah it's full,I now read. Thanks for setting this up!

Hi Lars, would be nice to be included. :)

PhyloPic PhyloPic is an open database of free silhouette images of animals, plants, and other life forms, available for reuse under Creative Commons licenses. Download silhouettes for use in educational materi...

www.phylopic.org is indeed a great source of vector representations of many taxa. I have noticed several times though, that PhyloPic was used as a single reference to all images used. In reality, each image has its own @creativecommons.bsky.social license, and often its author has to be attributed.

Great hypothesis but still in need of testing. I am currently working on quite a similar question in a big database, so testing this would be a great opportunity. Nice work!

The plant root economics space in relation to nutrient limitation in Eurasian herbaceous plant communities Plant species occupy distinct niches along a nitrogen-to-phosphorus (N:P) gradient, yet there is no general framework for belowground nutrient acquisition traits in relation to N or P limitation. Our...

Interesting paper on plant root economics under N- and P-limitation. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Improper data practices erode the quality of global ecological databases and impede the progress of ecological research The scientific community has entered an era of big data. However, with big data comes big responsibilities, and best practices for how data are contributed to databases have not kept pace with the collection, aggregation, and analysis of big data. Here, we rigorously assess the quantity of data for specific leaf area (SLA) available within the largest and most frequently used global plant trait database, the TRY Plant Trait Database, exploring how much of the data were applicable (i.e., original, representative, logical, and comparable) and traceable (i.e., published, cited, and consistent). Over three-quarters of the SLA data in TRY either lacked applicability or traceability, leaving only 22.9% of the original data usable compared with the 64.9% typically deemed usable by standard data cleaning protocols. The remaining usable data differed markedly from the original for many species, which led to altered interpretation of ecological analyses. Though the data we consider here make up only 4.5% of SLA data within TRY, similar issues of applicability and traceability likely apply to SLA data for other species as well as other commonly measured, uploaded, and downloaded plant traits. We end with suggested steps forward for global ecological databases, including suggestions for both uploaders to and curators of databases with the hope that, through addressing the issues raised here, we can increase data quality and integrity within the ecological community.

1/ Important read for anyone using, contributing, or building large databases by aggregating data sources. Discusses issues with data quality, duplication, credit attribution, etc, and includes recommendations for improvement

doi.org/10.1111/gcb.... #ecopubs

Daniils - Level 51 Check out Daniils's profile on GeoGuessr!

Are there any geoguessr playing ecologists out there? www.geoguessr.com/user/550d38e...

I will be presenting my latest ideas at the Bes2024 where I will compare nutrient requirements between threatened and invasive species. Please come!

I am working on nutrient dynamics of naturalized and invasive species! Please add me:)

New to this platform, I hated Elon musk. So no other choice! 😊