Article in the Guardian by @mountainogre.bsky.social Defunding fungi: US’s living library of ‘vital ecosystem engineers’ is in danger of closing www.theguardian.com/environment/...

TBT Fieldwork, Spring 2025 Arrived at a distant hut — first open the hut, fire and snow clearing. Slowly, warmth returns after a day in minus 20. Svalbard fieldwork blends presence of harshness, long hours with awe. Even with a busy mind, the beauty is hard to be unnoticed.

Very rare shot of the Arctic Platypus

Heading up for the @aberdlsagb.bsky.social Festival of Research today. I’m looking forward to hearing lots of exciting talks, and this afternoon I’ll share the story of how a literal “snow day” on Arctic fieldwork in 2019 evolved in to two (2!) NERC projects.

Check out the Microbial Primers page. Short articles written to help people new to a field to get quickly up to speed. @microbiologysociety.org www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/micr...

The number of glaciers disappearing worldwide each year is projected to sharply increase, peaking at 2,000–4,000 per year around the middle of the century, depending on the level of warming above pre-industrial levels, according to a study in Nature Climate Change. go.nature.com/4pEfbP5 ⚒️ 🧪

Last day of term, first day of DOING research not just administrating it this term #hammertime

Come to Birmingham and do a PhD with myself and @wvschaik.bsky.social!

Turns out one of the more pereceptive things said to me near the end of the pandemic's restrictions was that we would either start treating COVID like flu, or ending up treating flu like COVID. And here we are.

Glacier biogeochemical cycling and downstream impacts www.nature.com/articles/s43... #jcampubs

Glacial microbes might be tiny but their message is huge: climate change is erasing ecosystems we never knew existed. ❄️🔥 Have a read of this article about our own @arwynedwards.bsky.social 🔗https://www.the-scientist.com/the-ice-is-alive-uncovering-the-vanishing-world-of-glacial-microbes-73825

Ancient metagenomics reveals subglacial microbiomes driven by oxygen availability www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #jcampubs

Lovely to feature alongside the brilliant Birgit Sattler & Tom Battin in this story about life in Earth's dying ice. www.the-scientist.com/the-ice-is-a...

Lectureship in Zoology at Aberystwyth University! jobs.aber.ac.uk/en/vacancy/l... Come join our fantastic team at @aberdlsagb.bsky.social @aberuni.bsky.social in beautiful Wales. Application deadline: 14 Dec 2025.

Host–virome associations in the weathering crust of a rapidly retreating temperate Alpine glacier. Published Open Access and fee-free in MGen using a Publish and Read agreement: doi.org/10.1099/mgen... #MGen #PublishAndRead

Diving through the purple sulfur bacteria layer of Fayetteville Green Lake with our ROV last month. This is the most intense density of PSB that I've seen in many years!

New publication: A framework for assessing global health impacts of polar change: An urgent call for interdisciplinary research Open access link: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

We’re delighted that Aberystwyth has been named a UNESCO City of Literature – the first in Wales! More: tinyl.co/3u04 @librarywales.bsky.social @uwtsd.bsky.social @prifweinidog.gov.wales @unesco.org

The collateral benefits of the Covid pandemic response was a marked decrease in airborne and aerosol-transmitted infections via masking and non-pharmaceutical interventions @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Beautiful piece about microbes, buildings, and health 🤩 www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

Next time an institution tells you how seriously it takes research misconduct, ask them if it's *this* seriously. www.bmj.com/content/297/...

Excited to advertise a new interdisciplinary PhD opportunity at @geogdurham.bsky.social - "From ice to ecosystem: assessing the risk of glacier melt and legacy contamination for reindeer in Sápmi (Lapland)" ❄️ 🦌 To learn more about the project and how to apply visit: iapetus.ac.uk/studentships...

New article on equitable reuse of public sequencing data, published in @natmicrobiol.nature.com! Led by the Data reuse core team @lhug.bsky.social @environmicrobio.bsky.social Cristina Moraru, @geomicrosoares.bsky.social, @folker.bsky.social and with Anke Heyer and The Data Reuse Consotrium!

Just signed up to peer review an application for one of the largest science funders in the world. Asked to confirm I was at least 13 years old. Might explain a lot about the grant review process if it's secretly dominated by teenagers.

Long-buried layers of saline permafrost seem to be accelerating climate change’s transformation of the Arctic. https://scim.ag/46AxH2E

Our scientists are leading research into how a widely used vaccine can boost overall immunity in livestock 🐮 More: tinyl.co/3iC7 @aberdlsagb.bsky.social @ukri.org #AberTB#bovineTB#bTB#TB

2 Postdoc vacancies: Microbial dormancy in the cryosphere @erc.europa.eu #ERC_SIESTA 📢 PLEASE RT Experimental: 🧬 Single cell microbial activity measurements, flow cytometry, omics, biogeochem Modelling: 🖥️ Bioenergetics, thermodynamics, ecological, biogeochem ☀️ Marseille, France ‼️ Apply by 30 Sept

Real pleasure to be part of the Helminth Eco-Health Hub UK. A real opportunity for experts to forge new connections. Information on the network will follow. @aberdlsagb.bsky.social @aberuni.bsky.social www.cambrian-news.co.uk/news/univers...

Reminder that we are recruiting an Assistant Professor Bacterial Genomics @imibirmingham.bsky.social. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOO184/a... Deadline 24 Sept.

Sad views from southern #Svalbard 30.8.25 - melt has reached high up the mountains. From Hornsund to Amundsenisen barely any snow left… how should glaciers build mass like this? Svalbard is heating fast. Only steep mountain walls seem to help accumulate a bit and catch blown snow 📸from✈️ #Glaciology

Met Office stats confirm summer 2025 is officially the warmest summer on record for the UK. The UK’s mean temp of 16.10°C surpasses the previous record of  15.76°C and pushes the summer of 1976 out of the top 5 warmest summers. www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/new...

Temporary lecturer in Microbiology post available at Bangor University. Apply by 15th September: jobs.bangor.ac.uk/details.php....

Thanks to @aberuni.bsky.social for highlighting the phenomenal hard work of Drs @geomicrosoares.bsky.social @sararassner.bsky.social and team in mapping the microbiota of the South Wales coalfield. Prospects for future energy emerges from the legacy of fossil energy. academic.oup.com/femsec/artic...

Happy to share our new paper in L&O about autotrophic biofilms in subarctic lakes and streams 🦠 🏔️ @aslo.org aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Not bad, but not as gripping as S4C

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a... Thought provoking article to share with your families and friends when they ask what you do, featuring the ever excellent @arwynedwards.bsky.social

A powerful piece by @mountainogre.bsky.social on #microbes and #Arctic change, featuring our work on glacier ecology @aberdlsagb.bsky.social and work on methane cyclers by colleagues at UNIS www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

A time for good decisions. Taking a moment upwind to first calmly think through our optimal escape route away from a polar bear and her cub raiding nests in the distance. #fieldphotofriday #fieldworkfriday

A new 4 year PostDoc position in our lab! Modeling + experiments to explore dynamics of carbon fixing hot-spring microbiomes. Part of an exciting multidisciplinary team with Sophie Nixon, @brockhurstlab.bsky.social & others Please share & get in touch if interested! tinyurl.com/e7j7bha3

When you see a paper in a top journal that claims to be doing a global map of richness of a taxonomic group yet there are huge lacunae in the global map of samples from which they have done some fancy interpolation you have to be just a little bit sceptical

Excited to share our new study exploring chemoautotrophy in subzero Arctic brines. We identified cold-adapted Rubisco enzymes in Thiomicrorhabdus species, suggesting unique adaptations for carbon fixation in extreme conditions. Read more: journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... #Microbiology #Astrobiology

Solid tally of beasts over the last few months in the field. Plus 3 Arctic foxes and too many reindeer & geese to count. Not all biodiversity is microbial, just most of it. @aberdlsagb.bsky.social

Melting over 80.6% of the area of the Greenland Ice Sheet. This is the highest value in our data set, which starts in 1981. @polarportal.bsky.social

This might transfer well to Svalbard. www.bbc.com/news/videos/...

Our article showing energy production from air alone is in PNAS today. This paper provides an ultimate biochemical proof that microbes can survive simply by 'making' energy from air (making two ATP per molecule atmospheric H2 consumed) and has biotech applications. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Last week to apply for TWO PhDs with me and amazing supervisors at University of Birmingham The Last Of Us - www.findaphd.com/phds/project... Understanding pathogen diversity in maternal and neonatal populations - www.findaphd.com/phds/project... I’m on holiday so can’t answer queries though

Meanwhile, climate is not the only thing heating up in Svalbard: www.spitsbergen-svalbard.com/2025/07/22/g...

A plangent comment by @drbradbrad.bsky.social & co on the impacts of a winter warmer. It can rain in any month in Svalbard, but these happen more and more, and as more start studying winter ecology, their impacts become more noticeable. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Coming to a coastline near you soon.

A pleasant 9*C at the office today.