New paper out today in @royalsocietypublishing.org Biology Letters, led by undergrad superstar Laina Weiss! An experimental test of theory on the effects of temperature and resources on carrying capacity. So proud 🥹 tinyurl.com/yvmzmt9a @integrativebiology.bsky.social

Grateful to share our paper on gene-specific selective sweeps in human gut microbiomes, now out in Nature! It has been a joy to work with @rwolff.bsky.social, whose insights and hard work made this possible. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A fascinating application of social choice theory to ecology. It rigorously proves the suspicion that "biodiversity" has to be a loose, multi-faceted concept than a single scalar number. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

So proud of this paper 🥳 Could not have done it without the amazing team along side me: Lauren Shoemaker, Lauren Hallett, Peter Vesk, @oscar-godoy.bsky.social and @mmayfieldecology.bsky.social

Excited to share our fresh-off-the-press Annual Review on the role of temperature in metabolic scaling! We review the state of the field on this topic and unpack confusion about the various ways the term "scaling" is used in metabolic theories. www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Biological modeling is organized inquiry, but how should we think about the process? My new paper in #EcologyLetters argues that we should model like experimentalists: define treatments, measure responses, validate, perturb, repeat. 👉 doi.org/10.1111/ele.... Do you agree?

Most major theories in ecology assume some sort of equilibrium, but only ~half of empirical tests acknowledge it & even fewer observed it in their system. Does this matter? How did the idea become so pervasive in ecology anyway? Find out in our new paper! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

We take a deep dive into the equilibrium assumption in ecology—hope it's a useful synthesis for the community!

Very excited about this work led by Sergio

Ecology faces an accumulation of models but not an accumulation of confidence. Our new paper w/ Jonathan Levine www.nature.com/articles/s41... in @natecoevo.nature.com introduces a rigorous test rooted in queueing theory to falsify inadequate models and build confidence in useful ones.

Really excited about launching the universe of "Grassy Trees" to diversify plant growth forms in forest ecology! Bamboo, palms, and bananas are nature-based solutions that have already been working for thousands of years in many cultures. We just need to SEE them now.

POSTDOC JOB AD: I'm hiring a Bayesian ecologist to build a (IMO, extremely fun) model of humpback whale spatiotemporal dynamics in California 2-year position starting fall 2026. in-person in Santa Cruz; collab w with Mevin Hooten's lab at UT Austin. ask me Qs or apply: recruit.ucsc.edu/JPF02003

Excited to share that I’ll be starting my research group in Nov 2025 at the Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica in Taipei🎉 We study how eco & evo rules govern complex systems layered by hosts🌱& symbionts🦠 & mobile genes🧬 Recruiting soon at all levels! 🔗 chang-yu-chang.github.io/changlab/

What sustains biodiversity? 🌿🌸🐝🐦‍⬛ It’s not just about species, it’s also about individuals.   Our new paper in @esajournals.bsky.social Ecol. Monogr. shows how the way individuals specialize on their mutualistic partners can scale up to shape species persistence.   🔗 doi.org/10.1002/ecm....

Excited to share a new pre-print in collaboration with @sebastianschreiber.bsky.social, "Using Modern Coexistence Theory to understand community disassembly"! We set out to understand how techniques used to study coexistence can be extended to understand community disassembly. (1/X)

Feel free to contact me for info about this open position and the project! Fully funded through @hfspo.bsky.social and in collaboration with @jacrickets.bsky.social and Shawn McGlynn

The blog and the comments are very thought-provoking statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/09/15/t...

ICYMI: AmNat Editor-in-Chief Volker Rudolf speaks out: "Best Publishing Practices and Open Access Options at The American Naturalist" Read now! www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

The first Aguillon Lab paper is officially out in early view at Evolution!! Led by postdoc @devonderaad.bsky.social, we’ve explored the hybrid zone between black-headed and rose-breasted grosbeaks in the Great Plains. #ornithology #hybridization #speciation #evolution doi.org/10.1093/evol...

www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/... A truly delightful read by Judith Bronstein reflecting on the state of mutualism studies. It's a thoughtful look at where the field has been and where it's going—and such beautiful writing as well!

Novak et al. derive a functional response model that unifies Holling’s classical forms. The model clarifies when linearity can be a mechanistically-reasoned description of predator feeding rates and the impact it has on predator-prey dynamics. Read now! www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

We will be recruiting graduate researchers to start Fall 2026 in the Dallas lab at U South Carolina. We are a mix of population, community, and disease ecologists. Parasite macroecology!!! Feel free to reach out to chat and see our webpage for more info on our science (taddallas.github.io).

Come work with us!! Great group and super cool work 😎

Amazing opportunity!

I am seeking a postdoc for my group at UCLA. We work at the intersection of population genetics x microbiome (garud.eeb.ucla.edu). If interested, please message me!

Happy to share a new preprint! W/ @zachgold.bsky.social, Haylee Oyler, Jonathan Levine and @nathanjbkraft.bsky.social. We use a spatially explicit experimental design to ask: do higher-order interactions structure the dynamics of annual plant communities? Link: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵

Label invariance: a guiding principle for ecological models https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.15.664968v1

Last year, I joined a brilliant group of researchers for a 3-week deep dive into host–microbe systems. Each week explored a different theme, led by inspiring lecturers. I’m excited to share that videos of their talks — along with presentations by several team members — are now on YouTube:

This excellent article by @clsong.bsky.social‬ synthesizes research on the Assembly Graph, a useful conceptual & methodological tool to understand the dynamic assembly of microbial communities and multispecies coexistence. enviromicro-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

So excited to finally read this paper on parametrizing metacommunities! It's a true breakthrough. I've been looking forward to it since the fantastic talk at APS March Meeting.

Excited to share our new article exploring the eukaryotic diversity and composition in the gut microbiome of wild baboons! doi.org/10.1186/s425...

Host Competitive Asymmetries Accelerate Viral Evolution in a Microbe–Virus Coevolutionary System - Liaghat - 2025 - Ecology Letters - Wiley Online Library onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🧵The RELab opens! We explore how diverse ecologies cope with fluctuations while maintaining long-term integrity in space and time. Our motto is: ‘Everything is moving’. Not interested in asymptotics: transient dynamics reigns everywhere, every time. A supertransient thread with an arrow of time:

Interested in microbiome GWAS and heritability studies? Check out our new Review in Nature Reviews Genetics! We explore key findings, challenges, and future directions of the field. rdcu.be/epoRR @blekhman.bsky.social @sambhawa.bsky.social and Dr. Kelsey Johnson.

Do you want to know if species interactions are more a tool or a limitation when communities try to cope with global change? Check my talk tomorrow at 13:30 in TSB-7. #SIBECOLAEET2025 @eco-aeet.bsky.social @sibecol.bsky.social @sibecol-aeet-25.bsky.social

How do ecological communities respond to pulse perturbations (e.g. storms, wildfires)? We have a solid theory for stable fixed points, but what about cycles, transients, or chaos? In this preprint, we introduce a unified framework for these nonequilibrium cases. 1/7 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Microbial communities can harbor many species that do not coexist in pairs, yet can coexist in the full community. Here we provide the mathematical foundations of emergent coexistence, and explain why it can't be predicted from pairwise tests www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New paper w/ Jonathan Levine and @exp-evoeco.bsky.social! We induced plastic responses in annual plants through early-life competition. These responses tended to make subsequent species interactions stronger and coexistence less likely. Link: esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

How can we understand ecosystem dynamics using information theory? Using Shannon's entropy, this paper by Chuliang Song gives a clever introduction to IT within the context of assembly graphs. @longcy.bsky.social @guimaguade.bsky.social @blaividiella.bsky.social www.clsong.com/assets/pdf/s...

So emotional seeing my first-ever teaching evaluations! 😭 Creating all the materials from scratch was tough, but incredibly rewarding. I put a lot of thought into what students need in the AI era—sharing the complete class materials here in case they're helpful: clsong.github.io/EEB_C234/01_...

Very exciting news! In Sept 2025, I will move my lab to the School of Biological Sciences @monashbiol.bsky.social at #Monash University in Melbourne! I am recruiting #PhD students to work on #ecological & #evolutionary dynamics of #phytoplankton #communities – find out more here giuliaghedini.com

Just out: A geometric approach to beta diversity esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... Led by the brilliant @clsong.bsky.social & Muyang Lu.

Thrilled to share our new paper "A geometric approach to beta diversity" in Ecological Monographs. We propose a fresh perspective to rethink beta diversity and its measurement. esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecm.70008

Four #SPLASHY talks from the lab for #APSphysics March meeting next week at Anaheim, from starfish embryos to robotic active matter - looking forward! #ApsDsoft #ApsDbio #PRX_Life

Great news that increases funding levels and the number of awards and opens up PhD and postdoc awards to non-Canadians! Currently recruiting an MSc and a PhD in my lab - see www.tessgrainger.ca

The determination of leaf size on the basis of developmental traits - Zeqing Ma, Thomas N. Buckley, Lawren Sack - New Phytologist @tombuckleylab.bsky.social t.co/EFgmQo1qWy

Excited to see this paper from Mary Van Dyke out in press- she measures how rainfall manipulations alter the timing of the life cycles of California annual plants, and explore implications for species coexistence. Thanks to Sedgwick UCNRS Reserve for facilitating her research! #AJB

Yayy 🌱🪲🐝🐌- A list of stellar ecologists and myself showed that (1) species interactions can be summarised at the guild level, except for a few critical species, (2) they occur along a continuum from positive-to-negative, and (3) they have relatively weak strength except between plants!

I gave an interview to the BBC at midnight while the #LAfires were raging outside and I couldn't sleep. Turned into one of the most thorough and well-researched articles on wildlife and wildfire I've had the pleasure of contributing to.

Incredible work led by Jeff! As his office mate, I’ve seen firsthand the dedication and rigor he’s put into this project, ensuring the analysis is both thorough and widely applicable. Couldn’t recommend it more!