What are your academic red flags that make you not want to collaborate with someone? I'll go first: Lots of detail in your website profile about how many papers you've published, the number of citations they have, and how you stack up against others (e.g. top 1%).

If you saw my talk at #BES2025 and took photos, could you please send them to me either here or on email? My funder likes evidence that I'm doing stuff.

Come and see me talk about factors that influence the use of scientific evidence in conservation decision making in 5 mins time (4pm) in the Lowther room. The work is part of a massive systematic review that I've been leading for the last year or so and I'm massively proud of it!

Starting the first leg of the annual pilgrimage to #BES2025. A quick evening stop in London and to catch-up with an old friend and then north. As excited as ever but still without any slides for my presentation...

I 100% recommend getting involved with this - it's honestly been one of the most rewarding things I've done in academia and the team at the journal are fantastic! If you're at #BES2025 next week and want to talk about the opportunity I'd be happy to share my experience.

Another poll in prep for my #BES2025 talk next week - this time about the use of scientific evidence in biodiversity conservation. Please vote and retweet to inform what I say on Tuesday afternoon!

Do you think that the average conservation decision is informed by scientific evidence? 1️⃣ Yes 2️⃣ No 3️⃣ Not sure 4️⃣ Other (answer below) 📊 Show results

We're looking for a 6th Senior Editor! If you… 👉are intrigued by the interface between ecology & biological resource management 👉are interested in contributing to the journal’s strategic vision 👉have editing experience …we’d love to hear from you! www.britishecologicalsociety.org/content/seni...

It's only one week until #BES2025 kicks off - so if you could respond to this survey, and help shape my talk on the 16th, that'd be great!

I'm looking for good master's students for a couple of projects I'm offering. What are the best MSc/MRes courses I should send the project descriptions to? Ideally courses should be in Europe to make logistics less complex.

I'm preparing for my talk at #BES2025 and want to know what people think the main goal of applied ecological and conservation research is. If everything goes to plan, I’ll be using the poll results in the talk itself, so the more responses the better! @britishecologicalsociety.org

What do you think the primary goal of applied ecological/conservation research is? 1️⃣ Diagnose threats and impacts 2️⃣ Understand ecological processes 3️⃣ Inform management or policy 4️⃣ Something else (comment below) 📊 Show results

📣Job vacancy!📣 Research Fellow in Global Conservation at Leeds, working with Dave Williams (and me, a bit) to assess the impact of conservation initiatives on biodiversity, carbon, and people: jobs.leeds.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx... #ConservationScience 🌍

Great looking PhD offer with @laurajanegraham.bsky.social assessing the importance of Miyawaki ‘Tiny forests’ for biodiversity. There's a paper due out soon in @jappliedecology.bsky.social that calls for more robust assessments of the Miyawaki method, so good to see projects aiming to fill this gap!

Is peer-review getting slower? Anecdotal I know, but I've been waiting four months to hear back about a manuscript I submitted to a pretty prestigious journal. It would be great to have reliable turnaround times published on journal website so we could make an informed choice about where to submit.

This 👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41... "This has led groups of researchers to publish increasingly detailed maps of global conservation area priorities, but none of these articles have directly influenced the implementation of the biodiversity hotspot approach..."

This has gained some traction. There's now twenty something conferences and workshops on there. However, there's a very obvious European bias. Any N or S American, Asian, African or Oceanian (is that even a word) additions would be gratefully received!

It was great to host @julenastigarraga.bsky.social at BC3 today. He gave a fantastic talk about improving predictions in ecology and the role of mechanistic models in predicting change in forests. Hoping we can keep the conversations going and collaborate in the near future!

Ok, so since there's nothing coordinated anywhere, I've decided to make my own crowd-sourced list of ecology and conservation conferences here. If you know of a conference that fits, please add it to the list! Let's turn this into a useful resource for the community tinyurl.com/yb6e6mb2

🎉 Congratulations to our Centre Director, Prof @ymalhi.bsky.social, on being awarded the Ramon Margalef Prize in Ecology! 🌿 A well-deserved recognition of his pioneering research on tropical forests and global leadership in ecology. 🔗 naturerecovery.ox.ac.uk/news/4071 @ecioxford.bsky.social

I'm trying to organise conferences and workshops that I want to go to in 2026. Is there a decent list out there for ecology and conservation people anywhere? Everything I've come across by Googling seems to be full of predatory conferences.

I had a wonderful few days this week, hosted by the government of Catalonia and the University of Barcelona, and receiving the Ramon Margalef Prize for ecological research from the president of Catalonia

When in the woods, best beware of dead man's fingers lurking there. Reaching up above the ground, a creepy fungi to be found. Happy Halloween everyone. Photo: Sheringham Park by Rob Coleman

Evidence synthesis folk: are there any published standards for how to use AI and report its use? I've been using an AI tool to help with screening articles and want to make sure that I report things well.

We are happy to introduce the Soil Ecology SIG @britishecologicalsociety.org! Our aim is to connect soil ecology researchers across career stages, facilitating knowledge exchange and collaboration. Check out www.britishecologicalsociety.org/content/plan... and feel free to get in touch!

more PhD info here www.linkedin.com/posts/efuent...

At 10:00 🇵🇹, I’ll be speaking at the #EUFLYNET workshop about: “Rethinking standards in #evidencesynthesis for reliable ecology & evolution” 🐦 Many thanks to @ecobrlik.bsky.social for the kind invitation & for leading what'll surely be a fantastic systematic map (protocol 👉 doi.org/10.57808/pro...)

Absolutely awesome looking PhD project with Kevin and colleagues to produce vital knowledge to inform forest restoration strategy in the UK. Makes me wish I could do a second PhD!

Global change at a glance: The 2025 state of the climate report: a planet on the brink doi-org.csic.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/bios... | @aibsbiology.bsky.social "Climate change is a threat to ecosystem and human health, but it is also fundamentally a social justice issue" @williamripple.bsky.social

Un fotógrafo graba por primera vez a un lince ibérico blanco: el misterioso color de ‘Satureja’ “No es albinismo ni leucismo, y estamos investigando qué es lo que ha podido ocurrir y pensamos que podría estar relacionado con la exposición a algo ambiental” elpais.com/clima-y-medi...

Dense and continuous pine plantations fuel severe wildfires and hinder recovery 🔥 Reducing tree density can lower impacts, guiding more resilient afforestation and fire management strategies in Mediterranean ecosystems 🌲 🔗 doi.org/10.1111/1365...

Great talk by @rupertseidl.bsky.social today at BC3 on the past, present, and future of forest disturbances in Europe and what this means for biodiversity and ecosystem services. Especially interesting to see how forest recovery is rapid in most of Europe, but not in Central and Southern Iberia.

Great to be visiting the Basque Centre for Climate Change in beautiful Bilbao this week! Thanks @philmartin.bsky.social for having me, and for showing me around! I particularly enjoyed visiting really exciting experiments, e.g. on European beech recovery at the temperate-mediterranean ecotone!

Great day out in the field with our guest at BC3 this week @rupertseidl.bsky.social! Today we've been looking at a salvage logged site damaged by windthrow with some retention & an experimental harvest site, both in Álava. Nice to discuss similarities & differences in forest management.

For anyone interested near Barcelona next week, I’ll be giving a seminar (followed by other contributions) on ““Energy flow as a way of understanding ecosystem change and nature recovery”, as part of receiving the Ramon Margalef Prize 😊

The Christmas Island shrew, a tiny mammal once found only on the Australian island of the same name, has been declared officially extinct. It’s at least the fourth small mammal species to be wiped out from the island since the introduction of invasive species there a century ago.

New study in @science.org using counterfactual methods suggests that carbon credits sold as part of REDD+ projects deliver greater climate benefits than estimated by previous studies. However, only 19% of projects met emissions targets and climate benefits were relatively small tinyurl.com/3m4k9mn9

Creating woodland through natural processes: Current understanding and knowledge gaps in Great Britain Great to contribute to this #OpenAccess paper published in Ecological Solutions & Evidence: doi.org/10.1002/2688... #rewilding #forests #trees #nature @ukceh.bsky.social

Has anyone actually ever clicked on this?

Spain's fire-ridden summer 2025 sparked big debates about how forests are managed. Now new research in @jappliedecology.bsky.social shows that pine plantations in Spain can increase fire severity, that post-fire recovery is rare, & but that tree density management can help tinyurl.com/mf33xrt8

Do you get confused when reading meta-analyses? Our new paper offers a practical guide to help researchers understand, interpret, and use them properly. We also show that the insights meta-analyses provide are often overlooked by those who cite them.

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Interesting insights on evidence use in Australia: Policymakers valued Living reviews most when topics are evolving fast & they can trust and easily access them. Barriers include: High costs of updating reviews & managing confusion when the evidence base shifts www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-6...

Really interesting looking new study claims that under a transition to increasing wood use in buildings, increased demand could be met under current harvesting levels. However, this would require shift from use as fuel to industrial products & reuse and recycling of wood doi.org/10.1038/s418...

You can now apply to take part in our 2026 Associate Editor Mentoring Scheme! 🔖 If you want to learn more about the peer review process and you're an ECR based in the Global South, then this voluntary position could be for you 💭🌏🧪 More info here 👇 bit.ly/47uwYlD

Not quite the same but what irks me is folks that do not "curate" their Google Scholar pages. Lots of people "claim" papers written by folks with the same name but clearly not written by them.

New academia hell just dropped: A colleague has found cases of someone posting papers written by other people on ResearchGate with the title page edited so it looks like they, not the other people, wrote it. Just straight-up theft and plagiarism.

This is really significant. I've been frustrated that we have to guess how much power and water AI consumes, because these tech companies won't say (even though they know). This is the most transparent estimate from one of these companies so far. I hope others will follow suit.

Research grants take hundreds of hours to write and cause so many sleepless nights, but it’s okay as there are good reasons to write them #academia

🚨 Please repost! #CommunityScience This year, we counted LOTS of new cones on some conifer tree species in some places, and not many for others species/places. Want to contribute? Tell us what's going on w/ NEW CONE production on conifers 🌲 near you! www.inaturalist.org/projects/con... #ConeCounters