Congrats! I think the next step for using this metric to understand the impacts of #bioinvasions would be to develop 'dose-response' curves that relate invader biomass to changes in (e.g.) native populations, species richness, & ecosystem function.

This image of home just came down from the Artemis II crew. Taken after their translunar injection burn, there are aurorae at top right and lower left, and zodiacal light at lower right. Credit: NASA/Reid Wiseman

Is the universe really fine-tuned for life? The claim that even tiny changes in fundamental constants would make life impossible (the God-needed argument) is been dismantled by recent research: Life can emerge under a wide range of physical conditions ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2019PhR....

If it were feasible & safe, it would be informative to use whole-lake experiments to test the effect of *rate of invasion* on ecosystem indicators. Then we'd have a better understanding of how burgeoning invasion rates might threaten ecosystem stability (see redpath-staff.mcgill.ca/ricciardi/Ri...)

There has never been a more appropriate time to recreate this iconic photo. It could serve as new inspiration to rally humanity in protecting this fragile, unique living planet. www.nationalgeographic.com/science/arti...

I went back to capture what the astronauts said in full when the clock was stopped at T-10 minutes and they were asked if they were go for launch: This is Victor. We are going for our families. This is Christina. We are going for our teammates. This is Jeremy. We are going for all humanity.

Interesting to note the major exception: Ireland, where native red squirrels are *gaining* ground at the expense of invasive American greys. How? The come back of another native mammal, this one a predator: the pine marten. Making ecosystems functional again is the best cure for invasive species.

“Every year, we unleash this scourge on the countryside." Brilliant to see David Attenborough address the enormous impact of pheasants (for shooting) and cats (people's pets) on native wildlife and ecosystems. These are *crucial* conversations. www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

I showed this graph in class yesterday on how measles cases in the United States plummeted dramatically after the vaccine was licensed in 1963. It’s not subtle and I could not resist observing: “This stunning design in measles cases was not thanks to vitamin A. It was not due to beef tallow.”

These animals can cause big trouble. Why are states unleashing them by the millions? Introduced species can wreak havoc on native ecosystems. Many states are flooding their waterways with them. www.vox.com/climate/4831... 🧪 🦑 🌍️ 🐟️

Distribution of grey and red squirrels in the UK & Ireland. The grey fellas are taking over! Source: buff.ly/lHJKbr2

Many Oz mammals only persist in fox- and cat-free islands or fenced exclosures. The role of these 2 introduced predators on mammalian extinctions should be obvious. Peddling of alternative facts by Compassionate Conservation types required a data-based rebuttal 🧪 academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...

I've seen the movie & give it 8.5/10. It's unfair to compare it to masterpieces Interstellar or Arrival. Very poignant, but a bit too comedic for me at times. What it depicted well was the intense emotion scientists can feel during a discovery, as when Grace observes the taumoebas under the scope.

Re-reading Project Hail Mary before watching the movie. A superb science mystery, the book is dream sci-fi for a biologist: multiple forms of extraterrestrial life (+ first contact), extremophiles, & invasion ecology (space-dispersing parasites of stars, predator-prey dynamics, biological control)!

@simonmaechling.bsky.social #medsky

Invasive grasses are being looked at as a potential contributing factor to worsening fire seasons. One UBC researcher found invasive species were much quicker to recover than native ones in Lillooet following a 2021 fire. nanaimonewsnow.com/2026/03/20/i...

I like finding old references to species invasions. Here is a 19th century book describing the impacts of an introduced fish: Millet (1871) observed that introduced burbot (Lota lota) became so abundant in Lake Geneva as to cause the loss of native brown trout. #bioinvasions #invasivespecies

I've just finished HG Wells' sci-fi classic The War of the Worlds (1898). Firstly, it's very fun. Secondly, Wells drops in a number of invasion ecology themes and ideas 60 years before Elton's The Ecology of Invasions (spoilers incoming).

I often receive cringeworthy mail from people who cosplay journal editors. This one is for a dubious "Scholarly Special Edition" on "Birds" in the so-called Journal of Veterinary Medicine & Research. It seems irrelevant to them that I have no expertise in vet medicine or birds. #predatorypublisher

Latest story on invasive wild pigs in western Canada. A rare case of media digging deep into the issues and fact checking the random comments that get made by agencies without any data or facts to back it up. www.yourwestcentral.com/articles/res...

"The entire ecosystem that the dire wolves helped constitute is gone. There is no ecological niche for them to occupy today. Nor is there any serious ecological reason to try to create ensembles of proxies for Pleistocene megafauna." #de-extinction www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Scientists have criticized Colossal for repeatedly claiming to resurrect an extinct species, when in reality it has genetically altered an existing animal to have a superficial resemblance to the extinct species. Colossal dismisses the criticism as "semantics". www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

A well written response.

Intriguing article about a study that contradicts Elton's biodiversity-resistance hypothesis. Diverse microbial communities whose resident populations fluctuate are more likely to be invaded than stable species-poor communities. #bioinvasions #invasivespecies www.quantamagazine.org/the-ecosyste...

Conservation conundrum. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/s...

Quote: "Our maps show that almost the entire Arctic could become home to alien species." www.ecoticias.com/en/more-than...

By reshaping envts, invasions change the rules of existence for resident species: some will benefit & others will be harmed in ways that challenge management. Risk assessments must consider the capacity of invaders to alter the physical foundation of ecosystems. theconversation.com/how-biologic...

Now I know what to charge Nature to review their papers.

If you mean so-called "de-extinction" I have a blog post about it. eternalscientistmusings.wordpress.com/2026/01/30/a...

Invasive alien species are a top driver of global nature loss. Yet whenever it's an animal, a segment of people fanatically resists their control. They believe it's okay to sacrifice whole native ecosystems, with 1,000s of interconnected species, rather than tackle the problem. They're very wrong.

My view of the #deextinction hype, encapsulated below.

The Null Hypothesis is Always Wrong! New blog post - check it out. ecoevoevoeco.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-...

As did South Africa, where introduced pine trees (which consume more water than native vegetation) threaten water supplies and fuel wildfires.

This importance also applies to freshwater benthic data, which are used to evaluate changes to water quality and responses to human disturbance.

"It will be a mammoth because it will look like a mammoth and it will act like a mammoth, and it will restore interactions to that ecosystem that mammoths had with other species," Shapiro says. So now they claim to know how their engineered facsimiles are going to behave in the wild? #de-extinction

New from our lab: Using the invasive round goby as a model predator, we show how model selection in functional response experiments is affected by context (habitat complexity; mobile vs immobile prey). link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Online now: Nonnative forestry plantations: invasion epicenters?

It's the funding of taxonomic research & training that's dying out. Without an ability to identify life forms, we can't recognize/quantify invasions & extinctions and their impacts on ecosystems. Imagine trying to repair a complex steel structure if you can't distinguish different types of bearings.

Globalization of the Arctic, driven by declining sea ice cover, is predicted to facilitate bioinvasions across the northern hemisphere. See our 2017 horizon scan: www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

A mathematical exploration of some increasingly worrying trends in peer review. Some sensible recommendations, including encouraging AEs to STOP sending out just about everything for re-review after the first round. It's become systematic and annoying. Editors should make decisions.

This exemplifies perfectly an inherent inability to predict eco-evolutionary trajectories. Ecology and evolution used to be called Natural History. In hindsight it is possible to explain what happened, but we often make the mistake to think we can then project what we know to predict the future. 1/