Honored to have one of my photos on the cover of @nature.com And thrilled to be part of this #ForestGEO study led by Yuanzhi Li and Chengjin Chu 🌴 🌳 🌐 doi.org/10.1038/s415... Photo caption: Sunrise over a tropical forest near Danum Valley Field Centre, Sabah, Malaysia

As the climate warms, animals are being forced to shift their ranges to survive.🐾 Research led by Kayley Breslin & tessgrainger.bsky.social @integrativebiology.bsky.social using beetles found warmer temperatures can accelerate both movement & population growth. www.uoguelph.ca/cbs/news/202...

FWIW, I don’t think the major problem in my field, or related ones, is that people need to move faster & produce more. I read a lot of papers as part of the job, and I’m increasingly convinced we’d benefit from fewer papers and better ones, not more mediocre work produced ever more “efficiently.”

Robert MacArthur's "favorite part of ecology, [is] the part that combines the adventure of field work in varied places with the discipline of making nontrivial theory. It is the part best done by field naturalists, but naturalists who know what science is all about." Describes Brian to a tee!

"When energy is scarce, evolution selects dormancy" Commentary by Chris Kempes in @pnas.org www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Devastating loss of Dr. Adriana Romero-Olivares this week. She was an amazing mycologist, a leader in her field, & my friend & collaborator. This is a tremendous loss for mycology, science, & the world. There is a meal train for her husband & two small children www.mealtrain.com/trains/l3kg64

Prof. Adriana Romero-Olivares, UC Riverside, was doing incredible work on how fungi and ecosystems respond to global change. A rising voice, a dynamic scientist and educator, a young mother, wife and daughter gone far too soon. A huge loss. Her family, students and community are in my thoughts.

especially her husband, Dr. Jovani Catalan Dibene, and her two young children. With deepest sympathy, Joel L. Sachs Professor & Chair, Evolution Ecology & Organismal Biology

Dear Colleagues, It is with immense sadness and shock that I share the passing of Dr. Adriana Romero Olivares, a brand-new Assistant Professor in the Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology at UC Riverside. www.mealtrain.com/trains/l3kg64

If you'd like to support her family, you can do so here: www.mealtrain.com/trains/l3kg64

New exciting work 🧪by Kai Huang and team: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

New paper with Victor Felix and Pej Rohani in J. R. Soc. Interface. doi.org/10.1098/rsif...

Excited to share a new article from the lab & wonderful co-authors. We argue that habitat fragmentation research needs to be recalibrated to focus on changes over time. We hope that doing so will advance understanding, isolate attribution, and diminish heated debate. www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

Antifragility: A Cross-Cutting Concept for Understanding Ecological Responses to Variability by Wickman et al. Available now ahead of print! www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

This fortnight’s Nexus Notes connects models, techno‑optimism, moral courage, Welsh stick chairs (!), and why so many arguments talk past each other. There’s a deeper pattern here about models, responsibility, and perspective. 🔗👇 predirections.substack.com/p/knowing-mo...

New paper by Mackenzie Hoogshagen showing how contributions of diet & genetic background shape geographic variation in parasite infection outcomes across monarch butterfly populations - Ecological Entomology - share.google/s9s2Alqm9fQU...

In another experiment, we show how immigration can shift the balance between ecological selection and drift in shaping turnover in gut microbiomes across individual caterpillars and through development. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

With a landscape-scale experiment, we show how regional processes (immigration & species pool size) can alter the importance of species sorting and mitigate spatial homogenization of plant communities. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Petrol hit $3.40/L this week. One shock and the whole system wobbled. We’ve built a society so optimised that it’s become brittle — supply chains, food systems, infrastructure, all running with no slack. Society is optimising for efficiency. Ecosystems optimise for resilience.

Becoming a parent is much worse for women in academia vs men, because women do 5 times (!!!) the amount of childcare than men www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The 2026 National Science Foundation budget is $8.75 Billion.

Nature is THE predatory journal. Not because it publishes junk or operates via unethical practices, but because they know how much they are coveted and price gouge. No society affiliation, just pure corporate greed.

Our review of #trait - based approaches to ecological restoration is finally out in @esajournals.bsky.social *Ecological Applications*, highlighting the value of functional traits for creating system-general restoration strategies. 🌐 🧮➕📏 urldefense.com/v3/__http://...

If you’re interested in modelling community turnover and/or community uniqueness (i.e. LCBD: local contribution to beta diversity), make sure you check it out. Paper: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Super happy to share that my article on inferring the dynamics of selective constraints across complex ontogenies is now out in Royal Society Open Science. My experience with RSOS was great, and I’m happy to be part of the movement towards open science! royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article...

Early morning view of Riverside, CA to calm my nerves during this 5-3 powerplay. 🇺🇸 vs 🇨🇦 #GoldMedal #Hockey #Olympics

Beautiful winter morning in Riverside, California.

Clear differenecs in plant compostion emerging in 1st year of #DRAGnet experiment manipulating #disturbance & #nutrients in an annual grassland in Riverside, CA. This plot is dominated by native Amsinckia menziesii, with neighboring plot dominated by non-native Brassica tournefortii.

We're getting close! Only ~20 more signatures needed. Any current member of the Ecological Society of America (@ecologicalsociety.bsky.social) is eligible to sign this petition for a new ESA Section for Distributed Ecological Research Networks: esa.org/membership/p...

Riverside in bloom #BloomScrolling

We’re #hiring a #postdoc @ucriverside.bsky.social 🌿 Work on cis-regulatory evolution, gene family diversification, and cell-type-specific climate responses using single-cell and comparative genomics - kenchanmanelab.com/research/ Deadline: Feb 5, 2026 Apply: aprecruit.ucr.edu/apply/JPF02058

⚠️ New paper out in Nature Ecology & Evolution 🌱 #Grasslands #SoilCarbon @natecoevo.nature.com

Riverside super bloom with desert wishbone, fiddlenecks and popcorn flowers #NativePlants

“The U.S. Department of the Interior announced on Friday that it is revoking seven grazing permits in Phillips County that American Prairie had been using to sustain its herd of bison.” 🧪🌐🌾

Please sign & share this petition to create a new ESA Section for Distributed Ecological Research Networks (DERNs): esa.org/membership/p... Goals: promote and support participation in existing and new DERNs, facilitate sharing of knowledge, and encourage collaborations within and between networks.

Really important points, Rob!

Beautful day yesterday out at our pinyon flats experiment in southern California. We are testing how changing precipitation regimes in arid ecosystems alter the causal mechanisms linking soil biogeochemistry, plant community composition, and primary productivity.

youtu.be/r3wsnirQOXQ?... Check out our highlights and subscribe to see what is wild in Riverside in 2026. We have partnered with city parks to add cameras to Sycamore Canyon and will be working with the county to start monitoring donkey populations across Riverside.

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

My @newphyt.bsky.social Tansley Insight is now published in an issue: Trait-based island biogeography as a tool for studying future ecological communities I provide an overview of recent advances in integrating plant traits into island ecology and highlight key themes for future research.

How should the discipline of ecology and the community of ecologists respond to the ecological crisis? Is it time that these were put on something more akin to an emergency footing? www.cell.com/action/showP...

Sometimes when an idea isn't working as expected, it's not failure, but an opportunity to realize something even more interesting is going on. ...maybe it's failure.

How do you ensure generalizability in Ecological Applications? Jennifer L. Funk says explaining why something works allows others "to transfer the findings" across different taxa and systems. Read the interview: https://ow.ly/B0Nr50XGZNk ESA Journals #Ecology

Ecologists recognize the importance of integrating across scales, yet our models often target specific scales. Our new paper presents models of population growth that scale up to explain community-level patterns, including interactions of temperature, light & nutrients. doi.org/10.1002/ecm....

Really happy to share that the Second Edition of our book, "Spatial Ecology and Conservation Modeling", is now out and available online! We provide a foundation for applied spatial ecology with a focus on learning-by-doing. @camzoology.bsky.social @conservation.cam.ac.uk

Reining in large for-profit academic publishers and valuing researchers for quality over quantity must be central as we reimagine the future of scholarly publishing.

The Georgia Coastal Ecosystems Long-Term Ecological Research program is looking for a postdoc with expertise in wetlands and biogeochemistry. Please pass this along to likely candidates!

We are entering that time of year when it’s good to remember that, the editors & reviewers of your favorite society journals are your peers, so they’re also overwhelmed by end of the semester stuff & would like to spend time with family during holidays.

Exciting new 🧪 work by Kai Huang on #soil N emissions after warming a forest for 6 years @pnas.org www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Had an amazing time the last two days visiting and giving a seminar at UC Davis! Such great conversations, especially with students, and got to meet people who I've been inspired by since I was a student. Thank you Susan Harrison for hosting me, and to everyone else for your hospitality!