How can we support Other Effective area-based Conservation Measures (OECMs)? Carly Cook and colleagues identified a clear need to resolve what is required for sites to demonstrate they meet the definition of an OECM DOI: 10.1111/cobi.70148

Teck-Phui Chua and colleagues investigate the impact of individual mutations on antibiotic resistance through selection of antibiotic-resistant mutants in vitro. doi.org/10.1093/jac/...

How does herbivory, with and without nutrient enrichment, influenced litter decomposition of a standard leaf litter substrate? Adrienne Keller et al found no interactive effect of nutrient supply and herbivory on aboveground litter decomposition rates rdcu.be/eH4r2

Can we predict how Dengue fever will spread as repeated heatwaves become the norm? Suk Lan Sur and colleagues test the response of mosquitoes, dengue virus and the biological control agent Wolbachia to repeated heat exposures. doi.org/10.1128/msph...

It has been such a joy hosting @odedberger-tal.bsky.social for the past year in our lab here at @monashbiol.bsky.social. Will miss the science discussions, chats about global politics and, of course, eating together.🙏

Can we reach a consensus on the best 'size' metric to model vital rates in plants? Maude Baudraz et al found that several tested size metrics perform well - encouraging for large-scale demographic studies using different size metrics. doi.org/10.1111/1365...

A recent review outlines the mechanisms that define multi-drug-resistant pathogens and explores how phage–antibiotic synergy, through the targeting of efflux systems, can dismantle multi-drug-resistant phenotypes and enhance treatment outcomes. doi.org/10.1128/mbio...

What do scientists working in the field of environmental toxicology / behavioural ecology, from industry, government, non-government and academia/research centres think of behavioural endpoints in the protection of human and ecosystem health? doi.org/10.1093/inte... @bbmwong.bsky.social

How does heat and cold tolerance vary in an Australian bee? Matt Elmer et al found little variance in heat tolerance between field and glasshouse and the opposite with cold tolerance suggesting plasticity in this trait. esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Peeps! Remember that our #dartR team was a finalist for the Australian Museum Eureka Prize for Research Software 2025? 💻 We WON!!! 🥳 @eurekaprizes.bsky.social Wonderful evening with cool science, pretty dresses/tuxes, and yummy food @monashuniversity.bsky.social @monashbiol.bsky.social

The liverwort Marchantia is an attractive model organism to study the complex processes of plant cell wall polysaccharide biosynthesis. This simple genetic model system has allowed Hee Sung Kang and co-authors to develop a Marchantia cell wall GT cDNA library onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

Can we reduce inconsistencies in assessing and identifying threats to conservation status? Martin Iglesias, Carla Sgro and David Chapple developed a systematic protocol for quantifying threats, using Australian squamates as a case study doi.org/10.1016/j.bi...

Can we monitor bird migration using ebird data and weather stations? Xu Shi and colleagues test this data to list high priority species for evaluating collision risks with wind turbines or other infrastructure in eastern Australia doi.org/10.1111/geb....

How hot is too hot? And can crevices act as thermal refuges for the Kaputar rock skink? DT Roberts and co find that crevices provide thermal buffering, but future climate may elevate evaporative water loss presenting an additional physiological challenge. doi.org/10.1016/j.jt...

Is growth restricted by physical limitation of gills as GOLT theory predicts? CB Scholfield and Criag White test this by rearing cane toad tadpoles at different oxygen concentrations. doi.org/10.1242/jeb....

What are the most pressing conservation challenges for the Antarctic? Zachary Carter and co-authors present the results from a 'horizon scan' where the 131 experts agreed on 10 emerging conservation challenges. nature.com/articles/s41...

What do fruit flies and men have in common where sperm production is concerned? Brendan Houston and co-authors have reviewed this topic to find out if flies can be an additional model organism for male infertility. academic.oup.com/humupd/advan...

Ruairidh Duncan and co-authors describe a new species of Janjucetus from the Jan Juc Marl. This is a Mammalodontid- a clade of toothed mysticetes known only from the Chattian of south-eastern Australia and New Zealand. academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/a...

Brittany Mason and co-authors provide a snapshot of current iNaturalist data use, highlighting its taxonomic and geographic breadth and its growing impact on biodiversity research. academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...

No single process explains all features of sex chromosome evolution but Andrea Mrnjavac and co-authors have shown that an extension of Mullers sheltering hypothesis is simple and compatible with several features of sex chromosome evolution academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-...

Can we extend passive acoustic monitoring of wildlife to individual monitoring? Lifi Huang and co-authors show that features learned by models pretrained on bird species data can be transferred to individual classification tasks with minimal effort. sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Rohan Brooker and co-authors find the ability of cleanerfish to adjust their activity in response to competition underscores the role of behaviour in maintaining cleaning networks on coral reefs. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

New results from Y Choy et al suggest that adaptation to combined stress allows basal cold tolerance and its plasticity to co-evolve, but not heat tolerance, highlighting the vulnerability of ectotherms to long-term climate change. researchgate.net/publication/...

Classic population genetics theory predicts that inbreeding restricts the range of conditions leading to balancing selection but, in those cases where it does occur it may still play a role in adaptation. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40659359/

A study by EJ Howells and co-authors used spatial comparisons of quantitative genetic parameters and thermal history to provide evidence of widespread adaptive genetic variation and selection responses to climate warming in reef-building corals. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

John Bowman and Jonathan Levins present data that lend support to the idea that FGMYB was the female sex-determining gene in the ancestral land plant, which has been speculated to have been dioicous nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

How can we better integrate biodiversity information from a variety of sources to provide more robust species population information for multiple management and policy objectives? Frank Muller-Karger and co-authors outline a framework here pure.lib.usf.edu/ws/portalfil...

What do we know and understand about how plants respond to temperature? Avilash Singh Yadav and co-authors review existing knowledge science.org/doi/full/10....

Do we understand collision risks for seabirds in offshore wind farms? Mark Miller et al produce a parameter database to support Procellariiform collision risk modelling for offshore wind farm impact assessment. besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirec... @rohanclarke.bsky.social

Do biological invaders encounter genetic bottlenecks that constrain adaptation? Paul Battley and colleagues find that introduced populations encompass high levels of genetic variation with little evidence of bottlenecks. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our paper on #genetic management of the #endangered Macquarie perch is published 🐟 🥳 !!! We present a framework for #metapopulation management and our pipeline JeDi (for estimation of unbiased het, pi and Dxy from RRseq data) 🧬 @monashbiol.bsky.social #Bioinformatics doi.org/10.1111/mec....

Arabidopsis research has informed other disciplines including human biology and Lucia Strader and co-authors describe the role of Arabidopsis in elucidating immune mechanisms here academic.oup.com/plcell/advan...

Detailed surveys of an endangered skink find it is likely to decline in a region of high-elevation cloud rainforests supporting exceptional biodiversity and endemism. But it remains possible that gullies provide microclimatic refugia to climate change. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

Jonathan Edwards et al describe a coalified log containing tunnels and coprolites attributable to termites plus smaller coprolites matching the size range of mites-the earliest trace fossil evidence of these taxa in circumpolar environments in Australia sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

We have just opened searches for 3 new continuing Teaching & Research Academics. All positions are open at Level B (Lecturer) or Level C (Senior Lecturer), and we have one position in Genomics and two in Ecology. careers.pageuppeople.com/513/cw/en/jo... careers.pageuppeople.com/513/cw/en/jo...

The three academic positions (Lecturer/Senior Lecturer) in the School of Biological Sciences at Monash University are now advertised. Details here: Ecology: careers.pageuppeople.com/513/cw/en/jo... Genomics: careers.pageuppeople.com/513/cw/en/jo...

Please share. We have a fully-funded PhD position on animal migration. If interested, please apply by 27 July. More about us: shawanchowdhury.com. @idiv-research.bsky.social @monashbiol.bsky.social @uq-cbcs.bsky.social #PhDposition #Ecology #Conservation #Migration #Rstats #AcademicTwitter

Little penguins generally stick with their partners - but when the going gets tough, they opt for a divorce and find a new mate. Divorce rates are a useful predictor of the population's reproductive success: more divorces --> fewer chicks. 🧪🐧🌏 From @monashbiol.bsky.social, doi.org/10.1002/ece3...

The value of science communication blogs.cornell.edu/asap/events-...

Will evolving Dengue viruses at different temperatures affect their fitness in two different hosts? Fhallon Ware-Gilmore @mattd_hall Carla Sgro and colleagues have investigated this watermark.silverchair.com/veaf016.pdf?...

Globally, species with small distributions face disproportionate extinction risk. A case study by Michelle Ward et al serves as a template for the identification of important habitat for threatened species. sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The MACSYS Node at Monash University has multiple PhD Scholarships available to work on some exciting projects! $41,753 p.a. stipend PhD: 3.5 to 4 years Additional funding available to support travel and advanced training macsys.org/monash-phd-s...

Parenting Room @monashbiol.bsky.social Equipped with armchair, mini lockable cupboard, change table, mini-fridge, and privacy screen. Available for students, staff, and visitors. Please contact School Manager for access and long term key loan if required.

If you are a domestic student interested in working on insect migration/conservation or citizen science @monashbiol.bsky.social, please reach out ASAP. The domestic round deadline is May 31st. You can find more about our research interests here. shawanchowdhury.com.

Congratulations to Emily Roycroft who recently won the Dobzhansky Prize. monash.edu/science/news...

Pathogenesis-related protein is a general term often given to genes that are strongly induced by stress or pathogen attack. Yanfei Zhou, John Bowman and colleagues propose a model for flavonoid biosynthesis in Marchantia polymorpha. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

Nutrition and temperature can interact and BrookeZanco and colleagues found that the negative effects of nutritional stress were significantly greater in tropical populations of fruit flies under warmer temperatures sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Luke D. J. Thomson of @monashbiol.bsky.social et al. investigated the effect of M-current activation on controller gain and obstructive sleep #apnoea severity via a randomised controlled trial using flupirtine 💊 🫁 📜 Read the #Research here: physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/...

What do we know about DNA repeats? Sridevi Sureshkumar and colleagues emphasise the underexplored nature and immense potential of this area of research, particularly in plants nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1...