@taskmaster.tv I laughed so hard at the twin task that I nearly choked on a piece of orange. I was home alone; my life flashed before my eyes. 10/10, worth the risk.

We are looking for a research fellow to join our group for 2 years! Please share with anyone looking for a new position and interested in 🌱 local adaptation, plant-soil interactions and land use! euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/340833

Popping back to Bristol to collect the car I keep meaning to sell. Cost almost as much to go from my house in Levenshulme to Manchester (7 min) by train, as from Manchester to Bristol by Flix bus. Our public transport is a mess! #NorthernRail

Never has my desire to throw a scientific instrument out of a window been stronger. 6+ months of trying to fix it, tens of emails to Elementar, various new parts, hours reading the manual, an actual engineer visit and it still doesn't sodding work. 2 days til I leave this job - I think I'm beaten 😫

We popped to Devon for fieldwork at our regular Woodland Trust site. A beautiful sunny fond farewell since it'll probably be my last visit before I take a year out to cycle Europe and travel. It seems recent forestry work has scared away the deer so very little trap damage.

Friends, if you saw a news story or social media post about this, even if it didn't happen to you personally, you can help by sharing that link with me.

@anthomycota.bsky.social great talk today, thanks

We're fractionating soil from our 13C herbivory experiment at the moment and it's giving seaweed vibes when it dries. Also, a lot of colour variation for being only max 30 metres apart in the field.

We had a thoroughly enjoyable evening at the #BristolLightFestival, even if we spent so long queuing for Swoon ice cream that we missed the flamingos being lit. I think I was spoilt by the astronaught last year, these lights didn't quite compare.

I came across this majestic male bison in Teremiski village, Poland in July. We were in Białowieża forest for SAP lab fieldwork and leaf litter processing. He muched contentedly while I sat safely inside a car. This made my month!

In May we started our most intense experiment yet: 13C pulse-chase of in-situ oak seedlings to investigate effects of mammal & insect herbivory. We used air tight chambers to label only the leaves. We had PRS probes, data loggers, lysimeters and took flux data with automatic chambers in sequence.

The incredible view from by my holiday accommodation in Çamlıhemşin, Turkey, back in April. I hadnt expected the small apartment blocks perched all over the hills among the tea plants. Snow covered Kaçkar mountains in the distance.

I'm a pretty infrequent poster and brand new to Bluesky so now seems like a good time to look back on the year. These ruined leaf litter traps are from Devon last Jan, where we're looking at tree productivity vs soil biodiversity. Deer to blame for this destruction. #SAPlab #fieldwork

The really surprising thing from fieldwork to our temperate rainforest site in Devon was that all of our leaf litter traps and mammal exclusion fences survived storm #Darragh unscathed. Previous visit we had to change 6 traps - there's no rhyme or reason to their destruction! 🦌🍂

📢 18-month postdoc in my lab doing drought modelling with either the UK land surface model JULES or machine learning. Up to you which. Please share widely (thanks) www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de... Closes: 18th January

A rare sighting during yesterday's SAPlab fieldwork in Devon - the elusive greater spectacled PI in full winter plumage! This species more commonly found stalking the halls of a university. (I jest with love 😅).

1 week into Bluesky and my discover feed is half cats! Don't get me wrong, I love me a cute Kitty, but I was trying to keep it profesh (soil and forest ecology). I'm pretty sure I haven't liked a single cat related post 🤷🏼‍♀️

The situation in Georgia is alarming. I got a glimpse of their heavy-handed policing during my visit. The people protesting are risking a lot, largely in protest of losing the chance at something (EU membership) that we (UK) chose to give up. #Georgia #Tbilisi #Europe

At the polar opposite end of the publishing scale, I also finally got around to writing up my trip to Georgia (the country) this week for my personal blog. Can something be subtly life-changing? If so, that was Georgia for me and I enthusiastically recommend this "mystical land" to all. 🌍🧭

My first Bluesky post is (coincidentally) my first Nature paper! Soil microbiomes show consistent and predictable responses to extreme events doi.org/ntzk. Huge props to @frantecol.bsky.social and the other collaborators for this mammoth effort. #Soil #Microbiome #ClimateChange