Just as the impacts of climate change are really starting to bite, AoNZ as a nation is busy 'deprioritising' research funding into it. You can probably tell from some of the quotes how chill I'm feeling about this.

These are the kind of people we will be needing more of as climate change worsens. The extreme weather events around the country are a stark reminder that the coalition govt. is plucking out the eyes of our research system by reducing $ / shifting $ to things they think will make $$ fast. #NZPOL

Check out my latest article on moa de-extinction, which is out now in the Autumn issue of @forestandbird.bsky.social Magazine.

Check out my latest article on moa de-extinction, which is out now in the Autumn issue of @forestandbird.bsky.social Magazine.

This semester, my paleoecology students are working on species recovery plans for extinct species from the fossil record (I gave them a list to choose from), and my approach of "only assign things you'll actually enjoy grading" continues to be paying dividends.

Until now, scientists have identified only a few dozen variants that went through natural selection in humans in the past 10,000 years. A new study claims to find hundreds--maybe thousands. Here's my story on the provocative research, and the mixed reception it's getting. Gift link: nyti.ms/4tSJH9G

If you're in Dunedin today, come to our WildDunedin event on how palaeontology & genetics can help inform evidence-based kaitiakitanga & conservation management of our taonga species. It's at Tūhura Otago Museum in the Barclay Lecture Theatre from 3.30-5pm wilddunedin.ssboxoffice.com/events/the-p...

Also relevant if you are speaking out against private companies. As someone who was (naively) unprepared for having a smear campaign carried out against them, I wish I had thought more about this sooner. I wouldn’t have changed anything I did or said, but I wouldn’t not have been so shocked!

This is v good advice! Even if you’re not in the US.

Congrats to my MSc student Tobia Dale on the publication of her Hochstetter's frog radiotracking paper in the NZ Journal of Ecology. Well done - with Sara Smerdon, Jen Germano, Jo Monks, and Steph Kemner newzealandecology.org/nzje/3628

Congrats to my PhD student Imogen Foote on the publication of her paper on seabird DNA barcoding to aid ID of fisheries bycatch in the NZ Journal of Zoology. Well done - with Geoff Chambers and Peter Ritchie rsnz.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Congrats to my PhD student Imogen Foote on the publication of her paper on seabird DNA barcoding to aid ID of fisheries bycatch in the NZ Journal of Zoology. Well done - with Geoff Chambers and Peter Ritchie rsnz.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Congrats to my MSc student Tobia Dale on the publication of her Hochstetter's frog radiotracking paper in the NZ Journal of Ecology. Well done - with Sara Smerdon, Jen Germano, Jo Monks, and Steph Kemner newzealandecology.org/nzje/3628

Limestone caves host unique ecosystems we’re only just starting to understand #science #wildlife 🧪🧪 www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Massive budget cuts for US science proposed again by Trump administration idp.nature.com/authorize?re...

How did catastrophic black death and myxomatosis outbreaks on an isolated island affect the genomes of humans & rabbits, respectively? And how did the microbes evolve in response to this? PhD position @cpgsthlm.bsky.social with Anders Götherström and me as supervisors! su.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

I am wombat, hear me roar. #WombatWednesday #fieldwork #Tasmania #wombats #MammalWatching #WildOz #wombat

Just wrapped up an on campus interview and stopped in my tracks when I recognized this sticker from @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social ! Always nice to see faculty repping cool merch on their doors, especially rad when its about embracing the diversity of life around us

Want to do a PhD @universityofotago.bsky.social on climate impacts on #NZ vertebrates w/ Michael Knapp, @plubbe.bsky.social, @atennyson.bsky.social & me? Comes w/ fully funded scholarship & will investigate climate extinction risks using genomics & niche modelling evol.mcmaster.ca/brian/evoldi...

There's always a racist dinosaur (no offence intended to actual dinosaurs) that comes out of the woodwork in the Otago Daily Times Letters to the Editor in response to an opinion piece that you wrote theconversation.com/to-help-save...

Not only will you work on birds, but also bats, skinks, geckos & frogs. This research would come up with conservation strategies & a climate change extinction risk atlas for #NewZealand. Applications close 27th April 🦜🦇🦎🐸

I especially liked (que sarcasm) the email my co-author received from a reader saying Māori words followed by the English translation in brackets particularly irritated her, and that it should be English (Māori) instead. Oh, how fragile some people are theconversation.com/to-help-save...

Landmark experiment reveals a big unexpected problem with cloning A 20-year study has shown that, like photocopying photocopies, cloning doesn't produce perfect copies – with big implications for farming, conservation and de-extinction https://www.newscientist.com/article/2520756-landmark-experiment

My next book's been announced! I'll be writing RAISING THE DEAD, a history of de-extinction. Running from Thomas Jefferson's mastodon to Colossal Biosciences' "Dire Wolves," we'll dig into rewilding, Nazi cattle, eugenics, Jurassic Park and the long, strange quest to deny death.

I especially liked (que sarcasm) the email my co-author received from a reader saying Māori words followed by the English translation in brackets particularly irritated her, and that it should be English (Māori) instead. Oh, how fragile some people are theconversation.com/to-help-save...

Not only will you work on birds, but also bats, skinks, geckos & frogs. This research would come up with conservation strategies & a climate change extinction risk atlas for #NewZealand. Applications close 27th April 🦜🦇🦎🐸

At last! Ediacarans and Cambrian animals in the same site! Amazing! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Friends, we've gotten a lot of great responses to our survey for science communicators, and we are closing the survey on Friday evening. If you'd like to respond, please take the survey soon! umiami.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_... Please share. #SciComm 🧪🌍

A fossil bed in China containing animals up to 554 million years old suggests that we may have to reconsider the idea that life suddenly diversified during the Cambrian explosion

There's always a racist dinosaur (no offence intended to actual dinosaurs) that comes out of the woodwork in the Otago Daily Times Letters to the Editor in response to an opinion piece that you wrote theconversation.com/to-help-save...

Want to do a PhD @universityofotago.bsky.social on climate impacts on #NZ vertebrates w/ Michael Knapp, @plubbe.bsky.social, @atennyson.bsky.social & me? Comes w/ fully funded scholarship & will investigate climate extinction risks using genomics & niche modelling evol.mcmaster.ca/brian/evoldi...

Ecological research needs more "baseline" studies (if we can call them that now climate change is already well-underway). These will be seen as not having "enduring public value". Add this to the proposed cut to environmental research and it's game over for conservation and biodiversity. 😢

Excluded domains in the Environmental Sustainability and Resilience Pillar include "Ecological research with limited national relevance, eg investigations into environmental phenomena (such as natural sounds or processes) that do not deliver enduring public value for New Zealand." Absolute nonsense!

This report is terrible for the environment. NZ massively under-monitors environmental change and this is an issue in a changing climate because we will miss impacts of climate and other global change processes until it's too late to do anything about them. www.mbie.govt.nz/assets/repor...

While I'm at it: this report claims 'our priorities are closely aligned with those identified by iwi and Māori organisations (Appendix 3)' but those priorities are in Appendix 4 and are almost exclusively in research areas this report recommends cutting heavily.

It's INCREDIBLY transparent how much they came in with a ''soft' sciences and basic research bad, 'hard' sciences and applied research good' lens and then did absolutely zero work to interrogate those assumptions

And not to get nitpicky (I am going to get nitpicky) but I'd love to know why Australia (pop 27m) is in this table of countries with populations of less than 20 million, and why they've chosen to highlight several *very* small (>1m) European countries (Cyprus/Malta/Luxembourg) over, e.g., Singapore.

Also, the section on mātauranga is, uh, embarrassing:

I want to highlight this: the PMSITAC report uses AoNZ's relatively high funding of ag/environmental research vs other economies as a reason to recommend very significantly cutting them, and our relative extreme underfunding of social research as...a reason to even MORE significantly cut it. 🧪

NZ’s research priorities shift towards advanced tech – Expert Reaction

new zealand's 47-page govt report on science, out today, uses the terms "basic science", "discovery science", and "fundamental science" zero times "curiosity-driven research" appears only in regard to cutting it a foolish report released on April Fool's Day www.mbie.govt.nz/assets/repor...

Oh hey, the PMSITAC report is out and the short version is 'let's take money from literally every other area of research in AoNZ to put into tech'. That's the plan. Underfund everything else *even more than it already is* over the next three years. 🧪

More protection for migrating animals after global meeting – Expert Reaction

Ok, so I knew it would be an anger-inducing and triggering watch, but OMG. Bravo ABC Four Corners, and the brave souls that spoke out on the show. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03...