I created a small R package, tidyTRY, to help clean TRY plant trait data and pull European expert indicator values (FlorVeg) directly into R. It grew out of repeatedly rewriting the same scripts over the years. Repo: github.com/billurbektas...

"The most uncomfortable part for me is that I no longer think that scientific research will resolve the crises that we face." "I keep doing research not because I think it will save us, but because it would be a form of surrender to stop seeking understanding."

Drylands are globally resistant to invasive species! Native biodiversity and aridity are key but increasing grazing pressure and eutrophication may change the game 🌐 Our new paper is here @natecoevo.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Concentrations of PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” in North Atlantic pilot whales peaked in 2011 and have since dropped by more than 60%, thanks to phase-outs of specific chemicals. Replacement chemicals are not showing up in whale tissue. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/YEFe50Y6yMS

Happy to share that our new paper is out! We quantify multiple ecosystem services in rangelands with standardized global data from #NutNet 🦌🐄🦬, and show how their synergies and trade-offs shift with grazing exclusion and fertilization 🌿🌏💫 doi.org/10.1002/fee.... @esajournals.bsky.social

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

Plant diversity enhances ecosystem resistance to increasing grazing pressure in global drylands 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New study by Medina-van Berkum et al. in @pnas.org Plant diversity influences plant volatile emission with varying effects at the species and community levels 🌱🌼🌿 -> "At the community level, plant species richness directly enhanced VOC emission and increased VOC richness" doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

interesting new paper on community effects of invasive species👩‍🔬🧪🌍🪲🌐🐜🌱🐞🌾

Space-for-time substitution approaches in ecology do work! (at least in temperate grasslands) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

“Bektaş et al. (2026) offer a valuable template for future studies embracing the complexity of whole-plant strategies, inviting the scientific community to go beyond the traditionally used traits (Matthus et al., 2025).” Thank you @karlandraczek.bsky.social & @newphyt.bsky.social 🙏🏽

Plant phenolics play a key roles in plant strategies. Here we explore the drivers of phenolic content in plants over 1800 species across global drylands 🧪🌐 ➡️https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1365-2745.70222

Just published in @natecoevo.nature.com: using data from the @erc.europa.eu funded BIODESERT dryland survey, we show that plant diversity strongly enhances ecosystem resistance to increasing grazing pressure. Conserving biodiversity is key to sustaining dryland rangelands worldwide rdcu.be/eXY6D

Grazing is a major land use in drylands with major impact on ecosystems In a new paper, we found that plant diversity is key to increase ecosystem resistance to increasing grazing pressure. This effect is driven by complementarity in plant traits 🧪🌐 Find more here⬇️ www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Land-use change undermines the stability of avian functional diversity ->Nature | More from Lil Dr Glen EcoChat at BigEarthData.ai

New paper out today from our global #Biodesert survey! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... We found a global a conservative-acquisitive functional trait match between dominant and target plants that promoted facilitation worldwide 🌐🧪🌎🌾 @inrae-france.bsky.social @urep.bsky.social

Restoration ultimately aims to recover complex ecological systems with many interdependent species at large scale To understand the driving processes, we combined experiments & modelling Finding a trade-off between species recovery and food-web complexity onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

[ #VeilleESR #CancelCulture ] Suite à des pressions politiques, dont un message du Ministre sur X (le réseau de désinformation du suprémaciste Elon Musk), le Collège de France a été contraint d'annuler un colloque sur la Palestine.

Je pense que tout le monde devrait écouter cette prise de parole et mesurer ce qui vient de se produire avec cette tentative d'annulation, validée en haut lieu, d'un colloque scientifique au Collège de France

Un document concis et clair du @hc-climat.bsky.social

Rapid attribution study by @climameter.bsky.social @davifaranda.bsky.social of hurricane #melissa More at climameter.org

Happy to announce a short perspective piece as part of a SynCom @helmholtz.de working group. Discussing the breadth of biodiversity indicators, we encourage to differentiate better between multidimensional diagnosis, leading steering & actionable management indicators dx.doi.org/10.1002/2688... 🧪

The latest DroughtNet paper is out in Science today! Using coordinated experiments across six continents and 74 sites, the International Drought Experiment found differences between the effects of extreme droughts and more typical droughts... (1/3) www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Ces écosystèmes accueillent une riche biodiversité, piègent du carbone, filtrent l’eau, permettent de nourrir des animaux d’élevage… mais ils sont menacés par une utilisation de plus en plus intensive. Aujourd’hui, nous allons parler des prairies !

Unlocking the hidden biodiversity of Europe’s villages | EurekAlert! www.eurekalert.org/news-release...

We need much more semi-natural habitat (6-37%, depending on species group) in agricultural landscapes to effectively conserve pollinators. Large collaborative synthesis study looking at 59 studies in 1250 landscapes from 19 countries now published in Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

L’agroécologie : une alliée pour la nature, le climat et l’agriculture en Europe Une méta-analyse de 170 études, dans 21 pays, montre que les systèmes agroécologiques favorisent la biodiversité & le stockage du C dans les sols 👉 www.inrae.fr/actualites/l... @agroscope.bsky.social @urep.bsky.social

Highly interesting research by Tamsin Lockwood and colleagues now published in a paper titled "Semi-natural grasslands as a nature-based solution for climate change mitigation: An assessment of carbon and plant communities across age gradients" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Read the story behind this paper in the @springernature.com Earth & Environment community: communities.springernature.com/posts/decada...

📰Published📰Phosphorus recycling: how plants on nutrient poor soils make ends meet🌱 buff.ly/lja9aBp 🧪🌍

📣 🪲 Check out this paper led by @tperrot.bsky.social, which provides a clear demonstration that the intensive use of pesticides can be more detrimental than beneficial for crop production due to their negative impacts on natural pest control.

Reading in journal club: Science becomes trustworthy by constantly questioning itself @plosbiology.org @briannosek.bsky.social journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

To meet the targets of the #UN Rio Conventions (#UNCCD, #UNFCCC & #CBD) we must bend the curve of land degradation. Our latest Review in @natureportfolio.nature.com #Nature discusses how to do it by 2050 by urgently transforming global food systems rdcu.be/eACfr #KAUST

A must read www.nature.com/articles/s41... from @ftmaestre.bsky.social et al.!

Mitigating vegetation fragmentation in drylands requires promoting plant–soil facilitation, especially under high grazing pressure. For more see our new paper in #GEB 🌐 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... Another great outcomes from the #biodesert survey led by Yanchuang Zhao!

One of the most-viewed PNAS articles in the last week is “Energy expenditure and obesity across the economic spectrum.” Explore the article here: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... For more trending articles, visit ow.ly/Me2U50SkLRZ.

Nearly one-third of all retracted papers at PLoS ONE can be traced back to just 45 researchers who served as editors at the journal go.nature.com/4frnv04

doi.org/10.1007/s105... "Life on Earth is not confined by our imagined political boundaries between one country and the next, between one state and the next... "

New on the Belowground blog: plantlifebelowground.wordpress.com/2025/08/06/c...

Plastics are plan B for the fossil fuel industry.

New paper out on the dangers of using patterns across spatial climate gradients to predict what will happen with changing climate. That includes species distribution modeling. Space-for-time substitution can be misleading in sign, not just the magnitude of effects. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Tribune signée par un vaste collectif (scientifiques, sociétés savantes, associations, collectifs en santé & environnement, associations de patients) : « Le Conseil constitutionnel doit censurer la loi Duplomb au nom du principe de précaution »

In our new perspective in PNAS we call for a move away from conservation focused on saving individual species to focusing on ecological processes, which underpin ecosystem resilience and the capacity to adapt to environmental change. Led by @josephtobias.bsky.social 🌍🌐🧪 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Fabulous post by @randomwalker.bsky.social & Sayash raising the same concern many of us have about whether we're on the right track with how we're using AI for science. Everyone should read it, take a deep breath & think through the implications. www.aisnakeoil.com/p/could-ai-s...

That's us in the picture! 🖼️ Read about diversity-stability relationships in biodiversity experiments such as ours in @natecoevo.nature.com

the current rate of extinction, as estimated by ourselves and others, whom we cited, and across diverse major taxa, we may well be headed in the direction of a new mass extinction event www.cell.com/trends/ecolo... 🌐🧪

1 mn pour signer ... 1 chance pour revenir sur cette loi, véritable rupture démocratique pour conjurer cynisme&irresponsabilité. Chaque signature compte! A toutes et tous! C'est ici 👇 et vivent les rebsweets! petitions.assemblee-nationale.fr/initiatives/...

Published in Nature today! Here, we sought to systematically ask how natural community's metabolism changes with the environment. A simple consumer-resource model can predict N-cycle metabolism (nitrate use) and, more importantly, the mechanism behind its change. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#Communiqué🗞️ Les activités agro-pastorales ont accéléré l’érosion des sols alpins à un rythme 4 à 10 fois plus rapide que leur formation naturelle. Une équipe de recherche vient de décrypter l’histoire de cette érosion pour la première fois⛰️ 👉 www.cnrs.fr/fr/presse/le...