This past year, I have been fascinated by the way fields that are not biodiversity sciences / biogeography use and think about species distribution models. Most of my attention was on ML and paleo/anthropo, which, I think, are interesting end points. I believe there are important lessons for us. 🌎

Publishing in society journals means nothing as soon as these journals are captured by Wiley et al. and turned into mandatory open access. And societies are to blame for letting themselves be captured and turned into a money making machine for for-profit publishers.

A personal pet peeve of mine in North American academia is the disdain for Ph.D.s done on European timelines. They aren't a cheaper version of the same diploma. They are the real deal - only with increased time pressure. 🧪

I think this Neal Stephenson book will be my last Stephenson book. He's got advanced James Islington disease when it comes to writing women characters. That's just painful.

Hey museum / collection / natural history folks! I am looking for a database of inter-institution loans of specimens. Does such a thing exist? Is this info that would be in @gbif.org in some way? @thelabandfield.bsky.social ? 🧪

🧪 Figuring out the right way to represent interactions as a network is a really difficult task, makes a big difference on the interpretation. In a new preprint by @tanyadoesscience.bsky.social we attempt to provide a hierarchical framework for network ecology: ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

Really, really cool and thorough literature review by @crcruzr.bsky.social - what is the current shape of socio-ecological indicators for decision and policy making? My personal highlight is the glob. North/South divide in the ways different groups are contributing as stakeholders v. experts.

get in, no time to explain

Human-wildlife conflict

Two days later there are still sentences of this book running in my head. And I think it helped me figure out something: I don't like fiction in academic contexts that aren't written by people with actual experience of academia.

The last set of minis I painted was in [redacted] during my undergrad, so these didn't turn out awful? Now to finish the many details left over.

Look for the helpers

The Practice, The Horizon, and The Chain, by Sofia Samatar, is absolutely breathtaking. Really tight prose and an uncompromising look at how dangerous the university as an institution can be when it tries to uplift for the wrong reasons.

Do you have data on wildlife pathogens? The days to publish them on PHAROS before it was cool are counted. @danjbecker.bsky.social is tirelessly advocating for the adoption of better data curation/archival practices: Proc. B is now the 2nd journal to list PHAROS as an archive for these data. 🧪🌎

we're excited to share that Proceedings B has also come on board for listing PHAROS as a recommended repository for open wildlife pathogen and parasite testing data! thanks to @royalsociety.org for the support. @viralemergence.org royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/pages/f...

it’s come to my attention that my tumblr post has been crossposted to bluesky, so I’m posting it on my account here #AntiAI #GenAI

This is a real tour de force by Maria Isabel. This paper is, put together, a whole century of CPU time done with the help of Calcul Québec. We will also be moving some of the outputs to BON-in-a-Box, @geobon.org cloud-based tool to facilitate the reporting of biodiversity indicators.

🧪🌎 Only 12% of Colombia's Tropical Dry Forest is located within protected areas, which puts over 750 species of plants, birds, and mammals at risk of habitat loss. Read more about our most recent paper, where we also tie this trend to national-level biodiversity commitments.

For Canadian scholars, the reality is bleak . Ottawa is dangling money for American researchers, but what about our own? #academicsky #neuroskyence #psychscisky

Doing the final edits and bringing the last bits of nuance to this statement was a good reminder that by far the best part of this job is to just do things. We get to think about stuff and then do it. Amazing. Still can't believe it most days.

@colincarlson.bsky.social @jbyoder.org hear me out

One of the reasons I am in the lab pretty much every day, and a assistant on all my student’s assays: if you aren’t practicing those skills, you are losing them (and one of the best parts of this whole profession imo)

This is a genuine issue for two very important (and inter-related) concerns. First, pandemic preparedness; second, the hopefully last remnants of a colonialist perspective on open science that demands the right to exploit, and dares call it "access". A short thread.

It was great to meet so many other Early Career Researchers at our #TIBS2026 mixer last night - both catching up with old friends and meeting new ones. To celebrate all the ECR Biogeographers, we have created a starter pack so you can follow all the exciting work being done: go.bsky.app/KvnmdnK

Real

I suspect that one of the reasons behind the widespread adoption of generative AI by faculty is that it gives people the illusion that they can still do the things they knew how to do as a postdoc. Gen AI is used as a poor substitute to maintaining core skills.

Today I found out that a criteria for B2 level in French fluency requires one to be able to "navigate a complex awkward social situation". Needless to say it was quite a surprise to learn, after all these years, that I'm actually speaking French at an intermediate (B1) level.

The moment I decided to cancel Grammarly.

It's time for a little book retrospective for 2025. So here's a top 5+. Based on no particular criteria, just... a bit more than 5 really, really cool books I enjoyed a lot.

Writing reviews of books is incredibly difficult. My reasons to decide what is a 5⭐ book have included - words make pretty music in my brain - forever changed the way I see myself as a person in relation to the world but also - time travelling maculinists cut in half with a claymore

I've been writing a lecture which is going to feature a wide range of different invertebrate taxa. At some point, I realised that instead of trying to source photos/images for all those taxa, it'd be easier (+ more stylistically consistent) for me to just draw them all myself. #Invertebrate #SciArt

After 10 years in storage my xbox360 finally croaked. My last 300 google searches are variations of "fallout new vegas linux please help please i need this so much"

It's amazing how little Bloodborne has aged in 10 years. It's still at least as good as Elden Ring in my book.

Over a month ago, Ecological Indicators returned us either the wrong editorial decision, or the wrong reviews. In a month of emails with Elsevier, we have been unable to get any help. The last time I published there, they also returned the wrong review to us. What is going on there?

The simulations didn't work and I didn't get as far as I thought on this draft, bug the baking? The baking got done.

The long downwards spiral of mozilla makes me sad everyday. At least they had the decency to get rid of thunderbird and let the community save it.

This is, not a joke, one of my favourite papers in a long time. Absolutely stellar co-authors, but also a straight line from "nitpicky little nerds obsessing over sampling" to "translational research with clear implications for management". Go read all about it here: ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

11y.o. decided on tyrannids. We're SO back.

found an etsy shop that's doing a tremendous bit

i made a few edits to my sad little poem & drew something to accompany it

Noteworthy because it was my first time adding a polygon provider using the interface @mdcatchen.bsky.social built for one of our component packages 🎉

@typst.app really is as good as the hype.

"reviewers finish reading a paragraph before commenting" challenge (impossible) Very seriously, my adventures as an author recently suggest that none of you should be complaining about the low reading skills of students. Fix your attention span.

Responding to reviewer 2 is made measurably better by listening to King Tubby's version of Take Five

Checklists for quantitative analyses do not work. For beginners, they are overwhelming, and usually not sufficient enough that you can't make severe mistakes while thinking you're following best practices. For experts, they are obviously a hindrance, as you are supposed to be pushing boundaries.

Increase tri-council funding next you cowards

Today was the last day of my data science for biodiversity class, which we concluded with students presentations. They did really well! If you want to see/run a workshop version of this class (half day, full day, 2 days version!), reach out. 🧪

Limited experience here, but I always try to figure out why I was asked to write the letter. This usually means looking for things I have in common with the candidate; the more niche, the more important. I also confirm with the department whether I'm expected to make a recommendation at all!

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last Slouches towards its office to catch up on late grading?

I was reading about rotation forests, as one does, and then I started thinking; if rotation forests are better than random forest, surely rotation boosted trees would be very good, right? I wasn't ready for how effective they are.