Scaling laws for function diversity and specialization across socioeconomic and biological complex system "Once functions are introduced, their growth follows a remarkably universal pattern across all systems" @sfiscience.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 🧪🌐

I was thinking about this excellent article the other day.

🐜🚨 Ants are the new parrots: They are highly sought after as exotic pets and illegal trade is on the rise... #exoticpettrade #wildlifecrime #wildlifetrade #StolenWildlife #ants #terrarium #Kenya #Europe ▶️ www.theguardian.com/environment/...

This should be applied to proposals too.

The war in Iran is supercharging an ecological crisis in the Persian Gulf | Scientific American www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-...

Progressive alliance in Bristol. www.westofengland-ca.gov.uk/news/nationa...

From working closely with GMCA over the last 5 years, my reflections on Burnham: 1. He really has become a much better retail politician than he was; he thinks carefully about messaging & focus, looking to ram home a few things that make a difference to people's lives (hence banging on about buses)

Top work, @johnmorgan3.bsky.social

Absolutely love the Dutch for this. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Full of admiration for all those shortlisted for an Orwell Prize. Journalism at its most vital. www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-f...

Milei is destroying Argentina's education system. Today people will respond with a massive march. You can help Argentina by reading and posting about it. Gracias! #MarchaUniversitaria english.elpais.com/internationa...

Ethiopia’s protected areas are working — and that is worth celebrating. Our new paper in @natecoevo.nature.com looks at what Ethiopia’s experience can teach us about the challenges in turning global conservation targets into effective and equitable national action. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Natural England has revealed that it does not believe White Storks to be native to Britain – and it views releases of the species as not a conservation priority:

Much discussion post locals is on who Labour’s leader should be. For @newstatesman1913.bsky.social, I’ve asked who the party’s coalition should be: www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

This influx of wonderful books I've received recently makes me think we're enjoying a high point in natural history writing just now. (My reviews of some of them are on the way...)

The appeal of Last One Laughing is lost on me.

We had a great time at #EARMA 26 in Utrecht this week, where we were delighted to be media partners. You can catch up on all our reporting on our dedicated EARMA page: www.researchprofessionalnews.com/category/ear... #EAC26

Purely from a birding perspective, scrub is great: I was at a scrub-heavy RSPB reserve in Kent last weekend, and it was lousy with nightingales, whitethroat, lesser whitethroat, linnet, sedge warbler etc

More than 50 sloths were recently reported dead due to unsuitable conditions at Sloth World, a proposed so-called “slotharium” in Orlando, Florida. Learn more about the Sloth World scandal in this episode of Conservation Entangled, with Izzy Sasada. 👉️ mongabay.cc/Conservation...

Quantifying harm posed by invasive species to animal welfare will reveal a moral problem for so-called "compassionate conservation", which demands protection for even invasive animals. Is it compassionate to allow invasive rats, mice, cats to injure & kill wildlife? #bioinvasion #invasivespecies

🐜 How severely do animals suffer from invasive species? Researchers have developed a new framework called AWICIS that classifies animal welfare impacts across five levels. One key finding: especially invasive ant species cause substantial harm to native fauna. 👉 www.igb-berlin.de/en/news/meas...

What happened to make fallow deer treble since 2016?

Stagflation www.economist.com/britain/2026...

Well, well. A science publisher (Elsevier) decides to sue an AI firm over copyright infringement. Lawsuit with other publishers (Macmillan, Hachette etc.) vs Meta for training Llama models on copyrighted content, in Common Crawl and then from Sci-Hub among others. www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

I just sent this letter to the Science Minister and the CEO of UKRI concerning STFC's budgets

A really excellent piece of analysis by @evanhill.bsky.social and colleagues at the @washingtonpost.com reveals the extent of damage caused by Iran to U.S. and allied bases in the region. TL;DR the Iranians managed to hit quite a lot. www.washingtonpost.com/investigatio...

Google Deepmind workers threaten ‘research strikes’. Free to read. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-i...

My fave feelgood story of the moment. Red-and-green macaws are breeding in the Atlantic Forest for the 1st time in 200 yrs. The new chicks are the offspring of birds that were kept in captivity for 25 years, b4 being rehabilitated & freed #science #widlife 🧪 www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts...

A close UK friend once did an afternoon speed-awareness course as an alternative to getting a ticket. I'm told it was excellent, and they haven't gone over the limit since.

A new DNA study of museum specimens reveals that 80% of Fiji’s native ant species have declined since human arrival. The sharpest drop occurred 300 years ago with the rise of industrial agriculture. This study confirms the fragile state of island insect biodiversity. Read the full article.👇️

Switzerland is putting solar panels on all the empty space between train tracks. If done in the UK this would take 20,000,000 Solar Panels and would provide 8GW of electricity.

🌸 🐝 Have you ever seen a bee sleeping? This tiny solitary bee in Doñana has found the perfect spot to rest among the petals of a flower. Our fieldwork sometimes gives us moments like this. Beautiful reminders of just how extraordinary wildlife is.

🚨 ANNOUNCEMENT 🚨 168 HOURS 0 MINUTES 0 SECONDS REMAIN

Nasa seem to have stopped this working for the major internationally recognised rude words, but any member of the Viz generation will be able to create much to fnar at.

‘Most of the carbon in the atmosphere because of human activity has been emitted since 1990. In the last decade, Amrith points out, nearly two thousand environmental activists around the world have been murdered.’ Oliver Cussen reviews 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘉𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘌𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘩. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

"In just eight weeks — less time than it takes to age a traditional English fruitcake — the global economic outlook has been knocked sideways." I have eaten that fruit cake and it was the best fruit cake I have ever tasted. What's with the fruit cake metaphor? www.nytimes.com/2026/04/27/b...

In Our Time just did cybernetics. Brilliantly. Featuring our @stsucl.bsky.social colleague @jonagar.bsky.social and our former PhD student Jacob Ward www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

I'm not worried that one of the big AI firms is recruiting for this job. Nope, not worried at all: Policy Manager, Chemical Weapons and High Yield Explosives job-boards.greenhouse.io/anthropic/jo... [HT: @internationalintrigue.io ]

Swimming invasive snakes colonize Mediterranean islets by active swimming, then wipe out Endangered endemic lizard populations. A hidden pathway for biological invasions with profound conservation implications, as they re-shape island ecosystems 🐍 🌊 #OpenAccess in 'Ecology' Picture: Rubén Casas

cc @williamcb.bsky.social

This is just wonderful. I love Japanese trains. Big policy issue - this shows the importance of "complementary assets" that allow firms to capture more value from innovation.

Could agentic AI topple grant-funding systems? New article in @nature.com by @profgeraintrees.bsky.social & me, with data from 12 funders showing a 57% increase in grant applications since 2022 (& the launch of LLMs) rdcu.be/ffApn @rorinstitute.bsky.social @magdalenaskipper.bsky.social

Viktor Orban the solar king ....who saw that coming. be honest

Looks like London Waymo having its first whoopsie with the police from www.tiktok.com/@zonjy.media...

Known #extinctions are just the tip of the iceberg. Many human-driven losses remain undocumented—so-called #DarkExtinctions, absent from the IUCN #RedList, biasing our view of biodiversity loss. Check our new paper in Nature Reviews Biodiversity: www.nature.com/articles/s44... 🌐🌍🧪

streaming live sport is such a technical mess Rochdale v York tomorrow to win the league, aka greatest game in football history York sold 5,000 tickets to watch a livestream of the game in their stadium on big screens… but are asking everyone to delay celebrations because they can’t reduce the lag

NEW: #LSEHealth welcomes @helenpearson.bsky.social, author of Beyond Belief, in conversation with @debscohen.bsky.social on how medicine embraced evidence-based thinking — and what the future holds. 📍 LSE | 2 June | 6.30pm 🎟️ 🔗 bit.ly/41LH2CG

Penman’s done the Beach Boys. Read it, then read it again and again…. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Hoping there's another sign at the end labelled </FOOT PATH>