This is such a misguided, reductive view of what universities and higher education are for.

One potential upside of AI is that we could replace bird watching. Our latest paper by Xie et al. (2026) provides an analytical pathway for processing large volumes of observational data. www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/26...

Pro-tip: if you're applying for a placement or position in a research group, don't say that you're willing to do 'anything'. This makes you less likely to be successful than giving a clear indication of what you have to offer.

This thriving bookshop is now up for sale and looking for a new owner. If your dream is to run an award-winning bookshop in a seaside town then this is your chance.

Proposal rejected! In academic life, failure is far more common than success.

Russell et al. Insect herbivores increase plant species richness in a long‐term grassland experiment besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Pains me to say it as I know many researchers and companies are developing or adopting acoustic indices, but I agree with this critique. Soundscapes are a waste of time and funding. We should ditch them and focus attention on improving species identification via acoustic monitoring. 🧪🪶🌍🌐

There are no shortcuts in biodiversity monitoring. Acoustic sensors for individual species: great. Acoustic indices as biodiversity indicators: trash. New paper by Sugai et al. 🧪🌍🌐

I barely even trust the computer for this stuff. If I had my way I'd still march into the travel agent, ask what holidays they recommend, write a cheque, and emerge with a little envelope of plane tickets and hotel reservation print-outs which I then have to not lose for three months.

Input device trustworthiness, in descending order Mouse > Trackpad > Weird rubber clitoris thing > Touchscreen

I'm GenX and I wouldn't trust the laptop, I only make major purchases on the desktop. Those are Big Computer jobs.

Find someone who loves you like an insurance company at renewals time.

Note to self: screaming doesn't make the problem go away, it just makes it louder.

Do you remember the first time (you had a paper accepted)?

I have reached the level of dad-fu at which I can move through the house and turn off light switches without even looking at them.

After weeks of intense work I have reached the point of total cognitive collapse. Years of experience have taught me what I need to do next, and it's not 'push on until the crisis goes away'.

Come to work with us! jobs.helsinki.fi/job/Helsinki...

I'm a strong believer in the value of EdTech to support interactive pedagogy. Here are some of my favourite apps.

Greek mythology makes a lot more sense now that I have a set of unaccountable powerful people with stupid and obvious flaws and no way to smite them myself

At Chinese universities and other workplaces, this is the equivalent (and opposite) of the water cooler. On every floor there is somewhere to top up a running flask of tea.

Many hands make light work.

🚨 PhD position available ! 🚨 I am hiring a PhD student to work with me on the evolution of plant sexual systems 🌺 at @unifrbiology.bsky.social ! The position is funded for 4 years by @snsf.ch as part of my Ambizione fellowship. More info here: tinyurl.com/monoecy 🌱 Please RP and share widely ! 🌱

Many of us know someone whose life has been upended by COVID and never recovered. My best friend is one of them. Those of us who were fortunate to emerge unscathed owe it to them to keep reminding people that COVID didn't end.

Alone in a lift I fart: then calmly depart. New journeys begin. #haiku

Fully funded PhD studentship: ‘Recording nature and writing the self: time, entomology and the archive in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’. Closes 3 May. With Ruth Abbott, Staffan Müller-Wille, Ed Turner & me. @theul.bsky.social @zoologymuseum.bsky.social www.ccc.cam.ac.uk/initiatives/...

We for one are reminded of this classic

There's another solution to this: King in the North!

Online systems for citation tracking are breaking down due to reciprocal transfers between databases. It was bad enough when incorrect authors were added to my papers. Now my name is appearing on work I had nothing to do with.

Twenty-seven years ago was the last time I visited Beijing Normal University, and that was to meet a girl. Today I finally went back to give a research seminar.

The funny thing is, this could have been me 35 years ago. I was brought up in a fundamentalist Christian sect and there was plenty of 'Oh obviously this is terrible... but also kind of great' talk going on.

Chinese coffee culture is in a 'novelty flavours' phase and I don't like it.

I'm fascinated by this because I've long wondered whether something similar operates in my own male-dominated family, or if we're just a statistical anomaly. We've got the genealogy to show it too.

This seems bad. I've been told by marine hydrologists that simple models of land inundation from sea level rise exaggerate the impacts but this new study suggests that they might have been underestimated.

I love it when non-native speakers improve on the original language. It's not a spoon, it's not a scoop, it's a spoop. Perfect.

Great article. Another issue I've seen among friends is an unwillingness to treat themselves (e.g. going on holiday) because they believe that they should minimise their own impact. The ascetic approach is no good for long-term mental health.

This is such a good article for anyone working in conservation. One thing overlooked imo is how the size of organizations play a role, with people in small NGOs working twice as much for twice as less with little protections. First hand experience here 😉 news.mongabay.com/2026/03/an-e... 🌏

This story is obviously wild, but perhaps we should see it another way and ask is there a place for publishing imaginary natural history notes?

'Our method of conducting exams is a method for dealing with the enemy, not the people.' - Mao Zedong.

I will never not adore "and allies" in a fieldguide title. Don't mess with the grasshoppers or the earwigs and crickets and cockroaches will fuck you up

I appreciate the translation but it does reduce the thrill of discovery.

I'm in China right now and there's lots of newts to report.

Estates have sent a notification that the urinals in our building have stopped working. They're not taking the piss.

So far this year two expensive electronic items have stopped working after remote firmware updates, while Nissan are withdrawing the app I use to control charging of my electric car. I miss when manufacturers weren't allowed to break things after you'd bought them.

Another grant rejection means another carefully-chosen acronym goes in the bin. So let's celebrate the unused: post your favourite failed project names here.

if i find a student using this, i'm reporting them to academic integrity so fast my keyboard will be smoking and i'm usually a "please don't make me report you, let's talk this through" person to my core

Great to be getting the message out about our recent paper, but I should clarify that we didn't choose the title and we certainly didn't suggest illustrating it with a picture of a Sitka spruce plantation. Oh well.

Why it's time to bring back Ireland's rainforests. The idea of restoring temperate rainforests in northwest Europe requires thinking in practical terms about of the possible forests of the future, explain @markuseichhorn.bsky.social & Katerina Chernyuk @ucc.ie www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2...

Killer tortoises! I showed this in my island biology lecture yesterday and it shocked the students 😱 Here's the paper describing the behaviour: www.cell.com/current-biol... 🧪🌏

What is a forest? Remarkably we don't have a consistent answer to that question,which is why we don't actually know how much forest there is on Earth or where it is. 🌏🧪🌲🌳

When you've reached the last of your consumables budget.