Lecturer position in soil science opportunity (equivalent to Assistant Prof. Looking forward to seeing some great applicants. elhs.fa.ap1.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Job opportunity at University of Edinburgh: open ended position for a Lecturer in Hydrology. Application closing date: 12th August. elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Be sure to submit your abstract for the Soil Ecology in Practice conference by midnight tomorrow! www.britishecologicalsociety.org/content/soil...

Can we use ecological principles to increase coexistence in synthetic bacterial communities? Our new paper is now out in @isme-microbes.bsky.social: "Environmental complexity shapes maintenance of bacterial diversity through context-dependent interactions among niche axes" doi.org/10.1093/isme...

Environmental complexity shapes maintenance of bacterial diversity through context-dependent interactions among niche axes

Abstract. Microbial communities are often more species-rich than predicted from classical ecological models. The high levels of coexistence observed in nat

academic.oup.com

✊ Solidarity with University of Edinburgh staff taking action for better conditions, and with everyone organising, supporting each other and refusing to be divided.

I'm happy to share the first pre-print of out Lab! 🎉 Introducing ArchaeaHQ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... We curated 21,644 genomes across all 4 archaeal kingdoms to bridge the gap in public datasets for computational biology What is inside ArchaeaHQ... (1/2)

Q: How do you get "growth" without innovation, and how do you get innovation without funding public research? A: You don't. The UK has the worst public funding for uni + skills in the OECD, pay for starting lecturers down 25% since 2010, and that's why we are losing to countries abroad.

Research Professional News@resprofnews.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Breaking: Government set to cut strategic priorities grant. The government is on the cusp of cutting public funding for higher education teaching, the head of Universities UK has told MPs, placing institutions under even more financial pressure. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-u...

I am at SOM 2026 - Soil organic matter symposium in São Paulo, Brazil. This is my fourth SOM meeting and I still feel like an imposter soil scientist.

If anyone in government has a few minutes to run the country in between plotting leadership challenges, could they please cast their eye over the devastation of Higher Education in the UK. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Thousands of University of Nottingham staff told they are at risk of redundancy

Institution says it could run out of money by 2031 and wants to cut more than 600 academic and support posts

theguardian.com

Really useful paper explaining why richness/diversity metrics are rarely informative when applied to microbial community sequencing data: enviromicro-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Rethinking Alpha Diversity in Marker‐Gene Microbiome Studies: Dominance Matters More Than Richness

Marker-gene microbiome surveys systematically under-sample rare taxa, causing alpha diversity metrics to reflect dominance rather than true richness. This conceptual mismatch can lead to misleading e...

enviromicro-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

We ran a fantastic campaign! A record number of parliamentarians elected including 4 from Edinburgh. 💚

Scottish Greens@scottishgreens.org · 3mo ago

Your new record-breaking group of 15 Scottish Green MSPs!

We did it! Look at that swing. First constituency win in Scottish Parliament for the @scottishgreens.org 💚

Ballot Box Scotland@ballotbox.scot · 3mo ago

Edinburgh Central (Edinburgh and Lothians East) Constituency Vote (vs 2021 notional): GRN: 12680 (36%, +29.2) LAB: 8098 (23%, -7.6) SNP: 7702 (21.9%, -19.3) CON: 2262 (6.4%, -10.3) LD: 2168 (6.2%, +2.7) RUK: 1876 (5.3%, New) OTHx5: 455 (1.3%) Valid Turnout: 54.5% Green GAIN from SNP - LL

Polling station duty and get out to vote campaign. So much green enthusiasm. 🤞🏾💚

What happens to Arctic soils when they thaw? ❄️🦠🔬 We thawed frozen Svalbard soils & identified which microbes grew following thaw. Our results highlight how dormancy, predation & seasonality shape carbon cycling in thawing Arctic soils @microbemac.bsky.social #ERC_SIESTA tinyurl.com/4sawn2dj

Seasonal thawing of high Arctic soils triggers selective microbial growth and predation | mSystems

Microorganisms play key roles in transforming soil carbon into greenhouse gases. As Arctic soils warm as a result of climate change, greater depths and expanses of permanently frozen soil are experien...

tinyurl.com

Excited to share our new paper on how tree community resource economics shape soil food web multifunctionality across European forests! 🌲🌍 We quantified how energy flows through microbes, fungi, detritivores, herbivores and predators beneath the forest floor. rdcu.be/fhmF2

Tree community resource economics control soil food web multifunctionality

Nature - Plant community properties affect ecosystem functioning via energy fluxes in food webs, with the leaf and root resource economics of dominant tree species controlling soil food web...

rdcu.be

New from The Strain Team: 🎊 Springer Nature Discovers MDPI 🎊 Springer Nature has spawned a copycat journal series called "Discover" mimicking #MDPI journal titles and citation behaviours. We even made a browser game to prove it (see 🔗). Gross! 😀 1/n #ResearchIntegrity #SciPub #AcademicSky

Spinger Nature Discovers MDPI – The Strain on Scientific Publishing

Home page for the paper ‘The Strain on Scientific Publishing’ by Mark A Hanson, Dan Brockington, Paolo Crosetto and Pablo Gomez Barreiro

the-strain-on-scientific-publishing.github.io

Best part about seeing the #GreenWindaes around Edinburgh & Lothians East? The posters that locals have paired with them — for taxing the rich, solidarity with Palestine 🇵🇸 , with women’s autonomy over their bodies, trans solidarity 🏳️‍⚧️ On the 7th of May, we show up and fight back.

New online! Microorganisms lock up carbon in soil

Dear Colleagues, It is with immense sadness and shock that I share the passing of Dr. Adriana Romero Olivares, a brand-new Assistant Professor in the Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology at UC Riverside. www.mealtrain.com/trains/l3kg64

Meal Train for Jovani Catalan (Spouse of Adriana Romero Olivares)

Hi all, Please help out the family of Adriana Romero Olivares. Her husband, Jovani, and kids can be helped with meals over the next weeks as Adriana recovers.

mealtrain.com

📖 Published📖 From short to long: The impact of read length on metagenome assembly and binning These findings advocate for the integration of extended read lengths and Nanopore sequencing in metagenome analysis🖥️ 🧬 🔎

We must stand in solidarity with Jews being attacked by antisemitic criminals and terrorists: no ifs or buts. We must stand in solidarity with Palestinians being murdered by the Israeli government: no ifs or buts. These are not contradictory positions. They are consistent ones. 🧵1/5

My first single author article!! I was invited by Nature Reviews Microbiology journal to write a research highlight on a historical paper that was influential to me. I chose the Kallenbach 2016 paper on microbial-derived soil organic matter formation. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Again a great paper that I missed earlier in the year, concerning genome contamination as noise that can be interpreted as horizontal gene transfer www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Genome contamination may lead to an overestimation of horizontal gene transfer inferences - Nature Communications

Nature Communications - Genome contamination may lead to an overestimation of horizontal gene transfer inferences

nature.com

Delighted this significant microbial ecology study related to climate change appears in the @asm.org flagship journal mBio @mbio.bsky.social

Ashish Malik@ashish-malik.bsky.social · 3mo ago

New paper led by a brilliant UG student at UC Irvine. We looked at plant litter chemistry and associated changes in microbial decomposition as affected by a decade-long simulated drought in Southern California. In @mbio.bsky.social journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

My first single author article!! I was invited by Nature Reviews Microbiology journal to write a research highlight on a historical paper that was influential to me. I chose the Kallenbach 2016 paper on microbial-derived soil organic matter formation. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New paper led by a brilliant UG student at UC Irvine. We looked at plant litter chemistry and associated changes in microbial decomposition as affected by a decade-long simulated drought in Southern California. In @mbio.bsky.social journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Such heartbreaking news….i have long enjoyed Adriana’s work on fungi and warming, Valley Fever and ways to better engage with the Global South. My heart goes out to her family and colleagues.

Dr. Asmeret Asefaw Berhe@aaberhe.com · 3mo ago

Prof. Adriana Romero-Olivares, UC Riverside, was doing incredible work on how fungi and ecosystems respond to global change. A rising voice, a dynamic scientist and educator, a young mother, wife and daughter gone far too soon. A huge loss. Her family, students and community are in my thoughts.

Biological Data and GIS Officer - Plantlife International - environmentjob.co.uk/jobs/110085-...

Biological Data and GIS Officer

An opportunity to join the busy GIS and Data Team servicing an ambitious and evidence driven conservation organisation. Working with the Senior Biological Data and GIS Officer you will work on ...

environmentjob.co.uk

there's a lot to like in this paper! But it is just an evolutionary hypothesis, *not a conclusion*, that slightly increased abundances of soil Actinomyces could have any meaningful epidemiological impact on clinically relevant antimicrobial resistance. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Decade-long warming accelerates antibiotic resistance in grassland soils - Nature

Decade-long warming increased soil antibiotic-resistance genes by about 24%, enriching resistant microbes and gene transfer, driven by selection for thermal tolerance and linked traits, with implicati...

nature.com

🍄 Lichen bleaching as a response to Arctic warming 🍄 Our new paper @funecology.bsky.social led by Jiří Šubrt shows striking lichen bleaching & symbiosis breakdown due to experimental warming in Svalbard. I'm an incredibly proud supervisor of Jiří's MSc/PhD work! doi.org/10.1111/1365... 🌐🧪🌱🌍

Lichen bleaching as a response to long‐term experimental warming in the High Arctic

Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

doi.org