Free advice. It is many orders of magnitude faster to recode and run your Population Viability Analysis in R than to run it in Bayesian software from an Integrated Population Model.

A high-quality peer review should always be standard. But paying reviewers seems reasonable, especially when journals charge such substantial publishing fees and the reviewing process is so important

Nature@nature.com · last mo.

A biology journal trialled paying their reviewers and found it led to faster first editorial decisions – and increased review quality. go.nature.com/446SaLu

I've been wrestling with model convergence so I'm giving Empirical Bayes another try. Has anyone tried this out in their own research? Not seeking advice but curious about whether it worked for others.

I've been using the No AI version of DuckDuckGo and am impressed with the results. It seems to favor reliable sites and has a clean interface: noai.duckduckgo.com

A critical part of my "writing a manuscript process" has become jamming as much of my hard work into the supplemental materials as possible just before submission.

I got some really interesting results back a few weeks ago. I'm excited to write this one up! Good things to come. Obligate scavengers are the coolest.

If youre using AI to help with coding/stats on manuscripts, be sure to get a code review from someone who actually knows how to code/do stats. The AI slop era has arrived.

New Publication 📰 American kestrel population trends and vital rates at the continental scale https://bit.ly/4c19FjT 📷 Jim Shane Figure 4 from Howell et al., 2026 #RaptorResearch #Ornithology 🪶

Oscars for birds? Count me in. We cannot deny that the Killdeer deserves recognition for their amazing performance as a wounded prey item to distract predators from their kids #birds #BirdOscars

Get To Know Nature@gettoknownature.bsky.social · 5mo ago

So what birds most deserve an Oscar? I’m voting for the Blue Jay for their excellent impressions of other birds. I just heard one doing a very good Red-tailed Hawk screech #birds 🌿

“Novelty” of approach is overrated and no I won’t be expanding on this.

I love condors. They are critically endangered and quite the characters. But they’re also incredibly important. With iron-strong stomachs, they are the disinfectants of ecosystems and protect from disease. We have much to improve in our relationship with them. www.azcentral.com/story/news/l...

Condors soar over the Grand Canyon, kept aloft despite lead ammo threat

The California condor nearly went extinct, and remains imperiled by the threat of poisoning from lead ammunition.

azcentral.com

🤔Looking to make your #code more #reproducible? Check out our new and improved guide to Reproducible Code! 🧪🌍️ Find it here👇️ buff.ly/10TeNok @nhcooper123.bsky.social @britishecologicalsociety.org

The Bearded Vulture continuing its reign as the most metal bird by eating bones and doing this. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

In memory of Dr. Keith Hobson, the Society of Canadian Ornithologists is collecting donations to support the Keith Hobson Early Career Research Award. If you have the means, join me in supporting this initiative: www.zeffy.com/en-CA/donati... Details: www.sco-soc.ca/early-career...

Sometimes I just enjoy the aesthetics of discrete traceplots

Well, it's official. After our paper last year (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....), the Slender-billed Curlew is officially declared Extinct today. Scientists dream of describing new species, not writing their obituary and epitaph, knowing that they are gone forever #ornithology

A preview of my upcoming talk at Raptor Research Foundation. Evaluating management of Ridgway's Hawk using IPMs and PVAs. Press play and watch the Population Viability Analysis go!

So many people have made personal sacrifices working every day to improve living standards for all of us. They are heroes that often go unrecognized and deserve better. I'm thinking about you all today.

Steven J Cooke@sjcfishy.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Thinking about all of my US colleagues today that work for USGS, USFWS, US Parks Service, NOAA and the EPA. From front line environmental practitioners to scientists and policy makers, these folks ensure that waters are swimmable, fish are edible, that natural areas are accessible, etc, etc, etc.

Check out our latest where we look at long-term trends of Boreal Owl captures, juvenile captures, body condition, and cycles. Great work Justine Le Vaillant! A collab with @hawkmountain.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/eprint/EZU6Z...

Demographic trends for the Boreal Owl, Aegolius funereus, using standardized migration monitoring data in eastern North America

Many boreal species have declined during recent decades in North America. Various indexes suggest that populations of the Boreal Owl Aegolius funereus are declining across North America, but very f...

tandfonline.com

Someone please do this with Grasshopper Sparrows. It would be pretty wild because their early successional habitat can result from fires, agriculture, or mechanical manipulation. Cool study!

gavin jones@ecologyofgavin.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Which results in these incredibly insightful visualizations showing how bird-fire relationships vary spatially in their magnitude and, sometimes, direction (see the goshawk!!). This shows us that the effect of fire in one part of a species range might be completely different in another. Wowowowow

As of today, I'm officially an Elective Member of the American Ornithological Society (AOS)! 🎉🎈🎊 I always need to remind myself to stop and celebrate these things.

Here's an extremely useful study for those using survival models that compares different implementations. Just my luck, guess which model I had been using for a not-yet-published study. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Comparison of Bayesian Models to Estimate Survival From Dead‐Recovery Alone and Together With Live‐Encounter Data: Challenges and Opportunities

Different models in the Bayesian framework for analyzing dead-recovery data, either alone or together with live-encounter data to estimate survival, are presented and compared. Although all but one o...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Using non-centered parameterizations of the normal and multivariate normal distributions has absolutely rescued a couple of complex models for several projects. It served me well when models become intractible or take too long to run.

Please, please, please-submit to good journals (society + reputed publishers), respect peer review, and do your reviews with integrity. So important. Thanks to all of you who do. @steve-carpenter.bsky.social @esajournals.bsky.social #Ecosystems

Science Magazine@science.org · last yr.

A new study, based on an analysis of thousands of publications and their authors and editors, shows paper mills are just part of a complex, interconnected system that includes publishers, journals, and brokers. scim.ag/3H9kwwQ

Latest achievement, I made my model indices spell s,c,a,t. Thats sex, captivity, age, and time. Sadly, my study has nothing to do with actual scat.

Wildlifers who have traveled/lived in Costa Rica, what should i check out after a conference in October?

re: generative AI I have finally fully and accurately explained my problem with how it’s marketed and used. And now, you can use it, too.

New Book: State of the World's Raptors 📖 https://bit.ly/SotWR The new book, led by Executive V.P. of Science and Conservation Dr. Christopher McClure provides an original approach to setting regional priorities for the conservation of raptors across the globe.  Chris with book 📷 Anne Dixon

Our Madagascar Program Director, Dr. Lily-Arison Rene de Roland, has been named the 2025 Indianapolis Prize winner! Congratulations, Lily! Read more about Lily's accomplishments and the Indianapolis Prize at https://bit.ly/4klk1Od 📷 John Mittermeier   #RaptorResearch #birds #raptors

Are you a US researcher who has recently moved to Canada because of the Trump disruption to science (or are you in the process of doing so)? I want to talk to you for a story in @nature.com 🧪