I want to tell you a story, and it begins with this VERY WEIRD animal: Meet Thetys vagina... [a thread 🧵] 📸 m_patton bit.ly/2Mgw8Sf 🌿🧪🦑🐙🌊
Dax Kellie
@daxkellie.bsky.social
Data Analyst & Science Lead at the Atlas of Living Australia | Evolutionary biologist & social psychologist (PhD) 🧪 | #rstats 📊 | Music enthusiast 🎵 www.daxkellie.com Opinions are my own, and they do not express those of my employer
Very special hermit crab for your feed. This is potentially only the second-ever iNaturalist observation of the species Dardanus insignis!
Issue 40 of #rdmweekly is out! 📬 ➡️ Reproducible R Code @daxkellie.bsky.social @sortee.bsky.social ➡️ Generating Universes Within Universes with a Single Seed @andrew.heiss.phd ➡️ AEA Replication Tracker @paulgp.com ➡️ Informed Consent Template and more! rdmweekly.substack.com/p/rdm-weekly...
RDM Weekly - Issue 040
A weekly roundup of Research Data Management resources.
rdmweekly.substack.com
galah 2.2.0 is on CRAN! 📦 🛡️ Authorised users can access sensitive data from the command line 🌏 GBIF gets full support for predicate or DOI queries, new support for the Flemish and Kew Gardens portals 🗂️ We’ve tidied scripts to be more versatile, efficient & consistent galah.ala.org.au/R/ #rstats
Whoa when this invasive mushroom grows on a dead or dying hardwood tree, the fungal diversity of that tree is cut in half (on average) 😯🍄 Spreading across the US & Canada as well as Switzerland, Italy, Hungary, Serbia & Germany, this fungus could have a huge cascading impact on global ecosystems 🧪🌏
If it didn't make bright yellow mushrooms, we probably wouldn't even know golden oyster was reducing fungal diversity on decaying hardwoods worldwide. A very interesting genetic banking endeavor to conserve imperiled native fungi whose ecosystem roles we certainly don't understand yet. 🍄🧪
Happy National Eucalypt Day! I summarised 100 years' of eucalypt data from the Atlas of Living Australia as a landscape #EucalyptoftheYear #rstats @eucalyptaus.bsky.social 📊🧪 See more here: shandiya.com/dataviz.html...
Missed @daxkellie.bsky.social’s @sortee.bsky.social webinar this morning? Now up on YouTube! youtu.be/2_Aum45rYlU
Webinar: Dax Kellie on reproducible R code
YouTube video by SORTEE
youtu.be
If you missed my talk today about how to make your R code more reproducible and why it's good for science, the recording is already online! Apologies for the internet issues, I hope you can forgive me, they do go away after a few minutes 😅 #rstats 🧪🌏 @sortee.bsky.social youtu.be/2_Aum45rYlU
Webinar: Dax Kellie on reproducible R code
YouTube video by SORTEE
youtu.be
This is happening tomorrow! See you then 😀 #rstats 🌏🧪
In one week I'll be talking about tips for reproducible R code and why science would love you to try these tips on your own code too 🧪😍🌏 It's an online talk, so feel free to watch comfortably from your couch. Hope to see you there! @sortee.bsky.social #rstats events.humanitix.com/sortee-webin...
Awesome dataviz 🤩 So interesting how much variation there is in phrases like "Realistic possibility" compared to "About even" No wonder it's so difficult to use experimental survey data as strong evidence in research. People are too varied at interpreting scales! 🧪 #psychscisky
A really fun dataset for this week's #TidyTuesday, looking at how people interpret different probabilistic statements 📊 There's so many aspects of this to visualise, but I decided make some barcode plots comparing how people from the UK and US responded! #DataViz #RStats #ggplot2
A nice visual, and a worthwhile one to remember when considering gaps and biases in biodiversity data in Australia 🦘🌱 Nearly 70% of the population lives in a greater capital city, meaning that incidental observations of animals and plants outside of those areas are rare and valuable 🧪🌏📊
Love these population density spike maps. (by @researchremora) www.kontur.io/solutions/au...
In one week I'll be talking about tips for reproducible R code and why science would love you to try these tips on your own code too 🧪😍🌏 It's an online talk, so feel free to watch comfortably from your couch. Hope to see you there! @sortee.bsky.social #rstats events.humanitix.com/sortee-webin...
SORTEE Webinar: On what makes good sharable and reproducible R code, how to do it, and why it’s good for science
For this month's SORTEE webinar, Dr. Dax Kellie from the Atlas of Living Australia will present on good, sharable, and reproducible R code in science
events.humanitix.com
When every "easy" problem at work this week decides that they don't want to be easy problems
squidward from spongebob wearing a green hat
Alt: squidward from spongebob wearing a green hat
media.tenor.com
Want to make your code better at running again in the future? My talk next month will be filled with lots of tips about how to write sharable, reproducible R code and why it's good for science Hope to see you there! #rstats 🌏🧪👩💻
a woman in a yellow sweater is using a laptop
Alt: a woman in a yellow sweater typing with some real confident swagger on her laptop
media.tenor.com
Coming up in March! Join @sortee.bsky.social for a webinar with @daxkellie.bsky.social on good, shareable, and reproducible R code - register here: events.humanitix.com/sortee-webin...
Wow, this is spectacular! Evolution of beak size in an urban population of juncos in response to the loss of supplementary food (bird feeders) during the COVID pandemic, and subsequent regression. Is the UCLA campus the new Daphne Major? pnas.org/doi/full/10....
I just finished a three-year term as an editor at an international relations journal. I began at the start of the LLM era but ended right in the middle of it. Our volume of submissions tripled and our desk reject rate rose to 75%. I have some thoughts. open.substack.com/pub/hegemon/...
The Age of Academic Slop is Upon Us
what happens when AI automates "normal science"?
open.substack.com
Populations of endangered animals on an island have increased by 90-100% in five years, after effectively controlling non-native predators. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01...
'Predator-free' fence project praised for restoring Kangaroo Island's native wildlife
Five years after feral cats were removed from inside the Western River Refuge on Kangaroo Island, populations of endangered species have boomed.
abc.net.au
I listened to 171 albums in 2025 apparently. These were my favourites 💿🎶🤘
What a massive loss for science in Australia. Emma was a force, and responsible for many of my friends’ careers in biology. Very sad news, my condolences to her friends and family www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12...
Family, colleagues in 'disbelief' after leading scientist dies aged 52
University of Melbourne vice-chancellor Emma Johnston has died from complications associated with cancer, aged 52.
abc.net.au
It's December!🎄 But where are all the Christmas beetles? 😕🪲 Share any Christmas beetle observations with @inaturalist.bsky.social to help figure out why they seem to have disappeared. Even if you're unsure, mis-ID'd observations are valuable too! www.inaturalist.org/projects/chr... 🧪🌏📊 #rstats
Killer whales or orca have been observed hunting with Pacific white-sided dolphins in the waters off British Columbia, Canada, and sharing fish scraps with them after making a kill, according to research in Scientific Reports. go.nature.com/4rZ08RJ 🧪
Big new blogpost! My guide to data visualization, which includes a very long table of contents, tons of charts, and more. --> Why data visualization matters and how to make charts more effective, clear, transparent, and sometimes, beautiful. www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/salonis-gu...
New in Science, Macaques tap to the beat. Very cool study for its main result and its null one: consistent with nearly every other comparative study of music, monkeys don't differentiate beats by their relative strength—which even young children do innately. Monkeys have rhythm but not meter!
Monkeys have rhythm
Synchronizing movements to music is a hallmark of human culture, but its evolutionary and neurobiological origins remain unknown. This ability requires (i) extracting a steady rhythmic pulse, or beat,...
science.org
If you missed my talk but still want some tips for writing good code for scientists, my slides are here: daxkellie.quarto.pub/a-guide-to-w... All the links and references are there too in case you want to see more! 😀🧪🌏 #ESA2025 #rstats #quartopub
We all want to write good code…but…how? In my talk later today, I’ll give all few tips I’ve learned about good scientific code writing that have really helped me & maybe they’ll help you! Riverbank room 8, 2:50pm #ESA2025
We’re at #ESA2025! Come to the Atlas of Living Australia booth, located conveniently by the coffee cart! Come grab a hex sticker and say hi to me & @shandiya.bsky.social while you’re there 😀☕️
@shandiya.bsky.social shows how huge data infrastructures like the ALA also show what we *don’t* know about biodiversity, but how Data Mobilisation programs & our new {galaxias} package can help people provide data to fill the gaps 👇👀 www.ala.org.au/abdmp/ galaxias.ala.org.au 🧪🌏 #ESA2025 #rstats
For the first time, scientists have documented an unusual defense: Some species of arachnids build giant doppelgängers on their webs, creating a frightening deception that scares off would-be killers. https://scim.ag/487Myn0