🌱 Systems Ecology is now live! A new independent, researcher-run, diamond OA journal for ecological research through systems science. Free to read. Free to publish. No APCs. We are now open for submissions: systems-ecology.org Please help spread the word!

This looks promising! "...free to read and free to publish, with no subscription barriers for readers and no article processing charges for authors. The journal is run by researchers, for researchers, with the goal of advancing ecology through systems thinking."

Systems Ecology@systems-ecology.bsky.social · 2mo ago

We're pleased to share that Systems Ecology has now received its eISSN (3143-5769) and is a Crossref member with DOI prefix 10.67837. These are important steps as we prepare for our public launch in September. Free to read. Free to publish. systems-ecology.org

Last year, I publicly complained multiple times (see e.g. elevanth.org/blog/2025/07...) that the open access movement had been captured by publishers, and we are now worse off than before open access. Well people got mad at me for saying it. But I think things are still getting worse.

Eric Schares@eschares.bsky.social · last mo.

🚨Update: Our analysis of global APC expenditure has now been expanded to cover more publishers (7 -> 14) and more years (2019-2025). We estimate $15B in APCs paid over seven years, $3.7B in 2025 alone. Elsevier crosses the $1B threshold by itself in 2025. arxiv.org/abs/2608.16322 #ScholComm

What is a disease? In our new concept paper, we explore how complex networks, statistical physics, phase transitions and attractors allow us to redefine diseases as multiscale, emergent dynamical states. @manlius.bsky.social @guimaguade.bsky.social www.preprints.org/manuscript/2...

What can spatial patterns tell us about tumor growth or dryland ecosystem resilience? Are there bridges and opportunities between these apparently distant disciplines? This wednesday June 17 we'll have the 3rd Session of Eco-Onco Exchange, with @joshuabull.bsky.social and Benoît Pichon !

So glad to be back at @sfiscience.bsky.social , catching up with old friends and presenting recent work on microbial communities! www.santafe.edu/events/semin...

How do tumors or bacteria modulate their environment, and how does that translate into their growth? What can we learn from maths, and what are the implications for cancer therapy or ecosystem resilience? Register here for the first Eco-Onco session, April 22nd forms.gle/B77tZmyzCzmp...

Microbial communities can harbor many species that do not coexist in pairs, yet can coexist in the full community. Here we provide the mathematical foundations of emergent coexistence, and explain why it can't be predicted from pairwise tests journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

The first Eco-Onco Exchange seminar has been postponed by one week, to Apr 22nd! Register here: forms.gle/B77tZmyzCzmp...

Excited to announce Eco-Onco Exchange — a virtual seminar series bridging mathematical ecology and oncology. Each session pairs two speakers from each field around a shared theme, followed by joint discussion. First three sessions coming soon! Register here docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Similar tumors can often respond very differently to immunotherapy. Why? A simple mathematical model reveals the possibility of two alternative evolutionary strategies, dictated by mutational loads www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

☀️ 2026 Summer School in the Pyrenees - Unifying Mathematical Models of Biodiversity Applications are now open! This school offers a state-of-the-art overview for interdisciplinary theoreticians. 🗓️ July 5-11 🎯 PhD students to senior researchers ℹ️ intp.science/en/summer26.... 📭 contact@intp.science 🌐🧪

Excited to share a new PhD thesis from my student and soon Dr @vmaull.bsky.social on synthetic ecosystems, preventing tipping points, and a new concept: emergent bioengineering. Very proud of this achievement, and thankful to @sfiscience.bsky.social, where many of these ideas came to life.

Cooperation is a universal feature of complex systems, from the origins of life and microbiomes to societies. What universal patterns can be found in these systems? Here's our new @pnas.org paper. @jordipinero.bsky.social @artemyte.bsky.social @sfiscience.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

Why do some cancers respond to immunotherapy while others don’t? A new paper by @guimaguade.bsky.social shows, using maths, that as tumors mutate, they face a trade-off: growing faster can also make them easier for the immune system to spot. @sandyanderson.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Who is afraid of HGT? True, antibiotic resistances disseminate through it. But we can also leverage the same channels for spreading good stuff at a very large scale and fortifying the env microbiome with beneficial activities www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... by Victor Maull & @ricardsole.bsky.social

Synthetic Horizontal Gene Transfer for Ecosystem Restoration

Restoring endangered ecosystems has become a pressing issue as the effects of global warming continue to harm existing communities. Over the last decade, several studies have suggested the use of synt...

biorxiv.org

Can synthetic biology help save endangered ecosystems? Our new paper with @vmaull.bsky.social explores how engineered genes can spread through soil microbes. We model how synthetic gene transfer can support biodiversity. @vdlorenzo.bsky.social @guimaguade.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We are so close to start the @cs3conference.bsky.social Spainish Chapter (CS3) School !! 🎉 One of our invited talks will be delivered by Guim Aguadé-Gorgorió @guimaguade.bsky.social , about a really fascinating topic 👇

A central finding is that, even if we could measure pairwise interactions up to a certain precision, strong indirect effects can make our efforts useless: at high collectivity, pairwise interactions no longer inform about community coexistence www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Some tumors with many mutations are eliminated by immunotherapy, while others evade immune surveillance and eventually relapse. A new mathematical model could help us understand the complex role of mutational load in immunotherapy resistance www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... @ricardsole.bsky.social

Immunotherapy fails at curing heterogeneous cancers. Why? Modeling and clinical data suggest a limit to tumor heterogeneity, beyond which T cells fail at controlling highly-diverse tumors. Can we take advantage of this limit? @ricardsole.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

Microbial communities can harbor many species that do not coexist in pairs, yet can coexist in the full community. Here we provide the mathematical foundations of emergent coexistence, and explain why it can't be predicted from pairwise tests www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Tumors harbor hundreds of different cell types that compete and cooperate, mirroring a natural ecosystem. Can we model cancer as a complex ecosystem of many interacting species? An honor to work w/ @ricardsole.bsky.social and Sandy Anderson while bringing in recent work in ecology with Sonia Kéfi!