Most vascular plants' distribition are in disequilibrium w/ current climates, w/ species ranges best predicted by climatic conditions 10-18 yrs before sampling, especially so for closed-canopy species 🌳🌳🌲🌲 ➡️ Lagging dynamics or microclimatic processes ? @natecoevo.nature.com shorturl.at/m2EOx
Sean Pang
@seh-pang.bsky.social
Marie Curie Fellow - Spatial Ecologist, Niche Theorist! @biology.ox.ac.uk ~Sports Junky, Anime Guru, and self-proclaimed home Chef~ #Macroecology #Niche #Biodiversity #GlobalChange #ClimateChange #Rewilding #Tropics #Forests #Conservation #Demography
Disturbance regimes play a fundamental role in determining where plant species actually occur. Conservation and restoration need to think beyond climatic suitability and habitat maps. They also need to consider the ecological processes that create and maintain those habitats. #ECCB2026
Almost every European plant species is out of equilibrium. Climate change is only part of the story—disturbance greatly shapes where species actually occur. 🚨Our new paper 🌱in @natecoevo.nature.com analysed 3,047 species across >1.1M European vegetation plots. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Yesterday we shared the paper. Today I want to share the story behind it. We thought it was all about climate change. Then the models failed. That failure eventually led us to disturbances, and to a very different view of Europe’s flora. Read it @ communities.springernature.com/posts/europe...
Europe’s flora is living in a landscape out of Equilibrium
99% of plant distributions in Europe show signs of disequilibrium. The surprise? Climate change was only part of the story. Disturbance emerged as an even more pervasive force shaping where species oc...
communities.springernature.com
Almost every European plant species is out of equilibrium. Climate change is only part of the story—disturbance greatly shapes where species actually occur. 🚨Our new paper 🌱in @natecoevo.nature.com analysed 3,047 species across >1.1M European vegetation plots. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Fine-grained plant species distributions across Europe are strongly shaped by disturbance regimes - and by short-term #climatechange lags (in addition to long-term lags); see our new study in @natecoevo.nature.com 🌿🌼🌍 Thx @seh-pang.bsky.social for leading #macroecology #vegetation #plants #eccb2026
Almost every European plant species is out of equilibrium. Climate change is only part of the story—disturbance greatly shapes where species actually occur. 🚨Our new paper 🌱in @natecoevo.nature.com analysed 3,047 species across >1.1M European vegetation plots. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Almost every European plant species is out of equilibrium. Climate change is only part of the story—disturbance greatly shapes where species actually occur. 🚨Our new paper 🌱in @natecoevo.nature.com analysed 3,047 species across >1.1M European vegetation plots. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
What if we're thinking about the ecological niche... incompletely? That question stayed with me for more than five years. It eventually became the foundation of the Demographic Niche Concept—and, ultimately, my Marie Curie project.
🏅Delighted that our paper introducing the Demographic Niche Concept has been recognised 🥈for @ecography.bsky.social's E4 Award! The niche as composed of multiple demographic niches, of survival, growth, and reproduction~ Short Video Abstract explaining the idea youtu.be/AthZF6v06ho
E4 award runner-up: the demographic niche concept for understanding range-wide population dynamics
YouTube video by Ecography
youtu.be
E4 award runner-up: From niche theory to demographic realities: the demographic niche concept for understanding range-wide population dynamics. Video abstract: vist.ly/58ur2. A big congratulations to the 500 Euro prize!
Excited to get Name Cards for the first time! Looking forward to sharing them at #ATBC2026 China! Interested in species distributions, demography, climate change impacts, or tropical forests? Come say hi! Excited to discuss collaborations, student projects, and new ideas. See you there!
How did a City boy from Singapore come to love the many wonders of nature? So much that he dedicated his life's career to unraveling it? Well, its thanks to people like Sir David Attenborough, who among many others, brought the world to me. Happy 100th boss!
The niche concept explains where species can persist—but not always why. Integrating old, near forgotten ideas with modern demography, the Demographic Niche Concept provides a process-based foundation for understanding niches and distributions. nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Excited to see @seh-pang.bsky.social new @ecography.bsky.social paper out: a timely formalisation of the demographic niche concept, linking niche theory with vital rates to better understand range-wide population dynamics and #globalchange responses 🌿♨️🌍 #speciesdistributions #demography #ecology
📜New Paper📜@ecography.bsky.social Species distributions aren’t just about where species occur, but how survival, reproduction and development vary across environments. We formalise the Demographic Niche Concept to link niche theory and demography. nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
📜New Paper📜@ecography.bsky.social Species distributions aren’t just about where species occur, but how survival, reproduction and development vary across environments. We formalise the Demographic Niche Concept to link niche theory and demography. nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Very telling from the birdfood industry. Despite new RSPB/BTO advice on birdfeeding based on a solid scientific review, and RSPB taking a ££ hit themselves, EVERY major birdfood company is attacking/rejecting the guidance, claiming to know better, putting their incomes over conservation. Shameful.
RSPB advice to cut summer feeding sparks backlash from suppliers RSPB has said it will stop sales of seed and peanuts during breeding season but bird food companies push back against new advice www.rarebirdalert.co.uk/v2/Content/R...
Random life thoughts: It is hard to appreciate another man's struggles if you only see his fortunes. It is easy to be jealous of that one success I see, but how willing am I to brave the 100 failures before it?
I've recently made some changes to the gallery of all my data visualisations 📊 Most examples now have links to the underlying source code! If you see something you like, you can see how it was made 🤩 #DataViz #RStats
One of the things that has been on my to do list for a very long time, is building a gallery of all of the charts I've made across #TidyTuesday, #30DayChartChallenge, #30DayMapChallenge, and other miscellaneous projects 📊 And it's finally here! Link: nrennie.rbind.io/viz-gallery/ #DataViz #RStats
I love when new versions of the Eukaryotic tree come out, just casually reorganizing our understanding of the diversity of life. I may study birds but showing students how incredibly animal/vertebrate-centric our understanding of biodiversity is has to be one of my absolute favorite things.
New #ISEPpapers #preprint by @deemteam.bsky.social: Re-evaluating the eukaryotic Tree of Life with independent phylogenomic data www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #Protists #Microbes #Evolution #Eukaryotes #TreeOfLife #Phylogeny #Phylogenomics #Bioinformatics #Algae
New Science Advances paper: 60 years of change across European plant communities reveals a widespread shift toward denser vegetation, with increasing shade tolerance across habitats. Proud to co-author this important work🍃 #ecology www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Sixty years of plant community change in Europe indicate a shift toward nutrient-richer and denser vegetation
Bioindication reveals a 60-year shift toward denser, more productive vegetation, but a weak thermophilization signal.
science.org
The new IPBES #BizBiodiversity Assessment Report makes clear: business transparency is essential to maintain trust. 📢 Access the full media kit, including the Summary for Policymakers (SPM), multilingual press releases, and various multimedia assets at this link: https://bit.ly/IPBES12Media
Good morning #BES2025! Curious about demographic niches? Decomposing the vital rates that make up a species niche? Head down to poster B14.26 later today to find out more! Let's chat science! @britishecologicalsociety.org
Remembering #JaneGoodall and her life's dedication to understanding primates, conservation, and reaching out to the next generation of nature lovers. There's always a bit of sadness, in hearing about the passing of great figures, but more important is that we remember their work.
Even when the sky is falling, there will be a hole for you to squeeze through #AcademicLife #lifequotes
So sad to read this 😢 As someone working in 🇦🇷 for 10+ years I know that Argentine colleagues always had to face difficult and often unpredictable conditions. But the Milei government is dismantling Argentina's scientific system with unprecedented aggression - www.nature.com/articles/d41...
‘There will be nothing left’: researchers fear collapse of science in Argentina
One year into Javier Milei’s presidency, scientists are exiting the country in the face of big budget cuts.
nature.com
Deadline for the EvoDemoS conference 2 wks away! Join us at @PembrokeOxford @UniofOxford to discuss the breath and depth of demographic theory and applications in Sept evodemo2025.weebly.com Please retweet @biology.ox.ac.uk @pembrokeoxford.bsky.social @mpidr.bsky.social @britishecologicalsociety.org
EvoDemoS 2025
EvoDemoS 2025 International Conference. The local organising committee welcomes you to the 10th International Conference of the Evolutionary Demography Society, hosted at Pembroke College, Oxford, bet...
evodemo2025.weebly.com
An important but often overlooked aspect of rewilding or any restoration science is that IT TAKES TIME for nature to come back! We may remove the farm and even seed the land, but what if the little mice, katydid, spider, or bird is 200 km away? Conservation needs to be active!
Rewilding in degraded landscapes may be frustratingly slow to develop rich ecosystems Because sources of species to colonise are far away Our idea of restored ‘islets’ could be used Creating small patches of habitat which ‘seed’ the larger area esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...
🚨New review out in @ecography.bsky.social! 🔥Mechanistic niche models (MNMs) are the future—but they’re not plug-and-play. Our paper lays out how and when to use MNMs to predict invasive species distributions under climate change. nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Powerful yet challenging: mechanistic niche models for predicting invasive species potential distribution under climate change
Risk assessments of invasive species present one of the most challenging applications of species distribution models (SDMs) due to the fundamental issues of distributional disequilibrium, niche chang...
nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
I gave my first ADHD talk 2 weeks ago. Posting now because… ADHD. But this was also my first step in speaking publicly and raising awareness about what ADHD really is — especially in academic and workplace spaces. 🧠
#ECONOVOStories 🌍✨ @joe-atkinson.bsky.social, @mattkerr.bsky.social, @cmlmagneville.bsky.social, and @seh-pang.bsky.social attended the BES Annual Meeting 2024, sharing insights on from their research at ECONOVO! #ECONOVO #Ecology #Biodiversity #AarhusUniversity #BritishEcologicalSociety
Integrating #MetabolicScalingTheory into species distribution models...MetaRange.jl: A Dynamic and Metabolic Species Range Model for Plant Species onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Can 19th-century land use still influence today’s grasslands? Our research suggests it can—though the effects are subtle! Led by Gabri Midolo, our new article in Landscape Ecology explores how historical land use shapes the plant composition of current grasslands.
There is a huge potential for #tropical #forest #regeneration, either naturally or through #restoration efforts. Several countries stand out, Brazil, Indonesia, China, Mexico and Colombia. While there is a lot of doom-and-gloom in science, there is also hope. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Global potential for natural regeneration in deforested tropical regions - Nature
An estimated area of 215 million hectares has the potential for natural forest regeneration across tropical forested countries and biomes, representing an above-ground carbon sequestration potential o...
nature.com