David Tan

@mangrovepitta.bsky.social

Ornithologist and biogeographer. Working on the global macroecology of bird-window collisions and on the genetics of faunal adaptation to mangroves. Obsessed with pittas. Previously at the University of New Mexico, now a postdoc at iDiv in Leipzig.

We're excited to share our new exhibition, Nature and Us! 🌱 Housed in a space closed to the public since World War II, this free temporary exhibition questions how our relationship with nature has changed over time through an eclectic mix of objects, tools and specimens.

A black and white archival photograph of a gallery. In the foreground, there's a large glass display case with taxidermy monkeys inside. In the background, there are other glass display cases. On the image, there's black text inside a white box saying, 'We're opening an exhibition in a gallery that’s been closed since World War II!' and 'Nature and Us opens 16 September'

🔥🌳Study reconstructs 10,000 years of Amazonian #fire #history using dated charcoal. Fires rarely occur without human ignition; they've spread from forest edges to the interior ~2,000 years ago, then declined in two phases - around 600-700 years ago, and again after European contact. ⤵️

The pyrogeography of Amazonia: a Holocene perspective

Amazonian forest fires rarely, if ever, ignite and spread in the absence of humans. The first colonization of people into South America happened in the late Pleistocene, and by 10,000 years ago, human...

doi.org

The chronic under-resourcing of Australian collections continues. 3d/week for birds and mammals combined. 42k bird specimens and 59k mammals covering a HUGE chunk of real estate with high diversity (including heaps of endemics/endangered taxa). WILD.

Diana Fisher@dianafisher1080.bsky.social · yesterday

Collections manager position in the excellent Western Australian Museum in Perth. Deadline 15th September search.jobs.wa.gov.au/jobs/collect...

"Creating the third-largest university plant collection" may seem celebratory, but remember: this is happening because Duke administration decided to axe the herbarium as a cost-cutting measure. Natural history collections are a precious scientific resource, and too many are at risk of being lost.

Carl Zimmer@carlzimmer.com · 2d ago

UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke to combine herbaria, creating the third-largest university plant collection in the United States ncbg.unc.edu/2026/08/31/u...

I’m at ECCB 2026 this week! I’ll be presenting my new eukaryote pangenome simulator, PansimNuc (github.com/samhorsfield...), at Poster C-G.38 on Wednesday 2nd September - drop by if you’re interested in modelling pangenome evolution! @eccb-europe.bsky.social

GitHub - samhorsfield96/PansimNuc: A nucleotide-level pangenome simulator.

A nucleotide-level pangenome simulator. Contribute to samhorsfield96/PansimNuc development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

1/11 🐟 2nd new preprint today from @chasedbrownstein.bsky.social We investigated how losing the swim bladder, the organ that most fishes use to control their buoyancy, has shaped the diversity of ray-finned fishes over 90 million years of Earth history. The results surprised us. 🧵

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1/7 🐟🧬 New preprint! "The largest radiations of freshwater fishes initiated at the K-Pg boundary" Phylogeny of Otocephala: Clupeiformes, Alepeocephaliformes, & Ostariophysi 144 species, UCEs + whole genomes, Bayesian dating. 11,700+ species covered. Here is what we found 🧵👇

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🦌💩🦠 PhD opportunity! I am recruiting a fully-funded PhD student at the University of Calgary Faculty of Veterinary Medicine to study the causes and consequences of gut microbiome variation in caribou. Start date is flexible. Please share!

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