County 11/32 of @lyndsayfw.bsky.social's journey around Ireland's energy landscape - this is a great story! lyndsaywalsh.substack.com/p/kerry-and-...

Kerry and rural electrification: illuminating the black valley

Looking at the quiet revolution of bringing electricity to rural Ireland, and what it meant for Irish women

lyndsaywalsh.substack.com

Congratulations to Michelle Jackson, who has been awarded the Marsh Award for Ecology in the 2026 @britishecologicalsociety.org awards! Her research has advanced understanding of biodiversity dynamics, reshaping perspectives on community assembly and species interactions 👇

Dr Michelle Jackson receives Marsh Award for Ecology 2026

bit.ly

And that’s a wrap on #MENI2026! What a great day of microbial evolution research, and a pleasure to host at Trinity with @paulinedscanlan.bsky.social

We are recruiting 4 Postdoctoral Fellows! 🌊🌊🌊 Applications are open now! Deadline is 10th October 2026. More details and updates here: climate-hub.ie/msdm/ #postdoc #marine #MarieSkłodowska-Curie #MarineLife!

New paper with @kelbrick.bsky.social and @jpjhall.bsky.social - we show that fungicides select for multidrug resistant bacteria in soil via shared resistance mechanisms (efflux) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Fungicide Drives <fi>De Novo</fi> Evolution of Multidrug Resistance in the Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacterium, <fi>Pseudomonas fluorescens</fi>

Soil microbial communities underpin key ecosystem processes, including plant health, nutrient cycling and primary productivity. In agricultural soils, beneficial soil bacteria are often exposed to mu...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

We rely on healthy soil microbial communities to support ecosystem functioning and plant growth, but what happens when soils are exposed to multiple environmental stressors simultaneously? Spoiler: it's not good doi.org/10.1093/isme...

Fungicide and warming interact to reduce soil ecosystem functioning

Abstract. Soil microbial communities are essential to the functioning of their ecosystems, providing vital services such as plant growth promotion and bior

academic.oup.com

One of ecology’s oldest questions - how does population growth change as density increases? - remains surprisingly contentious. In our new @plosbiology.org paper we contribute to the ongoing debate by applying the idea of “Growth-Density Inversion”: doi.org/10.1371/jour.... 1/6

Growth-density inversion in Escherichia coli reveals superlinear, not sublinear, density dependence

Sublinear density dependence has been widely reported empirically, but this is at odds with resource competition theory. This study uses a tightly controlled test in a microbial model system to reveal...

doi.org

Sublinear #DensityDependence is widely reported empirically, but is at odds with theory. @jamesaorr.bsky.social &co use a tightly controlled test in a microbial model system to reveal superlinear density dependence, so aligning empirical evidence with theory @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4vwAmEZ

Bacteriophage continue to have so much to teach us. It's in our interest to understand how they work and impact human & environmental health. New joint work led by @mariandm.bsky.social & @rantahan.bsky.social inferring single-cell latent period & burst size heterogeneity from population dynamics.

Inferring single-cell heterogeneity of bacteriophage lysis-associated life-history traits from population-scale dynamics

Theory-guided experiments reveal single-cell heterogeneity of lysis-associated bacteriophage traits from population scale data.

science.org

Evolutionary rescue in a phage community! New paper from former PhD student, Sam Greenrod, with brilliant colleague @craigmaclean.bsky.social : academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc...

Rapid adaptation accelerates competitive suppression in a parasite community

Abstract. Environmental stress leads to changes in community composition by altering competitive hierarchies and pushing taxa towards extinction. Parasites

academic.oup.com

Eye-opening work by @olimeacock.bsky.social (former postdoc, now PI in Sheffield). He presents an exact mapping from steady-state consumer-resource to generalized Lotka-Volterra models, revealing that cross-feeding can lead to competition for other limiting resources. Feedback pls!

Oliver Meacock@olimeacock.bsky.social · 4mo ago

New preprint from @saramitri.bsky.social and me: tinyurl.com/3dsjnm4d The headline result - we derive a general way to connect mechanistic ecosystem models to the gLV equation. This reveals that strengthening cooperative mechanisms can make effective gLV interactions increasingly competitive. Weird!

Excited to share our new paper in @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social on data and code archiving at @britishecologicalsociety.org journals. TL;DR: Data archiving rates are high, code archiving rates are low, documentation needs to be improved! besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.....

Data‐ and code‐archiving in the British Ecological Society journals: Present status and recommendations for future improvements

Data- and code-archiving are important components of open science, as both make research more transparent, reproducible, accountable and credible, allowing future researchers to build on previous ...

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

A common complaint many people have about wind turbines: they don't like the look of them. But what lies beneath that dislike? Read more here: substack.com/home/post/p-...

Please share widely! Abstract submissions open for the 2026 Jacques Monod conference: Ecology and evolution of host-parasite interactions in a changing world! Held in beautiful Roscoff France from November 2- 6, 2026. Abstracts submission deadline : June 6 cjm.sb-roscoff.fr/en/conferenc...

Was great to be at the @hometreecharity.bsky.social conference last week! Not the usual suspects in the room, which made for some interestingly left-field discussions. These events are really important and they actually run it at a loss - so fair play to them for creating the space. Some thoughts 👇

PLEASE SHARE. PhD Opportunity with me, Ben Raymond and Jan Engelstaedter and Andrew Letten at University of Queensland. Experimentally testing mechanisms of how temperature may change selection and spread of AMR in E. coli. Coupled with some advanced modelling and sequencing. 🧪🦠 #microsky

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

great summary of our newest paper - led by Abby Gilson #seaweed #MarineLife 🦑 #AlgalAwesomeness! #oceanfarmers

Annals of Botany@annbot.bsky.social · 7mo ago

🌊🌿Join us to learn about the newly published “Biodiversity-Ecosystem Functioning: Increased species diversity does not increase the productivity of cultivated kelp” in @annbot.bsky.social by Abby Gilson and co-authors. (1/9) 👉 doi.org/qsqg @nessocon.bsky.social #aobpapers #macroalgae #kelpfarming

MENI is back! Join us in Dublin this August 2026 for our 3rd Meeting for Microbial Evolution in Ireland. We are delighted to have @rachelmwheatley.bsky.social @drrebeccajhall.bsky.social @jpjhall.bsky.social and @tweethinking.bsky.social join us as keynote speakers this year. miniurl.com/MENI

New paper by Laurie Wojcik et al. where we show that response to a pulse perturbation has a hump-shaped relationship with top-down control royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Top-down control and species composition influence nonlinearly the short-term response of experimental food webs to a nutrient pulse perturbation

Abstract. Extreme weather events intensify with global change and frequently disturb aquatic ecosystems via, e.g. nutrient pulses through surface runoff. W

royalsocietypublishing.org

Very excited to share the latest work from our lab, which was published today in Nature! nature.com/articles/s41... PhD graduate and now post-doc Sofia Dahlman, along with co-senior author Sam Forster from The Hudson and other researchers from our lab and others.

Isolation, engineering and ecology of temperate phages from the human gut - Nature

Human host-associated cellular products may act as induction agents for bacteriophages.

nature.com

This is a real loss. Few people did as much as Manchán Magan to connect the Irish landscape to its language and culture. His books are impressive works of accessible scholarship and will hopefully be read for many years to come. #SpeirGorm

Broadcaster and scríbhneoir Manchán Magan dies aged 55

The writer, broadcaster and documentary maker Manchán Magan has died at the age of 55, his family has confirmed.

rte.ie

I have an MRC-funded PhD project available (www.exeter.ac.uk/study/fundin...) on how warming will change the problem of AMR. Join a small and friendly group (padpadpadpad.netlify.app/about) in (sometimes) sunny Cornwall. 🧪🦠 #microsky Please share the ad below with anyone who may be interested.

Check out this new article on null model selection for multiple stressor research. Fantastic work by Iris Pimentel from @leeselab.bsky.social within the @crc-resist.bsky.social. Freely available at: dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3...

Wolves were treated as a threat to livestock and hunted to extinction in Ireland, aided by bounties. Portrait of John Watson with hound at his side and skin of ‘last wolf in Ireland’ 1786 under their feet. Royal Dublin Society collection #InternationalWolfDay

Was great to attend a Summer Academy of the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes. Really creative and clever students - enjoyed the seminar with the students and felt honored to give an evening talk in such a nice location on trends in insect populations. #Neubeuern #Studienstiftung #Insectdecline

Want to name a real virus? I have recently discovered 9 new phages which now need names! To enter, you simply need to donate to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust on my JustGiving page (£2 = 1 entry) and share your email with me on donation (see link info). Please share 💚 www.justgiving.com/page/meaghan-c-1

Thrilled to announce our webinar series: 🌱📈 Quantifying Ecology 📈🌱 We are collaborating with our SIG friends to bring you quantitative methods in different ecological contexts. Kicking off with Dr @jamesaorr.bsky.social and @bes-aquaticgroup.bsky.social on 5th August. More details to come!

Final version published in @cp-trendsecolevo.bsky.social Kong et al. Ecosystems have multiple interacting processes that buffer against co-occurring stressors www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

Ecosystems have multiple interacting processes that buffer against co-occurring stressors

There are multiple processes that buffer the effects of anthropogenic stressors. Much is known about how single buffering processes (e.g., biodiversity, adaptation) mitigate the effects of stressors o...

cell.com

Online now: Making sense of (sublinear) density dependence

Making sense of (sublinear) density dependence

Sublinear density dependence has been reported in numerous empirical studies and yet it is seemingly incompatible with most resource-explicit competition models. Reconciling this disconnect will either necessitate substantive revision of empirical methods or the assumptions of resource competition theory, but it also presents opportunities for original research with wide-ranging implications.

dlvr.it