A masterclass in Thymes last night with Breckland Flora Group. Breckland Thyme Thymus serpyllum is the local special species. ID notes on ALT

How does droughts kill plants and how do some communities benefit from drought? Here I tell the story of Breckland in eastern England youtu.be/0h6GYgza00E?...

Climate Extremes and Conservation

YouTube video by Bill Sutherland's Conservation Concepts

youtu.be

Our new commentary rdcu.be/ftx6h in @natecoevo.nature.com written with folks from @inaturalist.bsky.social and @cornellbirds.bsky.social shows that use of AI to manipulate existing or create new wildlife images undermines the huge value of vast citizen science databases. 🌍🪰🪶 #Ornithology 🧵 1/10

Citizen science platforms must mitigate against the threat of generative AI

Nature Ecology & Evolution - Citizen science platforms must mitigate against the threat of generative AI

rdcu.be

Looking at a nice plant, but feel like it's missing something? Why not see if you can find a bug or two on there with this handy list of bug host plants. sites.google.com/view/bedsbug...

BedsBugs - Bugs by plant

Many species of bug are strongly associated with either single plant species, or a small number of related species. Targeted searching of these plants, by beating or sweeping, can be a productive way ...

sites.google.com

Between error and discovery ⚖️ #NHMs house lots of labelled specimens; some representing occurrences outside spp known distributions! 🗺️🪲 But, how do we know we are seeing an actual collection event rather than a mislabelling error? Today we talk about an unresolved case! ⤵️ doi.org/10.7717/peer...

If you are interested in learning to identify the UKs ground beetles there are free guides to download on my website johnwalters.co.uk/publications...

A new set of some 600 grasshopper recordings from southern Europe, shared by Julien Barataud. Below an example Eugryllodes escalerae, xeno-canto.org/1095289

Decision relating to the #BritishList Pied Crow Corvus albus has not been added to Category A or Category D bou.org.uk/british-l... The British List remains at 636 species #ornithology

Yesterday our Botanical Skills Northern Ireland Team practiced how to use underwater drones to collect under-recorded aquatic plant specimens! The drone will also be used for our @bsbiireland.bsky.social #AquaticPlantProject & we hope to raise money for a 2nd drone to survey Scottish lochs.

Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland on Reels

facebook.com

Our new paper shows that when birds breed in artificial wetlands, they can still depend on surrounding natural wetlands. GPS tracking of black-headed gulls in #Doñana @ebdonana.bsky.social @britishecologicalsociety.org @seobirdlife.bsky.social besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Drought reduces the value of both artificial and natural wetlands for gulls breeding in the Mediterranean region

The importance of artificial wetlands for waterbird conservation can be easily overestimated from count data alone. The value of extensive fish ponds as a breeding habitat depends on maintaining the ....

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

If you're within reach of Northamptonshire on Sat 16 May there's a soldierfly identification workshop with the Wildlife Trust: learn how to identify soldierflies using keys, specimens & microscopes (suitable for beginners & more experienced) www.wildlifebcn.org/events/2026-...

Identifying and Recording Soldierflies and Allies with Martin Harvey | Wildlife Trust for Beds Cambs & Northants

Learn how to identify soldierflies using keys, specimens, and microscopes (suitable for beginners and more experienced recorders)

wildlifebcn.org

New preprint: Guidelines and best practices for the scientific use of global iNaturalist data ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v... 🌍🧪

It was a real privilege to work on this paper - some important messages for the world here. Thanks @pnas.org @billsutherland.bsky.social

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences@pnas.org · 5mo ago

Addressing global biodiversity loss needs more than data collection. A new PNAS Perspective from the 2025 US–UK Scientific Forum outlines 9 changes to improve how biodiversity is measured and used for conservation. Read now: https://ow.ly/BH5Q50YsXUY Forum: https://ow.ly/U5ZV50YsUTK

🎉 Huge news for BHL: The Field Museum is taking over the hosting of BHL’s website, servers & infrastructure, ensuring long-term stability and access for its 63+ million pages of open biodiversity literature. Learn more: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2026/02/tran... #BHLTransition #ILoveBHL 🌍 📚 🧪

The latest issue of #BritishandIrishBotany is out! It's our Open Access, online scientific journal. 6 papers inc @bsbiscience.bsky.social on garden escapes, a new hybrid grass, @floodplainmead.bsky.social on Scotland's wet grasslands, a hawkweed, drift seeds & sea bindweed: bsbi.org/about/news/l...

Somehow I missed this Californian record of Waved Albatross last autumn ebird.org/checklist/S2... an incredible vagrant 🪶

eBird Checklist - 5 Oct 2025 - Leg 6: 38.1035,-123.5610 - 17 species (+1 other taxa)

Submitted by Michael Carozza.

ebird.org

American Birding Association@aba.org · 6mo ago

Three new species added to the ABA Checklist! Two splits (Whimbrel, Yellow Warbler) and a recent distributional record (Waved Albatross) raise the ABA Area list to 1,161 species. Learn more here: www.aba.org/aba-checklis...

Cut blackthorn hedges less often = boost brown hairstreak butterflies. Really simple, cost-free (or even money-saving) measures can massively benefit wildlife. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Rare butterflies bounce back after landowners in Wales cut back on flailing hedges

More than 300 brown hairstreak butterfly eggs were recorded in hedgerows near Llandeilo this winter after decade of decline

theguardian.com

Taxonomy and phylogeny are two sides of the same coin, but that doesn't mean they are always in agreement. I wrote a blog post on why the new Phylogeny Explorer in @birdsoftheworld.bsky.social is such a big deal in that regard, and what's in store next for us. eliotmiller.weebly.com/blog/birds-o...

Birds of World's new Phylogeny Explorer

It’s been an exciting week. Five years in the making, we’re very excited to release this new, updated, dynamic phylogeny of the world’s birds. By harnessing Open Tree of Life ’s existing...

eliotmiller.weebly.com

Anisognathus mountain-tanagers. 6-7 species here, the middle is one of my favourite Andean birds: bold banana colours excellent shade of blue matching bright personality staple of mixed flocks - as well as being fab itself, has prospect of exciting companions. Almost perfect: 9/10 #birdart #sciart

This is the height of ecological illiteracy and shows how wannabe zookeepers have taken over UK nature conservation. Evidence for native status of these species is incredibly tenuous; releasing them into one of our most ancient & irreplaceable ecosystems would be crazy. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Three frogs to be reintroduced to West Acre 'pingos'

The money will be spent on breeding thousands of frogs and managing their release in 2026.

bbc.co.uk

Climate-driven range contractions in species like Twite and Citril Finch can't be fixed by releases www.birdguides.com/news/citril-... #Ornithology ##UKBirding 🪶

Citril Finch population collapses in Germany amid broader European declines

Citril Finch has nearly disappeared from Germany’s Black Forest, with numbers plunging by over 97%. Across Europe, habitat loss and climatic change threaten this mountain specialist, prompting urgent ...

birdguides.com

BirdGuides@birdguides.bsky.social · 7mo ago

A new captive-breeding programme for Twite in England has produced its first young in captivity and could begin releasing birds into the wild in 2026, in a bid to halt the species' severe decline:

The fragment of ND2 DNA that @tessaroo.bsky.social got from Calshot GT Grackle doesn't tell exactly where it came from but it excludes a USA west coast (nelsoni) origin and puts it in the Panama-Central-USA populations. Orange shape overlaid on map from DaCosta et al., 2008 doi.org/10.1525/cond...

My latest paper is now published in an issue! We showcased the incredible scientific contributions that local and amateur naturalists make for research on long term change! 💚🌍 doi.org/10.1111/icad...

Local entomologists shine a light on moth communities: The value of amateur records in cataloguing long‐term change

Written records associated with museum collections are often underutilised. We use two new macro-moth collections donated to the University Museum of Zoology (Cambridge) to investigate long-term cha...

doi.org

New paper alert! Microclimate temperatures are more extreme than we previously thought! Near-ground temperatures are amplified in hot weather, cool refugia is lost and replaced with heat traps ☀️🔥🥵 escape from heat will be very hard for small ground-dwelling organisms doi.org/10.21425/fob...

Interested in moth trapping? Wondering which trap to use? Or if different bulbs collect different species? Using 100k samples from @gardenmothscheme.bsky.social our new paper looks at these questions and more! With with Bill Kunin and @katatrepsis.bsky.social #mothsmatter #teammoth

Effect of bulb type on moth trap catch and composition in UK gardens

We analyse 10 years of records Garden Moth Scheme (GMS) to estimate the effect of bulb and trap type on the number of moths caught by moth traps. We find that brighter, higher wattage bulbs collect ...

resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Bij veel leden ligt de nieuwste Entomologische Berichten op de mat, of is deze digitaal te benaderen via de ledenomgeving op NEV.nl! Ook deze mooie uitgave lezen? Word lid, of even wachten. Oudere jaargangen zijn ook beschikbaar via Natuurtijdschriften.nl

Huge News from the Western Amazon: it's the year 2025 and we are still describing entirely new, strikingly-distinctive large-bodied bird species! Behold Tinamus resonans sp. nov. the Slaty-masked Tinamou mapress.com/zt/article/v... #Ornithology @tetzoo.bsky.social 🪶

EARLY VIEW in IBIS A new species of jewel-babbler (Cinclosomatidae: Ptilorrhoa) from the Southern Fold Mountains of Papua New Guinea | onlinelibrary.wiley.... Iain A. Woxvold, Banak G. Gamui, Leo Legra, Samson Yama, Bonny Koane, Salape Tulai | #ornithology 🪶

🦢 What a swan’s 570km U-turn could tell us about water, wetlands, and a changing climate.... www.linkedin.com/posts/kane-b...

Might be good for plant spp. richness, but I'm not sure mowing field margins every 6 weeks in spring & summer is going to be helpful for other farmland biodiversity. Seems a perfect way to repeatedly destroy every breeding attempt of ground-nesting birds, small mammals or butterflies that use them.

Journal of Applied Ecology@jappliedecology.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Semi-natural habitats are key for farmland biodiversity but their quality is often low due to high exposure to fertilizers 🌾🧪 A new study shows that more frequent cutting can create diverse vegetation even in highly productive habitats ✂️🌏 🔗 doi.org/10.1111/1365...