1/ The world's songbirds sing in just 8 basic sounds. And where a bird lives decides which ones it uses. My first PhD paper is out now in @science.org (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aee6239) Here is what we found:
Orlin S Todorov
@orlinst.bsky.social
Biostatistician, TIA, UTAS Evolution, Brains, Cognition, Stats, R
This is interesting — a recent study of mode share (the % share of transportation trips by car, transit, walking, biking etc) relative to city size and income levels in almost 800 cities in 61 countries. Interesting results. HT @davidzipper.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Carnivores highly active during the day were the first to go extinct after human arrival and settlement globally. Their complex life histories made them most vulnerable to habitat alteration and very salient hunting targets. nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
Extinct Pleistocene carnivores were diurnal and highly active
nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Orlin S Todorov@orlinst.bsky.social · 10mo agoExtinct Pleistocene carnivores were diurnal and highly active - fresh off the press 🐯 Only BMR and diurnality are robust predictors of extinction and this also stands for extant species 🦨🐅🦝 With @johnalroy.bsky.social we use an exhaustive sample and account for phylogenetic and trait uncertainty.
Unsolicited listicle: My list of the most criminally underused/underappreciated phylogenetic comparative methods. Note, I am not involved in ANY of these methods; but I see them as things people are often asking of comparative data but have been surprised at how infrequently they have been cited.
Extinct Pleistocene carnivores were diurnal and highly active - fresh off the press 🐯 Only BMR and diurnality are robust predictors of extinction and this also stands for extant species 🦨🐅🦝 With @johnalroy.bsky.social we use an exhaustive sample and account for phylogenetic and trait uncertainty.
Extinct Pleistocene carnivores were diurnal and highly active - fresh off the press 🐯 Only BMR and diurnality are robust predictors of extinction and this also stands for extant species 🦨🐅🦝 With @johnalroy.bsky.social we use an exhaustive sample and account for phylogenetic and trait uncertainty.
1/ A longtime Wired editor just wrote a mush-brained essay about how he totally missed the political rot of Silicon Valley (& still doesn't get it). But in the late 1990s, a Wired journalist warned of a toxic ideology bubbling up from tech. Paulina Borsook has largely been erased. Let's change that
1 To predict the behaviour of a primate, would you rather base your guess on a closely related species or one with a similar brain shape? We looked at brains & behaviours of 70 species, you’ll be surprised! 🧵Thread on our new preprint with @r3rt0.bsky.social , doi.org/10.1101/2025...
🦘🦘🦘 If you ever wonder why roos jump in your headlights (or even if you don't) here is a brief overview of why and what is different about marsupial cognitive ability. 🦘🦘🦘 uploads.strikinglycdn.com/files/c595eb...
It was a pleasure being part of this collaboration led by Barry Brook with @johnalroy.bsky.social @willgearty.bsky.social et al! Watch this space for more 🐅🐆🐈🦝
Andrej Spiridonov@andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 12mo agoWe live in the non-uniformitarian world of post-Pleistocene mammalian turnover: "findings demonstrate that human-driven niche modification, beyond earlier megafaunal extinctions, profoundly reshaped mammal communities on a global scale." doi.org/10.1098/rsbl... 🧪 ⚒️ #Paleobio #EvoBio #Macroecology
Randomly coming across a MDPI article where the author cites himself every time he's unsure what to cite (t-test, Fisher). It's also the editor's choice 🤦♂️ www.mdpi.com/2073-4395/14... 50 out of place self-citations! AI or just negligence? plantscience.psu.edu/directory/rp...
Public info institution the BoM never mentions fossil-fuelled global heating, even during mega-droughts, heatwaves, bushfires floods. Why? Perhaps because its board is controlled by Shell, Santos, Woodside & Chevron? If you think this stinks, make a subsmission! michaelwest.com.au/undue-influe...
Undue Influence: oil and gas giants infiltrate Australia's Bureau of Meteorology - Michael West
Oil giants Shell, Santos, Woodside and Chevron finance the Bureau of Meteorology. The BOM does not discuss "climate change".
michaelwest.com.au
Human impacts on large mammals went well beyond triggering late Quaternary mass extinctions. A new paper by Brook et al. showing that biogeographic patterns were erased by the spread of domesticated species: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... A related paper is in press. Stay tuned.
We are recruiting a PhD student to work on a decision-support tool for food producers to assess and optimise the environmental sustainability of products. Ideally, someone who is knowledgeable about food production, sustainability and can or is willing to learn how to code in R/Shiny or Python.
Available projects for research degrees | University of Tasmania - Environmentally sustainable food product
Globally, there is an urgent need to make food production environmenta...
utas.edu.au
Crab-like creatures are famed for having evolved five times in evolutionary history. But anteaters have evolved at least 12 times--in half the evolutionary span. Cool story by @jakebuehler.bsky.social for @science.org
‘Things keep evolving into anteaters.’ Odd animals arose at least 12 separate times
Findings speak to the dramatic impact ants and termites can have on mammalian evolution
science.org
🚨 First PhD chapter is out! My work thus far, with @andy2dobson.bsky.social We found that formerly common species have declined the fastest, on average. 📄 North American bird declines are driven by reductions in common species | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
North American bird declines are driven by reductions in common species
Declines in North American birds are driven not by rare species vanishing but by sharp losses among formerly common species.
science.org
my guess is that this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of unethical conduct.... ⬇️
Retraction Watch@retractionwatch.com · last yr.Frontiers to retract 122 articles, links thousands in other publishers’ journals to “unethical” network
-- Metascience 2025 Virtual Preconference -- "Critical Metascience: Does Metascience Need to Change?" 23rd June 15:00 BST nomadit.co.uk/conference/m... 🔹️ Sven Ulpts 🔹️ Sheena Bartscherer 🔹️ Me! 🔹️ Carlos Santana 🔹️ @lisamalich.bsky.social 🔹️ @jbakcoleman.bsky.social #MetaSci #STS #PhilSci
all this talk about changes in p-value magnitude being interpreted as an increase in the "quality of evidence" necessitates that i share this. we all should share and actually read this in fact (for starters). #stats #metasci
The Difference Between “Significant” and “Not Significant” is not Itself Statistically Significant
It is common to summarize statistical comparisons by declarations of statistical significance or nonsignificance. Here we discuss one problem with such declarations, namely that changes in statisti...
tandfonline.com
What theoretical & methodological challenges emerge when investigating #behavior across the tree of life? We are organizing an interdisciplinary workshop on 'comparative behavioral biology' (Sept. 26-27). Please help us share the open CfA! 📢👇 hiw.kuleuven.be/clps/events/... #philsci #HPbio #evobio
Sketch, capture and layout phylogenies www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧬🖥️🧪 github.com/husonlab/phy...
As Jumana Bayeh argues in her scholarly close reading, Universities Australia's definition of antisemitism has one purpose only — to silence voices in support of Palestinians.
Silencing Palestine: Universities Australia and the new definition of antisemitism - Overland literary journal
I am a researcher of literature and I am invested in understanding the political nature of language, and the context in which that language is embedded — even chaotic and unfocused language. I want to...
overland.org.au
Interpreting residual plots can be tricky - how strong must patterns be to indicate model assumption violations? The latest #Rstats 📦 nullabor update makes this easier with lineup plots! 🔍 📈 Learn more: mansthulin.se/posts/nullab...
Our latest rant w/ Simone Blomberg in @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social - The fallacy of single imputation. We make a convincing case that single imputation is misleading and should not be (mis)used especially for trait datasets (also confirmed by simulations) doi.org/10.1111/2041...
Missing data and the problem of handling variable-incomplete datasets is a common feature of ecological, evolutionary, biogeographical and palaeontological analyses. Here is a refreshing review arguing for the application of a generalized "Multiple Imputation" Rubin (1976) procedure 👇
Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez@frodsan.bsky.social · last yr.The fallacy of single imputation for #traits databases: Use multiple imputation instead @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social #ecopubs doi.org/10.1111/2041...
Here are some cool animations I made a couple years ago for teaching DAG-based causal inference Confounding!
Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? Jevin West (@jevinwest.bsky.social) and I have spent the last eight months developing the course on large language models (LLMs) that we think every college freshman needs to take. thebullshitmachines.com
INTRODUCTION
thebullshitmachines.com