Dax Kellie

Or should I say *invertebrates* & plants. Apologies to all the little non-insect inverts out there, you matter too

And in case you want to go straight to the paper, it's here. It has even more videos of tiny worms soaring through the air!
doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

These worms can jump up to 20 times their body length—the equivalent of a human jumping the height of an 11-story building—by riding on electrostatic charges 🪱⚡😮

An incredible example of how important electrostatic forces are for many insects & plants (eg pollination)

🧪🌏🐙

Jacques Bertin’s valued points map with R How to make a Bertin’s valued dots map using R: full tutorial with code and explanation.

Thanks! But all credit goes to Ben Nowak for making this amazing tutorial. I just followed along 😀

r-graph-gallery.com/web-valued-d...

Wow a whole family of beautiful stump-not-stumps!

Species: Podargus strigoides (Tawny Frogmouth) Atlas of Living Australia species page for the Podargus strigoides

These photos are not mine, but taken by talented researchers and citizen scientists. I found them on the ALA. Photo credits are in the alt text
bie.ala.org.au/species/http...

Tawny frogmouth named 2025 Australian bird of the year winner Perennial runner up finally claims the crown in the biennial Guardian/BirdLife Australia poll, ahead of Baudin’s black cockatoo and gang-gang cockatoo

Find out more about the Australian Bird of the Year competition and winner: www.theguardian.com/environment/...

science/comms/2025-10-16_tawny-frogmouth/scripts/tawny-map.R at main · AtlasOfLivingAustralia/science Repo for code produced by the ALA Science & Decision Support Team - AtlasOfLivingAustralia/science

Code: github.com/AtlasOfLivin...

A map of tawny frogmouth observations in Australia. The map is a Jacques Bertin map, which consists of a grid of dots over all of Australia, and each dot's size relates to how many observations are in that area. The dots are dark brown and the background a light grey/brown, much like a tawny frogmouth's feathers. The map shows many bigger dots along the east coast of Australia, showing that most observations are recorded there, though there are several other smaller groups of large dots in the south east and northern regions of Australia

Two tawny frogmouths sitting on a branch. They both have fuzzy, speckled dark brown and light grey/brown feathers and wide, short beaks. One tawny frogmouth is looking at the camera, one eye half open and the other mostly shut. Its eyes are large and orangey colour. The second tawny frogmouth is just behind it facing to the left, both eyes closed, with an expression as if it has just smelled a lovely cup of coffee and is cherishing the scent. Photo by Thomas Mesaglio 2020 (CC-BY 4.0 (Int))

A tawny frogmouth seated on a branch facing the camera. There are blurry dark green leaves in the foreground, showing that this frogmouth was seen through foliage. The tawny frogmouth has speckled dark brown and light grey/brown feathers that look remarkably like tree bark. The eyes are a rich yellow/orange. Photo by buluurr 2024 (CC-BY-NC 4.0 (Int))

🎉Congrats to 2025's Australian Bird of the Year, the Tawny Frogmouth (everyone's favourite tree-stump-that's-not-actually-a-tree-stump)! 🦉

Here's a map of where they've been recorded. Take a photo of the next tree stump you see, it might be a bird of the year!😉

🌏🧪📊 #rstats @birdlifeoz.bsky.social

And of course a big benefit of joining a group like SORTEE is meeting other like-minded people who care about robust and transparent science. Many are on Bluesky!

If you’re a member and want to be added, send me a DM 😀 🧪🌏

go.bsky.app/44PpngU

On a side note, the more I think about it, I think you’re onto something with this HipsterScript idea

Every function name could be an obscure coffee order or every object name a B-side Modern Lovers track. Completely unreadable unless you are in the zeitgeist

Looks like a good guide - the general data cleaning part is a lean intro to some very common issues in all sorts of data. Would be great if every phd who touches raw data was offered a short course in these basics (in R or Python or whatever HipsterScript) cleaning-data-r.ala.org.au/2_general-cl...

Thanks Richard! I definitely agree - we realised (after lots of reshuffling) that general cleaning fixes *many* problems, *then* you get to ones that require domain expertise

Lots of resources exist on general data cleaning, but we figured it’s foundational + nice to have it in one searchable place

Thanks so much David!

Release 0.2.0 · AtlasOfLivingAustralia/cleaning_data Updated data for September 2025 #53 Fixed broken {taxize} examples in Taxonomic validation chapter #38 Added content about taxonomic mismatching scenarios to Taxonomic validation chapter #51 Edited...

See the full list of updates here:
github.com/AtlasOfLivin...

The cover of the Cleaning Biodiversity Data in R book. It has an illustration of an Pacific Cleaner Shrimp in the middle of a navy background. The shrimp has a bright red-orange shell, pale-yellow body and white whiskers.

Still want to make cleaning biodiversity data shrimp-ler? 🦐

Good news: We just updated our Cleaning Biodiversity Data in R book, so you still can! We've updated data for 2025, added new content & fixed lots of silly typos 😀

Live the shrimp-le life:
cleaning-data-r.ala.org.au

#rstats #ecology 🧪🌏

D’Angelo, Groundbreaking R&B Artist, Dies at 51 From his 1995 debut Brown Sugar to his 2014 comeback Black Messiah, he helped define the neo-soul movement

Was listening to D’Angelo just yesterday talking about how he’s one of the greats. Huge loss 💔 RIP

pitchfork.com/news/dangelo...

Southern emu wren is a good one for targeted conservation action too. It needs immediate saving from a tenth of it's habitat being converted to a rocket launching facility

Australian bird of the year 2025: vote for your favourite #birdoftheyear in the Guardian / BirdLife Australia poll From little penguins to (very big) cassowaries, every bird has its fans. Vote for your favourite in the 2025 Guardian/BirdLife Australia poll

Vote now, if you haven't already, for the Guardian's Bird of the Year 2025

It helps to nominate a bird that's endangered, giving it a much higher profile - like Baudin's black cockatoo for example

Please vote - this is a wonderful environmental exercise

🙏🏽 🦜

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Field crickets (Gryllinae) aren't just plain brown chirping things in backyards - the group is actually pretty diverse, with >3,000 species. Maybe the weirdest are in the genus Sciobia, which all have these delightful Pikmin-like "hats" 🥺

📸: Sciobia barbara, Pierre-Henri Fabre

#EverydayEnsifera

So much this!! Code is so valuable and literally the thing that creates your results. When you include it in your paper it can be such a valuable resource to everyone (plus earn you a couple more citations).

Pink empress Mantis

A bar chart showing that of all vertebrate groups (animals with a backbone and skull), amphibians face the highest risk of extinction. The data source is the IUCN Red List. The chart is licensed under CC BY to Our World in Data.

The threat of extinction is not spread evenly across the tree of life. To protect animals, it’s important to know which ones are most threatened and why.

Of all vertebrates (animals with a backbone and skull), amphibians are most threatened with extinction.

That’s me asking a question that appears to be causing everyone else in the audience to have an existential crisis 🥲

Thanks #WOMBAT2025! I had a great time listening to cool speakers and meeting many nice, passionate and impressive people. See ya next time 👋
#rstats

SquidSim is the coolest package - it let's you build complex hierarchical data structures and then simulate data from the world you create. The best tool for doing proper power analyses and testing how well your models can uncover the 'truth'. I've been recommending it to everyone!

This is figure 3, which shows arm actions and their relationship to animal behaviors.

Octopuses can use any of their arms to perform tasks, but tend to use a particular arm, or arms, for specific tasks, according to a study in Scientific Reports. go.nature.com/4pjR34k 🌊 🧪

That method is a bit confusing because the countries with which comparisons are being made are distorted. I like this method of comparison better, showing a country’s actual area compared with the Mercator projection.

Even if you don't code (or use Python), the visual way we explain how locations of sensitive species are obfuscated (i.e. made less precise📍) in this post is something I'm very happy with in the end

It might be worth a look if you work with sensitive species data 🙂🧪🌏

a map. An outline of Midwestern (a local government area in NSW, Australia) in black surrounded by a buffer zone in blue around it. Purple points (which are species observations) are speckled around the map

3 maps, each showing an black outline of Midwestern (a local government area in NSW, Australia) with a grid overlayed on each. Each map shows a purple dot representing a theoretical 'true' species location, and a yellow point representing the new point location due to generalisation (the process of making the location less precise). These three maps show 3 scenarios when a generalised point appears inside an area when its true location is outside, inside an area when its true location is inside, and outside an area when its true location is inside

🔍 Need to search for species in an area with a buffer? 🔵

Learn how to add a buffer in Python and see how to consider threatened species with obfuscated locations in a new ALA Labs post by Amanda Buyan & me 😀

labs.ala.org.au/posts/2025-0...

🧪🌏 #Python #matplotlib #geopandas #geospatial #quartopub

A sit in the sauna can save endangered frogs Anthony Waddle’s unconventional approach resulted in a stunningly practical solution to fight a deadly fungal infection.

A stack of bricks 🧱 or a luxury frog sauna? 🐸

Many species seek out these warm enclosures and, excitingly, regular visits on warm days can help fight against deadly chytrid fungus too. The fungus is sensitive to heat. ~28°C (82°F) is enough to limit chytrid growth 🧪🌏

www.nature.com/articles/d41...