Andy Allan

a leopard from one of our trail cameras walking along a path

We're Laura and @andyallan.bsky.social - we study predator-prey interactions, personality and how individuality may shape animal ecosystem roles. We work together in ZA but I'm also a movement ecologist with @uniexecec.bsky.social now creating a system for tracking mongoose in real-time in Uganda

It's helpful when the samango monkeys check on our camera traps. Theyre little good friends
from @andyallan.bsky.social

‘Awe-inspiring and harrowing’: how two orcas with a taste for liver decimated the great white shark capital of the world A decade ago, up to 1,000 of the apex predators lived in one South African bay. Now they have gone, fleeing from killer whales. But the gap they have left creates problems for other species

Wild (non-political) story about how a couple of orcas fucked around and triggered a trophic cascade. I’m fascinated by these sorts of tales, in which *individual* animals, not just wildlife populations, prove powerful enough to alter ecosystems.

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

ESF is hiring a fellow to be an illustrator at one of their field biological stations. It's a beautiful misty secluded place in the Adirondack mountains. I miss ESF so much that I just did some fieldwork nearby. Apply!!!

bsky.app/profile/leni...

Wow! Amazing opportunity here for South Africa based 🇿🇦 researchers to develop their quantitative skills! 🤩💻

Two workshops:

• An intro to stats in R
• Applied hierarchical modelling

The course is FREE! These opportunities rarely come about in 🇿🇦, so share widely & sign up!

#conservationscience 🌍

High above the forests the baboons scale the cliffs up to their sleep site on top of Mt. Lajuma with @andyallan.bsky.social following and me videoing from a nearby cliff.

Trading cows for forests in a few wealthy countries could deliver huge climate benefits A new study found that reducing world cattle production by a mere 13% and rewinding select pastures could lock away the equivalent to 3 years' worth of global carbon emissions.

A new study found that reducing world cattle production by a mere 13% and rewilding select pastures could lock away the equivalent to 3 years' worth of global carbon emissions.

www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2024/11/trad...

The Eco Story of Soy: Environmental Impact and Solutions In this exploration, we dive into the heart of soy's environmental narrative, where we confront questions of sustainability, weigh its global impacts, and showcase what the research shows on whether i...

Compared to chicken, pork, or beef (KG/protein), soy uses far less land:
🐓 3x less than chicken,
🐖 9x less than pork, &
🥩 32x less than beef

Compared to dairy, soy milk uses:
🌎 1/10th of the land,
💨1/3rd of the GHGs, &
💦1/20th of the freshwater.

New by me:
www.plantbaseddata.org/post/the-eco...

England’s national parks facing financial peril due to budget cuts, say CEOs Leaders warn cost savings will lead to mass redundancies and that spaces could become ‘paper parks’

“reform us, change our purposes, put nature recovery and nature and climate front and centre. Make sure we really are inclusive.”

Bold leadership from Dartmoor and Northumberland #NationalPark - warning they are in “critical care” and facing “closed signs”.

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Keystone individuals – linking predator traits to community ecology Individual behavioral plasticity enables animals to adjust to different scenarios. Yet, personality traits limit this flexibility, leading to consistent interindividual differences in behavior. These ...

@andyallan.bsky.social and I published this in TREE tinyurl.com/bdfe4zf5 on linking predator behavioral traits to their ecosystem roles and responses to environmental change