Jonathan Tonkin

Night-flying insects over UK in decline, weather radar study reveals Study of Met Office data one of first to show how nocturnal insects affected by factors such as light pollution

Delighted to announce a new paper, led by Mansi Mungee, which studies insect populations over the UK using weather radar and is covered by the Guardian: www.theguardian.com/environment/...

more below...

#entomology #radar #biodiversity #insect #research #conservation #data #tech #sustainability

Short-term thinking is killing the planet Why intergenerational justice demands we think long-term

I wrote about this sort of thinking a while ago here

open.substack.com/pub/predirec...

Farmers agree to sale of Fonterra's consumer brands In a statement, Fonterra said it received a "strong mandate", with 88.47% of votes in support of the sale.

I couldn’t think of a better example of short-term thinking than this! 🤦‍♂️

www.1news.co.nz/2025/10/30/f...

If you’re not sure of your vaccination record with MMR, just go to the pharmacy and get a jab. There’s no harm in getting an extra dose. Measles is not worth the risk.

7 basic science discoveries that changed the world Ozempic, MRI machines and flat screen televisions all emerged out of fundamental research decades earlier — the very types of study being slashed by the US government.

"Basic research is easily mocked because it can seem impractical, but, in fact, it is a major driver of economic growth. “The return on investment in basic research — the return to society — is very high, typically multiple dollars back per dollar invested,” says Holdren."

Haha -- I'm envious of your comms skills. You came across really well and the argument was very compelling!

Listened in and you did a fantastic job of communicating the issue! Well done

Biosecurity alert: hornet queen nest found in New Zealand Aucklanders warned after hornet queen discovered in Glenfield.

Ugh. No thanks. Auckland folks keep an eye out please! Please share.

Grant Robertson presents at Te Pūnaha Matatini’s annual hui.

On the second day of our annual hui, we started the day with a keynote from University of Otago Vice-Chancellor Grant Robertson on the research system in Aotearoa 🧪🧵

After four days off the grid in the NZ backcountry, I’m excited to be heading to Dunedin to talk complexity at the annual hui (meeting) for @tepunahamatatini.bsky.social, the NZ centre of research excellence in complex systems.

One of the things that was special about the Marsden Fund is that the decision-making process was tweaked over the years rather than reinvented over and over again like other funds. That allowed for decades of learning that I hope will not be lost in this latest restructure.

Rivers of Food One third of the world's food production is dependent on rivers. But they are under increasing pressure, threatening global food security now and in the future.

You have to check this out. #Rivers of #food: How healthy rivers are central to feeding the world, from @wwf-water.bsky.social.

@jjopperman.bsky.social wonderfully presented this work recently at the International Society for Rivers Science conference in Davis, CA.

rivers-of-food.panda.org

In this version of 'Nexus Notes' (a fortnightly feature for Predirections readers), I share a bunch of recent research and media around the planetary boundaries framework from the past few weeks, including an updated Doughnut of Doughnut Economics and the Planetary Health Diet.

We have no shortage of evidence of scalable solutions. The barrier continues to be one of implementation, not ideas, science, or tools.

Yes, the planet is in a dire state, but the healing of the ozone layer and the reduction of aerosols highlight we can actually turn things around. The window remains open. We’ve not crossed into irreversible territory. It’s our choice whether we want to or not.

All seven of these Planetary Boundaries continue to move in the wrong direction. That’s more than three-quarters of the Earth’s support systems outside the safe zone and getting worse.

Nexus Notes – Planetary Boundaries special edition Nexus Notes #15

The seventh Planetary Boundary of nine has been crossed. Ocean acidification has joined climate change, change in biosphere integrity, land system change, freshwater change, modification of biogeochemical flows, and introduction of novel entities.

Planet’s first catastrophic climate tipping point reached, report says, with coral reefs facing ‘widespread dieback’ Unless global heating is reduced to 1.2C ‘as fast as possible’, warm water coral reefs will not remain ‘at any meaningful scale’, a report by 160 scientists from 23 countries warns

This is very sad, but also not surprising. The science has warned for a long time, including in IPCC reports, that even modest levels of global warming will devastate virtually all coral reefs.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

It was a great meeting!

Brainstorming what we need to do for one of these car parks at Berkeley.
With @albertruhi.bsky.social and @stefanolarsen.bsky.social

This time around, #WaterYear is also gonna have water memes...

Looking forward to our first Plenary for #ISRS2025 @riversociety.bsky.social @jdtonkin.bsky.social

Photo of plenary speaker J Tonkin at the International Society for River Science in front of a slideshow stating “Beyond the Ivory Tower”

Great call for #SciComm action at #ISRS2025 by @jdtonkin.bsky.social “if we aren’t speaking to the public, we leave a gap that will be filled by others.” @riversociety.bsky.social #AcademicSky

It takes all kinds: a composite approach to sustainable freshwater fisheries Freshwater fisheries face diverse, interacting stressors that threaten freshwater fish populations and global freshwater biodiversity. In Canada, freshwater fisheries are managed and conserved by vari...

We often think of fisheries management as being the role of the government fisheries manager. They certainly play an essential role but there is a diverse supporting cast. We discuss what that looks like here: cdnsciencepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Oh cool! Stoked you’re coming. Meant to reach out to see if you were going to be there. Hectic times so lost track of time

En route to the US to deliver a keynote at this exciting meeting of the International Society for River Science. Looking forward to catching up with old colleagues and making new ones.

Accounting for the influence of dissimilarity gradients on community uniqueness Compositional uniqueness has become increasingly relevant for understanding how local communities contribute to regional biodiversity. The most widely used metric is the Local Contribution to Beta Div...

Happy to see this preprint up on bioRxiv, led by Daniel Hernandez-Carrasco: Accounting for the influence of dissimilarity gradients on community uniqueness

If you've ever used LCBD in analyses of ecological uniqueness, this one is for you, but there's a lot more than that in here.

Dig into the post for more on this. Share your thoughts. But most importantly, share this with your friends — more people need to know about this.

These species had no role in causing climate change. Yet, they are being pushed beyond their limits simply because of where they live. And because of what we’ve done to the climate. I’m frustrated by this, but there are things we can do.

Species did nothing to deserve this... we decide what happens next One in six vertebrate species were highly exposed to unprecedented temperature in 2024

1 in 6 vertebrate species were highly exposed to unprecedented temperature in 2024. This is a shocking statistic. In this post, I give some of the details behind this statistic from a recent paper led by Cory Merow.