Andrea Santangeli

Global distribution of forest landscapes covered by airborne LiDAR

Only a pre-print for now, but after 4 years of hard work I couldn't resist sharing this!

The Global Canopy Atlas: analysis-ready maps of 3D structure for the world's woody ecosystems

📜: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Huge team effort led by the brilliant Fabian Fischer!

Grazing cattle at low intensities could sustain biodiversity on modern farms | University of Helsinki A new study conducted by researchers at the University of Helsinki emphasises the important role of low-intensity cattle grazing in maintaining biodiversity on modern farms.

Grazing cattle at low intensities could sustain biodiversity on modern farms: new paper out in AGEE doi.org/10.1016/j.ag...

www.helsinki.fi/en/news/envi...

@aksulehikoinen.bsky.social @irinaherzon.bsky.social @johanekroos.bsky.social @andreasantangeli.bsky.social et al.

"Health losses attributed to anthropogenic climate change," a brief communication in the journal Nature Climate Change. There's a map showing regions of the world, and pie charts of relevant studies as they apply to different health impacts like "heat-related deaths" and "maternal and child health"

🚨 NEW: Climate change is already causing 30,000 deaths per year - a global annual economic loss of $100-350B USD - but the true damage is probably 10x higher. Out TODAY in Nature Climate Change: the first systematic look at the science of "health impact attribution" 🔓 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Drones with thermal cameras are revealing the secrets of elusive Australian forest wildlife The new technology will help scientists monitor and protect some of Australia’s most iconic and threatened forest species.

Happy to be able to share that our work investigating the efficacy of thermal #drones for nocturnal #wildlife surveys is finally published in @esajournals.bsky.social Ecological applications: doi.org/10.1002/eap..... Find a summary in @theconversation.com here: theconversation.com/drones-with-...

‘We’ve done it before’: how not to lose hope in the fight against ecological disaster Some days it can feel as if climate catastrophe is inevitable. But history is full of cases – such as the banning of whaling and CFCs – that show humanity can come together to avert disaster

How not to lose hope in the fight against ecological disaster

Reboot Development: The Economics of a Livable Planet New World Bank report: Find out about how policymakers can connect the dots across land, air, and water sectors to drive strong, sustainable economic growth at the national-level and unlock major glob...

The economics of a livable planet

How do we perceive biodiversity? We can see it & hear it In the verdant and melodious depths of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where the songs of birds match the murmur of leaves, several Indigenous people affirm the results of research that…

A recent study shows that people are able to perceive biodiversity through sights & sounds, and those perceptions correlate with the actual biodiversity of a natural place.

The study adds to a growing body of research on biodiversity perception & its connections to human mental health & well-being.

How is this possible?

This ant can lay eggs of two different species, birthed by the same mother

It was fun analysing birding data instead of bird data! Read on to find out the predictors of where eBirders go birding around the world!

New on conservation science:

Coexistence with large carnivores is a conservation challenge. Revisiting Volterra principle (more mortality on both prey and predators leads to more prey & fewer predators) can inform modern conservation strategies.

Boyce et al. in Cons. Biol. doi.org/10.1111/cobi...

Identifying opportunities toward conflict transformation in an Orca‐Salmon‐Human system We examine stakeholder conflict over endangered killer whale protection, determining identity-based roots of conflict and opportunities towards transformation.

In this article, Eckert et al examine stakeholder conflict over endangered #killerwhale protection, determining identity-based roots of conflict and opportunities towards transformation. 🌊Learn more at doi.org/10.1111/csp2...

#conservation #science

Very happy to share that our paper presenting a framework for optimal movement decisions in complex landscapes has just been published in TREE @stephharris.bsky.social @jacobnabe.bsky.social tinyurl.com/d45s36y5

Under-five mortality burden in low- and middle-income countries set to increase under future warming Zhu et al. provide the global perspective that high-temperature exposure increased the under-5 child mortality in low- and middle-income countries (LIMCs). The child mortality burden attributable to c...

Under-five mortality burden in low- and middle-income countries set to increase under future warming: www.cell.com/one-earth/ab...

@geda-imedea.bsky.social @imedea.bsky.social @theperegrinefund.bsky.social @conservnamibia.bsky.social @africanornithology.bsky.social

Mass poisoning is decimating African vultures. We quantified cost-effectiveness of GPS-tagged sentinel vultures to mitigate this threat. Few sentinels can save lots of vultures—but fast ground response is key. Super relevant study led by Teja Curk: besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

An R package for working with generalized additive models Graceful 'ggplot'-based graphics and utility functions for working with generalized additive models (GAMs) fitted using the 'mgcv' package.

🚀 gratia 0.11.0 is out!

Now has a paper in JOSS — please cite 📄 doi.org/10.21105/jos...

Experimental parallel processing ⚡

New assemble() for building plots 🎨

Better support for complex families + new diagnostics 🧪

Lots of bug fixes + polish ✨

👉 gavinsimpson.github.io/gratia/

#Rstats

Scientists’ role in defending democracy The United States’ democratic leadership, commitment to freedom of expression, and investment in the pursuit of knowledge have long enabled its preeminence in science and technology. Yet today we are ...

When democracy falters, science is among the first casualties—truth silenced, data erased, expertise sidelined. But history shows us: scientists can build independent institutions that preserve truth, counter misinformation, and defend both knowledge and democracy. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Correcting environmental sampling bias improves transferability of species distribution models Sampling bias is an inherent problem in widely available biodiversity data, undermining the robustness of correlative species distribution models (SDMs). To some extent, subsampling occurrence data c...

Important paper!
nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

A systematic review evaluating the performance of eDNA methods relative to conventional methods for biodiversity monitoring vist.ly/4372j #eDNA #Metabarcoding

The radiation and geographic expansion of primates through diverse climates | PNAS One of the most influential hypotheses about primate evolution postulates that their origin, radiation, and major dispersals were associated with e...

I love this paper on primate diversification (tl;dr, early primates diversified out of colder climates)

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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.

🚨 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/...

Hi Diego, sure, please email me: andrea.santangeli@gmail.com

🦅 Call for #cameraTrap collaborators! 📸
Do you have camera trap data focused on med/large carcasses from S & C America?
Get in touch & join our #SCAVENGIST project to uncover scavenger roles in carcass consumption & implic. for pathogen transmission under global change. DM me

Without vultures, carcasses are slow to rot and disease-carrying flies abound “Absolutely disgusting, so grim, the worst fieldwork of my life, but also extremely rewarding in a very odd way,” said Julia Grootaers, describing her three months collecting data among rotting pig…

Researchers in Costa Rica found that pig carcasses decomposed twice as fast when vultures had access to them.

The absence of vultures led to a doubling of fly populations at carcass sites, which could affect human health, since these flies can carry diseases like botulism and anthrax.

Applied Solutions to Balance Conservation Need With Practical Applications: A Case Study With Eagles Movement Models and Wind Energy Development Wind energy development is known to negatively impact birds through collisions with turbines. Predictive space use models can be useful for identifying areas which should be designated for the conser...

Our new paper just out in Ecology & Evolution journal

Applied Solutions to Balance Conservation Need With Practical Applications: A Case Study With Eagles Movement Models and Wind Energy Development

Led by Megan Murgatroyd

doi.org/10.1002/ece3...

#RaptorResearch #ornithology

Causes and consequences of insect decline in tropical forests Nature Reviews Biodiversity, Published online: 04 April 2025; doi:10.1038/s44358-025-00038-9Insect biodiversity in tropical forests is poorly understood but is probably facing declines, with serious consequences for ecosystem functions and services. This Review describes the major threats to insect biodiversity, which include the effects of a burgeoning human population and of climate change. The authors further highlight the urgent need for greater efforts to measure and monitor insect biodiversity in the tropics and discuss emerging approaches to facilitate such studies.

ICYMI: New online! Causes and consequences of insect decline in tropical forests

Our new paper: How e.g. bird and mammal species influence bird-feeding practices of humans based on a questionnaire in Finland. Thanks for the collaboration @aivelo.bsky.social @informedbirds.bsky.social @katjaronka.bsky.social @andreasantangeli.bsky.social @annaha.bsky.social @flewrabi.bsky.social

Vulnerability of amphibians to global warming - Nature A 4 °C global temperature increase would push 7.5% of amphibian species beyond their physiological limits.

@nature.com has just published online our new paper!🎉🐸🌡️Lead by @patricepottier.bsky.social and supervised by myself and @itchyshin.bsky.social: in this massive research effort we overcome several common convictions related to the topics we studied. www.nature.com/articles/s41... Here are take-homes.

GitHub - google/cameratrapai: AI models trained by Google to classify species in images from motion-triggered widlife cameras. AI models trained by Google to classify species in images from motion-triggered widlife cameras. - google/cameratrapai

I am incredibly excited to see our SpeciesNet model released!! This represents years of work by the @wildlifeinsights.bsky.social AI team (and completely impossible without the amazing Ștefan Istrate's AI development and implementation).

Github: github.com/google/camer...
Blog: bit.ly/4i5cKBs