Benedikt Schmidt

Here’s what you need to know about Starmer’s illiberal protest curbs: they would have killed the Labour party at birth | George Monbiot The rights we enjoy in the UK, and the movement the PM purports to lead, were built on protest. Those rights are in dire peril, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

To be effective, protest must be noisy, obstructive, annoying. No longer is this allowed. Now the last attribute of effective dissent – persistence – is also to be banned. But the moment protest ceases to be effective is the moment democracy dies. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The new European Red List of amphibians was published! I am happy that I could contribute two short chapters to it:
"Successful amphibian conservation by focusing on manageable threats"
"The impact of habitat loss and degradation on amphibians"

nc.iucnredlist.org/redlist/cont...

Abteilungsleitung bei info fauna! Will sich jemand im Artenschutz engagieren?

naturschutz.ch/job/info-fau...

The current pdf has a production error. Springer made an error when they created the pdf. I hope they'll change it soon.

Genetic monitoring reveals loss of genetic variation and increased isolation in an endangered pond-breeding amphibian - Conservation Genetics Empirical knowledge on how genetic diversity changes through time in populations in the wild is extremely limited. This study aims to contribute toward a better understanding of the dynamics of genetic diversity over time in an amphibian species Red-Listed as endangered in Switzerland, the natterjack toad, Epidalea calamita, which lives along the Swiss Reuss valley, an area Dominated by human activity. We collected samples in 1998 and 2020 from the same area and, when possible, from the same sites (i.e., populations). Observed and expected heterozygosity, and allelic richness (Ho, He, and Ar, respectively) were significantly higher in 1998 than in 2020, while the fixation index (Fst) was significantly higher in 2020 than in 1998. The inbreeding coefficient and the effective population size (Fis and Ne, respectively) did not differ between 1998 and 2020. Bottleneck events were detected in two populations in 1998 and in five populations in 2020. Spatial genetic differentiation among the four populations which could be sampled in both 1998 and 2020 was greater in 2020 than in 1998. In conclusion, genetic monitoring revealed that populations of an endangered amphibian lost genetic diversity and became more isolated over a period of 22 years, corresponding roughly to seven generations. Future research should investigate the causes and consequences of this loss of genetic diversity for individual fitness and population viability and to develop conservation strategies to mitigate further losses of genetic diversity.

"Genetic monitoring reveals loss of genetic variation and increased isolation in an endangered pond-breeding amphibian"

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Beavers boost bats: Through habitat complexity and prey availability, beavers foster bat richness, activity, and feeding activity. 🦫
Read the full paper here: buff.ly/iVXQjl3
Image by @vmoser.bsky.social

Volunteer Conservation Action Data Reveals Large-Scale and Long-Term Negative Population Trends of a Widespread Amphibian, the Common Toad (Bufo bufo) Rare and threatened species are the most frequent focus of conservation science and action. With the ongoing shift from single-species conservation towards the preservation of ecosystem services, ther...

It's essentially a sequel to journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Increasingly uncommon common toads: multidecadal, ongoing abundance decline of a widespread amphibian despite volunteer conservation action - Biodiversity and Conservation Wide ranging and abundant species, often termed common species, play critically important roles in ecosystem functioning. However, conservation practice usually focuses on rare and declining species, including monitoring their state, while population trends of common and widespread species are often logistically difficult to evaluate compared to rare habitat specialists. This is particularly the case for small nocturnal vertebrates such as common amphibians, where abundance data are typically absent across most of their range. Building on previous work, we used national scale volunteer-collected data across Switzerland and Britain to investigate population trends over four decades for Europe’s two most common amphibian species, common toads (Bufo bufo) and common frogs (Rana temporaria). We included an average of 86 populations per year with an average count of 87,900 toads and 74,000 frogs in Switzerland and 80 populations per year with an average count of 75,800 toads in Britain, resulting in a total count of nearly 5.5 million toads across the entire study period. Overall, toad abundance declined in all decades since 1973 in Switzerland (33% abundance reduction) and since 1985 in Great Britain (41% reduction), but there were significant regional recoveries in Britain since 2013. Common frog abundance trends in Switzerland varied and remained positive overall but population growth rate declined after the year 2000. The impacts of such large-scale and ongoing abundance loss of common species may affect the ecosystem services provided by these species and require effective conservation action that expands beyond protected areas.

Common toads are increastingly uncommon - read our new publication on the topic:
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

A nice collaboration with Helen Moor and Silviu Petrovan.

In yesterday’s speech to the U.N., Donald Trump fully embraced the rhetoric of lizard-like climate deniers #trumpdisgrace #editorialcartoon

Bill Bramhall @billbramhall.bsky.social

What Trump said are the well-worn and often rebutted lies of the fossil fuel lobby, whose lies are the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.
If you hear such climate science denial tropes, the answers to all of those can be found at skepticalscience.com

1955.

Und Klimaleugner und Klimaschutzbremser verkaufen Euch für dumm.

Dank geht raus an die #Milliardenlobby

Warum das Mittelmeer der Ground Zero der Klimakrise ist Klimawandel, Überfischung und Umweltverschmutzung haben das Mittelmeer zu einem der am stärksten gefährdeten Meere der Welt gemacht: eine Bestandsaufnahme in vier Küstenregionen

Übrigens wenn das Mittelmeer wärmer wird, wirkt sich das auch auf unser Wetter aus.

Mehr Regen, mehr Überflutungen, krassere Unwetter.

Den Dank dafür nimmt die Fossil-Lobby gerne entgegen.

#Milliardenlobby

www.derstandard.de/story/300000...

We offer a fully funded 4-yr contract for a PhD candidate in Evolutionary Biology to join our group (www.eco-evo-devo.com). The project will combine genomics and ecophysiology to understand the evolution of developmental plasticity in spadefoot toads. For requisites and contact info please check 👇

Dinosaurierspur

We are excited to have our paper "Robot metabolism: Toward machines that can grow by consuming other machines" in this special issue of @science.org Advances.

Paper: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

#ScienceAdvances

Die Entwicklung der letzten 10 Jahre zeigt den Vormarsch der erneuerbaren #Stromversorgung! Vergleich Woche 36 im 2015 und 2025. Bsp: 🇩🇪 von 40 auf 56%, 🇫🇷 von 14 auf 37%, 🇦🇹 von 50 auf 83%, 🇬🇷 von 21 auf 58%, 🇵🇱 von 7 auf 26%,🇨🇭 stabil, von 75 auf 73% etc. www.energy-charts.info/charts/renew...

Not just an attack on “experts” or science. It’s an attack on facts, knowledge, education or anything that could support someone questioning their iron rule. The bedrock of totalitarian, authoritarian regimes and dictatorships. That’s what RFK Jr is calling for. Only the dictator knows “the truth.”

Fix kein Fixpreis: Bundesrat unterliegt im Streit um den F-35-Kampfjet mit den USA Der Kauf der 36 Flugzeuge des Typs F-35 kostet bis zu 1,3 Milliarden Franken zusätzlich. Den «verbindlich garantierten Preis» der US-Regierung gibt es nicht. Der Bund prüft nun drei Optionen.

"Fixpreis" wird das Wort des Jahres. Garantiert.
Kann auch als Steigerungsform von "unfähig" gebraucht werden.

Quallen legen komplettes Atomkraftwerk in Frankreich lahm Ein Quallenschwarm hält sich in Küstennähe auf und gerät in die Filtertrommeln eines Atomkraftwerks. Jetzt steht das AKW still – ausgerechnet mitten in einer Hitzewelle.

#Atomausfall in #Gravelines

Quallenschwärme verstopfen Filter der Kühlwasserversorgung in 4 Reaktoren. 2 weitere im Wartungsstillstand.

#Quallen legen komplettes #Atomkraftwerk lahm

Mitten in einer #Hitzewelle, in der vermutlich weitere #AKW gedrosselt werden müssen.

Sommer in der Stadt #Basel

Konservative: Technologie wird uns vor dem Klimawandel retten!

"Oh? Cool! Wir haben viele Technologien! Wärmepumpen, E-Autos, Windräder ... "

Konservative: Nein, doch nicht DIE! Andere ... die bestimmt irgendwann kommen werden! Wir sollten uns nicht festlegen und solange weiter Fossile fördern.

Feindbild Elite Der Kolumnist und FDP-Landrat plädiert dafür, Exzellenz anzustreben – und zwar in jedem Bereich. Es sei richtig, hohe Ansprüche zu stellen.

Eine lesenswerter Beitrag.

‘Self-termination is most likely’: the history and future of societal collapse An epic analysis of 5,000 years of civilisation argues that a global collapse is coming unless inequality is vanquished

For thousands of years, we have been parasitised, exploited and destroyed by elites. Our survival depends on overthrowing them.
Fascinating article by @dpcarrington.bsky.social
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The humbling of green Europe Europe’s hard right is pushing the continent’s climate consensus hard. The response so far is tepid

Europe’s hard right, like America’s, has come to loathe renewable energy. It is unreliable, they say, and too expensive. Now parties on the centre-right are saying things that sound increasingly similar

Labour’s carbon-capture scheme will be Starmer’s white elephant: a terrible mistake costing billions | George Monbiot The supposedly green project – brainchild of the previous Tory government – will increase emissions, not reduce them, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

2. The reason is as grim as you could imagine: a cynical and staggeringly expensive greenwashing scheme dreamt up by the fossil fuel industry and packaged as a "climate solution": the supposed "Carbon Capture and Storage" scheme the government is funding. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...