Eric Wood

Well deserved!

Rapid butterfly declines across the United States during the 21st century Numerous declines have been documented across insect groups, and the potential consequences of insect losses are dire. Butterflies are the most surveyed insect taxa, yet analyses have been limited in ...

Rapid butterfly declines across the United States during the 21st century | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Loss of pollinator diversity consistently reduces reproductive success for wild and cultivated plants Nature Ecology & Evolution - A meta-analysis finds that decreasing diversity of pollinator species has a negative affect on multiple measures of plant reproductive success, with wild plant...

[new paper] You probably suspected that loss of pollinator diversity consistently reduces reproductive success for wild and cultivated plants, but here we quantify it: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We tallied a little over 70 species! Can you best us?

Nature | San Diego: America’s Wildest City | Season 43 | Episode 3 Experience San Diego, where dazzling biodiversity thrives amidst a transformed urban landscape.

For you SoCal people, if you have not seen this episode of 'Nature' (San Diego - America's Wildest City), you need to. My Ecosystems of California class will be watching it today discussing the awesome ecology, and identifying the plants, & wildlife featured.

www.pbs.org/video/san-di...

**FORESTGEO STAFF SCIENTIST POSITION!** We are hiring a Research Ecologist to focus on Central and South American Forest Dynamics, to be based at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Smithsonian staff scientist positions are excellent, as is the ForestGEO team! Come be our colleague!

Title page from Oak Origins: From Acorns to Species and the Tree of Life, by Andrew L Hipp, illustrated by Rachel D Davis, with forward by Béatrice Chassé. Title page features a Hill's oak leaf (Quercus ellipsoidalis) illustrated in pen and ink with watercolor wash by Rachel Davis. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/O/bo236998258.html

I'll be giving a free webinar Thurs, Dec 5, 7 p.m. Central time for the Minnesota Native Plant Society on the topics of #oak reproduction, #species, #hybrids, & #phylogeny / #treeOfLife, from my new book (press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...).

Join us, and pls share!

us06web.zoom.us/j/6977108818...

A few years ago, postdoc Gail MacInnis led this great project showing that urban beekeeping doesn't help "save the bees" (and can do more harm than good). peerj.com/articles/146...

@ndevere.bsky.social Hi - we do a bunch of urban pollinator work. Would be happy to network with you and others in the starter pack.

As usual, students in my lab have been busy with many projects. One that has taken off recently is our NSF-funded urban food webs project, which generally explores relationships between native/nonnative oaks, insects, and birds right on our LA campus. A fun project with long-term data potential!

A flower that mimics aerial leaf litter (e.g., dead leaves trapped in vines, branches etc) tricks an aerial leaf litter specialist beetle into pollinating it. Super crazy and cool pollination syndrome.

Assistant/Associate Professor: Marine Mammal Biologist The Marine Mammal Institute invites applications for a part-time (0.75 FTE), 12-month, tenure-track Assistant/Associate Professor position. This position is located in Newport, Oregon.Appointment at t...

The Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University, affiliated with our Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences Department, is hiring an Assistant / Associate Prof. Join us!

jobs.oregonstate.edu/postings/161...

Thanks for putting this together. If there is room, I'd love to be added.

Snapshot from GOES satellite of bomb cyclone and atmospheric river over northeastern Pacific today.

Remarkable view of #BombCyclone west of Oregon & Washington and associated #AtmosphericRiver west of California this PM. Fortunately, the strongest winds will remain well offshore, but very heavy rainfall is likely across portions of northern CA into weekend. #CAwx #ORwx #WAwx

Cat "What have you done?"

Birding is the best.

If you are interested in #rstats, hierarchical modeling in ecology, and in particular occupancy models, then check out my blog!

The one post that gets the most traffic is this one here on how to combine presence-only and detection/non-detection data. 🧪

masonfidino.com/bayesian_int...

Nah, not hard to study. People are definitely doing it (like @dlnarango.bsky.social, etc) - but, still pretty niche. Lots of cool pollinator-floral stuff and tons of neat insect-host plant work - but, less so on who eats who - at least concerning bird research.

Urban food webs (plants->insects->birds)

People are suggesting Bluesky is just an echo chamber. Possibly. But there needs to be a place to network with friends and colleagues and learn about amazing science and ways to improve our planet. That used to be the other site - and it was amazing. That is long gone and now this is where it's at.

🚨Looking for two PhD students to join our lab in Fall' 25🚨

If you know someone that loves/works with Neotropical birds and/or species interactions, and is looking for a PhD please share this with them! (application deadline is January 3rd).

More info here --> montanolab.com/join-us/

A really interesting critique of the ‘luxury effect’ in urban ecology studies and a discussion on an alternative framework to understand variability in biodiversity within cities.

Bluesky and fellow #urbanists - I am an ecologist at Cal State Los Angeles. My research is focusing more and more on urbanist issues, e.g., walkability, urban design, etc., and the intersection between benefits for people and biodiversity. I'd love to connect with others thinking of similar things.

💡 Tip: You can set your website as your username on Bluesky!

This is one form of self-verification, and we especially encourage official organizations and brands to do this! Examples include @npr.org @react.dev @duolingobrasil.com.br.

Here's our guide for how to do this:

go.bsky.app/HKhn9FZ just made a starterpack for LA Urbanists. These are accounts that I followed on Twitter that often (but not always) chimed in on LA urbanist issues like housing, bikes, transit, and the environment.

Share your videos with friends, family, and the world YouTube

youtube.com/watch?v=06eU...

This is amazing - a cool surf gang in Pakistan. Send these guys your spare boards and lets get these guys to the Olympics.

Cool study finding differences in herbivory between island and mainland sites - but no real vertebrate predation effects. We have an oak exclosure experiment going too and are finding strong predation effects related to herbivory patterns. Will be interesting to further compare with this neat study.

Some amazing crossbill vagrancy going on in North America, White-winged Crossbills arriving on Bermuda over 1000km from the mainland! Worth scrutinising any “Two-barred Crossbills” that turn up near shipping lanes…

A map of flight paths emanating from breeding colony of gulls, with this caption: Early on, LifeWatch noticed something odd. Most gulls were making daily trips to Mouscron, a city on the French border 65 km away. They went to investigate and found the birds bingeing on discarded snacks at the Roger & Roger potato factory.

Today in relatable science: Gulls making a mysterious daily trip that turned out to be to a potato chip factory

I haven’t posted in a while, what have I been up to… well for starters Frontiers finally published our urban coyote connectivity paper after almost a year of being accepted. Bit criminal, but we are happy its out & somehow still relevant considering we submitted in 2022 doi.org/10.1002/fee....