Brian Maitner

Fair. And since these are McFarlane figures, they're really more statues than action figures anyway, so not much point in opening them.

The next stage of biodiversity informatics: community-driven synthesis and integration of biodiversity databases Abstract. Developing a predictive science of the biosphere depends heavily on the rapidly expanding biodiversity data that are commonly stored in biodivers

Interested in #Biodiversity #Informatics? Cool new work led by Xiao Feng examines the current state of the field and proposes how to improve things!

doi.org/10.1093/bios...

Mike's right, I open my toys so I can play with them ;)

Tree species exposure to novel climates in #Florida by end-of-century. The green dot indicates @usf.edu's Tampa campus. Data are from our new paper in @pnas.org (doi.org/10.1073/pnas...)

New in @pnas.org we assess future #climate exposure for 32,089 species of #trees🌳
🔹69% face unprecedented climates in ≥10% of range
🔹In taiga & Amazonia >50% of local tree diversity exposed
🔹 31% of species retain >90% of range in stable climates -> important climate refugia♨️
doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

The total amount of public land that Trump wants to make available for sale is equivalent to more than TWICE the size of CALIFORNIA.

All to pay for tax cuts to some of the richest people in world history.

We're going to find out why a Christian nationalist “Appeal to Heaven” flag—linked to Jan. 6 and evangelical extremism—was flown on a federal building.

We’re filing a FOIA request to get answers from the SBA.

Also note that even folks who work outside of China may find this work useful! Given the large number of species and higher taxa shared between the flora of China and other regions around the world, this can be very helpful in imputing missing traits in other reigons.

This paper is part of a growing number that focus on plant traits in a particular region to try make progress on the Sisyphean task of assembling plant trait information. This seems like a great way of mobilizing relevant datasets.

Chinese Seed Trait Database: a curated resource for diaspore traits in the Chinese flora Click on the article title to read more.

Cool new #OpenScience dataset focusing on #seed #traits in #China led by Hao-Yu Wang!

doi.org/10.1111/nph....

The paper, data, and code are all readily available (CC-BY), and the code makes good use of R markdown to document the analyses used in the paper.

Please pass along - postdoc position! with our working group on #FunctionalTraits and rarity. This is part of the FREE (Functional Rarity in Ecology and Evolution) working group led by Cyrille Violle in Montpellier France 🧪🌐🌾 emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/U...

On June 15 in 1940, the USSR occupied Lithuania. The USSR did not care about international treaties. Deportations, murders, and terrors followed for the next 50 years.
Russia took on USSR's legacy, waging wars against its neighbours, yet to be contained.

Everyone is awesome! Happy Pride Month!

Sen. Alex Padilla was forcefully removed and handcuffed for daring to ask a question at a Kristi Noem press conference — a chilling abuse of power.

We've previously warned about her extremist religious views and the danger she poses to our country.

ffrf.org/news/release...

Birds of the World - AviList: A Unified Global Checklist of the World’s Birds is Now Available AviList, a unified global checklist of birds, that provides the most current and authoritative taxonomy of birds around the world was released today by experts in taxonomy, nomenclature, and bioinform...

A monumental taxonomy unification effort has just been published - thanks to all those who've collaborated for years to make this happen!
birdsoftheworld.org/bow/news/avi...

MOBS 1.0: A Database of Interspecific Variation in Marine Organismal Body Sizes Motivation Body size is a fundamental trait influencing an organism's life history, ecology, physiology and evolutionary dynamics. While extensive body-size databases exist for terrestrial vertebrat...

🧵New paper + open database drop!
The Marine Organismal Body Size ( #MOBS ) Database is now live—85,000+ marine species, from plankton to whales, with standardized size data.
A huge leap for biodiversity, conservation, and climate science. #science #marinelife onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Wonderful new trophic #rewilding poster: naturbeskyttelse.dk/2025/05/22/n... #restoration #biodiversity #megafauna #natureart

Effect of climate on traits of dominant and rare tree species in the world’s forests Nature Communications - Species’ traits and environmental conditions determine the abundance of tree species across the globe. Here, the authors find that dominant tree species are taller and...

Publication out on the effect of climate on traits of dominant and rare tree species in the world’s forests in natcomms.nature.com‬rdcu.be/enby2

Proposed cut to NSF Biology budget is 70%.

70%. Seventy.

Call your senators & reps nonstop. Give them numbers on NSF impact for state/district. tableau.external.nsf.gov/views/NSFbyN... explain this will decimate the economy if their districts, especially if it has a major research univ. 🧪

Graphs showing 25 years of budgets for the National Institute of Health, NASA, and the NSF. In all cases, the proposed budget for next year is far, far below any year of the previous quarter century.

There are 2 previous historical cases of countries destroying their science and universities, crippling them for decades: Lysenkoism in the USSR and Nazi Germany. The Trump administration will be the 3rd.
It's not just budgets but research, institutions, expertise, and training the next generation.

Former NSF Director Warns Of Fragile Future For American Science Former NSF Director France Córdova reflects on the promise of science, the limits of philanthropy, and why disinvestment puts America’s scientific future at risk.

“All of science is underfunded—and now we really mean it.”

Former NSF Director France Córdova on the future of American science.

My piece for Forbes: www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

Open, Reproducible and Transparent Science in Ecology Course on reproducible workflows to manage, produce, use, and reuse FAIR data

Interested in #OpenScience, #reproducibility, #FAIRdata, #GBIF, #biodiversity data, and #AI? In November, we are organizing a course for early career ecologists in the home of the reindeer! 🌱🏔️🐑🦌🦋🦇🐞🌾💻
www.uib.no/en/rg/EECRG/...

Ukraine hits bridge linking Crimea to Russia with underwater explosives Operation ‘severely damaged’ base of Crimean bridge, opened by Putin in 2018, Kyiv’s SBU security service says

Slava Ukraini www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

New preprint from the lab! 🧪 Maria Isabel Arce-Plata et al. track 20 years of Species Habitat Index change for 237 species of birds, 68 mammals, and 450 plants in the tropical dry forest of 🇨🇴. Forest conversion to pasture was the largest driver of habitat loss.
ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

I've started a website with simple graphs tracking how the US economy is doing in terms of unemployment, economic sentiment, and inflation. It will be updated monthly as new data come in. Feedback is welcome! #EconSky

usbarometer.com

Today, we remember Romas Kalanta, a herald of freedom. 52 years ago, a 19 year old student set himself on fire in the streets of Kaunas shouting "Freedom for #Lithuania!".

🇱🇹 Deputy FM Gabija Grigaitė-Daugirdė welcomed the historic decision by the CM of @coe.int to establish a Special Tribunal for the crime of aggression against Ukraine: "This will be the first tribunal since Nuremberg to address the crime of aggression – the source of all other international crimes."

The licoread #rpackage helps you import raw #Licor datafiles into #R, and is now on #CRAN. Conveniently it seemlessly works together with the #fluxible package to calculate your fluxes.

@jogaudard.bsky.social is on a roll!
#rstats #li-cor

“The NSF can be understood not only as a catalyst of scientific promise for national purpose, but also as a guarded response to fears about centralized control over knowledge and thought, shaped by the dark shadows of the Third Reich and the emerging Red Scare.”