Tharaka

Tailored policies for perennial woody crops are crucial to advance sustainable development - Nature Sustainability Perennial woody crops are important sources of food that can provide ecosystem benefits through their long-lived nature and structural complexity. This Perspective provides a roadmap to harness the po...

“We’re missing an opportunity to leverage tree crops to address some of the biggest environmental and social challenges of our time,” says Carlos Martínez-Núñez, a researcher at @ebdonana.bsky.social and coordinator of the study.

Press release: www.ebd.csic.es/en/outreach/...

Article 👇

Biodiversity in the city: TEE Lab research featured in The Straits Times We are proud to share that recent research from the Tropical Ecology and Entomology Lab (TEE Lab) at the Asian School of the Environment (ASE), NTU, was featured in The Straits Times as part of the SG...

We are proud to share that recent research from #TEELab at Asian School of the Environment, NTU, was featured in The Straits Times as part of the SG60 special on Singapore’s “City in Nature” vision 🌳🏢🌳

teelabntu.wixsite.com/home/post/bi...

Complementing urban agriculture and green spaces is important for ecosystem functions and biodiversity in cities: A systematic review and meta‐analysis Urban agriculture is in an intermediate state between traditional urban green spaces and conventional rural farms in terms of environmental impacts, so that its contribution to urban sustainability r....

🌿 Excited to share our new study showing that integrating urban agriculture with other green spaces can enhance biodiversity and ecosystem functions in cities!
👏 Led by Emilio, Zeyu & Sihao
📖 Read more: doi.org/10.1002/2688...
#UrbanEcology @teelab.bsky.social

🎓 Celebrating Dr. ong Xin Rui and dr. Tharaka S. Priyadarshana’s Graduation from TEELab 🎉 This month, we proudly celebrated the graduation of Dr. Ong Xin Rui and Dr. Tharaka S. Priyadarshana, who have both been conferred the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)! Their achievements are a te...

So proud of these two amazing Dr's and excited for their next adventures ❤️ 🤩🎓🎉 @teelab.bsky.social NTU Asian School of the Environment first graduating PhD students 🥳 @tharakasp.bsky.social @xinruiong.bsky.social

teelabntu.wixsite.com/home/post/ce...

City Road Verges Rich in Flowers and Cut Less Often Improve Butterfly Diversity | Happy Eco News City Road Verges Rich in Flowers and Cut Less Often Improve Butterfly Diversity. New research led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) reveals that simple and space-efficient...

Today, we have a guest post by Tharaka S. Priyadarshana, a Research Fellow, who writes about how adding vegetation to road verges can improve butterfly population sizes.

Read the article here: happyeconews.com/city-road-ve...

#happyeconews @tharakasp.bsky.social

Which Kind of Science Reform What hope is there for science reform, if we can't agree on what to reform? Right now, principles are more important than practices.

How can we reform science? I have some ideas. But I am not sure you’ll like them, because they don’t promise much. elevanth.org/blog/2025/07...

Butterflies benefit from roadside greenery in cities, finds Singapore study Reducing the cutting of plants in road verges and having a greater variety of flowering plants in them improves butterfly numbers and diversity.

Butterflies benefit from roadside greenery in cities, finds Singapore study
@teelab.bsky.social
@tharakasp.bsky.social
#insects #urbanisation #connectivity #entomology #butterflies
www.ntu.edu.sg/research/res...

Huge congratulations to Dr. @xinruiong.bsky.social & Dr. @tharakasp.bsky.social on receiving their graduation scrolls and transcripts! A proud moment for their supervisor @eleslade.bsky.social #TEELab

(Media Feature) Science Talk: Beyond bees and butterflies – why South-east Asia must step up on insect conservation We had the amazing opportunity to contribute a commentary for The Straits Times on our recent publication in Ecology Letters, "Identifying the Knowledge and Capacity Gaps in Southeast Asian Insect Con...

Beyond bees and butterflies: Why SE Asia must boost insect consevation. Our article in the Straits Times. teelabntu.wixsite.com/home/post/me... @xinruiong.bsky.social @teelab.bsky.social #insects #Entomology #conservation

My 4th PhD chapter is out! Flower-rich, less-cut road verges support urban butterflies🦋 authors.elsevier.com/a/1khHFcUG5a...
teelabntu.wixsite.com/home/post/fl...
doi.org/10.1016/j.la...
🙏 @eleslade.bsky.social @teelab.bsky.social

Quantifying disturbance effects on ecosystem services in a changing climate - Nature Ecology & Evolution A generalizable, functional-trait-based approach for quantifying the effects of disturbances to ecosystem services and economic outcomes, including under climate change, highlights the need for incorp...

Brief interruption in my/our doom scrolling/posting to share a paper I'm really proud of that has taken almost a decade with the very patient @exconomist.bsky.social @katehelmstedt.bsky.social P. Reich, S. Polasky & K. Boersma
www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/n

Flower-rich, less-cut road verges support butterflies in urban environments Urban road verges, often overlooked as simple roadside greenery, can serve as valuable habitats for butterflies and other insect pollinators (Figure 1). Our recent study explored how these narrow gree...

Flower-rich, less-cut road verges support #butterflies in #urban environments. Our new paper in Landscape and Urban Planning using causal inference methods to assess #biodiversity in urban green spaces. Led by @tharakasp.bsky.social @teelab.bsky.social 🦋🌼🛣
teelabntu.wixsite.com/home/post/fl...

Congratulations on your PhD, @xinruiong.bsky.social – so proud of you and all you've achieved! 🍾🥂🎉

I’m forever grateful to my amazing supervisor, @eleslade.bsky.social, for her invaluable guidance, belief in me, and unwavering encouragement! 🙏

🎉Heartiest Congratulations, Dr Tharaka!! We are super happy and proud of Dr Tharaka S. Priyadarshana and his successful defense of his PhD thesis, "Conserving invertebrate biodiversity in agricultural and urban landscapes". His research is a...

🎉Heartiest Congratulations, Dr @tharakasp.bsky.social!!!

teelabntu.wixsite.com/home/post/he...

Truly grateful for all the support from my best friend, @xinruiong.bsky.social 🙏

🎉 Congratulations, Dr. @tharakasp.bsky.social on successfully defending his PhD! ✨ Your dedication to conserving #invertebrate #biodiversity in #agricultural & #urban landscapes is truly inspiring! Proud supervisor @eleslade.bsky.social 😎 #TEELab #phdunlocked

📢 Exciting news! 🥳
Dr. @xinruiong.bsky.social has successfully defended her PhD on advancing #insect #conservation in Southeast Asia 🪲🧬
#TEELab @eleslade.bsky.social

teelabntu.wixsite.com/home/post/dr...

🎉 Huge congratulations to Dr. @xinruiong.bsky.social on successfully defending her PhD! ✨ Her work on #integrative approaches to address data, knowledge & capacity gaps in SE Asia #insect #conservation is a major step for #biodiversity research. Proud supervisor @eleslade.bsky.social 😎 #TEELab #phd

Our new paper, based on data from 1,705 studies, shows that pesticides are toxic to organisms they are not intended to harm, including fungi, microbes, plants, insects, & vertebrates such as ourselves. Questions the wisdom of applying over 3 million tonnes of them every year...

Causal Inference With Observational Data and Unobserved Confounding Variables As ecology tackles progressively larger problems, we are moving beyond the scales at which randomised controlled experiments are feasible. Using observational data for causal inference raises the pro...

Do you ignore the effects of #ConfoundingVariables in your models? Do you remove correlated variables because of a statistical test rather than causal reasoning? If so, read this paper by @jebyrnes.bsky.social and @lauradee.bsky.social! #AcademicSky 🧪🌏

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

📖Published📖

Our new research article demonstrates how you might combine expert knowledge with causal diagrams and superpopulation models to mitigate geographic biases in biodiversity monitoring data 🌎 🧪 Read it here 👇

https://buff.ly/3C2ZKws

Tropical forest clearance impacts biodiversity and function, whereas logging changes structure The impacts of degradation and deforestation on tropical forests are poorly understood, particularly at landscape scales. We present an extensive ecosystem analysis of the impacts of logging and conve...

New study out in @science.org combining a massive #biodiversity dataset from SAFE Project & SEARRP science, showing that logged forest is still valuable for biodiversity. Happy that @teelab.bsky.social #dungbeetle data could contribute to this.
Read more here
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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This review provides an overview of recent developments in computational methods in #LandscapeEcology

It covers topics like spatial patterns, connectivity, landscape genetics, and more.

Read the full paper: https://buff.ly/41xU6wx

#Ecology #ComputationalMethods #Research

Tailored policies for perennial woody crops are crucial to advance sustainable development Nature Sustainability - Perennial woody crops are important sources of food that can provide ecosystem benefits through their long-lived nature and structural complexity. This Perspective provides...

Grateful to contribute to this incredible project published in @naturesustain.bsky.social, led by Carlos, showcasing how woody crops are vital for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals 🌍 🌳 Check out the full paper here: rdcu.be/d39od #TreeCrops #Sustainability #SDGs @teelab.bsky.social

Happy Holidays & Goodbye 2024! Towards the end of 2024, the TEE Lab went for a scenic late afternoon walk along the Southern Ridges before ending it off with a delicious Vietnamese dinner. Check out this photo stream our fun walk a...

Happy New Year from @teelab.bsky.social. Here's to more fun in 2025! teelabntu.wixsite.com/home/post/ha...

Graphical abstract showing the identified knowledge and capacity gaps in insect occurrence records, insect studies and #conservation posts. Proposed solutions to address these gaps are listed: Promote better coverage of all insect groups, increase public engagement and local monitoring, apply integrative taxonomy approaches, encourage regional collaboration and increase funding and political recognition.

Ushering in 2025 is our latest publication in Ecology Letters! Through a quantitative assessment of insect occurrence records, insect studies and '#conservation' posts, we identified gaps in five areas and suggest potential solutions to enable insect conservation efforts in Southeast Asia. (1/n)

A Graphical Catalog of Threats to Validity: Linking Social... : Epidemiology lenging, but these skills are often glossed over in training. Campbell and Stanley’s framework for causal inference has been extraordinarily influential in social science training programs but has rec...

Threats to validity (with helpful DAGs)

journals.lww.com/epidem/fullt...

OK, here is a very rough draft of a tutorial for #Bayesian #SEM using #brms for #rstats. It needs work, polish, has a lot of questions in it, and I need to add a references section. But, I think a lot of folk will find this useful, so.... jebyrnes.github.io/bayesian_sem... (use issues for comments!)

Green spaces provide substantial but unequal urban cooling globally - Nature Communications A 1.5-fold gap exists in green space cooling adaptation between cities in the Global South and North. Enhancing urban green space quality and quantity offers vast potential for improving outdoor cooli...

Green spaces provide substantial but unequal urban cooling globally - check our new study across the 500 largest cities worldwide, recently out in Nature Communications
nature.com/articles/s41... 🥵🍃🏙️🏠🌐🌳#heatstress #climatechange #greenspace #urbandesign #luxuryeffect