Neil Gilbert

New newer. I think we’ve added four or five since I posted this in June.

like I still think on a nigh daily basis about the one about the bon iver song title being smash your face on the keyboard

damn man I missed your tweets

The 12th Biannual Conference of @biogeography.bsky.social is coming to the beautiful city of Aarhus, Denmark in January 2026! Abstract submissions are now open until Sept 1. Attendance is capped at 400—submit early to secure your spot! More details below. conferences.au.dk/tibs-aarhus-...

this is probably in the "being an academic 101" syllabus but I've found that even reviewers who are completely wrong or missed the point can provide an opportunity to improve wording so that other readers are less likely to make the same error, even if you don't do what they ask

Beyond Species Richness for Biological Conservation Recent global policy developments have highlighted the need for straightforward, robust, and meaningful biodiversity metrics. However, much of conservation science is dominated by the use of a single....

Happy to share new work from the lab and a wonderful group of co-authors:

We argue that conservation biology needs to move beyond the current focus on species richness metrics.

While this has been argued before, we highlight the unappreciated impacts of using richness for a variety of problems:

Stronger El Niños reduce tropical forest arthropod diversity and function Nature - Time-series data from tropical forests tracking weather and declines in arthropod diversity and function show that fluctuations in species were largely dependent on their El Niño...

New article out today in Nature - intensified El Niño events under climate change appear to be chipping away at tropical forest arthropod diversity.

This is already leading to substantial losses in arthropod function in primary forests across the tropics.

rdcu.be/ezAxP

Assistant Professor of Biology The Biology Department at Oberlin College invites applications for a full-time tenure track faculty position in the College of Arts and Sciences in conservation ecology. Initial appointment to this po...

🚨🚨 New tenure track position in #ConservationBiology @oberlincollege.bsky.social in the #Biology department--come join us, and contribute to our brand new Environmental Science major too! #biologyjobs #ecologyjobs

jobs.oberlin.edu/postings/16671

Do birds tune their songs to their hearing?

Is there tight coevolution between avian vocal signals and hearing-or do signallers and perceivers evolve more loosely?

It turns out perfect tuning is not required...

Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

#bioacoustics
#prattle 💬
#ornithology 🪶

Can we identify animal behaviours from camera traps without training new AI models? Post provided by Gaspard Dussert. My name is Gaspard Dussert, and I am a PhD student at the Université Lyon 1, working in the Laboratory of Biometry and Evolutionary Biology (LBBE). My research com…

Check out our latest blog!

Find out more about identifying animal behaviours from camera traps without training new AI models! 📸 🌍 🧪

Three decades of declines restructure butterfly communities in the Midwestern United States | PNAS Insects are declining worldwide. These declines have been documented across taxonomic groups and are worrisome given ecosystem services provided by...

More bad news for butterflies. Our new paper led by Wendy Leuenberger shows common species are declining even more rapidly than rare ones. @ZipkinLab

Three decades of declines restructure butterfly communities in the Midwestern United States | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2501340122

Are you planning on attending the @amornith.bsky.social (American Ornithological Society) #AOS25 meeting in St. Louis this year?

I'm making a Starter Pack of attendees so we can easily follow each other. Attending the meeting and want on the list? Comment here or DM me! go.bsky.app/3dybD1a

🙋‍♂️🙏

nothing like the adrenaline rush of going to submit your manuscript & the abstract is 150 words over the limit 💀💀💀

Close up of cover of 1895 book, North American Shore Birds, by Daniel Giraud Elliot, showing a breeding-plumage Spoon-billed sandpiper

Cover of 1895 book, North American Shore Birds, by Daniel Giraud Elliot

Spoon-billed sandpiper on the *cover* of "North American Shore Birds" from 1895! Now one of the rarest birds in the world (<450 adults), this lists only 2 North American records, both from Kotzebue Peninsula, Alaska. All known breeding locations are across the Bering Strait in Russia 🦉🌍🧪 1/3

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/...

I’m recruiting graduate students to join my lab at the University of New Orleans starting in January or September 2026!
If you're at #Evol2025 and curious about my research, come to my talk on Saturday at 11:30 AM in Macroevolution & Diversification II.
Contact me if interested.
claramuntlab.org

Thrilled to share our new article in @pnas.org highlighting global gaps in where we study animal movement—and outlining the next generation of smart bio-loggers.

👉 Read the full study in PNAS: lnkd.in/exP8NCeZ
1/

A new time tree of birds reveals the interplay between dispersal, geographic range size, and diversification Flight may affect the dispersal and evolution of birds. Using a new evolutionary tree, Claramunt et al. find that efficient fliers have broader geographic ranges, and speciation reduces range size, bu...

Happy to share our latest paper in which we use a new big phylogeny of birds to analyze the relationships between dispersal, geographic range size and diversification rates across all birds. See also post by
‪@sheardcat.bsky.social‬ and @josephtobias.bsky.social
www.cell.com/current-biol...

Was just sent this, author unknown. There's plenty to debate but they're right about evolutionary ecology. 🌏

Underwater image of a sea lion hunting salema fish in the Galapagos Marine Reserve.

Why do some say marine protected areas are just “paper parks”? And are industrial fishers actually staying out of these no-fishing zones?

New in @science.org: We used AI + satellite radar to find out. doi.org/10.1126/scie...

#ScienceResearch #OceanConservation #OceanTransparency #30x30 #Fisheries

So much of functional trait ecology has not considered intra-specific variation (often for lack of data), but here is a guide to using ITV when the data is available

Come work with us!

The department is an invigorating place and lots of conservation-focused work going on with the Conservation Research Institute and Cambridge Conservation Initiative. The students are fabulous!

Our new paper published today in Current Biology shows that immediate international cooperation is needed to conserve the eastern North American monarch butterfly.

www.cell.com/current-biol...

New paper in Ecology! We show how to incorporate basically any animal behavior into ecological networks models: doi.org/10.1002/ecy....

Electroreception in treehoppers: How extreme morphologies can increase electrical sensitivity | PNAS The link between form and function of an organism&rsquo;s morphology is usually apparent or intuitive. However, some clades of organisms show remarkable ...

Why do treehoppers look so weird?! Our latest paper, out this week in @pnas.org, suggests a perhaps unexpected reason - static electricity ⚡ We show that treehoppers can detect the electrostatic cues of predators and that their crazy shapes may boost their electrosensitivity! doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

The nutritional content of anthropogenic resources affects wildlife disease dynamics Synopsis. Wildlife have become increasingly reliant on human-supplemented food, affecting interactions between individuals and subsequently pathogen transm

New paper out modelling how the nutritional content of wild bird foods could affect disease transmission - a nice follow-up application of our Molecular Ecology study showing that food quality can affect immune function and disease tolerance.
doi.org/10.1093/icb/... @durantlab.bsky.social

Read our latest paper on the application of macroecological theory to better understand human impact on biodiversity, great collaborative work led by @pierregauz.bsky.social
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Global incidence of female birdsong is predicted by territoriality and biparental care in songbirds - Nature Communications Elaborate traits like birdsong are thought to be sexually selected in males but are poorly understood in females. This study shows that year-round territoriality and biparental care are selected for f...

What life history and behavioral traits predict female bird song at a global scale?

Our collaborative paper let by Karan Odom and out today in @natcomms.nature.com helps to answer that question

@josephtobias.bsky.social @sheardcat.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The WildCo Lab @wildco.bsky.social is recruiting 2 postdocs in quantitative ecology to work on mammal population estimation and monitoring from camera trap data. 🐺🐻🦌📷📈
Please share the word or apply to join us at UBC in lovely Vancouver, Canada!
wildlife.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2025/0...