Ptilotus senarius hadn’t been seen since the 1960s. People thought it was extinct — until nature-enthusiast and horticulturist Aaron Bean came across it and shared an observation to iNaturalist. There, community members helped confirm what once seemed impossible: this species had survived.
A horticulturalist putting bands on birds in a remote part of QLD saw an interesting plant.
He uploaded photos to a #CitizenScience app, where a Queensland Herbarium botanist saw them and recognised a plant thought to be extinct:
connectsci.au/news/news-pa...
@ausjbotany.bsky.social #AusJBotany
Thrilled to be part of this new study that aims to derive a meaningful classification of distinct and recognisable Australian terrestrial bird communities. Lead by @martinemaron.bsky.social and Hannah Fraser with many other colleagues check it out here.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
MAJOR NEWS! We just launched an awesome new tool! The illustrated Birds of the World Phylogeny Explorer lets users trace any bird’s lineage, compare species relationships, and explore major evolutionary milestones with a click of a button. SHARE and EXPLORE! birdsoftheworld.org/bow/news/phy...
The @theseabirdgroup.bsky.social 1992 conference was sponsored by shortbread and whiskey!
We need more of this.
Great to attend #BES2025 in Edinburgh this week, and to have the opportunity to share some of my PhD work with conference attendees!
We churned through over 100 million radar samples to quantify the structure of migration through the airspaces across the United States: Just out in Ecology esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
Richard Fuller, winner of the #AOC2025 Serventy Medal, talks about migratory birds in Australia. From shorebirds that use the East Asian – Australasian Flyway to surreptitious night-time migrant, the story of bird migration is far richer than most of us realise. www.fullerlab.org
So excited to shared this project lead with @fredericddb.bsky.social and many enthusiastic ecologists. We played as predators and prey and with quite simple rules and were able to reproduce phenomenon observed in nature. doi.org/10.1111/2041...
@methodsinecoevol.bsky.social
Do you teach #rstats? Do your students complain about how lame and old-fashioned dplyr is? Don't worry: I have the solution for you: github.com/hadley/genzp....
genzplyr is dplyr, but bussin fr fr no cap.
Featuring a Desertas petrel that stunned scientists by chasing a tropical storm (see their incredible chase mapped here!), tiny nightingales that cross the Sahara twice a year, and Bewick's swans that have changed their stopovers and diet
The next International Statistical Ecology Conference (ISEC) will take place on January 8-15, 2027, in Mérida, México.
Calls for workshop and roundtable proposals now open, deadline Nov 15, 2025 (anywhere on earth).
Visit statisticalecology.org for more information. 🧪
Please share widely 📈🦋🐾
Variable: e.g. Carrion Crow -ve, Raven +ve, Rook/Hoodie CIs overlap 1.
For the very common stuff, you start to run into detectability effects - particularly in the BirdTrack analysis - where species are likely to be the first-recorded regardless of preference, given how common and obvious they are.
Large citizen science datasets are powerful tools for biodiversity science, but they may have biases. Nice new paper from @louisbackstrom.bsky.social et al. showing that for eBird and Birdtrack lists there is a tendency for rare species to be over-represented
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
A lot of common species are in that sweet spot. Skylark perhaps closest: 1.001 from the eBird analysis and 0.999 from the BirdTrack analysis. From a quick check through Table S1, other examples inc. Goldeneye, Blue Tit, Goldfinch, Little Egret, Kestrel, Fulmar, Bullfinch, Blackcap.
Brilliant trip to Barra and Colonsay (19th-23rd Sep) with @birdingscot.bsky.social, @louisbackstrom.bsky.social, and James Weeks. Some great birds over the course of the trip, with Stuart Beeby's Swainson's Thrush at Cuithir the undeniable highlight, and a lifer for all of us! 1/4
#BirdingScotland
In spite of these preferences leading to the overrepresentation of certain species in the eBird & BirdTrack datasets, we found that this bias had limited impacts on actual applications of the data (occupancy models). Even so, we urge consideration of observer bias in analyses of #citizenscience.
Rare #birds were significantly more likely to drive survey initiation, with other species-specific factors like novelty and charisma also potentially contributing, especially among more common species.
These observer preferences were most prevalent on short-duration surveys (less than 5 min). ⤵️
Using #citizenscience data from eBird @cornellbirds.bsky.social and BirdTrack @birdtrack.bsky.social @btobirds.bsky.social, we explore what drives birders to initiate semi-structured surveys on these two large-scale citizen science platforms.
The biggest factor: species rarity! ⤵️
Very pleased to share my first PhD paper, out now in @consbiog.bsky.social:
Backstrom, L. J., Drake, R. L., Worthington, H., & Johnston, A. (2025). Detections of Rare Species Lead Citizen Scientists to Initiate Data Recording. Diversity and Distributions, 31(10), e70103. doi.org/10.1111/ddi.... ⤵️
