Louis Backstrom

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....

20.11.2025 18:20 — 👍 44    🔁 19    💬 2    📌 3

Far eastern curlew illustration by @terngirl

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

20.11.2025 08:05 — 👍 7    🔁 3    💬 0    📌 0

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

17.11.2025 23:11 — 👍 7    🔁 4    💬 1    📌 0

GitHub - hadley/genzplyr: dplyr but make it bussin fr fr no cap dplyr but make it bussin fr fr no cap. Contribute to hadley/genzplyr development by creating an account on GitHub.

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.

06.11.2025 23:25 — 👍 460    🔁 168    💬 43    📌 56

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

16.10.2025 08:18 — 👍 27    🔁 9    💬 3    📌 0

Home - ISEC 2027 Call for Workshop Submissions, Deadline Nov 15th -- Submit Workshop Proposal Call for Roundtable Submissions, Deadline Nov 15th -- Submit Roundtable Proposal The International Statistical Ecology Conf...

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 📈🦋🐾

13.10.2025 17:52 — 👍 14    🔁 13    💬 2    📌 0

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.

15.10.2025 08:02 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

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....

13.10.2025 22:54 — 👍 131    🔁 43    💬 10    📌 4

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.

14.10.2025 10:25 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Swainson's Thrush perched in a tree at Cuithir, Barra. Photo taken by Louis Backstrom.

View over the small patch of woodland where we saw the Swainson's Thrush at Cuithir, Barra.

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

24.09.2025 17:27 — 👍 25    🔁 3    💬 1    📌 0

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.

13.10.2025 08:33 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

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). ⤵️

13.10.2025 08:33 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

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! ⤵️

13.10.2025 08:33 — 👍 7    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

Detections of Rare Species Lead Citizen Scientists to Initiate Data Recording Aim Citizen science data are increasingly used to monitor biodiversity but come with several challenges that can impair accurate ecological conclusions. We explore how observers' preferences for cer...

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.... ⤵️

13.10.2025 08:33 — 👍 21    🔁 4    💬 1    📌 0