Ashish Malik

What a result!! Huge congratulations to the amazing Hannah Spencer - everyone in Gorton and Denton has just made history. This result shows @greenparty.org.uk can win anywhere, that the politics of hope can win over the politics of hate & there is no longer any such thing as a Labour safe seat 💚

Photograph of Green party candidate Hannah Spencer taking a selfie of her along with Green Party leader Zach Polansky after she won the by election in Gorton and Denton, Manchester. along with the caption "Green Party takes Gorton and Denton from Labour in first ever Westminster by-election win".

We can now bring you the full voting tallies: Green Party - 14,980 Reform UK - 10,578 Labour Party - 9,364 Conservative Party - 706 Liberal Democrats - 653 Monster Raving Loony Party - 159 Advance UK - 154 Rejoin EU Party - 98 Libertarian Party - 47 Social Democratic Party - 46 Communist League - 29

For Europeans looking in:

- The Greens are the only party in England advocating a new EU referendum.
- Pro brexit Labour lost.
- Pro brexit, anti ECHR and right wing Reform party lost.

This might be a big moment in Britain - turning away from the far right.

Hope Beats Hate: Green Party Defeats Reform and Labour in Huge Gorton and Denton By-Election Victory A concerted political and media campaign to scare voters about a “Green Menace” winning this by-election failed, reports Adam Bienkov

In a battle between hope and hate, hope won out.

Why voters rejected the hateful politics of Reform and instead embraced the "Green Menace" in Gorton and Denton

bylinetimes.com/2026/02/27/h...

The MicrobeAtlas database: Global trends and insights into Earth’s microbial ecosystems MicrobeAtlas (www.microbeatlas.org) is an integrated, reference-based resource for truly planet-wide microbiomics, analyzing hundreds of thousands of microbial lineages across diverse environments, co...

MicrobeAtlas is now published in Cell. 🌐🌎🦠

Explore the paper and resource to see what large-scale microbiome data reveal about global ecological patterns:
www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

For a concrete application, see our recent work on “Community conservatism”:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I'll be presenting my group's research on how microbe mediate soil carbon accrual in agricultural soils. Join in!

Then & Now Portugal's Drug Decriminalization Key developments since Portugal decriminalized drugs in 2001 Overdose deaths 1999 369 2016|30 New HIV diagnoses due to injecting 2000 907 2017 18 Number of people incarcerated for drug offences 1999 2017 3,863 1,140 Sources: TheLancet, drugpolicy.org, EMCDDA, VHPA

Labour has been pushing lies about the Greens’ policy on reducing drug misuse. This is a policy that has already been very successful in Portugal. It has reduced harmful drug taking by ending the so-called “war on drugs”.

ECR Viromics Webinar Series flyer https://coms.osu.edu/webinars/ecr-viromics-webinar-series

I’ll be presenting at the next ECR Viromics Webinar on March 11 at 9 AM CT, highlighting a new tool I’ve been developing in the @karthik-a.bsky.social lab for scalable, automated discovery and curation of auxiliary viral genes: CheckAMG.

Details and registration here: coms.osu.edu/webinars/ecr...

🦠Delve into the world of microbial ecology with @ashish-malik.bsky.social & Josh Thurston in the first of @bes-soilecogroup.bsky.social's Soil Ecology Seminars

Sign up via the link below to hear all about the latest research in this area on Wednesday, 25 February

One hundred unanswered questions on the dispersal ecology of fungi Abstract. Fungi comprise millions of species that play numerous varied roles in Earth’s natural and managed ecosystems, engaging in a multitude of positive

New paper out today in the ISME | International Society for Microbial Ecology Journal and the first product from our ESIIL (Environmental Data Science Innovation and Impact Lab) working group on Fungal Dispersal. Check it out!

academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc...

New paper from my team detailing a greatly expanded genomic database of Asgard archaea revealing of high energy metabolism those related to eukaryotes! Led by @katyappler.bsky.social lots of help from @jameslingford.bsky.social @valdeanda.bsky.social @kassipan.bsky.social doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Finally out in @nature.com: a new piece of the puzzle of how complex life evolved. Lead by @archaeal.bsky.social & @katyappler.bsky.social. Great collab with @greening.bsky.social and @kassipan.bsky.social. More pieces to follow soon! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Introducing.... The Soil Ecology Seminar Series 2026!
Join us on Wednesday the 25th of February at 1 pm GMT for the first installment. We will delve into microbial ecology with exciting talks from Dr Ashish Malik and Josh Thurston:
Register your interest here: urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...

Our Associate Editor, @ashish-malik.bsky.social, is a speaker at the upcoming Soil Ecology Seminar! Don’t forget to register!

Congrats Justin.

Everyone knows that space and spatial structure is super important in shaping the Microverse 🌎🌍🌏 Check out this amazing review where @marcelbaecker.bsky.social and @bramvandijk.bsky.social et al bring together a huge body of knowledge @microverse.bsky.social @binfutrecht.bsky.social

ICOM2026 – Symposia Symposia The parallel symposia during ICOM2026 have been a work of the mycorrhizal community, representing submissions from >50 researchers from all stages of career from 18 countries. We are pr…

There are still a few weeks left to submit your abstract for @icom2026.bsky.social in Cairns, Australia. Consider applying to our special session on “Mycorrhizae and biogeochemical cycles under global change” (Session 23), co-organized by Prof. Tessa Camenzind and I.

icom2026.org/symposia/

Microbial growth rate is a stronger predictor of soil organic carbon than carbon use efficiency - Nature Ecology & Evolution Microbial carbon use efficiency is a strong predictor of soil organic carbon stocks. Here the authors reveal that the microbial growth rate is a more reliable and informative predictor, and that model...

Combining a global dataset of paired observations with outputs from four land surface models, the authors show that microbial growth rate is a more reliable and informative predictor of soil organic carbon than carbon use efficiency 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The ISME20 abstract submission deadline has been extended to 22 February. Microbial ecologists worldwide are invited to submit abstracts for oral, short talk, or poster presentations and contribute to the ISME20 programme.
isme-microbes.org/isme20-abstr...
#ISME20 #MicrobialEcology

JOB ALERT! Lecturer in Biological Sciences Come and join us in the world class Life Sciences Building at the University of Bristol! Closing date: Sunday 8 March

JOB ALERT! Lecturer in Biological Sciences Interested in our research areas? Click the link in our bio to discover more! Closing date: Sunday 8 March

JOB ALERT!

We are excited to announce that we are recruiting three new academics at lecturer level!

Click the link below for more info on how to apply, and don’t forget to explore our research themes too!

We look forward to receiving your applications!

www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...

We are recruiting three new lecturers!

Read on if you'd like to bring your passion for biology to @bristolbiosci.bsky.social at @bristoluni.bsky.social and join our team of ambitious, creative, inclusive and collaborative researcher–educators:

www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...

Attitude magazine. Zack with his arms crossed.

Absolutely honoured to be named @attitudemag.bsky.social trailblazer of the year in their #101 list.

As a gay man, I know it's a worrying time for our LGBTIQA+ community.

We are under attack.

When they come for one of us, they come for all of us. And we will stand together.

An Explicit Test of Kill the Winner: Protistan Grazing and Phage Lysis Differentially Impact Fast‐Growing Bacterial Taxa in the Coastal Antarctic We evaluated whether predators ‘kill the winner’ wherein protists and phages preferentially impact the most abundant members of bacterial assemblages over an austral summer with weekly dilution exper...

An Explicit Test of Kill the Winner: Protistan Grazing and Phage Lysis Differentially Impact Fast‐Growing Bacterial Taxa in the Coastal Antarctic enviromicro-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #jcampubs

We’re hiring: Research Group Leader in computational biology.

Are you generating more research ideas than you can explore? Lead cutting-edge AI & biology research at EMBL-EBI.

Apply by 11 April 2026: embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j...

#ScienceCareers @ewaldlab.org @embl.org

Tenure-Track Assistant Professor / Associate Professor in Bioinformatics and/or Computational Biology at Aarhus University, Denmark - Vacancy at Aarhus University Vacancy at Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics - BiRC - Bioinformatics Research Center, Aarhus University

Aarhus University is seeking a Tenure-Track Assistant/Associate Professor in Bioinformatics/Co… https://nat.au.dk/en/about-the-faculty/vacant-positions-and-career/job/tenure-track-assistant-professor-associate-professor-in-bioinformatics-and-or-computational-biology-at-aarhus-university-denmark #job

Microbial growth rate is a stronger predictor of soil organic carbon than carbon use efficiency - Nature Ecology & Evolution Microbial carbon use efficiency is a strong predictor of soil organic carbon stocks. Here the authors reveal that the microbial growth rate is a more reliable and informative predictor, and that model...

Soil microbes grow, respire, die. Because their biomass eventually becomes necromass, and necromass can be stabilized in soil, growth rate emerges as a powerful predictor of soil carbon: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Image from Twitter

The weekend weather report.

UK could ‘lose generation of scientists’ with cuts to projects and research facilities UK’s research funding body warned best scientists taking posts oversees due to lack of job stability at home Hundreds of early career researchers have warned that the UK will lose a generation of scientists after the announcement of significant cuts to physics projects and cutting edge research facilities. Scientists working in particle physics, astronomy and nuclear physics have been told their grants will be cut by nearly a third, with project leaders asked to report back on how their research would fare with cuts up to 60%. Continue reading...

UK could ‘lose generation of scientists’ with cuts to projects and research facilities

From death comes diversity - Nature Ecology & Evolution A high-throughput laboratory experiment tracking the assembly of soil-derived communities shows that species-rich bacterial necromass supports increasingly diverse communities, with each additional de...

From death comes diversity! 🦠🧪🌐🌏

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

Thanks for your intervention. The changes are so unfair to people who have already invested their life with the hope of getting a settlement. The trust in the system will be broken.

Yesterday I was in a room packed full of MPs imploring govt to rethink its proposed changes to ILR rules for migrants

Govt is planning to make unfair retrospective changes that are racist & classist

These would devastate the lives of many who have made this country their home