Ashish Malik

Exclusive: US investigation points to likely US responsibility in Iran school strike, sources say Military investigators believe it is likely that U.S. forces were responsible for an apparent strike on an Iranian girls' school that killed scores of children on Saturday, two U.S. officials told Reu...

Reuters Exclusive

"U.S. military investigators believe it is likely that U.S. forces were responsible for an apparent strike on an Iranian girls' school."

"The strike would rank among the worst cases of civilian casualties in decades of U.S. conflicts in the ​Middle East."

We're searching for a new colleague in the Département de
@geographieudem.bsky.social! The department is looking for an Associate or Full Professor of Ocean and Climate Science.

fas.umontreal.ca/public/FAS/f...

I gave a talk on microbe-mediated carbon accrual in agri soils in the @bes-soilecogroup.bsky.social seminar series. A recording is available in the link below. @britishecologicalsociety.org

A new preprint with Matthew Schmitt, @kiseokmicro.bsky.social and Vincenzo Vitelli makes a huge step forward in learning functional groups of components in complex biological systems. It's dimension reduction that speaks to biological function. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

YouTube video by British Ecological Society The Soil Ecology Seminar Series - Microbial ecology

Last week was the first edition of our Soil Ecology Seminar Series! A big thanks to Josh Thurston and Ashish Malik @ashish-malik.bsky.social for their excellent talks and to everyone for joining! You can check out the recording here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDxT...

Join @berasymbionts.bsky.social , @tatsuyanobori.bsky.social and us for a postdoc on the remarkable developmental biology of symbiosis!

Applications are due March 25th 🪲🦠

@johninnescentre.bsky.social @thesainsburylab.bsky.social

The word ‘soil’ doesn’t feature once in Scotland’s thirty-one-page draft Climate Change Plan. Professor Neil Metcalfe BES Scottish Policy Group Chair

How do the Scottish Government's plans for achieving target carbon budgets stack up?

Our Scottish Policy Group recently responded to a consultation on the draft Climate Change Plan.

Nature security assessment on global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and national security This strategic assessment explores how global biodiversity loss and the collapse of critical ecosystems could affect the UK’s resilience, security and prosperity.

“Protecting & restoring ecosystems is easier, cheaper & more reliable”

The Government’s Nature Security report has been criticised, but this conclusion about the way ahead makes all the right noises

www.gov.uk/government/p...

Conversations With - Dr Ashish Malik When did you realise academia was the path for you? It wasn’t a carefully mapped-out plan. In fact, becoming an academic wasn’t even really on the radar at the beginning.

I had a conversation about my research, what inspired me to a career in academia, and my current research interests. Thanks to Edinburgh Innovations @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social

Also I've finally joined LinkedIn.

www.linkedin.com/pulse/conver...

Ancient symbiosis between plants and fungi: important insights for sustainable agriculture Low potassium and high nitrogen levels throw soils out of balance

A team led by ecologist @christinakaiser.bsky.social has discovered that mycorrhizal symbiosis is sensitive to imbalances of certain nutrients in the soil. The data come from an experiment that has been running for over 70 years.

www.univie.ac.at/en/news/pres...

🧵1/3 #PlantScience

🌍 Highest EVER Green Party Polling

➡️ Lowest Reform Polling Since April 2025

➡️ Lowest Reform lead since July 2025

HOPE IS HERE 200K GREEN PARTY MEMBERS Green Party Promoted by Chris Williams on behalf of The Green Party, both at PO Box 78066, London SE169GQ

🚨 BREAKING 🚨 The Green Party has over 200,000 members.

More members, more councillors, more MPs.

The Green Party just keep growing.

Join us ⤵️

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