Dr. Julian Olden

The current website of the US Department of Agriculture. What a nightmare.

I've been proud to serve as the faculty leader for this effort. It has been a pleasure to interact with passionate students and emerging science communicators for many years now! We publish annually. I encourage you to check out past issues and follow! @uwsafs.bsky.social @trevorabranch.bsky.social

Interesting! I'm on my reading list for the week.

Absolutely ... and very much our message! Thanks for your comment.

Funding: CESAB programme of @frbiodiv.bsky.social. Great list of co-authors and fun working group! @uwsafs.bsky.social @uwfreshwater.bsky.social @profchrisharrod.bsky.social @profchrisharrod.bsky.social

Importantly, we continue to believe that morphological traits hold VALUE in depicting habitat use, ecological diversity & offering insight into fish movement! But our results do raise concerns of whether such traits are ‘functional’ in that they are a reasonable proxy of a species' trophic ecology.

The growing enthusiasm for trait-based ecology, particularly approaches grounded in morphological traits, is increasingly shaping science. However, we caution that this enthusiasm should not overlook the limitations of morphological traits as a meaningful lens or currency for functional inference.

This study leveraged a comprehensive database of stable isotope values for fish communities worldwide. doi.org/10.1051/kmae.... And yes, stable isotopes have limitations ... isotopic vs. trophic niches. We cover all of this in our paper!

In a global test, we show that morphological traits show weak (ca. 10% var exp) associations with d13C & d15N for freshwater fish species. At the individual level, morphology explained 4% in isotopic variation within populations. Body size & jaw length explained some var, albeit not much.

Support of such claims depends on the fundamental, albeit often unspoken, assumption that morphological characteristics of fish, such as body size & shape, fin configuration, & the size & orientation of the mouth and eyes, serve as reliable indicators of their feeding strategies & prey preferences.

Fish ecologists routinely posit that functional trait analyses, founded either solely or in part on morphological traits, provide opportunities to guide global biodiversity conservation. Our paper just published in GEB sought to explore this claim. doi.org/10.1111/geb.... Read thread below.

Agree, we all definitely need this type of encouraging feedback! :)

Absolutely! I'm experiencing the same thing as AE for a few journals. Authors are getting frustrated with me (I feel awful), and often, the additional burden shifts to me to provide a second review. 😒

Congrats!

Really important science and message - thank you Miguel!

It was a real pleasure to participate in the Mazama Newt Workshop at Crater Lake hosted by the @oregonzoo.bsky.social and the National Park Service. Discussions focused on a recovery plan for the Mazama newt in light of an exploding invasive signal crayfish. Great to see @ericrlarson.bsky.social!

Yep, the University of Washington also did this about 2 years ago, and it was (and still is) an utter trainwreck!

Just out: Few-shot transfer learning enables robust acoustic monitoring of wildlife communities at the landscape scale. Super great work by Gio Jacuzzi. doi.org/10.1016/j.ec.... Github release: zenodo.org/records/1569...

To play devil’s advocate (not having watched the clip), Suzuki is likely trying to trigger more emotion and action to prove his statement wrong!

Thanks Ana Clara! It's great to be visiting!

Wonderful to be able to spend some time at @iea-udg.bsky.social at @univgirona.bsky.social with my host and friend @garciaberthou.bsky.social. Looking forward to my seminar in a few hours!

A huge congrats to Dr. Diallo @jessdiallo.bsky.social! Many more great things lay ahead!

Another wonderful CESAB FOOD-WEBS working group meeting!. Such a wonderful and productive time (managed to submit 2 papers during the meeting) Special thanks to @profchrisharrod.bsky.social for hosting us at @sceneuog.bsky.social in Scotland! Funding: @frbiodiv.bsky.social

Thanks Jono. Writing that piece was among one of the highlights of my Leopold Fellowship. Very therapeutic to write and the message is constantly in the forefront of my mind.

The impact of invasive fishes lasts a lifetime -
we found lifetime trophic shifts in native species using fish eye lens stable isotope analysis coupled with otolith growth measurements 🐟 👁️ 📈

Check out the new pub with @oldenfish.bsky.social
esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Management struggles to keep pace with invaders. With @jessdiallo.bsky.social and others we demonstrate the utility of removal models to help improve invasive removal programs & robustly evaluate the success of population suppression & eradication.
esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

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Super cool. Would like to see this done for submerged wood on lake bottoms. I've manually counted using underwater video, but automation would be excellent. doi.org/10.1051/kmae...

Nice work, and so great to see that project during your PhD continue to push important science forward.

I miss this article last week in all the chaos - but it's well worth the read. Thanks @jjopperman.bsky.social for all you do!