@ecoinvasions.bsky.social
Ecologist (invasive species, freshwater biodiversity, bioinvasions, aquatic ecosystems) | Professor of Biology, McGill University | Director of the Bieler School of Environment | My lab account: @ricciardilab.bsky.social
Quote: "Our maps show that almost the entire Arctic could become home to alien species."
www.ecoticias.com/en/more-than...
At gem & mineral shows, and I bought many of them from a dealer in Halifax, when I lived there as a postdoc circa 2000. I don't buy often, as I am running out of shell/display space. The first thing that caught my attention from your photos was the the nice array of display cabinets you have!
By reshaping envts, invasions change the rules of existence for resident species: some will benefit & others will be harmed in ways that challenge management. Risk assessments must consider the capacity of invaders to alter the physical foundation of ecosystems. theconversation.com/how-biologic...
Now I know what to charge Nature to review their papers.
If you mean so-called "de-extinction" I have a blog post about it.
eternalscientistmusings.wordpress.com/2026/01/30/a...
These are a few of my favorite volutes on my shelves:
Voluta ebraea (massive 17 cm in length!);
Voluta musica (a knobby form that has a pattern so busy, it looks like it writes a symphony);
and one of my junonias (which, in addition to its striking spots, has a perfect unfiled lip).
Invasive alien species are a top driver of global nature loss. Yet whenever it's an animal, a segment of people fanatically resists their control.
They believe it's okay to sacrifice whole native ecosystems, with 1,000s of interconnected species, rather than tackle the problem.
They're very wrong.
My view of the #deextinction hype, encapsulated below.
The Null Hypothesis is Always Wrong!
New blog post - check it out.
ecoevoevoeco.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-...
Pines had good PR, back in the day.
Over 10 years ago, it was known that there existed SARS-like viruses (residing in Chinese horseshoe bats) that could infect human pulmonary tissue. So we don't need to invoke a 'lab leak' theory to explain the emergence of this zoonotic disease.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
As did South Africa, where introduced pine trees (which consume more water than native vegetation) threaten water supplies and fuel wildfires.
This importance also applies to freshwater benthic data, which are used to evaluate changes to water quality and responses to human disturbance.
As present, invasion science cannot predict the impacts of the release of novel biological entities (genetically engineered organisms, synthetic cells, hybrids) sufficiently to avoid ecological disasters. Such predictive power might be unattainable. Without it, this is reckless ecological gambling.
"It will be a mammoth because it will look like a mammoth and it will act like a mammoth, and it will restore interactions to that ecosystem that mammoths had with other species," Shapiro says.
So now they claim to know how their engineered facsimiles are going to behave in the wild?
#de-extinction
New from our lab: Using the invasive round goby as a model predator, we show how model selection in functional response experiments is affected by context (habitat complexity; mobile vs immobile prey).
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Trying to manage ecosystems without the power to recognize distinct life forms is akin to trying to navigate through a world without having access to a map. theconversation.com/taxonomy-the...
Taxonomic capacity is essential for enhancing ecosystem services (by allowing the discovery of new foods, biofuels, medicines), effective conservation (identifying species at risk) and managing biosecurity (identifying invasive pests & diseases). newsroom.co.nz/2019/04/21/t...
Quote: "Taxonomy rarely gets the credit, but its work to date has already contributed to the rise of agriculture, the discovery of antibiotics, and the idea of evolution."
zenodo.org/records/3648...
Quote: "We need to be able to interpret genetic data in a way that humans can understand and use. That's taxonomy's job. And if we want to save what's left of the vast diversity of life on Earth, we'll have to reinvest in this science."
www.nytimes.com/2024/07/07/o...
It's the funding of taxonomic research & training that's dying out. Without an ability to identify life forms, we can't recognize/quantify invasions & extinctions and their impacts on ecosystems. Imagine trying to repair a complex steel structure if you can't distinguish different types of bearings.
I have a small collection of seashells - alongside fossils, skulls, meteorites, and insect specimens on shelves around the house. A few examples are shown below. You'll probably recognize several of these species. I'm partial to cowries, cones, and volutes. #molluscmonday #malacophile
Globalization of the Arctic, driven by declining sea ice cover, is predicted to facilitate bioinvasions across the northern hemisphere.
See our 2017 horizon scan:
www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...
A reminder. bsky.app/profile/ecoi...
A mathematical exploration of some increasingly worrying trends in peer review. Some sensible recommendations, including encouraging AEs to STOP sending out just about everything for re-review after the first round. It's become systematic and annoying. Editors should make decisions.
This exemplifies perfectly an inherent inability to predict eco-evolutionary trajectories. Ecology and evolution used to be called Natural History. In hindsight it is possible to explain what happened, but we often make the mistake to think we can then project what we know to predict the future. 1/
