Reuben O'Connell-Booth

Lovely site on Orthosia identification www.eakringbirds.com/eakringbirds...

Frequentist statistical inference without repeated sampling - Synthese Frequentist inference typically is described in terms of hypothetical repeated sampling but there are advantages to an interpretation that uses a single random sample. Contemporary examples are given ...

Just interpret it as a probability interval (link.springer.com/article/10.1...)

Best practices for moving from correlation to causation in ecological research - Nature Communications Different scientific traditions offer seemingly disparate approaches to inferring causal relationships in ecological systems. This Perspective unifies the causal assumptions and methods from...

Excited to share our new paper in @natcomms.nature.com We synthesize causal discovery & inference approaches across traditions (regression adjustment, quasi-expts, SEMs, Granger causality, convergent cross-mapping, and more) into a unified workflow for ecologists. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Fibre Optic Drones - British Ornithologists' Union Plastic pollution from fibre optic drones may threaten wildlife for years

New form of conflict pollution in Ukraine: drone fibre optic cables.

bou.org.uk/blog-morelan...

This might be a good one… A is the impact, Y_0 is before, Y_1 after. U_2 shows an additivity violation. But there seems to be missing arrows for me!

bsky.app/profile/cboy...

Challenge for ecologists: can we draw BACI as a DAG?

Dyson among the rich farmers harvesting green subsidy mil... Inventor’s company was paid £2.2m in post-Brexit scheme that critics say unfairly rewards wealthiest landowners while small farmers miss out

“This is an incredibly ambitious transition away from area-based payment into a system where all payments are dependent on public goods, and there will be difficulties along the way”.

@lydiacollas.bsky.social in @theobserveruk.bsky.social on imminent reforms to the SFI scheme.

Migratory bird stopover patterns linked to urbanization and social landscapes - Nature Cities Urban ecology traditionally focuses on single cities, yet cities play key roles in ecological processes such as migration. Radar analysis across the continental USA reveals that nearly half of stopove...

A study I led came out in Nature Cities yesterday!

We used radar to study the role that urban landscapes play in migratory bird stopover. Spoiler: birds use cities a lot, and the patterns of their use reflect social processes and the inequities embedded in them.

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Moth perched on a streetlamp. Our work suggests that light suppresses activity in moths, so once attracted to a light they are prevented from escape.

Eye-opening findings on how light suppresses moth activity. Light attracts moths, but what if we've been missing a much more pervasive effect where even sky-glow light levels make them freeze?

Paper: doi.org/10.1098/rspb...
@uniexecec.bsky.social @esbriolat.bsky.social @kevinjgaston.bsky.social

What's new in the world of Generalized Additive Models YouTube video by Bottom of the Heap

🚨 GAMs have moved on—so it’s time for an update.

On March 3, 2026 (17:00–19:00 CET) I’ll be livestreaming an updated introduction to Generalized Additive Models in R

📺 YouTube livestream link: youtube.com/live/A9U8e1K...

#RStats #mgcv #GAMs #gratia #statistics 🧪

New #OpenAccess work by @rocb-ento.bsky.social, @katatrepsis.bsky.social & W. Kunin in #RESInsectConsDiv explored the effect of bulb type on moth trap catch & composition in UK gardens
doi.org/10.1111/icad.70050

#GardenMothScheme #Biodiversity #ALAN
@manusaunders.bsky.social @wileyeco.bsky.social

Effect of bulb type on moth trap catch and composition in UK gardens We analyse 10 years of records Garden Moth Scheme (GMS) to estimate the effect of bulb and trap type on the number of moths caught by moth traps. We find that brighter, higher wattage bulbs collect ...

Interested in moth trapping?

Wondering which trap to use? Or if different bulbs collect different species?

Using 100k samples from @gardenmothscheme.bsky.social our new paper looks at these questions and more! With with Bill Kunin and @katatrepsis.bsky.social

#mothsmatter #teammoth

Macro‐moth families differ in their attraction to light: implications for light‐trap monitoring programmes Light traps are used to make inferences about local macro-moth communities, but very little is known about the efficiency with which they attract moths from varying distances, and how this may dif...

The only paper I can think of that has looked at radius directly is this one by @eleslade.bsky.social - finding that moths are attracted to weaker traps from a surprisingly small area!

resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Hi Simon. We were not able to directly compare the attraction range of different bulb types, only the catch size here. But we do think attraction radius is likely to affect the species the trap collects, based on species' mobility, fig below shows how we think that might work

Effect of bulb type on moth trap catch and composition in UK gardens We analyse 10 years of records Garden Moth Scheme (GMS) to estimate the effect of bulb and trap type on the number of moths caught by moth traps. We find that brighter, higher wattage bulbs collect ...

Interested in moth trapping?

Wondering which trap to use? Or if different bulbs collect different species?

Using 100k samples from @gardenmothscheme.bsky.social our new paper looks at these questions and more! With with Bill Kunin and @katatrepsis.bsky.social

#mothsmatter #teammoth

Graphical abstract on a paper on designing user-centred technologies to address the illegal wildlife trade. The image depicts four visual parts of the study, 1. the geographic location where the research was conducted, in Indonesia, 2. Some of the methods, including a needs assessment where members of conservation law enforcement ranked the effectiveness of features that would assist them in their jobs together with a correct species identification, such as the IUCN or protection status, the 3. part shows a prototype of an app on a mobile phone screen, which is the use case we are considering. It shows a picture of a bird taken in a wildlife marketplace followed by the percentage accuracy that the artificial intelligence model has assigned the classification of the image. The 4. section discusses some implications of the study, i.e. that technology results wouldn't be admissible in court (i.e. this species was correctly identified by a tool and not a person) and that bird trade is socially acceptable, which compromises the efficacy of enforcement.

One of my PhD chapters: 'Designing user-centered technologies to address the illegal wildlife trade' is OUT NOW in the @society4conbio.bsky.social journal Conservation Science and Practice! Please check out the graphical abstract and give it a read: conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

How old postcards reveal the destruction of chalk downland This post is by Guy Shrubsole. Rifling through boxes of old postcards in junk shops is, admittedly, not my coolest pastime. But it’s something I’ve started doing of late, because some o…

4/ Using evidence gathered from old postcards, maps and the accounts of shepherds and botanists, I want to rebuild a picture of the chalk downland that existed until the 1940s - and in doing so, help efforts to restore it.

Please get involved here:

ghostsofchalkcountry.org/2025/09/14/h...

Learning that ”the relationship remained significant after adjusting for (unreliable) confounder” is an inference criteria that becomes worse when you have more power has been very formative for how I read the literature.

Keir Starmer has no plans to attend COP30 climate summit in Brazil Final decision has yet to be made amid ‘big fight inside government’ over trip by prime minister

This is outrageous

“Reform [UK] voters don’t think climate is important and the Mail and Sun [newspapers] complain that Starmer has spent a record number of days overseas”

on.ft.com/4nOy28P Keir Starmer has no plans to attend COP30 climate summit in Brazil

Heath's moth trap design, from the original publication.

Heath, J., 1965. A genuinely portable M.V. Light Trap. Ent. Rec., 77: 236-238. www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/39266893

Your annual reminder of how to tell Field Scabious, Knautia arvensis, and Small Scabious, Scabiosa columbaria, apart with a quick glance. Have a look under the flower heads. Field Scabious has a double row of leaf-like bracts, and Small Scabious has a single row of narrow, bristle-tipped bracts.

These moths use the stars to navigate on an epic migration Bogong moths migrate hundreds of kilometres and back each year using the southern night sky as their compass.

So cool - these moths navigate using starlight

More great stuff from the Eric Warrant & the Lund vision group.

Makes me wonder- could this be disrupted by skyglow? Yet another way artificial light can disrupt moths?

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Sorry - the Y axis should say "Predicted catch". We controlled for weather by including temperature, rainfall and moonlight values as smooth terms in the model. Cheers!

Its true! I quite like this staircase. faster, too - 0.63 iters/sec versus 0.45 for the base pipe. but anything not in square brackets causes a blockage!

needless to say this is also extremely fast!!

Piped data.table... a beautiful thing (just me?) #rstats

Natural England is delighted today to declare England’s newest National Nature Reserve: the Bradford Pennine Gateway NNR. 1200 hectares of priority habitats on the doorstep of tens of thousands of people, many with limited access to high quality natural areas.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Interesting paper, worth a read. Another complicating factor in untangling moth declines! link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Government ‘failing to support natural regeneration of trees in England’ Campaigners say targets for woodland creation are unlikely to be met because 95% of grants are for planting

REVEALED: only 5% of Forestry Commission grants for woodland creation have been spent on the natural regeneration of trees, while the remaining 95% is spent on tree planting.

The government needs to change the rules.

My FOI request & comment in the Guardian:

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Butterfly heist 70 years ago is still causing flutter Braby has spent thirty-odd years researching butterflies and moths, so when alarm bells start ringing follows up

When lepidopterist Michael Braby spotted something odd on a rare butterfly specimen, an old case was re-opened: a heist involving Scotland Yard & a forgery that created a flutter throughout the taxonomic world.

cosmosmagazine.com/nature/butterfly-heist-70-years-ago-is-still-causing-flutter/