6/6 When the dataset you are using to assess diversity change does not consider the dominant driver of diversity loss, and relies on studies where biodiversity can only go up (e.g., recovery, succession), then it not representative of how humans are altering biodiversity on Earth.

5/6 BioTime does not account for the single largest contributor to biodiversity decline -- habitat loss. Not one study in that dataset shows how 43% of Earth's land surface that used to be forested, but has been converted to agriculture, has influenced biodiversity.

4/6 BioTime has many studies of colonization of new habitats (e.g., dragonflies colonizating new pools). Studies of recovery, succession, and colonization are designed to monitor unidirectional increases in diversity, and do not tell us how humans are altering biodiversity.

3/6 But one must recognize several things about these time-series datasets (e.g., BioTime) that have been used to conclude +'s and -'s are equal: (1) BioTime includes many studies of recovery/succession after a disturbance (plants recovering from the Mt. St. Helens eruption).

2/6 No, it's not a surprise there were many examples of + trends. We've known this since Sax's pubs. There are, in fact, many locations on Earth where invasions have outpaced extinctions. And no one ever expected all locations on Earth to be in diversity decline.

Inside Biodiversity What do we really know about biodiversity? Inside Biodiversity brings you in-depth conversations with leading researchers tackling the most pressing and controversial questions in biodiversity science...

1/6 Here, A. Gonzalez tries to clarify stance on use of time-series data (e.g. BioTIME) to draw conclusions about biodiversity loss. When asked if it was a 'surprise' time-series found equal numbers of +/- diversity trends, Andy overly complicates issue insidebiodiversity.podigee.io

Inside Biodiversity What do we really know about biodiversity? Inside Biodiversity brings you in-depth conversations with leading researchers tackling the most pressing and controversial questions in biodiversity science...

More biodiversity loss denialism (sigh). Cherry picking and misrepresentation of data and are being used intentionally to sow doubt about biodiversity loss in the same way the Heartland Institute trys to sow doubt about climate change. This is bad science.

insidebiodiversity.podigee.io#subscribe

Good study on biodiversity change quantifying local diversity loss and lack of biotic homogenization. I wonder how the #BioTIME group is going to respond ... they'll probably just dig in their heels and insist their deeply flawed time-series data are better.

Ecological disruptions are a risk to national security Overfishing, disease and environmental crimes cause social and political instability, economic strife and strained international relations.

Thrilled to share this new @theconversation.com article, co-authored with eminent ecologists Brad Carrinale and J. Emmet Duffy.

theconversation.com/ecological-d...

Ecological disruptions are a risk to national security Overfishing, disease and environmental crimes cause social and political instability, economic strife and strained international relations.

Our new article in The Conversation highlights Nature's Role in National Security

theconversation.com/ecological-d...

Nature Positive’

A great approach to encourage action on biodiversity?

Yes, but I also see a tendency for it to promote complacency

By just planning nature positive approaches people can think “job done”

Like international biodiversity agreements- setting targets is only the start

One of my PhD students just shared this with me after I edited a draft of his first chapter 😆

But there is no substitute for reading someone's paper(s) in full and using expert opinions (individual or group) to determine if someone's work is high-quality and original. I wish there was an entirely objective way to evaluate, but a combination of quantitative/qualitative criteria works better.

Great question, but I'm struggling with this like everyone else. Although they get a bad rap, I think metrics like impact factors/citation rates should remain a part of evaluation b/c they have valuable information and allow for comparison. 1/2

It's far easier to say we should ignore current metrics of research quality than it is to propose ones that are better.

Does anyone review for Frontiers Media? They were once on Beall's list of predatory journals, but there has since been defense of their journals. Even so, it's a for-profit publication factory with 100s of journals & 1000s of papers. What is the quality of peer-review?

Guiding principles for rewilding There has been much recent interest in the concept of rewilding as a tool for nature conservation, but also confusion over the idea, which has limited its utility. We developed a unifying definition ...

It seems that every 5 to 10 years we invent a new term to try and advance an old idea. Maybe if we just delivered on the original idea in the first place, we wouldn't have to fein novelty so often.

Society for Conservation Biology conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

The 2nd edition of our Conservation Biology text was published today! This book is a ‘course in a box’ that comes with PowerPoint lectures, chapter quizzes, student study guides, & tutorial videos / practice exercises that can be assigned as homework or used for discussion & lab.

Shaping the Future of Conservation: Insights from the Acting Editor-in-Chief of Conservation Biology

Christopher Anderson, Acting Editor-in-Chief of Conservation Biology, shares insights on the evolving field & the journal's focus on inclusivity. He emphasizes the need for social-ecological approaches to address #biodiversity loss & #climatechange.
🌍 #conservation
www.wiley.com/en-us/networ...

Evolution journal editors resign en masse Board members expressed concerns over high fees, editorial independence, and use of AI in editorial processes.

Did you see that the editorial board of the Journal of Human Evolution resigned to protest the unethical practices of Elsevier?

My question -- How do we create a future for scientific publishing that isn't controlled by the big publishers?

Great write-up by @jenlucpiquant.bsky.social

#SciPub 🧪

Beyond the Hype: Navigating the Conservation Implications of Artificial Intelligence Conservation AI—the deliberate application of artificial intelligence technology to achieve conservation goals—has great potential to boost productivity, make existing conservation actions more effic...

A thoughtful analysis of the risks of #AI in and around conservation. We hear a lot about the positives, and for my research, machine learning has been a game changer. This article brings a broader perspective

conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Conclusions of papers that use datasets like these are questionable at best, wrong at worst (garbage in = garbage out). Ecology needs more efforts like Gaume and Desquilbet. If researchers who put together datasets won’t do their proper QA/QC, then others should do it for them.

Gaume & Desquilbet show the #InsectChange database is riddled with errors, as are its parent databases (e.g., #BioTime). Errors include misinterpretation of data from original studies, incorrect data entries, duplicate entries, incorrect units, incorrect organismal groups & more.

L. Gaume and M. Desquilbet (10.24072/pcjournal.469) dive into the #InsectChange database, which has been used to show the abundance of terrestrial insects is declining less than previously thought, and that freshwater insect diversity is increasing (e.g., van Klink et al. 2021).

An increasing number of researchers are synthesizing hundreds of studies to assemble large datasets used to draw conclusions about changes in insect abundance (#InsectChange), biodiversity (#BioTime), and more. Conclusions are only valid to the extent these datasets are reliable.

(4/4) This is not a good way to do science! To young researchers ... when people criticize your work, listen to arguments and join forces to erect new hypotheses. Collect or correct data & do additional analyses needed to find the truth. Let data, not personal viewpoints, generate reality.

(3/4) Authors have been made aware of this problem but ignored it (doi:10.1126/science.344.6188.1098-a). Authors have also been made aware of data errors in the BioTime dataset used to draw conclusions (peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10....), but have ignored these as well.

Looking back on biodiversity change: lessons for the road ahead | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Estimating biodiversity change across the planet in the context of widespread human modification is a critical challenge. Here, we review how biodiversity has changed in recent decades across scales a...

(2/4) How then, do these authors (doi.org/10.1098/rstb...) continue to find there has been no net change in biodiversity at any location on the planet? Answer: Their dataset ignores habitat loss, looking only at biodiversity change on other parts of the planet. They then extrapolate to the world.

(1/4) 50% of the world’s land surface is agriculture, 3% is urban. Biodiversity is almost always lower in ag/urban habitats than those they replaced. Thus, if you chose 100 lat/long coordinates from Earth’s surface at random, biodiversity would have been reduced >50% of the time.

A letter from polio in support of RFK Jr., co-signed by natural selection | Opinion A letter from the highly contagious viral disease polio, written to members of the U.S. Senate in support of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s confirmation.

Clever! Wish I would have thought of this op-ed

www.yahoo.com/news/letter-...