Joshua Twining

Questions and inquiries welcome, my email is joshua.twining@oregonstate.edu

Feel free to email me at Joshua.twining@oregonstate.edu with any questions!

It’s got everything you could dream of - loads of fieldwork, small mammal trapping and handling, simulations to inform sampling designs and hierarchical modeling, all in the beautiful Pacific Northwest!

Are you looking to get a graduate degree in Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences? This funded MS project at OSU is focused on testing a range of non-invasive method for small mammals (enclosed camera trapping + thermal cameras mounted on drones) against SCR applied to live trapping data.

Hi Dormiens, applications in my department (Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences) do not close as they are on a rolling basis term to term. See link below for more info:

fwcs.oregonstate.edu/fisheries-an...

ahah I am Gabby. Started just a few months back.

Thank you!

I agree! Thanks for sharing Jess.

The PhD project: jobs.rwfm.tamu.edu/view-job/?id...

The masters project: jobs.rwfm.tamu.edu/view-job/?id...

I am recruiting two funded graduate students (1 MS, 1 PhD) to join the lab and the Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences program at Oregon State University!

If you are into population ecology and a combination of fieldwork and modeling - then check this out!

Please share/repost widely!

About time. Not that I'm a fan of ranking journals, and of course there are genuine articles published in those journals, but this is just stating facts. If it's in most of MDPI/Frontiers, we can't trust it's been properly peer reviewed.

Moonstruck: how lunar light influences animal behaviour - Australian Geographic Biologists have recently fixated on our closest celestial body, but what can it tell us about the Moon's effects on animal behaviour?

A neat article about how moonlight can affect animal behaviour and its relevance to light pollution.

Features research led by @glinley.bsky.social.

www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/wildl... - @ausgeo.newsmast.social.ap.brid.gy

Department Head The Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences is seeking a Department Head. This is a full-time (1.00 FTE), 12-month, professional faculty position. The Department of Fisheries, Wil...

Our department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences at Oregon State University is hiring a new Department Head. Any full profs out there wanting to lead us?!

jobs.oregonstate.edu/postings/162...

⏰New Research ⏰

We quantified the direct impact of diversionary feeding on capercaillie productivity. We show an increase in the proportion of hen with a brood in DF sites (37% -> 85%) and, as a result, a 131% increase in chicks per hen. Read more here: www.researchgate.net/publication/...
1/7

Two panel diagram. Left panel shows red (native) squirrel and grey (invasive) squirrel eating a peanut. Right panel shows a peanut covered with Pine Marten (Native Predator) scent. The grey squirrel is eating the peanut, the red squirrel does not. Text shows it is avoiding the feeder and behaving more vigilantly.

Advent Sci-Fact 9:

Invasive squirrels do not avoid predator scent!

Grey Squirrels (Invasive in the UK) do not avoid feeders with Pine Marten scent. Native Red Squirrels visit scented feeders less frequently, for shorter visits and are more vigilant!
Paper: tinyurl.com/23u944wq
#SciComm #SciArt 🧪🌍🐿

Well this made my day! Thanks Galatea for the great sci comm. I love the graphic you made!

Forgive me, my responses were to a question about modeling plant interactions as opposed to impacts of habitat on animal abundance (the latter of which these models do - you can add any covariates that you hypothesize influence the state process (I.e. abundance) of your species of interest).

My inkling is that using this model with plant communities wouldn't be an optimal approach but I am uninformed on standard practices when it comes to thinking about plant interactions!

With mobile animals we have to contend with ubquitous issue of hetereogenity in detectability (so we explicitly address by modeling observation process.) I am niave to whether this is an issue, or even considered / worthwhile when sampling plants (which are stationary and simpler to survey?).

Thanks Alyssa! I think it *could* be applied to plant systems, but I imagine (I don't know) that there may be more information-rich models used in plant world which contain more info about underlying abundances (here we used detection/non-detection data, but with plants you could just count them?)

Abundance‐mediated species interactions Species interactions shape biodiversity patterns, community assemblage, and the dynamics of wildlife populations. Ecological theory posits that the strength of interspecific interactions is fundament...

Are you interested in species interactions and how we model them?

Then this thread is for you!

Our new paper in Ecology on the role of abundance in species interactions provides new statistical tools for modelling species interactions.

shorturl.at/Sqz9m

🧵(1/13)🧵

Very cool model and paper!

I would love to join if possible!

I develop and use hierachical models for estimating population sizes, distributions, and species interactions to inform evidence-based management and conservation of wildlife populations.

Thanks Alexej! I hope you are well. We should catch up soon!

Thanks Remington!

There are a bunch of interaction models out there, when should you think about using this one?

Check out our flow diagram to help you decide! (13/13)

Please share widely and contact me if you can't access the paper!

Abundance‐mediated species interactions Species interactions shape biodiversity patterns, community assemblage, and the dynamics of wildlife populations. Ecological theory posits that the strength of interspecific interactions is fundament...

If you are interested and want to learn more, please check out our new open access paper in @ESAEcology:

shorturl.at/Sqz9m

Huge thank you to the dream team on this @bencaugustine.bsky.social Andy Royle, and Angela Fuller.

(12/13)

We then applied the new model to a case study of interactions between coyote, fisher, and marten in northern New York.

We detect interactions between species that we did not detect using co-occurence models! (11/13)

We ran a bunch of simulation studys to explore inference of modeling interactions as a function occupancy vs abundance, and to explore when, and where the abundance-mediated interaction model works well! (10/13)

What I think is really neat here is the variable ecological contexts of use - from intraguild interactions to parasite- or predator- mediated competition through to trophic cascades. (9/13).