Tom Rhys Bishop

Functional trait dissimilarity drives arboreal ant community assembly while competitive trait hierarchies shape colony performance in experimental mesocosms Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Do you like functional traits, competition, mesocosm experiments, ants and rigorous fieldwork in unusual tropical systems?

Then you might like this new paper - the last from my DPhil at Oxford- in Functional Ecology:

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Shannon's H, Simpson's D, and Pielou's J are useless in ecology. Fitting data with a compound abundance distribution based on the geometric series is a better way to quantify variation – and to estimate species richness. New paper in Ecology Letters.

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

We need more provocative papers like this …

🦠 New Research - The gut microbiome shapes latitudinal differences in host immunity and pathogen load in a damselfly ➡️ buff.ly/0f99mq4

🚨New paper out in PNAS🚨

Soil eDNA reflects regionally dominant species rather than local composition of tropical tree communities 🧬🌿🌳🌺🧬

We asked about the spatial scale of biodiversity captured by samples of DNA from tropical soils #Luquillo #eDNA. A short 🧵....

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Composite image of the Proceedings B journal title, the manuscript title and the author list, alongside an image of a red-footed booby flying amongst palm trees. Some text reads: "Winds shape the behavioural decisions of red-footed boobies, impacting their foraging commutes and feeding behaviour".

"Commuting in crosswinds and foraging in fast winds: the foraging ecology of a flying fish specialist" 💨🐦🐟

New @iomarinescience.bsky.social research out now in @royalsocietypublishing.org: doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

📸 @robinfreeman.bsky.social

🧪🌍🪶

Reconsidering space-for-time substitution in climate change ecology - Nature Climate Change Ecologists often leverage patterns observed across spatial climate gradients to predict the impacts of climate change (space-for-time substitution). We highlight evidence that this can be misleading n...

New paper out on the dangers of using patterns across spatial climate gradients to predict what will happen with changing climate. That includes species distribution modeling. Space-for-time substitution can be misleading in sign, not just the magnitude of effects.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excited to share that we have just been awarded a NERC Pushing the Frontiers grant to work on between-group cooperation in the Shark Bay dolphins. We will soon advertise a 3 year post-doc to join the team - drop me an email if you might be interested! Pls share widely 🙏🏻

Hey Brian! Thanks for the insights, really interesting! We'll take it on board. :) Going to check out your papers now...

NERC policy on resubmissions This policy only applies to research grant applications.

Really disappointing new policy from NERC banning resubmissions of grant applications

Many of us, including me, have won grants on resubmission,

using the reviews to improve the application

This is is neither fair nor productive
www.ukri.org/councils/ner...

Metabolic traits are shaped by phylogenetic conservatism and environment, not just body size | PNAS Metabolic rate dictates life’s tempo, yet how ecological and environmental factors integrate to shape metabolic traits remains contentious. Conside...

Awesome to see our paper exploring competing hypotheses in macro/metabolic ecology out in PNAS.

Led by the all star @lilyleahy.bsky.social with a range of amazing folks including @funkyant.bsky.social @natejsanders.bsky.social @ianjwright.bsky.social.

Check it out!

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Phylosignal, 500 citations later My first R package, phylosignal, that I started more than a decade ago, has just passed its 500th citation. So I decided to take a little time to celebrate (we definitely don’t celebrate enough). I…

Phylosignal celebrates its 500 citations! 📦🎉

I've written a short blog post to celebrate and reflect on this 10-year old #rstats project. 👨‍💻

www.pieceofk.fr/phylosignal-...

Heard of "Darwin's paradox"? It refers to Charles Darwin's observation that coral reefs are wildly productive despite occurring in nutrient-poor tropical oceans. Reefs are, so the story goes, oases in marine deserts 🏝️...

Turns out that 2/3 of these assertions are very wrong...

🌐
🦑🧪

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Post-doctoral fellow in functional genomics and ecophysiology Subject description The goal of the project is to uncover the mechanisms explaining why global warming and heatwaves reduce reproductive success and cause excess mortality in wild and domesticated war

I am looking for a postdoc wanting to use functional genomics to understand why birds 🐦 struggle with climate warming in @erc.europa.eu project #HotLife. Ideal candidate is a molecular evolutionarybiologist. Join us at @biologylu.bsky.social. Details 👇
shorturl.at/wijEq

Would appreciate a re-post!

BES Macro 2025 A British Ecological Society specialist group conference for researchers in macroecology and/or macroevolution at any academic career stage.

It's the last day to apply for #BESMacro2025 ! Come join us in beautiful York for two days of awesome macro-scale science (plus an optional pre-conference workshop on scientific storytelling)

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/bes-macro-...

Schematic diagram showing the major axes of tree crown architecture

So excited to finally share our new paper charting the global spectrum of tree crown architecture, out today at @natcomms.nature.com ‬🧪🌐

Paper link 🔗: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A brief thread of what we found 🧵

Closing tomorrow! Last chance to apply for postdoc to explore the role of animals in savanna ecosystem productivity & nutrient cycling! Link to job: tinyurl.com/53dy4584 #savanna #termites #largemammals

Illustration of a Greenlandic landscape, showing in the foreground Rhododendron lapponicum on a cliff, with sea ice and icebergs in the background. Illustration by Alberto S. Ballesteros (@asbillustration.bsky.social)

🌸Plant diversity dynamics over space and time in a warming Arctic 🌸

Our new study @nature.com analysed plant diversity change in >2000 tundra plots over 4 decades. We found that plants changed unevenly, mostly driven by warming and biotic interactions.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🧵 (1/7) 🌐🧪🌱🌍

Exploring Nutrient Cycling in the Waterberg, South Africa Ecosystems researchers travel to the Waterberg in South Africa to collect baseline trait data with collaborators from Liverpool University and University of Pretoria

In February, Yadvinder & Eleanor traveled to South Africa to collect trait data at collaborator, Kate Parr’s @funkyant.bsky.social field site for her new ‘The Green Stuff’ Project.
@naturerecovery.bsky.social

We cover this visit in a visual way on our blog
www.oxfordecosystems.org/post/explori...

Life on the dry side: a roadmap to understanding desiccation tolerance and accelerating translational applications - Nature Communications Desiccation tolerance is an extreme adaptation to water limitation. Here the authors envisage a roadmap to advance desiccation tolerance research, highlight key knowledge gaps, call for standardizatio...

our perspective on desiccation tolerance research is out in
@naturecomms.bsky.social. with nearly forty authors from around the world spanning diverse career stages and disciplines, this work represents a shared vision for the field. let us know what you think!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

News A very busy month in the Traits Lab! Tom and Phil were establishing the new MicroMaze  project in the Cederberg mountains of South Africa and figuring out our new physiological experiments in...

Excited to have kicked off our @hfspo.bsky.social project MicroMaze with Andrew Davies, Charlene janion-Scheepers and @rebeccasenior.bsky.social in the Cederberg mountains.

News update and pics on my website here: www.bishoptraitslab.com/news.html

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BES Macro 2025 A British Ecological Society specialist group conference for researchers in macroecology and/or macroevolution at any academic career stage.

Registration is OPEN for #BESMacro2025, the best conference in town. This year we're in York: 10-11 July main conference, 9 July pre-conference scicomm workshop. If you do macroecology or macroevolution, please join us!

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/bes-macro-...

Rochelmeyer et al. investigate the use of drone-based surveys to count and assess tree hollow accessibility in a tropical savanna south of Darwin, Australia 🌳📈

Check out their findings 👇
https://buff.ly/3WCSvT0

🌎🧪

NERC RED-ALERT CDT: Linking the changing chemical environment to biological recovery across formerly industrial rivers. at Cardiff University on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - NERC RED-ALERT CDT: Linking the changing chemical environment to biological recovery across formerly industrial rivers. at Cardiff University, listed on FindAPhD.com

How do urban rivers recover from historical pollution and what could be applying the brakes to ongoing biological recovery? #PhD opportunity at Cardiff Uni with Steve Ormerod and me, plus UKCEH and other partners 🌍🧪 www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Fully-funded PhD with @seanrands.bsky.social, Emma McKinley, Rupert Perkins and myself on saltmarsh management and ecosystem service provision 🐝

Apply here 👉 www.nercgw4plus.ac.uk

I'm afraid it was the US election and Elon Musk's role in it that finally made me leave Twitter

Nice one Brian, would love to be added if there is space!

Oh wow this is amazing! Thank you!

Holy wow, I just learned about Rainbow Parentheses in R! Paired parens appear as same colors! Never count your close parentheses again
Tools->Global Options->Code->Display Tab->Click Rainbow Parentheses