Peter Flood

The workflow illustrates a step-by-step process for conducting causal analyses. Arrows indicate the typical flow of an analysis. Two possible pathways are shown: causal discovery approaches (blue), which aim to identify the existence of causal relationships when pre-existing knowledge is low, and causal inference approaches (yellow), which aim to quantify the direction and magnitude of causal effects when pre-existing knowledge is high. The gray feedback loop on the right highlights the iterative refinement of causal analyses based on assessments of the plausibility of causal assumptions.

So, y'all have heard me going on about #causalinference in #ecology a lot. Now our big synthetic guide "Best practices for moving from correlation to causation in ecological research" is out! Led by Hannah Correia & Paul Ferraro, it's a great walk-through for all! 🌍🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Braided rivers look chaotic, but their food webs tell a different story.
Using stable isotopes, we found that fish, birds, and spiders connect resources across huge spatial scales — revealing hidden structures that help stabilise these dynamic ecosystems.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Male Copulatory Structures in Reproductively Functional Female Live‐Bearing Fish Pseudopoecilia fria We recently discovered a population of the live-bearing fish Pseudopoecilia fria (Cyprinodontiformes: Poeciliidae), in which females were found to possess gonopodia, reproductive organs normally excl...

One of the coolest ichthyology discoveries I’ve heard about in a while. Large pregnant female livebearers with male reproductive organs found in the wild. Goes to show how fluid sex and sexual traits can be.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

China’s Yangtze River shows signs of remarkable recovery after fishing ban Doubling of fish biomass and rebounding of endangered species shows government measures starting to work, biologists say

China’s Yangtze River shows signs of remarkable recovery after fishing ban

Doubling of fish biomass and rebounding of endangered species shows government measures starting to work, biologists say www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Native fishes on our money!

Good environmental news can happen!

On this International Day of Women and Girls in Science, the American Fisheries Society proudly celebrates the women and girls shaping the future of fisheries and aquatic science!

#WomenInScience #GirlsInSTEM #FisheriesScience #AFS #InternationalDayOfWomenAndGirlsInScience

Happy International Day of Women and Girls in Science!

Follow these awesome women ocean scientists, many of whom I'm proud to call colleagues and delighted to call friends.

🧪🦑🌍🐟

go.bsky.app/7MdiLgo

PFAS levels in Great Lakes fish are dropping, study finds A new study shows PFAS levels in Great Lakes fish are on the decline as manufacturers have phased out some chemicals in recent decades.

PFAS levels in #GreatLakes fish are dropping, study finds

The declining levels were driven by an industry phase-out of legacy PFAS chemicals

www.wpr.org/news/pfas-le...

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 🧪

A wetland landscape

A yellow perch

A small esox species

A juvenile centrachid species

There are about 532,938 acres of #GreatLakes coastal wetlands - some 833 square miles - that provide habitat for nearly 80 species of fish species at some point during their life cycle. Yellow perch, pike, and bass all often start out their lives in these nurseries! #WorldWetlandsDay

Important discussion here

If biodiversity were a company, it would dwarf the biggest corporations.

Its annual contribution to society is in the tens of trillions of dollars.

A graph showing daily temperature anomalies since the 1940s

Not a single day in 2025 was cooler than the 1991-2020 average, on a global scale. @copernicusecmwf.bsky.social

If you are not an expert, and you find that your personal opinion differs from expert consensus and the overwhelming weight of evidence:

Consider that "the experts who study this know more about it than I do" is a more likely explanation than "I alone discovered what all the experts missed"

An image of plants underwater from a wetland. The Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences logo and white text reading "Editor's Choice" are overlain.

⭐Editor's Choice ⭐

Brown trout introduced into new streams can shift their body shape to match local fish within weeks!

Read more about how plasticity boosts survival in new environments and sets the stage for future adaptation 👇

https://ow.ly/LeQA50XRZRW

Graphic advertising a talk for the Coregoning Science Webinar through the Great Lakes Fish Commission and the USGS. The talk title is “Genomic insights into population structure and sex determination in Great Lakes Ciscoes” given by Kristen Behrens (University of Michigan) on Jan. 9th, 2026 at 12:30PM EST. It includes a photo of the presenter at a table with a bunch of cisco drawings spread out and a trifold board with information on ciscoes.

For those interested in Great Lakes fish (or what I’ve been up to so far in my postdoc) I will be giving a talk for the Coregonine Science Webinar on Friday, January 9th at 12:30 EST! bit.ly/010926

For context, carp is traditionally a popular Christmas Eve dish in parts of Central Europe, and people often keep them alive in bathtubs for a few days before the meal #25DaysofFishmas www.npr.org/sections/the...

New in @biolinvasions.bsky.social: I argue that accelerating invasion rates threaten ecosystem stability & sustainable management. Thus there is an urgent need for progress toward Target 6 of the Kunming-Montreal GBF, which calls for a substantive reduction in global invasion rates.
-> rdcu.be/eVlNk

Bringing some #Fishmas from our tree to your feed. 🐟

#TeamFish

A global estimator of C and N isotope baselines for fresh waters Baselines are the pebbles in the shoes of isotope ecologists. The extreme variability of the isotope composition of resources at the base of food webs governs the spatial differences of consumers'...

hot off the press! Led by the mighty Marie Perga, including many members of the Fooδ-webs team, and kindly funded by the Foundation for Research on Biodiversity/CESAB

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

Julie Claussen - Tomorrow's Catch Julie Claussen is transforming science communication in fisheries by making research more accessible by bridging science, storytelling, and conservation.

“If I had a wish, I wish everybody could put on a mask & snorkel and just sit there and watch fish.” @julielovesfish.bsky.social is making conservation more human and more heard. See more in #TomorrowsCatch: contentwithpurpose.co.uk/afs/tomorrow...

Biological invasions as costly as natural disasters, study finds By invading new environments, some alien species have caused disastrous consequences for local species and ecosystems, as well as for human activities—damage to infrastructure, crops, forest plantatio...

Invasions are as costly as natural disasters:

From 1980 to 2019, financial losses attributed to invasive species amounted to $1.2 trillion (USD), compared to $1.9 trillion in losses caused by storms, $1.14 trillion caused by earthquakes, and $1.12 trillion due to floods. phys.org/news/2023-04...

Tribes move whitefish upriver in bid to revive Great Lakes runs Biologists are releasing live whitefish in Upper Peninsula rivers to see whether they can serve as a bridge for large-scale species restoration.

Tribes move whitefish upriver in bid to revive Great Lakes runs

Featuring @matteherbert.bsky.social

#GreatLakes

www.mlive.com/environment/...

Saving a species but at the expense of others? The way to hell is paved with good intentions. In the hope of saving certain endangered species and ecosystems, some conservation projects propose the introduction of large plant-feeding mammals int...

A study of introductions of large herbivorous mammals outside their native range suggests they do more harm than good to local biodiversity. Only 1 in 5 impacts is positive. Positive effects on certain native species often come at a cost to other natives. #bioinvasions www.unifr.ch/news/en/3344...

🐟🌱🧪🌐🌎

Invasive species cost humans $423bn each year and threaten world’s diversity At least 3,500 harmful invasive species recorded in every region on Earth spread by human activity, says UN report

A reminder, from the 2023 IPBES assessment of invasive alien species. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The Fight to Save Lake Whitefish | Great Lakes Now Explore shipwreck sanctuaries and a forest that fueled a media empire.

Whitefish are Disappearing. What Can We Do?

#GreatLakes

www.greatlakesnow.org/the-fight-to...

Museums had a rough 2025: Report shows lower attendance, lost grants, less money The American Alliance of Museums put out its annual industry snapshot and it's not great. Trump's targeting of museum programming had downstream effects and put a "chill on corporate philanthropy."

#Museums had a rough 2025: New AAM Report shows lower attendance, lost grants, and less money. 🙁

A complex, multi-layered diagram showing the food web and energy recycling in freshwater lakes and ponds.

From Yale University Press: "PONDS: An Illustrated Guide." #Freshwater food web spread.
🧪🌿🌎🐡🪶 #wildlife #scicomm #sciviz #wildlifeart #illustration #scientificillustration #natureart #visualscicomm #sciviz #scicomm #streams #rivers #FoodWebs