Felix Neff

New study on arthropod declines @natecoevo.nature.com 🪲

In two time series @jena-experiment.bsky.social & @bexplo.bsky.social we show how community (dis)assembly underpins local biomass declines.

It mostly boils down to species loss, with identity losing relevance.

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

The fall of a prolific science journal exposes the billion-dollar profits of scientific publishing One of the 15 publications that put out the most studies globally has been expelled from the indexing system for irregularities. Its publisher, Elsevier, has a 38% profit margin that reached $1.5 bill...

„The fall of a prolific science journal exposes the billion-dollar profits of scientific publishing“ 🧪🎓

english.elpais.com/science-tech...

Many of my colleagues in ecology will know the name of the journal:
Science of the total environment (STOTEN)

Radar data find no decline in insect numbers—but there’s a catch Study of continental U.S. sees stable population of bugs, but it may be missing important pieces of the puzzle

The first study to survey insect populations on a continental scale finds no evidence of widespread decline, at least over a recent 10-year period. https://scim.ag/4pnb6hN

Interested in nocturnal #moths?
☑️ Check our new BE-Paper in @oikosjournal.bsky.social:
#Land-use intensification reduced trait & phylogenetic beta #diversity - mainly in common moths. Rare #forest species responded differently. Body size ↓, wing load & darkness ↑.

🔗 doi.org/10.1002/oik.... 🌐

Photo credit: Felix Neff.

The #EditorsChoice article for the issue discusses how #moth communities are shaped by season, weather, elevation, and landscape composition
doi.org/10.1111/icad.12835

#Biodiversity #InsectCommunities
@felixneff.bsky.social @agroscope.bsky.social @vogelwarte.bsky.social

Photo credit: Felix Neff

Thrilled to announce the publication of the trophiCH database: a multi-trophic, species-level #metaweb for #Switzerland🇨🇭

Out now in #ScientificData 📃 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Want to explore the dataset? 🔍 webapps.wsl.ch/trophiCH/

#OpenData #Ecology #FoodWebs 🌐

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Species loss in key habitats accelerates regional food web disruption - Communications Biology Simulating extinctions across regional food webs reveals that losing species from one habitat— especially wetlands—can cascade to others, accelerating multi-habitat food web collapse, highlighting the...

🚨 Hot off the press! We show that species loss from key habitats (like wetlands) accelerates secondary extinction in regional multi-habitat food webs. Also, we show the importance of common species to regional food web robustness. doi.org/10.1038/s420...
#Ecology #FoodWebs #Biodiversity #Metaweb

Graphical abstract of: Moth communities are shaped by season, weather, elevation, and landscape composition

A new article in #RESInsectConsDiv shows moth communities are shaped by season, weather, elevation & landscape composition - a dataset of unusually large spatial & temporal extent

Read the article now🔽
doi.org/10.1111/icad.12835

@felixneff.bsky.social @agroscope.bsky.social @vogelwarte.bsky.social

A macro photo, front three-quarter view, of a little butterfly perched on a green leaf. The butterfly has pale green eyes with black speckles, legs covered in thick yellow fuzzy hair, and orange wings sprinkled with metallic light blue patches. It is very cute.

A macro photo, side view, of a little butterfly perched on a green leaf. The butterfly has pale green eyes with black speckles, legs covered in thick yellow fuzzy hair, and orange wings sprinkled with metallic light blue bands and patches. It is very cute.

Please enjoy this ridiculously cute butterfly, which was about the size of my pinkie fingernail. It's in the butterfly family called metalmarks (Riodinidae). Males, like these, have reduced front legs and perch using only the rear 4 (females can use all 6). Sarota acantus; Costa Rica 🐙🌿 #insects

Four graphs showing the relationship between abundance on the y axis and (i) day of the year (bimodal), (ii) temperature (positive), (iii) elevation (positive) and (iv) proportion of forests (positive). Sketches of five moths on the left side.

#newPaper published about how moth communities vary with #season, #weather, #elevation, and #landscape composition

Based on an incredible dataset collected by Ladislaus Rezbanyai-Reser over 50 years in #Switzerland

doi.org/10.1111/icad...

#moths #Lepidoptera #insects #phenology #temperature

Our study ‘The #global #human impact on #biodiversity’ is out in @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🌍🌐🐟🌿🪲

Unprecedented synthesis of >2000 studies led by @francoiskeck.bsky.social shows humans are not only shrinking species numbers—but reshaping entire communities across the planet.
🧵1/5

New @science.org
The disappearance of butterflies at a "catastrophic rate" in the United States
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

Radio SRF streicht die Sendungen/Podcasts „Trend“ und das Wissenschaftsmagazin. Noch weniger Hintergrund zu Wirtschaft und Wissenschaft - doch genau das, was die Demokratie im Kampf gegen die Irrationalität der internationalen Fascho-Oligarchie braucht.

Das Ende des Wissenschaftsmagazins Das SRF-Wissenschaftsmagazin soll auf Ende Jahr eingestellt werden. Wir fragen nach: Warum dieser Entscheid? Und wie sind die Reaktionen aus der Wissenschaft? Zudem: Wie uns künstliche Intelligenz umg...

Es kam sehr überraschend: Am Donnerstag fiel der Entscheid der SRF aus Spargründen das "Wissenschaftsmagazin" zu streichen. Zusammen mit anderen Forschern (u.a. @erichfischer.bsky.social @florianaltermatt.bsky.social) habe ich meine Bedenken geäussert www.srf.ch/audio/wissen...

Zwei neue Fischarten in Schweizer Gewässern entdeckt Die Bevölkerung kann per Umfrage mitentscheiden, wie zwei Fischarten heissen sollen, die Bárbara Calegari und ihre Kolleginnen und Kollegen entdeckt haben. Im Interview erklärt die Biologin, wo sie le...

Zwei neue Fischarten 🐟 in Schweizer 🇨🇭 Gewässern entdeckt

www.uniaktuell.unibe.ch/2025/zwei_ne... 🧪

(also available in EN www.uniaktuell.unibe.ch/2025/two_new...) #biodiversity

Graphical representation of the hypothesized causal flow analysed in the study. in hypothesis 1, functional community features (represented as green boxes) mediate the effect of land-use intensity on acknowledged stability drivers within trophic levels. in hypothesis 2, functional traits of the lower trophic level mediate the effects of land-use intensity by influencing stability drivers both directly and indirectly through changes in the functional composition/diversity of higher trophic levels

New paper about how effects of #land-use intensity on community stability are mediated by #functional traits in managed #grasslands and #forest. Based on lots of field data on both #plants and #arthropods 🌱🌳🦋🐞🕷️📈

#insects #ecology @bexplo.bsky.social

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Insect communities in windthrows peaked at the very beginning of two study decades and then slowly declined 🪲

Salvage-logging affected species composition, thus a mosaic of logged and unlogged windthrows best promotes biodiversity 🌲🌏 🧪

🔗 https://buff.ly/40ysYwz

Our global study on the state of trust in scientists is now out in Nature Human Behaviour! 🥳

With a team of 241 researchers, we surveyed 71,922 people in 68 countries, providing the largest dataset on trust in scientists post-pandemic 👇🧵https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-02090-5

OK, here is a very rough draft of a tutorial for #Bayesian #SEM using #brms for #rstats. It needs work, polish, has a lot of questions in it, and I need to add a references section. But, I think a lot of folk will find this useful, so.... jebyrnes.github.io/bayesian_sem... (use issues for comments!)

Everything you ever wanted to know to get started on #microclimate is compiled there ⬇️ in 🔟 guidelines 🤓 Unpack each 1️⃣ to select the right variable, the most relevant spatiotemporal scale, the best sampling design & to tailor your analyses to your study question

🧪🌐🍁

shorturl.at/VYP8f

More than 90% of fossil fuel emissions occurred since my parents were born.
Over 80% since I was born.
Over 30% since my children were born.

And well over 50% since the world agreed at the Rio Earth Summit to prevent dangerous climate change. And I thought: „At last!“

Multispecies crop mixtures increase insect biodiversity in an intercropping experiment In an agricultural field intercropping experiment, we manipulated crop diversity (0–3 crop species) and the input of agrochemicals. We found that insect biodiversity increases with crop diversity and...

Insect apocalypse? No! Intercropping can be a solution: besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Loss of pollinator diversity consistently reduces reproductive success for wild and cultivated plants Nature Ecology & Evolution - A meta-analysis finds that decreasing diversity of pollinator species has a negative affect on multiple measures of plant reproductive success, with wild plant...

[new paper] You probably suspected that loss of pollinator diversity consistently reduces reproductive success for wild and cultivated plants, but here we quantify it: www.nature.com/articles/s41...