Jon Kuntz, PhD 🦈

Cool paper alert. Was trying to model the thermal performance curves of several farmed seaweed species and ran across this awesome, theoretical unifying paper: “A universal thermal performance curve arises in biology and ecology” www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Generalized dynamics of cross-feeding bacteria Abstract. Bacterial cooperation involves the exchange of metabolites, which can range from costless byproducts of metabolism to intentionally produced and

Check out our new paper on cooperating bacteria led by @janamassing.bsky.social w/ @thilogross.bsky.social and @akfbio.bsky.social, where we explore the costs and benefits of metabolitic trade on stability in non-spatial and spatial contexts... exciting! royalsocietypublishing.org/rsif/article...

Regional ecosystem responses to environmental drivers in cold‐water lakes evaluated using stable isotopes of salmonid fishes Diverse environmental drivers influence food web energy and nutrient flows, a key ecosystem function, yet their relative importance remains poorly known. We compiled thousands of bulk stable isotope ....

Very happy that our paper on regional-scale cold-water lake ecosystem functioning, examined using over 5000 salmonid isotope measurements, is out now open access in @aslo.org Limnology & Oceanography!

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

This is really really cool Mat!

Carbon isotopic changes of 16 proteinogenic amino acids during trophic transfer in a cultured marine consumer - Progress in Earth and Planetary Science Stable carbon isotopic compositions of amino acids (δ13CAA) in organisms potentially record information on carbon sources and flow in food webs. In this study, we report δ13C values of 16 proteinogeni...

Sun, Y., Ishikawa, N.F., Ogawa, N.O. et al. Carbon isotopic changes of 16 proteinogenic amino acids during trophic transfer in a cultured marine consumer. Prog Earth Planet Sci 13, 9 (2026). doi.org/10.1186/s406... #stableisotopes

The morphological evolution and phylogenetic diversity of skates and rays along the marine coastline of Mexico are linked to species diversity and extinction threats - Hydrobiologia The understanding of the interaction between morphological diversity, phylogenetic history, and biodiversity at various temporal and spatial scales is crucial for conservation of communities and speci...

The morphological evolution and phylogenetic diversity of skates and rays along the marine coastline of Mexico are linked to species diversity and extinction threats 🦑🌿🐟🦈 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Congrats y’all! Cool paper! I got into the dynamic time warping bandwagon myself for eye lenses!

New #OA paper in Ecological Informatics comparing automated methods for provenance assignment using chronological chemical records deposited into archival structures such as #otoliths, #lenses, #statoliths. Our focus was on #salmon but it has much broader application. doi.org/10.1016/j.ec...

Thanks braddah! 9 months left in a fellowship I’m grateful to have, but we’ll see what happens. I’m afraid I’ll have too many ideas left unfulfilled

Got 3 postdocs pulled from me in the last year because of US funding… but getting to the point that I can’t keep waiting around for the next cycle to have less opportunities. Unfortunately it’s likely forcing me out of academia.

My co-authors and I are happy to present our framework "Collective Intelligence as Collective Information Processing (CIP)."

Here we propose decomposing different information processing mechanisms to unify disparate phenomena traditionally classified as "collective intelligence."

Beneath the surface: a deep dive into the behaviour and interactions of elasmobranchs in a tropical South Atlantic archipelago - Environmental Biology of Fishes Sharks and rays face significant population declines due to overfishing, habitat degradation, and climate change. Their behavioural patterns, such as feeding, territoriality, and interactions with oth...

Beneath the surface: a deep dive into the behaviour and interactions of elasmobranchs in a tropical South Atlantic archipelago 🦑🌿🐟🦈 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

This is where I live!

Tips and tricks for writing constructive peer reviews Peer review has been the cornerstone of scientific inquiry for centuries and is considered the backbone of scientific quality and rigour (Spier, 2002). Des

In my first Editorial as Associate Editor for @conphysjournal.bsky.social, we help combat this lack of training by providing some "tips and tricks" for writing constructive peer reviews, based on our collective experiences as editors for multiple scientific journals.

That is an INSANE n() lol

After taking (too) many pictures of scales we finally have our new study out: Identifying escaped farmed salmon from scales using deep learning: academic.oup.com/biomethods/a...
The model works well and covers the major Atlantic salmon rivers in Norway. Could be adpated to other fish and places!

Housing proximity and vegetation cover affect diel activity patterns of domestic cats (Felis catus) in regionally protected shorelines Abstract. Free-roaming domestic cats (Felis catus) are among the most impactful non-native species globally, causing the extinction of 63 endemic vertebrat

Huzzah! After a lot of work, I'm happy to share that the results of my first chapter have been published and are available for your perusal. In this paper, I was interested in understanding how characteristics of urban environments influence the diel activity of cats academic.oup.com/jue/article/...

New pre-print with @psmaldino.bsky.social on an agent-based model of propaganda in online spaces.

Using the voter model from physics, we simulate networks with stubborn agents (zealots) who do not change their opinions, asking about their optimal positioning for influencing the network.

Inter-method differences (SIMS vs. IRMS) in oxygen isotope fractionation: insights from Chinook salmon otoliths Stable oxygen isotopes (δ18O) in biogenic carbonates serve as a valuable proxy for reconstructing thermal history. Fish otoliths (ear stones) are part…

Inter-method differences (SIMS vs. IRMS) in oxygen isotope fractionation: insights from Chinook salmon otoliths #stableisotopes www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Fine‐scale reconstruction of pelagic fish migration by iso‐logging of eye lens Understanding lifetime space use by pelagic animals is pivotal for ecology and fisheries management, but electronic tags are costly, labour-intensive and rarely able to capture juvenile movement. ...

Fine‐scale reconstruction of pelagic fish migration by iso‐logging of eye lens - Matsubayashi - Methods in Ecology and Evolution #stableisotopes besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Distilling food web dynamics: top–down and bottom–up drivers of extinction and trophic cascades Quantifying population dynamics is a fundamental challenge in ecology and evolutionary biology, particularly for species that are cryptic, microscopic, or extinct. Traditional approaches rely on cont...

New paper where we explore how the dynamics of food webs can be explored when populations are ‘distilled’ to high and low states, or Boolean switches… Somehow this leads to a discussion involving Otodus megalodon :D

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

Nice! Did you use the spatialRF package for your random forest regressions? Would love to read but no institutional access 😢

So delighted to have worked with Drs Christine France and Julianne Sarancha on this project. With deer samples, we created isoscapes (Sr, O, and S) for the state of Virginia.
Potentially hella useful for archaeology in the region. 🏺🧪 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Trophic niche variation across the pan-Arctic coastal continuum We analyzed stable carbon and nitrogen isotope values (δ13C and δ15N, respectively) for pan-Arctic coastal primary producers and consumers to detect large-scale regional trends both temporally and spa...

"We found that despite the enormous spatial range of data, both pPOM and sPOM became 2.1‰ and 2.2‰ more 13C-depleted per decade, respectively, with parallel decreases in the δ13C values in consumers"

journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Early gigantic lamniform marks the onset of mega-body size in modern shark evolution - Communications Biology The earliest appearance of mega-body size in sharks is pushed back by 15 million years with the discovery of new fossils from Northern Australia. Using a comprehensive dataset of living sharks to esti...

The earliest appearance of gigantic lamniform #sharks has now been pushed back by ~15 Ma (upper Aptian, ~115 Ma) with the discovery of enormous cardabiodontid shark remains from northern Australia.🦈🧪

www.nature.com/articles/s42...

New #sharkscience from Hilary Lewis and others:
Challenging traditional methods of age estimation: elemental and isotopic characterisation of speartooth shark Glyphis glyphis vertebrae.
www.int-res.com/abstracts/me...
@iucnshark.bsky.social @austsocfishbiol.bsky.social @mickgrant.bsky.social

Cool to see this out!

Does tidal marsh restoration lead to the recovery of trophic pathways that support estuarine fishes? Evaluation of tidal marsh restoration success is typically based on the recovery of habitat size and target species. However, food-web structure may provide valuable insight into ecosystem functionin...

Does tidal marsh #restoration "work", if the goal is bringing back key species AND the trophic interactions that support them? A thousand stable isotope samples later, we have answers! 💯 work by PhD student Megan Pagliaro:
esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... #SanFrancisco #BayDelta

Jane Goodall with monarch butterfly scarf

“It actually doesn’t take much to be considered a difficult woman. That’s why there are so many of us.”
― Jane Goodall

💙 RIP to a real one. My childhood hero

A landmark scientific workshop has identified 124 Important Shark and Ray Areas (ISRAs) across the European Atlantic, providing the first comprehensive map of critical habitats for threatened species such as Basking Shark, Tope, Spiny Dogfish, Sicklefin Devil Ray, and Angelshark.