Inês Silva

Best practices for moving from correlation to causation in ecological research - Nature Communications Different scientific traditions offer seemingly disparate approaches to inferring causal relationships in ecological systems. This Perspective unifies the causal assumptions and methods from...

Excited to share our new paper in @natcomms.nature.com We synthesize causal discovery & inference approaches across traditions (regression adjustment, quasi-expts, SEMs, Granger causality, convergent cross-mapping, and more) into a unified workflow for ecologists. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excited to announce our courses for #MovementEcology.🤗

This year we will be in #Africa @mpalarc.bsky.social at Mpala Research Centre. Starting with a basic R course designed for #AfricanResearchers, followed by a two-week international Animove workshop. animove.org/basic-r-cour... Please share 👍

Refining Capture and Collaring Protocols for Red Foxes Animal capture is an important aspect of ecological studies, required for fitting tags and collecting biological samples. Capture success can be increased while ensuring high welfare standards throug...

🚨NEW PAPER🚨🦊
The main thing I learned during my PhD is that foxes are smarter than me.
We had gotten funding, we were collaborating with management authorities, we had the fancy collars... We were ready to investigate fox movement ecology. But we weren't catching any foxes. (1/5)
🧪🌍

Movebank

Help us improve Movebank: During 2026, we will undertake a major renewal of the Movebank system to build scalability and sustainability. What does Movebank mean for you? How could it better support your work? Your feedback will be highly appreciated! Survey: survey.academiccloud.de/f/221856?lan...

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Another day of #AnimoveCR 😀 Analysing animal movement with continuous-time models by @ecoisilva.bsky.social and Chris Fleming, ending with a fantastic plenary talk by @kamransafi.bsky.social on Kruger National Park research.

Pictured is a male jaguar (Panthera onca) equipped with a tracking collar. William F. Fagan et al. tracked the movements of 1,239 mammalian carnivores, including 16 canid species and 18 felid species, on six continents. On average, compared with felids, canids displayed a greater density of trackways within their range and were more likely to reuse established trackways. According to the authors, the evolutionary differences in carnivore movement patterns could aid efforts to model encounters among carnivores, prey, and humans. See the article by Fagan et al. e2401042122. Image credit: Sebastian Kennerknecht (photographer).

Canids seem to be the routine lovers, reusing their travel routes more than felids. This shapes hunting, encounters, and even disease spread. Insights from 1,239 GPS-tracked carnivores, including the Arctic foxes we track on Bylot Island 🧪🌿🌎🌐🦊. Read in the latest PNAS at bitly.cx/TxI2

From policy to practice: progress towards data- and code-sharing in ecology and evolution | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Data and code are essential for ensuring the credibility of scientific results and facilitating reproducibility, areas in which journal sharing policies play a crucial role. However, in ecology and evolution, we still do not know how widespread data- and ...

Our latest #SORTEE-led paper is out now in #ProcB!

We reviewed data/code-sharing policy clarity, strictness & timing across 275 EcoEvo journals

We also worked with #ProcB & #EcologyLetters to assess initial compliance with sharing mandates. Huge team effort! 👉 doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

📣 Hot off the press at #ProcB!

🔍 Our study checked data/code-sharing policies in 275 eco/evo journals and compliance in Proc B (n=2,340) & Ecology Letters (n=571). Policies exist, but clarity and strictness vary, affecting reproducibility.

🔗 doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

Global distribution of forest landscapes covered by airborne LiDAR

Only a pre-print for now, but after 4 years of hard work I couldn't resist sharing this!

The Global Canopy Atlas: analysis-ready maps of 3D structure for the world's woody ecosystems

📜: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Huge team effort led by the brilliant Fabian Fischer!

🎉New preprint!

"TADA! Simple guidelines to improve code sharing"

tinyurl.com/8rmnwjrk

We present simple guidelines to help researchers of all coding levels improve the transparency and reproducibility of their analytical code, TADA!

Transferable, Accessible, Documented, Annotated.

Graphical abstract for a manuscript titled "Too few, too many, or just right? Optimizing sample sizes for population-level inferences in animal tracking projects". The workflow has been fully implemented in the movedesign Shiny application and R package, allowing users to easily test sampling strategies and assess the reliability of space-use and movement metrics, ultimately promoting more rigorous and impactful wildlife research and conservation.

This workflow has been fully implemented into the latest version of the #movedesign R Shiny app, making it easy for researchers to test and optimize their animal tracking sampling strategies! The package is now available on CRAN #rstats github.com/ecoisilva/movedesign

A multi-panel figure shows how relative error (%) in population-level estimates changes with population sample size (m) across different sampling durations (2 months, 4 months, 1 year, 3 years, 9 years) for African buffalo tracking data. The top row displays results without resampling, and the bottom row with resampling. Each panel contains scatter points and error bars for relative error at each sample size, colored by whether the error falls within a ±5% threshold (blue for true, red for false). Shorter durations (left panels) show higher, more negative bias and larger error bars, with many red points, while longer durations (right panels) show reduced bias and more points within the error threshold.

We found that researchers should favor sampling parameters (duration or interval, depending on the target) over population sample size to reduce bias. However, a larger sample size is crucial to increase precision and capture high individual variation.

Graphical abstract for a manuscript titled "Too few, too many, or just right? Optimizing sample sizes for population-level inferences in animal tracking projects". The workflow presented in this manuscript evaluates sampling design by assessing sampling duration, sampling interval, and the number of sampled individuals needed to obtain reliable population-level estimates.

✨ New preprint! "Too few, too many, or just right?" 🌍🌎🌏 We explore how to evaluate study design in animal tracking studies by assessing sampling duration, interval, and, now, the number of individuals needed for reliable population-level estimates. #movementecology www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Thrilled to share our new article in @pnas.org highlighting global gaps in where we study animal movement—and outlining the next generation of smart bio-loggers.

👉 Read the full study in PNAS: lnkd.in/exP8NCeZ
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🚨New paper out🚨
We used fine-scale GPS, depth & accelerometry data to reveal foraging activity of the endangered Bermuda petrel.

Thanks: @campioni-leti.bsky.social & collab. effort of Bermuda Conserv. Dept, Canad. Wildlife Service & ISPA Portugal

A thread 🧵

#seabirds #biologging #movementecology

Can I be added? 😄

New paper in @currentbiology.bsky.social on seabird wind use and foraging decisions!

doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...

We estimated wind selectivity in Manx shearwaters and explored how birds handle the trade-off between being wind efficient and targeting known foraging areas

@sosbangor.bsky.social

The study of social animal migrations: a synthesis of the past and guidelines for future research | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Seasonal migration is a common behaviour seen in many species worldwide. There is evidence that social factors influence various migration decisions, but compared to the well-studied field of social f...

🚨 New paper alert! 🚨
Excited to share our new review in @royalsocietypublishing.org Proceedings B! 🎉

We synthesize research on social factors influencing animal migration and offer guidelines for future research. Check it out here: doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

#OpenAccess #Migration #MovementEcology

Using wild-animal tracking for detecting and managing disease outbreaks Zoonotic diseases increasingly threaten human and wildlife populations, driving a global rise in mass-mortality outbreaks, including the ongoing avian influenza panzootic in wildlife and zoonotic spil...

We’re tagging more wild animals than ever – so how can this data be used for early alert, detection, and better management of zoonotic outbreaks?

So excited this piece is finally out, with an amazing team.

www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

#OneHealth #Zoonoses #Biologging #MovementEcology #HPAI

Tracking data and teamwork once again show their value for wildlife conservation.

Our study led by Timothée Poupartand and Thibaut Bettignies reveals mismatches between the Natura2000 marine network and seabird distributions, urging for better protected areas off France

l1nq.com/kwIzl

A female Western Gull was recorded riding 150km in a garbage truck from San Francisco to a compost facility in Central CA, probably to forage. TWICE. An innovator, an icon, a genius.

This is one of my favorite @waterbirdsociety.bsky.social papers I've ever handled as managing editor #ornithology

Application countdown for the #Animove Workshop 2025 in Costa Rica.....Deadline is 31st of May. Sign up now ! animove.org/next-animove...
@mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social @movebank.bsky.social #biologging #animalmovement #rstats

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The Ecology of Animal Migration course will be held again in Lund University this November! A great opportunity to learn and network for PhDs working on migration.

Open post-doctoral positions in #movementecology: a thread! If you are offering a position and would like us to spread the word, let us know.

Not been here for a while, I though I would today to commemorate the 25th of April 1974. If don't know what it represents for Portugal, visit the website that was built to commemorate the 50 years of the revolution (which was last year) which includes lots of information about it:
50anos25abril.pt

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