Colin Beale

Some very productive times at #IPBES12 for the @cascade-hei.bsky.social team! There are so many needs identified by IPBES experts & members that #UKHEI can support. It's also been great to help so many ECRs navigate their way through these events - the future of science-policy engagement looks good!

Great to have some fanstastic @york.ac.uk colleagues along for discussions at #IPBES12 at the moment. @charlielem.bsky.social @proflinds.bsky.social and loads more! Also fun to catch up with colleagues from across the world to discuss these important topics.

This was a great workshop, and I'm also excited about what comes from the work of CASCADE over the past 2 years. Watch this space!

Ouch. Just hoping that same individual isn't also one of my applications I'm shortlisting this week! Quite baffling.

Guidelines: - Best Practice for Using iNaturalist in the UK: Best Practice for Using iNaturalist in the UK A practical, optional guide to help your observations integrate smoothly with the UK biological recording system This guidance is entirely optional. You...

forum.inaturalist.org/t/guidelines...

invasive species are probably not what you want to focus on to achieve this - focus on rare species. But this research (and others we're doing) makes me question whether it is a conservation priority at all. Should we manage for beta diversity / to reduce homenisation? I suspect not...

The homogenisation literature seems to view homogenisation as a bad thing & suggests that yes, we should care about the emergent property of communities that is beta divesity itself - increasing this should be an objective of conservation. Our results suggest if you subscribe to that view, then

I suspect if we actually calculated contributions separately introduced species would be increasing overall beta diversity in most of our examples. The key question, therefore, is do we want to conserve beta diversity for the sake of beta diversity itself, or is that not a priority?

I think a key point I'm making is perhaps slightly hidden here - it is that if (and potentially only if) you care about beta diversity, then you should care more about rare specise than widespread introduced ones.

I mean, look at this cute floofball! Isn't it adorable? So floofy grey below and pinky dumpy above. Just a ball with a silly tail attached.

so they can avoid mating with very close relatives www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1... but we also know quality differences usually show up in breeding success, as well as longer-term recuitment success, so it's not clear what the mechanism is for this benefit to dispersal in these very cute birds! 6/6

EVEN MORE LONG_TAILED TITS! There's no end to the cuteness

either the ♀️♀️ that move further are intrinsically better quality birds, or moving further means these ♀️♀️can escape any inbreeding costs from breeding with more closely related ♂️♂️ . We know inbreeding costs are big, but we we also know long-tailed tits detect relatedness from call similarity 5/

A graph from https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1815873115 showing that the proportion of fledglings that make it to breed is massively higher for the females that move ~2km compared to thsoe staying within 500m of their nest.

But in long-tailed tits we see a remarkably strong increase in the numbers of offspring that subsequently recruit into the breeding population for females that disperse further. They don't have bigger broods or fledge more, but they yound survive better. 2 plausible reasons why this is: 4/

Closer up of three - they're so teeny and cute! Long graduated black with thite-finged tailed better on show here as they use their tiny conical beaks to shred the fat balls.

Most of what we know about this comes from Ben Hatchwell's group www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/.... They've shown that it's usually ♂️♂️ that help, while ♀️♀️ move off. Dispersal is risky: you have to move somewhere new, where you don't know where food is or predators lurk, so the benefits must be high. 3/4

Here they are again - so many tails all sticking out!

Like most birds, ♀️ long-tailed tits disperse further than ♂️♂️ (this is the opposite to what is seen in mammals, & no-one knows why they differ!). Long-tailed tits are also cooperative breeders: some young from a 1st brood stay & help rear the next brood, and 2nd broods are therefore bigger. 2/N

7 long-tailed tits crowding onto fat balls. They are themselves floofballs, with a slightly pinkish white underside, blank wings with a white stripe, pink back and cute black eyebrow over beady black eyes as well a tail amost twice the length of their body. Very VERY cute.

Just recieved news from @btobirds.bsky.social that one of our campus Long-tailed Tits had been found over the weekend all of 7km east of where we ringed it as a baby in the summer. A flock in the garden this morning gives an opportunity to share a little story about dispersal in this cute bird! 1/N🦉

Congrats due mainly to @jackhhatfield.bsky.social I promise you, but thanks!

Posing male elephant, looking might strong with some pretty hefty tusks too.

This was another really great bit of work by @molly-rc-brown.bsky.social & it was great to work with @professorpub.bsky.social & Shuo Gao on this. Thanks too to @leverhulme.ac.uk for funding through @anthropocenebio.bsky.social ! May there be every more 🐘🐘🐘! 6/6

A fine elephant in Ghana stands on a dusty path.

We conclude that to save elephants through reducing demand, one-size-fits-all campaigns thank major on building feelings of guilt or moral assertions aren't enough. We need culturally nuanced, segmented strategies that target specific motivations like gifting & social status. 5/6

Close up of elephant calf just starting to grow tusks next to it's mother's trunk. I think it is cute.

Many consumers still view ivory as a profitable financial investment, believing its resale value will only rise if elephant popoulations continute to fall, and we identified a segment of 'diehard buyers' who remain completely unswayed by legal bans or conservation messaging. How to reach them? 4/6

a penguin wearing a santa hat is holding a gift box with the words for you above it ALT: a penguin wearing a santa hat is holding a gift box with the words for you above it

Ivory is most frequently purchased as a gift for friends or business contacts. This isn't just a transaction; it’s a way to build social capital. Gifting ivory helps build 'face' and signals the giver's refined taste & status. 3/6

Elephant showing his tusks nicely, while swimming in a lake. Ivory is most beautiful on an elephant...

So why do people still buy ivory? Molly identifies the sense of beauty of ivory as a primary driver, but for many consumers, ivory isn't just a product; it’s an irreplaceable material symbolising auspiciousness, luck, and prosperity. Its aesthetic value is deeply tied to cultural identity. 2/6

A family of elephants at a waterhole viewed from about toe height. with a baobab behind them. These are coold beasts!

New paper alert! Despite China’s landmark 2017 domestic ivory ban, demand hasn't vanished. The fab @molly-rc-brown.bsky.social's 2nd PhD paper out today reviews the deep-seated psychological and social reasons why demand persists. 🌍 🧪
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.... 1/6

A pic of a some birds at a waterhole. THere are several species, so it demonstrates diversity. But do we need excuses to post pics of ducks, ibis, storks and geese?

Some other issues are raised too: declines in very common species to about 50% occupancy will increase beta-diversity, suggesting that perhaps we should be very specific about aspects of diversity we want to manage. Thanks to Jack, @jonathan-gdon.bsky.social & Chris Thomas for fun on this! 5/5

A Ruppell's griffon vulture in a cloud of flies comes down to land. It's huge and broad winged, flying towards the camera. Mostly brown, with white legs and a fluffy white head. Hard to say it's cute, but strangely, as it has become rarer it has likely INCREASED beta diversty in Africa.

Since the differences between sites (beta diversity) is a key component of biodivesity there has been some interest in how to conserve this aspect. Ou rwork suggests traditional conservation focussed on rare species will work better than worrying about introductions to achieve this goal. 4/5

Graphs showing the change in species contributions to spatial beta-diversity between time periods totalled by occurrence frequency quartiles (first column) and for individual species (second column). Rows are different species datasets. The summed contributions clearly show negative impact of species change for species found in 50% of sites, strong impacts for the large nubmers of localised species and little overall impact from widespread and often introduced species.

Because there are usually more localised species (found in <25% of sites) than widespread ones, it is change in rare species that generates the strongest net change in the community differences. Homogenisation, therefore, is driven by net changes in rare species, not spread of common ones. 3/5

Graphs showing the relative contributions of each species to spatial beta-diversity (Hellinger transformed total variance) in the two time periods compared to the proportion of sites each species was recorded in. Data shown for North American birds, South African plants, European pollen samples, Pacific coastal benthos and UK mammals. There are obviously humped shapes in the top figures, confirming individual species contributions are greatest around 50%, though with more nested datasets the relationship doesn't come down so much at high occupancy.

Species found in roughly 50% of sites contribute the most individually to community differences. But both increase or decrease in frequency of these species will reduce community differences, while super abundant species have little impact on community differences. 2/5

Yellow-collared Lovebirds - two small green parrots with yellow breasts and collars and black heads. White eyelinter and a sharp red beak. They're cute. Mnay lovebirds are kept as pets but escape sometimes and have colonised lots of places they weren't in before.

New paper! Led by @jackhhatfield.bsky.social we looked at species driving biotic homogenisation (biological communities becoming more similar). onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.... Current wisdom assumes expansion of human-associated common species is the cause of homogenisation, but is it?🌍🧪1/5

New paper with @jonathan-gdon.bsky.social @cmbeale.bsky.social and Chris Thomas looking at species contributions to biotic homogenisation and differentiation.

@anthropocenebio.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1111/geb....

They are rather fine!

Have a smart male pochard for #InternationalUnsolicitedDuckPicDay ducks do make some of the best #birds