Ryan Stephens

An interesting study from Japan observes how animal-dispersed truffle-like fungi are more prone to genetic isolation due to forest fragmentation. Not a surprising finding, but interesting to consider from a conservation standpoint!

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

🦅🌱Secondary seed dispersal by migrant harriers in India

📷 © Sankar Subramanian

vist.ly/4cfkr

#Diploendozoochory #Grasslands #OpenNaturalEcosystems #Raptor

Excited to share our most recent work in collaboration with @liedcarneiro.bsky.social . We link network properties with estimates of pollination success. Check it out!

Water cascades down a shallow creek over large slate rocks. Yellow and orange leaves mix with some still green in front of a pale blue sky

Two men leaning on hiking sticks are deep in conversation standing at the base of a large waterfall. Leaves in the foreground are starting to transition from green to the yellows and oranges of fall.

Deeply variegated leaves of wild ginger with pale green patterns overlying a dark mint green stick out against the browns of the forest floor

Pale purple aster flowers pop next to leaves in the midst of fall colors change

Saturday site visit today at Abram's Falls with @ryanbstephens.bsky.social, beautiful fall weather, and the onset of fall colors in southern Appalachia 🍁🍂

An ad for a PhD position to start fall 2026 working with me at ETSU. For more info, please email at LeeBR1@etsu.edu.

A close-up picture of dimpled trout lilies active in early spring, still largely surrounded by the previous year's senesced tree leaves.

A beautiful vista of the Blue Ridge Mountains from on top of Carver's Gap on the border between North Carolina and Tennessee.

🚨 Please repost widely!🚨

I am recruiting a PhD student to join my lab next fall to work on forest and climate change ecology projects in southern Appalachia! Come join me in one of the most beautiful, biodiverse, and understudied parts of North America. Details below and happy to answer questions

You know your Google Scholar alerts are keyed in when it suggests your own papers and your student's theses!

I'm hiring! Please share!
Join me this winter as a #wildlife #ecology technician. 6 months at $18/hr and subsidized housing available. Maintain a #cameratrap array, #bobcat and #fisher live trapping transects, and telemetry. More: blackrockforest.org/work_with_us

Dang!

Nice, thanks! Was actually just looking at that one this afternoon.

annihilated*

I'm #teaching an introduction to research class in #biology for undergraduates this term. Anyone have a good suggestion for a short paper or text on questions, objectives, and hypothesis with a biology focus?

Looks salvageable. We had an 18 inch white pine that absolutely initiated one of ours.

Thanks! Wish we had more voices like yours here in the USA!

I'm giving a talk on Tuesday about carnivores as dispersers of mycorrhizal fungal spores as part of a special session on fungal spore dispersal. Come check it out if you are here in Baltimore and like fungi, carnivores, or trophic interactions. #ESA2025

Mechanisms that potentially contribute to the maintenance of interactions between bacteria, ectomycorrhizal fungi (EcMF), and land trees across varied developmental periods.

“…when organisms interact can largely determine how they interact.”

#Viewpoint: Is it all about timing? Identifying the symbiosis critical points that govern interactions among #bacteria, ectomycorrhizal #fungi, and land #trees

By Louis Berrios 👇

📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Congrats!

How climate shapes soil fungal traits Many soil microbes play a vital role in ecosystems, as they help plants access nutrients and water and assist in stress tolerance such as during drought and to defend against pathogens. One such group...

Our new global study led by @smriti-pehim-limbu.bsky.social is now out in @pnas.org. TLDR: Certain spore traits were linked to climate AND species range sizes! YES we can use traits to gain insight into env adaptations for microbes.

#mycorrhizas #spores #NSFfunded
www.eurekalert.org/news-release...

Measuring Personality in Wild Small Mammals: A Review of Methods and Proposal for a Standardised Approach We provide a systematic review of methodologies used to study personality in small mammals. We propose adopting ‘Standardised Experimental Design’ and ‘Behavioural Measurements’ to effectively compar...

Our review led by S. Savazza "Measuring Personality in Wild Small Mammals: A Review of Methods and Proposal for a Standardised Approach" is out, free open access, in mammal review
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

A map showing telemetry and roost locations of sympatric northern and southern flying squirrels at a location in Ontario, Canada

New from Rebekah Persad and the Kawartha Flying Squirrel Project: Home range size, habitat selection, and mycophagy of sympatric North American flying squirrels esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Big day in the lab. Noah, successfully defended his thesis (my first student) and knocked it out of the park! I also submitted a manuscript from a project that we have been working on for about 6 years.

New paper out! 🏙️ We found that urbanisation simplifies and homogenises seed dispersal networks. 🪴🐦‍⬛ Non-native plants dominate in cities, accounting for 61% 😔 of interactions in the urban network vs just 15% in forests! 🪻🌿🌴
Check it out: doi.org/10.1111/cobi...
🌐🧪🌍🍁

#Truffles are out! We found some nice Tuber and Destuntzia collections, among others.

Ectomycorrhizal fungal community succession and fragmentation across forest edges nearly three decades postharvest Forest management for wood products involves the conversion of primary forests to younger plantations. This has an immediate impact on biota such as ectomycorrhizal fungi, a diverse symbiotic fungal ...

Forestry trials set up decades ago are key to understanding long term outcomes of management. This study looks at recovery of EcM fungi nearly 30 years (!) post harvest. Nice work👍from a great team.

nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

The biogeography and conservation of Earth’s ‘dark’ ectomycorrhizal fungi In this review, van Galen et al. use global soil metabarcoding databases to evaluate current estimates of the total number of ectomycorrhizal (EcM) fungal species on Earth, outline the current state o...

Our paper shows that most ectomycorrhizal fungal species (83% of OTUs) are "dark taxa": species we detect in DNA, but can't match to known species names. We map global "darkspots" - the parts of the world most in need of more research. @spun.earth @ethz.ch www.cell.com/current-biol...

Designing better out-of-the-box histograms Given how common histograms are in BI tools, you might think they’re easy to design. Think again. We share challenges we encountered, and how we handled them, while designing better out-of-the-box…

Histograms are incredibly useful, interpretable, and common in BI. But building histograms that work well out of the box — no matter the data — is trickier than it sounds. We share some of the challenges faced, and decisions made, when designing histograms for Observable Canvases:

Last day of Animal Ecology today and my students surprised me with bear hats. I’ve been complaining about all the damage they do to our field sites and it’s been a running joke all semester. Of course every student presentation today also had bears.

Well deserved!

Ahhhhhh Spring. A time to replenish, revive, and…. REGROW YOUR BONES?!?

a🧵on a new paper

"Over the limit: Consequences of gray squirrel personality on the shifting range limits of oak and hickory species" led by Maisie Merz is now out (open access) in Global Ecology and Conservation. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Happy to share that the first paper of my PhD is out!

We developed a trait-based framework 🌱🦜 to quantify how plant-frugivore interactions and animal movement shape plant functional connectivity—the dispersal of seeds between habitat patches.

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...