Marcel Cardillo

A man standing up in a crowded room of people sitting. He is dressed in workman's clothes and has his head raised as if speaking up when not necessarily belonging there.

We are a rich enough country to be funding 37% of all basic research proposals, not just considering "the best" 37% and then maybe only funding 12% in the end.

🤎

After a few years of benign neglect I am rebuilding bionames.org, which is a database of 5.4 million taxonomomic names for animals, linked to half a million DOIs and 278K PDFs. Dream is for every species name to be linked to its original publication using a persistent identifier #PID

Forecasting extinction risk for future-proof conservation decisions Conservation prioritisation emphasises currently threatened species, but there are strong arguments for complementary, more proactive approaches based on forecasting future extinction risk for unthrea...

Forecasting extinction risk for future-proof conservation decisions: Trends Ecol & Evolution www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

Should conservation focus on threatened species? Or should we be proactive and protect species before they become threatened? This paper explores how to get the balance right.

external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%...

The Culture Wars Came for Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales Is Staying the Course.

I take Wikipedia for granted. Reading this Jimmy Wales interview reminded me in our Fantasyland age what a remarkable and important creation it is. True pillar of civilization. Runs on only $200 million a year. Requires our support. So I’m finally donating. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/18/m...

Fuck Black Friday — The Shovel We're raising our prices by 10%

It’s that time of the year again when Australian companies celebrate the fact that it’s almost the Friday after a pilgrim thanksgiving holiday in America by providing discounts to unrelated goods

Well fuck that

We’re raising our prices by 10% and donating the difference (+ an extra 15%) to charity

Surprisingly difficult to get hold of the full list of EPBC amendments...

But here's the list of amendments put out by The Greens

Forecasting extinction risk for future-proof conservation decisions Conservation prioritisation emphasises currently threatened species, but there are strong arguments for complementary, more proactive approaches based on forecasting future extinction risk for unthreatened species. Forecasting methods vary in the timescale of extinction risk estimation and include established methods such as Population Viability Analysis (PVA) and Early Warning Systems, and emerging ‘Over-the-Horizon’ (OTH) methods. We develop a framework that integrates extinction risk assessment across timescales and outlines tradeoffs between shorter- and longer-term extinction prevention goals. This framework facilitates use of extinction risk forecasting in decision-theoretic conservation prioritisation that explicitly considers alternative time horizons for extinction prevention. Considering extinction risk on extended timescales offers a future-proof approach to conservation planning that may prevent more extinctions than focusing exclusively on currently threatened species.

Online now: Forecasting extinction risk for future-proof conservation decisions

Conceptual framework for extinction risk forecasting that outlines key elements and tradeoffs associated with forecasting on different time horizons.

Online now: Forecasting extinction risk for future-proof conservation decisions.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Should conservation focus on threatened species? Or should we be proactive and protect species before they become threatened? This paper explores how to get the balance right.

The Greens have secured an inquiry to find out why job & program cuts are being rolled out across the CSIRO! It will consider the impacts of the funding cuts, the importance of public funding for science & CSIRO’s future funding & resourcing needs.

A graph plotting the CSIRO funding as a percentage of GDP from 1978 to 2025. In 1980 it was around 0.17 %, since then it has sharply fallen to 0.03 %.

The dismantling of Science in #Australia continues...

I remember that hopes were high in 2022 that the new Labor Government would end the decade-long decline. We are now in the second #Albanese term, and things are worse than ever.

ABC News article: www.abc.net.au/news/science...

#PlantScience

Camera captures rare Aussie predator believed extinct across 70km landscape A $5 million project has helped change the region, allowing for the animal's return.

Over five years after cameras were set up within a sprawling Western Australian landscape, an elusive “chuditch” has been filmed for the first time.
au.news.yahoo.com/camera-captu...

A Guided Tour of Phylogenetic Comparative Methods for Studying Trait Evolution Phylogenetic comparative methods are important tools in biology, providing insights into the way traits evolve. There are many technical resources describing how these methods work. Our aim here is to...

Neat paper: A Guided Tour of Phylogenetic Comparative Methods for Studying Trait Evolution
www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Nature suggests you use their "Manuscript Adviser" bot to get advice before submitting

I uploaded the classic Watson & Crick paper about DNA structure, and the Adviser had this to say about one of the greatest paper endings of the century:

Four maps of the Australian Monsoonal Tropics

New paper led by Emmeline Norris based on her Honours project: Land tenure contributions to protected area growth under alternative conservation targets in the Australian monsoon tropics
conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

New Not Drowning, Waving album with Sir George Telek entitled “Malira” out Sept 19th ahead of Melb Recital Centre show on Sat 20th. Front cover features Wargi Apelis from the acclaimed Moab Stringband of Raluana, Rabaul.

I was ok with it until the last two words of the title

Hundreds more CSIRO jobs on the chopping block as experts raise fears over impact on science Exclusive: Concerns Australia is gutting its research capability coincide with Trump’s deep cuts into US science agencies

Other countries will take American scientists, they say.

YouTube video by Australian Crawl Australian Crawl - Things Don't Seem (1981)

What about this classic Oz Crawl song that I'm pretty sure was written with the 2020's in mind:
youtu.be/pv9nyNb4NTk

And one final thought: Ozzy going out after giving an emotional final performance that raised a ton of money for charity is more spiritually uplifting and did more genuine good than anything any televangelist and religious grifter who railed against him ever did combined.

Why is there such variation in species diversity among regions? Work led by @alexskeels.bsky.social shows that the history of climate change driving expansion & contraction of biomes is at least as important as current environments. ‬https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2502129122

enormous phylogeny of ~700 Grevilleoideae plants plus outgroups with major tribes and fossil calibrations highlighted

New paper out today in @pnas.org presenting near-complete phylogeny of the Grevilleoideae subfamily of Proteaceae plants, representing years of work and huge collaboration from an amazing team - ft. @marcelcardillo.bsky.social @hsauquet.bsky.social @austinmast.bsky.social and many others not on bsky

Thoroughly approve of #3, #5 & #8

You could have picked the original Warumpi Band version of My Island Home, but otherwise all good choices 👍

The hardest part of PhDing is coming up with important, original questions that can feasibly addressed. Pretty sure Grok can't come up with good research questions.

🚨🐸 Frog Nerds Assemble 🐸🚨

Recently we published a paper on the phylogenetics and taxonomy of Australia and New Guinea's tree frogs, the Pelodryadidae.

Link here: tinyurl.com/4udpmxsm

What does this mean for you Litoria-lovers?
There's a whole bunch more names to use!

Let me explain ...

A split-screen image. The left side shows a rhinoceros mother and calf in a savanna landscape with scattered trees. The right side depicts a forest fire scene with orange flames and silhouetted trees against a dark sky. Text reads: "Biodiversity is in crisis" followed by: "1 million plant and animal species risk extinction Ecosystems are collapsing Misinformation slows progress." "Trust the science. Conserve, restore and sustainably use biodiversity."

‘Biodiversity is not declining’ is a claim you may have heard. But science says otherwise. 📉

The @ipbes.net #GlobalAssessment reveals 1 million plant & animal species are at risk of extinction. Misinformation clouds the crisis.

Rely on trusted research to understand our shared challenges. 🌍🧪

To be fair I think there’s a just a general all-round drop in support at the moment.

The skeleton of the early whale Maiacetus suspended from the ceiling. It is a mammal with anatomy like a crocodile’s.

For millions of years, whales walked on land.

Early whale evolution was an evolutionary burst in wetlands, estuaries, and ocean shallows, otter-like mammals with crocodile smiles moving between land and water. This form, Maiacetus, lived in what’s now Pakistan about 47.5 million years ago. 🧪