Matthieu Leray, PhD

Colombia bans all new oil and mining projects in its Amazon Colombia will no longer approve new oil or large-scale mining projects in its Amazon biome, which covers 42% of the nation’s territory, according to a Nov. 13 statement by its environment ministry. Ac...

Very proud to be Colombian right now! 🇨🇴 I hope all neighboring countries follow suit soon! news.mongabay.com/short-articl...

Coral Bleaching: The Equatorial‐Refugia Hypothesis

🔗 buff.ly/xtRwbvO

Today, my latest publication was published in Global Change Biology. This work is the result of several years of brainstorming, discussing and polishing with three of my favorite collaborators. In it, we discuss how climatic extremes may affect evolution.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Excited to share that my lab is moving to HKU @swimshku.bsky.social early next year! Really looking forward to working with great colleagues in the Baker, Schunter, Mcilroy, Gaitan and Russell labs, @bonebraking.bsky.social, @jonscibulski.bsky.social and others in the School of Biological Sciences

Here, we show that deep below, corals and feather stars don’t just share space – they share microbes. Endozoicomonadaceae + Nitrosopumilaceae inhabit both hosts in a “promiscuous” symbiosis that may fuel nitrogen cycling in the deep sea.
doi.org/10.1186/s401... 🌊🪸🧪 #Bioinformatics 🧬💻 #SymbioSky

The Brown and Stachowicz labs are looking for a postdoc for an NSF-funded project on the thermal dependence of disease in eelgrass! As a bonus you get to be based at the Bodega Marine Lab! Interested? Find out more here: brown-ecology.com/join-us/

The sponge-ctenophore debate was one of the first that excited me as an undergrad. It’s so cool to still see new papers coming out on the topic!

"Our data are exquisite. Our world is empty."

An amazing piece on the coral reefs of the future by Rick MacPherson.

bluesky Global Ecology Feed Digest #38 Curated digest of the bluesky Global Ecology feed on biodiversity, ecosystems & conservation at large scales. Terrestrial, freswater & marine realms.

🌐 Global Ecology feed Digest #38, Nov 3-10, 29 posts!

✨For the lazy (yes we are!) & friends who don't like social media but might benefit from this feed, here’s a DIGEST crafted with 💚 for you to share

👉 globalecologybs.github.io/feeddigest.g...

DM if you want to receive the link weekly

🌍🦤🦑🪴🍁🧪

🦭 New study reveals overlooked intraspecific variation in prey quality and its influence on predator energy budgets. By identifying key ecological drivers, they emphasize the need to integrate such variability into bioenergetic models.

Read the full paper here! ➡️ buff.ly/vecdcwH

The hitchhiker’s guide to cross-species DNA delivery Microbial hitchhikers are rewriting the rules of horizontal gene transfer. He, Patkowski, et al. reveal how phage satellites assemble chimeric infective particles that deliver DNA across species bound...

The hitchhiker’s guide to cross-species DNA delivery

@cp-trendsmicrobiol.bsky.social Spotlight by Kotaro Kiga and Rodrigo Ibarra-Chávez

www.cell.com/trends/micro...

Oxygen supersaturation has been reported to protect aquatic animals from heat waves. We tested this in a large collaborative experiment on many species of fish and crustaceans. Our new paper in @plosbiology.org shows that the effect of hyperoxia on thermal tolerance is negligible. Unfortunately.

Advert for Art and Science session at upcoming ICRS in Auckland New Zealand. July 19-24 2026. Abstract deadline December 1, 2025.

Please join us in this uplifting and inspiring session bringing Art and Science together at the upcoming International Coral Reef Symposium in Auckland, New Zealand, July 19-24 2026. See you all there! Fighting to save reefs through Art!🧪🪸🧬🌎🌊🐙🦠🌿

Mesquite's two icons, one against a black background, and one against a sun on a sky blue background.

Mesquite 4.02 update released! It fixes a few bugs and adds Codon Alignment and various other improvements. Also, much faster with genomics files with 1000s of loci. www.mesquiteproject.org 🧪 #evolbio
@bembidion.bsky.social

The cover of the Cleaning Biodiversity Data in R book. It has an illustration of an Pacific Cleaner Shrimp in the middle of a navy background. The shrimp has a bright red-orange shell, pale-yellow body and white whiskers.

Still want to make cleaning biodiversity data shrimp-ler? 🦐

Good news: We just updated our Cleaning Biodiversity Data in R book, so you still can! We've updated data for 2025, added new content & fixed lots of silly typos 😀

Live the shrimp-le life:
cleaning-data-r.ala.org.au

#rstats #ecology 🧪🌏

Call for abstracts Reefs Reimagined: Art and Reefs. International Coral Reef Symposium July 19-24, 2026. Submission deadline Dec 1, 2025.

Join our session to discuss the role of art in coral reef conservation at the International Coral Reef Symposium in Auckland, New Zealand July 19-24, 2026. Abstract deadline Dec 1, 2025. 🧪🪸🌎🌊🧬🌐🌿🐡🐙

Okinawa had its hottest September at 1.6C above the average. I filmed this mass coral bleaching last year, but didn't have the heart to share. Total annihilation of the first few meters of depth. This stuff happens before our eyes, and yet people who think it isn't real keep gaining power.

Bridging the gap between individual specialization and species persistence in mutualistic communities Mutualistic interactions among organisms are fundamental to the origin and maintenance of biodiversity. Yet, the study of community dynamics often relies on values averaged at the species level, igno...

What sustains biodiversity? 🌿🌸🐝🐦‍⬛ It’s not just about species, it’s also about individuals.
 
Our new paper in @esajournals.bsky.social Ecol. Monogr. shows how the way individuals specialize on their mutualistic partners can scale up to shape species persistence.
 
🔗 doi.org/10.1002/ecm....

In massive #collaborative #effort, we assembled published & unpublished #fish 🐟 #eDNA 🧬 metabarcoding datasets, covering ~2000 sampling sites/>100 river systems globally. 🐟 🐠 🐡 🌐 🌍

Now results out in 2 #parallel #preprints @biorxiv-ecology.bsky.social

#aquatic #biodiversity #meta-analysis
1/6🧵

JOB OPPORTUNITY: Lecturer in Marine Biology and Scientific Diving (University of Plymouth)

www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOS637/l...

#jobs #lecturer #scientificdiving #plymouth #coralreefs #university #marinescience #marinebiology #marineecology #jobopportunity

A roadmap for equitable reuse of public microbiome data - Nature Microbiology In this Consensus Statement, a consortium of microbiome scientists discuss current sequencing data sharing policies and propose the use of a Data Reuse Information (DRI) tag to promote equitable and collaborative data sharing.

I'm grateful to be part of Data Reuse Consortium contributing to the paper "A roadmap for equitable reuse of public microbiome data" published in Nature Microbiology @natmicrobiol.nature.com. It proposes solutions for the data recycling🧵⬇️
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#microsky 🧪🦠💻🧬👩‍🔬
@i2sysbio.es

Please help me get a job in a different country

For the recent coral reef science arrivals, here are two starter packs so you can find your people! If you want to be added, please let me know. I have been adding people as they come through my feed. go.bsky.app/Qo5Gh2H go.bsky.app/QSafBeL 🌎🌊🧪🌐🐟🪸🐙🌿

Calling all isotope ecologists.
IsoEcol 2026 will be held between October 12-17th, 2026 at the University of Hong Kong
See www.isoecol.com/2026/ for more

Taxon‐specific BLAST percent identity thresholds for identification of unknown sequences using metabarcoding The identification of organisms in environmental samples using metabarcoding relies on factors such as taxonomic assignment methods, genetic markers, reference databases and confidence thresholds ...

📖Published📖

Pappalardo et al. developed taxon-specific confidence thresholds for eukaryotes at different taxonomic levels to optimize the accuracy of BLAST-based taxonomic assignments for metabarcoding 🧬 🌍 🧪 Read more here 👇

My group at NOAA/Miami is hiring a postdoc to lead a marine eDNA biodiversity effort (Bio-GO-SHIP). You'll develop and deploy high-throughput metabarcoding assays for ocean DNA. Help make foundational contributions to global marine biodiversity monitoring! t.co/p53s7E0YiL

Evolutionary consequences of extreme climate events Simon Baeckens and Colin Donihue review case studies of rapid evolutionary change in response to extreme climate events and sketch a framework for future studies in the rapidly changing climate of the...

Extreme climate events can catalyze rapid evolutionary change! in our new Current Biology (@currentbiology.bsky.social) piece, Colin and I argue it’s time to study their evolutionary consequences systematically — beyond opportunistic observations. www.cell.com/current-biol...

How thoughtful experimental design can empower biologists in the omics era - Nature Communications Here, the authors discuss principles of experimental design that are relevant for all biology research, along with special considerations for projects using -omics approaches, highlighting common expe...

I am really excited to see this article on basic experimental design principles published. Definitely will be mandatory reading for incoming graduate students in my lab. Maggie Wagner who led this article did an amazing job with the illustrations of basic principles www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Taxon‐specific BLAST percent identity thresholds for identification of unknown sequences using metabarcoding The identification of organisms in environmental samples using metabarcoding relies on factors such as taxonomic assignment methods, genetic markers, reference databases and confidence thresholds ...

This is great - we a huge need in the #eDNA community to have data-informed standards for eDNA identity cutoffs, not just the bog-standard 97%
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
For Chordata there is no cutoff that leads to 0% error when assigning species!! (Table S4)