Dr Dave

We had 83mm of rain yesterday, first decent drop after four weeks of no rain. Very welcome but quite intense—half of that fell in less than an hour. Water sheeting everywhere, dams overflowing. I realised just how much we need to learn if we want to keep living in an increasingly energetic world…

Long-range population connectivity & limited restrictions on gene flow have shaped the evolution and diversification of flying-foxes across the Indo-Australian Archipelago. Our #newpaper has implications for conservation, speciation & #biosecurity risk. 🌐🌏 #bioinvasions 📖OA: doi.org/10.1111/eva....

EARLY VIEW in IBIS Beyond the specimen: rethinking ornithological collecting in a changing world | onlinelibrary.wiley.... Ken Norris, Heather Avrili | #ornithology 🪶

This research is the ~25 year on tail of a single moment from my first 'scientist' gig doing fish surveys with David. We were electrofishing in the Great Sandy Nat Park when I realised the "elvers" we'd picked up were ammocetes: larval lampreys. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08...

Morning all

Evening all. Asking for some positivity—one of our boys is struggling, trying to find his place in an indifferent world…

Your monthly reminder that if you're using ChatGPT to do your science, you're failing your colleagues, community, and all of us. Here, ChatGPT makes up data and presents it as the real thing — then apologizes when confronted.

Pondering the mistletoe season - thinking on seedling biology, strength of mistletoe glue, climate change impacts, any mistletoe nonsense the media may invent, mistletoe harvest, mistletoe control etc etc. Whether I’ll cover all that or not we will see... diary.mistletoe.org.uk/mistletoe-se...

Morning all.

Flying-foxes are highly mobile, but gene flow isn't uniform: isolation-by-distance in Pteropus alecto, panmixia in P. poliocephalus & P. scapulatus, and asymmetric hybridization shape their evolution and diversification 🦇🧬 doi.org/10.1111/eva.70329

It’s *always* a retired engineer, even if as here you’ve got to do a MAD fold-in to get there

Good afternoon good people.

Cleared the gutters yesterday and it’s now chucking it down. Commence warm inner glow in three, two, one…

Pterostylis falcata - Large Sickle Orchid #orchid #wildflowers #flowers #grampians #wildoz

Caladenia harringtoniae - Pink Spider Orchid Endemic to the Jarrah forests in southern parts of Western Australia where it grows in seasonally wet areas. Classified as threatened/vulnerable #orchids #ozflora #wildoz #nativeplants #inaturalist #bloomscrolling 🌿

I have a long piece at @theconversation.com about AI and the university theconversation.com/friday-essay...

Get close. Get really close. Plunge your head into a gum and see what you can spot! Here is a beautiful Dotted Paropsine Leaf Beetle laying delicate eggs, shared with us by Irene Proebsting in our 2026 photo competition. Get up close to a gum near you and let us know what you find!

Good morning.

#MistletoeMuncherFromWayBack

Three typhoons this year so far but bird banding on Rota is still happening! I'm so impressed to see so many recaptures (~50%) despite all the weather havoc. Marianas birds like this na'abak (Micronesian Rufous Fantail) are so resilient! 🪶 #SciComm @instbirdpop.bsky.social

We saw a few bluebonnet parrots in our travels last weekend. They are super timid and it's challenging to get good photos of them. This is a juvenile - looking at me with suspicion - at Amyton, South Australia. #birdsseenin2026

A Horsfield's bronze cuckoo. Southern Flinders Ranges, South Australia.

Good morning.

🎉Good news! The paper ‘Floral morphology tracks divergence time despite radical ecological shifts in southern South American mistletoes’ in @annbot.bsky.social by Fiorella Muñoz-Domínguez and co-authors is now #free for 2 weeks 🧵(1/7) 👉 doi.org/rttj #PlantScience #AobPlants

Video of a regent parrot mum leaving her nest after feeding the kids - old river red gums are critical habitat for these birds but they’re under threat from logging and water stress

Good morning. #FriYay

after 1600km, a solar and battery powered refrigerated trailer was still 67% charge! No more diesel burning generators to keep truck trailer refrigerated! thedriven.io/2026/10/21/t...

University of Nottingham, right now, is cutting 560 jobs. Do we need to rebrand universities as very large, very clean, land-based oil rigs to get government support?

Our pool-to-pond conversion in suburban Adelaide will feature on Gardening Australia tomorrow night, where we will explain why and how we did it. A true oasis for ourselves and all wildlife. On ABC TV at 7:30pm Friday 23 Oct 2026, and on iview thereafter.

Some projects are born in a burst of enthusiasm. Others take a much longer road. This seabird plastics paper started in 2016, stalled, and was brought back to life by early-career researchers Nia & Chrissie (with @nhcooper123.bsky.social supervising) 🧵 1/3 #ornithology

We analysed plastic occurrence in 93,281 birds from 240 seabird species. 182 of those species contained plastic. Pelicans had the highest weighted mean frequency at 66.7%, penguins the lowest at 5.15%. 2/3 #ornithology #PlasticPollution

Interestingly, none of the ecological traits we tested had a consistent effect once study design was accounted for. Phylogenetic position was the strongest predictor, a possible quick first screen for species. Paper: doi.org/10.1098/rsbl... Blog: adriftlab.org/news/old-pro... #ornithology

Good afternoon good people. 30 seconds of goat shenanigans to your feed. Carry on.

Please enjoy this Central Netted Dragon (Ctenophorus nuchalis) who was just being this little guy hanging out on a shrub. #WildOz #ReptileAwarenessDay Extremely Good Lizard

Diversification of barn owls in the Western Hemisphere: royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article... A new study suggests that barn owls spread to the continental Americas from the Caribbean, and reached the Galápagos two separate times! 🪶🧪 (📷 @minzhao-aves.bsky.social et al.)

Join our 12 Nov webinar to explore the new ARDC Guide to Research with Sensitive & Indigenous Data. Learn ethical, respectful, and legal approaches from ARDC experts. Register now: https://ow.ly/wllE50ZXRUX #ResearchData #IndigenousData #Webinar #AusResearch

Morning all.

Pied Honeyeater feeding on an Eremophila longifolia. A nomadic bird of inland Australia. #BirdOfTheDay #birds #WildOz

A Noisy Miner that was nesting low right over the path at Oxley Creek Common. Noisy Miners fear nothing. #brisbane #birds #wildoz

Preview of a new album that will be published on my website this coming Sunday - 'Botswana: Elephant Forest'. This is a rare, intimate nocturnal recording of elephants passing through a natural corridor of mopane woodland close to the Motloutse River in Botswana. #fieldrecording #soundscape

www.reuters.com/business/env...

91% is a big number, so more please.... My news to me good news for Oct 20 #EarthOptimism www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...