Dr Manu Saunders FRES

New blog: Why have we had so many Bogongs and hoverflies at our place? We still don’t understand what drives insect boom and bust patterns, or how these patterns influence extinction risk ecologyisnotadirtyword.com/2026/10/04/o...

How we fight inflation doesn't just matter for the economy. It matters for democracy. If government decisions leave people poorer, more indebted and less secure, we risk deepening the conditions that have emboldened the far-right. 🔗 My article for the FT. Link below.

New #Forum article in #RESInsectConsDiv #DungBeetle declines merit global attention doi.org/10.1111/icad... #Conservation #BioindicatorTaxa #InsectDeclines @manusaunders.bsky.social @wileyecology.bsky.social

I’m sorry, what?! “Salmon are carnivores and eat other fish in the wild, so feeding them chicken is entirely natural,” said an executive at a major salmon-feed producer.” Feeding them humans would be just as “natural” BTW. www.ft.com/content/8f1e...

[new paper] Animal Pollination Under Human-Induced Rapid Environmental Change www.annualreviews.org/content/jour... Writing this review was really inspiring, and it was a pleasure to work with two young talented scientists @blancaac.bsky.social and @nermonper.bsky.social cc @ebdonana.bsky.social

News | England’s cultural organisations unprepared to deal with extreme heat, Arts Council England survey finds Staff and visitor wellbeing, income and footfall suffered as indoor temperatures hit over 41°C in some venues this summer

I read this article and it is fantastic! It should be on mandatory reading lists for all masters & PhD students (and faculty too). Reading matters! Citation matters! Shortcuts are bad scholarship.

Anthropic is out with new nonsense about Claude (or the collection of models called Claude) deserving moral consideration and/or be able to feel distress, so my inbox is filling up with journos asking me to comment. I've also got a day job, so here is a brief set of public comments on this: >>

To test this, we compiled 3,415 quantitative networks with >110,000 links among 5,343 pollinator and 6,126 plant species across all major terrestrial biomes. The study brought together 142 researchers from 32 countries. 3/8

New study published in @natecoevo.nature.com ! We assembled the largest global dataset of plant–pollinator networks to ask a simple question: do interactions become more specialised towards the tropics? doi.org/10.1038/s415... Study led by @saileesakhalkar.bsky.social and myself ☺️ 1/8

Our latest work is out @natecoevo.nature.com! We revisit a classic: Are interactions more specialised towards the tropics?🌻🪰 Great to lead this with @robtrop.bsky.social, and our coauthors across the world! Grateful for their collaboration🥳, and hope to continue working with this amazing community!

"While he is a distinguished editor, Kohler's biggest impact on the nation has been as a communicator." -one of Australia's best communicators... @alankohler.bsky.social 👏👏👏 www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09...

Finally got the Bogong moths here in Armidale, a few days later than the rest of NSW! Hundreds fluttering through our backyard tonight, nectaring on Eremophila and Pittosporum #ozinverts #threatenedspecies

New work in #RESInsectConsDiv #BumbleBees alter diet breadth but maintain pollen macronutrient levels in response to varying floral availability in managed timberlands doi.org/10.1111/icad... #InsectCommunities #Bombus #Pollinators #Conservation @manusaunders.bsky.social @wileyecology.bsky.social

Amazing! This year's Bogong moth migration seen in full flight, after a few years of low records. Insect population dynamics can be unpredictable, especially without long-term data. Look forward to seeing science on what may have driven this year's pattern #ozinverts www.news.com.au/technology/s...

New #OpenAccess work in #RESInsectConsDiv reports on roadside #pollinator populations & the negative impact of intensive roadside vegetation maintenance, suggesting implications for management. doi.org/10.1111/icad... #InsectDeclines #Biodiversity @cwf-fcf.bsky.social @manusaunders.bsky.social

Apple "detectives" wanted to identify a gnarly old tree growing on a remote plot of land in Maine. What they discovered was the key to a centuries-old apple mystery.

Try this at your next meeting #HigherEd #academia #sociology #GenAI

I agreed with the general premise of this post until: "I also used LLMs as an aid to understand the paper better and also learn some concepts used in the papers that I did not know prior to this exercise." Irony etc. But seriously, we won't defeat AI with AI! #AcademicSky medium.com/@TmlrOrg/ask...

This is a thing everywhere in the world: on-site diesel generation is advertised as "backup" generation, but data centre operators plan to use it way, way more than that. Firmus in Australia now fighting against rules to limit pollution from their fossil-fuelled project

thinkin bout this - along with pollution, ai psychosis & ai enabled (industrialized basically) online harassment, discrimination, plagiarism, propaganda and ncii/csam (etc.) farrr more than “extinction” by ai within a decade

Students in discussion of uncurated materials is not teaching. Students hanging out together is not teaching. Good teaching is the thing that AI cannot do, while it can mimic a role in the first two. 9/

I have listened to and read lots and lots of What AI will Mean for College and the one big thing that gets skips all the time is TEACHING. Information provided is not teaching. 8/

“Pacific nations have been telling Australia this for years” writes @louisemorris.bsky.social “Emission cuts need to happen at the source, not through offsets from avoided deforestation or speculative carbon removal schemes.” Read the full piece on The Point: thepoint.com.au/opinions/260...

Gettting rid of protections for 94% of wetlands and 1/3 of streams and rivers (especially out West). "Relatively permanent" as a rule from the Supreme Court is ambiguous and essentially meaningless - some of the most important ecologically waters dry up seasonally! www.nytimes.com/2026/09/04/c...

A bit disconcerting when one of the world's largest moth species is attracted to your headlamp! Found this beautiful Hercules Moth in far north Queensland. #wildoz #wildlife #nature #biodiversity #insects

Another 'not funded' ARC grant application on my list, sigh #FT26. Time to update my application for next round... Reminder: if you write & submit an excellent ARC application that doesn't get funded, you're a superstar too! #AcademicSky ecologyisnotadirtyword.com/2023/11/10/m...

Are you an ecologist/evolutionary biologist looking for an ongoing academic position? Monash University’s School of Biological Sciences is hiring! Come join us in Melbourne, Australia! Details here: careers.pageuppeople.com/513/cw/en/jo...

New blog: If you don't use genAI to artificially enhance your research outputs, why aren't you encouraged to claim the originality and integrity of your work? #AcademicSky ecologyisnotadirtyword.com/2026/09/04/s...

New blog: If you don't use genAI to artificially enhance your research outputs, why aren't you encouraged to claim the originality and integrity of your work? #AcademicSky ecologyisnotadirtyword.com/2026/09/04/s...

New #OpenAccess research in #RESInsectConsDiv #MothTraps shine a light on nocturnal #parasitoid wasps: Snapshot assessment of UK diversity and distributions doi.org/10.1111/icad... #Biodiversity #InsectMonitoring @manusaunders.bsky.social @wileyecology.bsky.social

Normalising AI use for all outsources the research and verification process to individuals who don't have the high level of skills/training needed to conduct rigorous research. We already suffer from policy makers not listening to experts, this is very concerning www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

New research in #RESInsectConsDiv Keeping the herds: Traditional #grazing shapes beetle #assemblages in Mongolian steppes doi.org/10.1111/icad.70134 #Coleoptera #Biodiversity @manusaunders.bsky.social @wileyecology.bsky.social

Summer in Mumbai was brutal and endless. The monsoon's poster child was running out of water. In a dispatch for @equatormag.bsky.social, I wrote about living with extreme heat in a broken city and limits to resilience. With🔥 images by @ishantankha.bsky.social www.equator.org/articles/cit...

Excellent work by Eilish and Peter on this amazing plant genus #ozplants

No idea why the Sydney Morning Herald is calling this a "sleeper" issue. The science has been in for decades and residents & activists banging the drums as loudly as they can! www.smh.com.au/environment/...

If university AI policies are written by staff/academics who are heavily involved with AI development and use, is this a policy or a marketing strategy? #AcademicSky

New #OpenAccess research in #RESInsectConsDiv Protection status and environmental gradients shape #butterfly #assemblages in an East African tropical ecosystem doi.org/10.1111/icad.70125 #Biodiversity #SpeciesRichness #InsectAbundance @manusaunders.bsky.social @wileyecology.bsky.social

The little-known environmental risk that could emerge as ships leave the Strait of Hormuz www.sbs.com.au/news/article...

Proud to have been part of this submission to SCOTUS to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for their decade-long disinformation about climate change. With @naomioreskes.bsky.social @geoffreysupran.bsky.social and others www.ucs.org/about/news/a...

Not 'if', but 'when'. This analysis is a great awareness tool, but likely an underestimate of impacts. This will be devastating for many species and will reshape ecological communities everywhere www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08...

New #OpenAccess #ConservationNote in #RESInsectConsDiv Mapping wild #bee diversity and flower use for an effective #conservation of the Doñana #biodiversity hotspot doi.org/10.1111/icad.70121 @manusaunders.bsky.social @curromolina.bsky.social @nermonper.bsky.social @ibartomeus.bsky.social

Just hit a new record for number of reviewers invited -- 24, and still counting. (If you're reading this and want to review a plant macroecology paper, lmk?)

This is basically how Science works

Stop normalising genAI.