Marta Shocket

Marta Shocket

@martashocket.bsky.social

Lecturer @ Lancaster University LEC | ecology & evolution of infectious disease, vector-borne disease, climate (change), stats/models, insects, Daphnia | they/them

1.8K followers432 following7 posts

Marta Shocket reposted

Hello, since Redbubble did me dirty (suspension without explanation while owing me money) let's experiment a little bit! If I've known you long enough not to abuse my work and you want a print/sticker/whatever from me, pay me what you want, I'll give you high resolution files. Try me! #Art #SciArt

Marta Shocket reposted

Are you an undergrad, graduate student, or Post-doc in STEM? Want to switch to science writing? The AAAS Mass Media Fellowship places students in working newsrooms nationwide for 10 weeks in summer. It's PAID! 📝https://massmedia.secure-platform.com/a/page/About

Marta Shocket reposted

Marta Shocket reposted

I'm joining Rutgers DEENR in a tenure-track faculty position this fall! I'll be recruiting a quantitative postdoc in climate change wildlife ecology (start fall 26 or jan 27) and PhD student doing bioacoustics to study avian responses to extreme weather (start fall 27). More- www.gcmelab.com/join-us

Marta Shocket reposted

A wearable diving suit that enables wha-

Nature Portfolio@natureportfolio.nature.com

A paper in Nature Communications presents a wearable diving suit that enables terrestrial cyborg cockroaches to maintain respiration and locomotion underwater for up to 3 hours. This biohybrid system facilitates sustained exploration through hybrid hazardous terrains. go.nature.com/4xZn8Tp 🧪

Marta Shocket reposted

Spiralling global temperatures (1850-2026) It is exactly 10 years since I first put this animated graphic of changes in global temperature online. #ClimateSpiral It instantly went viral. People watched it over and over again. It still offers the power to shock a decade on.

Marta Shocket reposted

Wind and solar have now beaten fossil fuels in Great Britain for a record 15 months in a row Just a decade ago, fossil fuels were generating four times more than wind + solar Now that's flipped: Since the Iran war, wind and solar generated twice as much as fossil fuels

Marta Shocket reposted

Since I've lectured about it in 2 classes over the past couple weeks & have all the slides readily available, allow me to take this opportunity to do a brief educational 🧵 about (some of) the history of scientific racism & eugenics in the US.

David Roberts@volts.wtf

Yet again I remind everyone (as Elizabeth does in her very next tweet) that "foreigners are corrupting our pure blood with weakness & disease" is Fascism 101. Not some variant, not some metaphorically similar thing, not some echo -- the thing itself.

Marta Shocket reposted

We missed #WorldRobberFlyDay but it's still #FlyWeek! Check out this amazing robber fly [ #Asilidae ] from Kerala, India 😮❗😍 Thanks to Dr. P.K. Sumodan for sharing with the society and thanks especially to Lakshmi Prajath for photographing this beauty! 📸

Marta Shocket reposted

Less than 800 NSF grants awarded over the first half of the fiscal year for the entire country. Previous years were already over 2-3k awards by now. It is not particularly overdramatic to say we are seeing the death of federally funded science research in the United States.

Brandon Bishop@brandontbishop.bsky.social

Welcome to the last half of the US federal fiscal year. Here is where we're at with National Science Foundation--the agency that funds basically everything other than biomedical research at American universities--grant numbers. grant-witness.us/funding_curv...

Marta Shocket reposted

Replying to @alexip718.com

"Your hated rival school offering to print your censored edition with their own presses and John Revere-ing the copies across the state through the middle of the night to ensure a big investigation could be seen by homecoming alums" is not a sign of a healthy democracy

insidehighered.comPurdue Student Journalists Distribute Solidarity Paper at IUStudent journalists from Purdue University’s The Exponent went to rival Indiana University on Friday to deliver a special print edition in solidarity with the now out-of-print Indiana Daily Student, a...

Marta Shocket reposted

Denmark's coal-to-wind transition is one of the most dramatic energy transformations of the past three decades. In 1990, coal provided 90% of Danish electricity. Today it is under 3%. Wind now covers roughly 60% of electricity generation. The last coal plant is scheduled to close by 2028.

Marta Shocket reposted

Did you know that cement is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions? Most of this is tied to cement chemistry, not to fossil fuels. It emits ~5% of global GHGs...roughly 2-3x what aviation does. Fortunately, there are solutions to this! Check them out here: drawdown.org/explorer/imp...

drawdown.orgImprove Cement ProductionImprove Cement Production is a Highly Recommended climate solution. It involves using low GHG-emitting materials & reducing emissions from fossil-fuel burning.

Marta Shocket reposted

This is my favorite climate change chart. Japanese monks, aristocrats, and emperors kept meticulous records of cherry blossom festivals for 1,200 years and accidentally built the world's longest climate dataset.

Lots of great talks so far at the UK VBD conference in Liverpool, but most interesting new fact for me so far came from UK APHA's Ben Jones: There are parasitic wasps for Ixodes ticks that were trialled for biocontrol in the late 1990s! Wikimedia commons pic of Ixodiphagus hookeri.

Marta Shocket reposted

The Honeygar Farm peatland has been devastated by drainage, farming, and excess nutrients. Proud to work with them - via Casey Bryce and her team - on using its restoration as an opportunity to learn and teach. @cabot-institute.bsky.social @bristoluni.bsky.social www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.ukFormer dairy farm in Somerset could become research centreHoneygar Farm is one of the few areas in the UK that still holds deep lowland peatland.

Marta Shocket reposted

New paper out! We developed a new approach to West Nile virus forecasting that is the first nationwide attempt to beat a benchmark standard (by 22%!). The key advancement was aggregating county data to regions which boosted signals that were obscured by small case counts. doi.org/10.1029/2025...

doi.orgA Regionally Determined Climate‐Informed West Nile Virus Forecast TechniqueAggregating county-level case data to the regional-level enhanced the signal of the spatially varying effects of climate on case counts Drought and temperature were the most common climate factor...

Marta Shocket reposted

This is a devastating blow to Canadian dipterology, entomology, ecology, and beyond. Please share. #diptera @dipterists.bsky.social @teamdiptera.bsky.social @canentomologist.bsky.social @entsocamerica.bsky.social @entsocontario.bsky.social @entsocbc.bsky.social @royentsoc.bsky.social

From Chris Borkent: Fellow Dipterists/systematists/ecologists: Agri./Agri-Food Canada plans to eliminate the Diptera Unit at the Canadian National Collection of Insects. Dr. Art Borkent has prepared an open letter to support keeping the unit open. To sign, please read & follow the instructions here.

Marta Shocket reposted

From Chris Borkent: Fellow Dipterists/systematists/ecologists: Agri./Agri-Food Canada plans to eliminate the Diptera Unit at the Canadian National Collection of Insects. Dr. Art Borkent has prepared an open letter to support keeping the unit open. To sign, please read & follow the instructions here.

Marta Shocket reposted

With the shuttering of the Walter Reed Biosystematics Unit last year by the US Army we are loosing a lot of expertise and future expertise in insect taxonomy and ecology.

From Chris Borkent: Fellow Dipterists/systematists/ecologists: Agri./Agri-Food Canada plans to eliminate the Diptera Unit at the Canadian National Collection of Insects. Dr. Art Borkent has prepared an open letter to support keeping the unit open. To sign, please read & follow the instructions here.

Marta Shocket reposted

ohvbd 1.0.0 has now been released on CRAN! This package should help those looking for VBD data by interfacing with vbdhub.org for searching, and the VectorByte trait and population dynamics databases for data download (alongside much more). vbdhub.org/blog/ohvbd-c... #rstats #vectorbyte #vbd

vbdhub.orgohvbd 1.0.0 has been released on CRAN! - BlogAnnouncing ohvbd v1.0.0 on CRAN: a unified R interface for retrieval and harmonisation of vector-borne disease data.

Marta Shocket reposted

Considering the challenge in suggesting we eat more plants, proposing insect products seems ridiculous. But it's received $1B to try to scale & now ~80B insects are farmed. It can actually emit as much as some beef & has major risks. My first in the Drawdown Explorer: drawdown.org/explorer/dep...

drawdown.orgDeploy Insect Farming for Food and FeedInsect Farming for Food and Feed is not recommended as a climate solution because it offers minimal opportunities for GHG reductions and has significant down sides.
Dr. Jonathan Foley@globalecoguy.bsky.social

Many people think that eating insects could be a good solution to climate change. Nope. Not really. Read more here, and see why Project Drawdown says this is "Not Recommended" as a climate solution. drawdown.org/explorer/dep...

Marta Shocket reposted

With WaPo locked into a death spiral, CBS effectively an arm of state news, and public media facing massive budget cuts, it's more important than ever to follow and support independent media.

Marta Shocket reposted

Hello Insectphile Friends! I’m giving a casual presentation to a “ladies lunch” group next week about insects. I can talk for days about insects, both scientifically & emotionally, but that’s just me. Tell me & help me, what should I include about why YOU love insects? Hugs & Bugs! 💚🪲 🌿

Marta Shocket reposted

dplyr 1.2.0 is out now and we are SO excited! - `filter_out()` for dropping rows - `recode_values()`, `replace_values()`, and `replace_when()` that join `case_when()` as a complete family of recoding/replacing tools These are huge quality of life wins for #rstats! tidyverse.org/blog/2026/02...

tidyverse.orgdplyr 1.2.0dplyr 1.2.0 fills in some important gaps in dplyr's API: we've added a new complement to `filter()` focused on dropping rows, and we've expanded the `case_when()` family with three new recoding and re...

Marta Shocket reposted

Most people are worried about climate change - but most don't hear or talk about regularly. That's why I started my free newsletter Talking Climate. Every week I share good news, not so good news, and what people can do. If you aren't a reader yet, see below. I have 6 different ways to subscribe!

Marta Shocket reposted

An #rstats question for package developers: If my package maintains a cache to minimise data downloads, is it sensible/preferred to put an automatic cache cleaner (delete anything older than x days) in .onLoad, or to just mostly leave cache maintenance to the user (with appropriate helpers)?

Marta Shocket reposted

Two years ago we got together in a beautiful mountain to learn and develop #rstats packages for ecology After {labeleR} (ecologyr.github.io/labeleR/) and {BlueCarbon} (ecologyr.github.io/BlueCarbon/), {mappestRisk} is now officially out! See thread by lead author @dario-ssm.bsky.social 👇

Darío San Segundo Molina@dario-ssm.bsky.social

🗺️🐛 mappestRisk is now on CRAN! We developed this R package to help non-expert R users create pest-risk maps based on experimental data of the thermal biology of crop-pest species. github.com/EcologyR/map...