Becks Spake

Building a robust evidence base for rewilding is challenging Our paper finds inconsistencies in monitoring & evaluation of outcomes Comparing projects, standardising data collection, & more researcher-practitioner collaborations could move us forward conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

My first ever sci-fi novel. I'm struggling! But I really want to finish it! Anyone else? #scifi

My nephew is 11 and an avid reader of adventure books. Any good recommendations to make me a cool aunt?!

Feelings while marking an excellent MSc thesis

It happened in a seminar yesterday at my institute that somebody bullied a phd student to change an analysis, because two of the predictors were correlated. Multicollinearity is a brain worm, isn't it? It never makes sense to choose control variables based on pre-model correlations.

Hairy Nuts Disco, Lanzia echinophila. On decaying hairy cases of Sweet Chestnuts It's too dry at the moment, but here are some from this day in 2024. #Fungi #FungiFriends

Excellent title for a paper highlighting that multiple estimands can be defined for a particular research question "Tell me what you want, what you really, really want" onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

When I first became a scientist, I realised I needed to get used to feeling stupid. I'm OK with stupid. All good. Now I'm an academic, having to balance teaching, admin and research, the dominant feeling seems to be frazzledness. It's overwhelming at times. Any tips and advice...? #academia

We all had a good sniff of a Fragrant Toothcrust fungus today, Mycoacia nothofagi Opinions differed on what the smell resembled. I was getting pineapple.

I'm super excited & proud to share our latest paper with you all, published today in @jappliedecology.bsky.social! The team put together a systematic map on the factors impacting the use of scientific evidence in biodiversity conservation decision making. (1/12) tinyurl.com/3c6x6vca

Well that's a wrap! 🍁 Thank you for having me @itchyshin.bsky.social !! I loved visiting the amazing COSSEE Lab team, and giving my seminar 'Meta-analysis without a target: what exactly are we estimating?". Was great to meet incredible wildlife biologists at @ualbertapress.bsky.social

Sometimes you get a referee report back and you're just like "huh I guess you're right, this paper does kinda blow"

Currently visiting @itchyshin.bsky.social at University of Alberta 😀 My mind is blown from all the great discussions with COSSEE lab members and collaborators! cossee.org

What makes a multispecies abundance indicator "wrong", and what can be done to fix it? Read our new paper in Ecography to find out! @sacrevert.bsky.social @spakey.bsky.social @susanjarvis.bsky.social, Gary Powney and Xiao-Li Meng @uniexecec.bsky.social @ukceh.bsky.social doi.org/10.1002/ecog...

Does anybody else get a horrid visual when asked: 'Can I pick your brains?'? or 'I'd love to pick your brains on something'. BACK OFF, ZOMBIE! 🧟🧠⚔️

"...knowing when to stop banging one’s head against those internal cranial walls and ask a stupid question of one who knows more than you. Figuring out how to present a stupid question to someone you do not want to think you stupid is also a necessary component of thinking and learning."

😡Tell this to my big sis, an @england.nhs.uk consultant, who has been working tirelessly to treat the vulnerable during the heatwaves Tell this to those on the frontline battling the wildfires 🔥

All four books I've co-authored are freely available online for non-commercial use: - Bayesian Workflow at avehtari.github.io/Bayesian-Wor... Links to other three books are in the quoted post 👇 (too many books to fit in one post!)

Combining science and activism.... does it damage public trust? Or could it be the only thing powerful enough to combat the disinformation and passivity that is holding back urgent action on existential threats such the Climate Emergency? More from us in @nature.com today: rdcu.be/fzcmS

#caturday

Check out @olross.bsky.social's new preprint on matching methods for field ecology! In our efforts to randomize plot selection, we've overlooked a more fundamental issue: the treatments themselves—e.g., disturbances—are rarely randomized! PSM provides a solution 🧪🍁 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Hmmmm... 🦌🦌🦌🐑🐑🐑🌱🌱🌱

Today we wrapped hundreds of saplings in sheep wool, to see if they reduce deer herbivory. 🦌🌱 So nice getting out in the field. 🌳 Took f ages 😃

New paper out now 🥳 When psychologists discuss generalisability, they often refer to vague notions of representativeness. We provide an accessible intro to the total survey error framework as a tool to reason about this more rigorously. w @taymalsalti.bsky.social @ruben.the100.ci >

This looks useful. A typical meta-analysis in ecology mixes experiments with observational studies, mixes coefficients with different controls and therefore different causal meanings. I would not normally say "hey the folks in medicine are doing it right, imitate them" but in this case maybe

Really excited and proud of this new initiative, funded by the New Forest Biodiversity Forum It has been fun helping students draw DAGs under the trees 🌳🌲 We took some totally candid, completely natural photos of us in action 😂 www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/2627446...

D'oh! 🐦🎶🔇

Gave an interview to @news.sky.com earlier this evening about heatwaves. I said I gave a very similar interview 10 years ago (that time to BBC) about heatwaves. Politicians have failed to act. Societies have failed to adapt. And here we are. We are in dangerous climate change.

Sheila is struggling in this heatwave 🥵

Now that's what I call a spicy opeing: Understanding mechanisms is not a research question.

Around 3 years ago, we started writing papers during our weekly lab meetings. This is the first one from our new lab at @ualberta.bsky.social Location-Scale Models for Ecologists! preprint: ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v... tutorial: ayumi-495.github.io/Eco_location... Enjoy! #glmmTMB #brms

Here's said mascot along with an excellent checklist by @shreyadimri.bsky.social

Interested in simulating the kind of data that you might commonly find in evolutionary and ecological studies? Then we have the R package for you - squidSim!! Check our new preprint: ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

Epidemiologist Donna Spiegelman sez: SUTVA is “mostly not necessary for valid causal estimation and inference most of the time” statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/06/03/e...

A nice summary of how different causal inference approaches can be used in habitat fragmentation research in light of necessary data and assumptions