Tanya Strydom

I promise cute doodles and(maybe) some pondering as to the assumptions we make when we construct networks! 🎨🕸️

International Initiative for Theoretical Ecology@iite-ecotheory.bsky.social

📣Next Tuesday, our online seminar speaker will be Tanya Strydom (Sheffield) @tanyadoesscience.bsky.social , presenting: ⭐Take a Byte: How the (En)Codification of Food Webs Impacts Inference⭐ Free+open to all! Zoom link: liu-se.zoom.us/j/63158449287 Global Times: www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/f...

Me (after having spent ~2 days on a slide deck, including colour palette specific re-rendering of images and figures): I have the desire to rework my colour palette 🙃🙃🙃

26 Aug

Working on layouts for a slide deck and honestly this one might be at its peak already. 😂

23 June

Me: yeah I’m just not feeling the #wc2026 vibes this year Also Me: is obsessed with the typeface used for the Norway kit. 🇳🇴 Imma need journals to get real chill real quick about non standard typefaces…

🚨📄 NEW PREPRINT ALERT 🚨📄 🌐 Are we mapping ecosystems… or just mapping models? 🤔 We took ONE Jurassic fossil community 🦑🐚🐟 and built food webs SIX different ways. The result? 😳 The way you build the network can matter MORE than the change you're trying to study. 🔗 doi.org/10.32942/X2X... 👇

doi.orgAre We Mapping Ecosystems or Models? Framework Choices Dominate Food Web Topology and Extinction Inferences

So the takeaway isn't: ❌ "Which model is correct?" It's: ✅ "Which model is correct for your question?" Network reconstruction isn't just a technical step. It's part of the hypothesis. Choose accordingly 🎯 📄 doi.org/10.32942/X2X...

And finally 🙌 Huge thanks to the absolute dream team behind this one 💚  🐚 @barankarapunar.bsky.social  🕸️ Jennifer Dunne 🦴 Pincelli Hull  🌊 Crispin Little  🦈 @pimientoc.bsky.social  🌍 Andy Ridgewell  🌱 @beckerhopper.bsky.social  🦕 @profalexdunhill.bsky.social

And here's the bit that made us do a double take 😳 The reconstruction method explained MORE variation in network structure than the extinction event itself. Read that again. 🫠 The modelling framework had a bigger effect on the inferred food web than the ecological turnover we were studying.

Before anyone panics 😅 This doesn't mean food web models are bad. It means they're hypotheses. Every reconstruction method encodes a different view of how interactions happen 🧠 Trait constraints 🦷   Energetics ⚡  Topology 📈 They're answering slightly different questions.

🍽️ Question 2: Do they predict the same species interactions? Also nope. Even when two methods produced networks that looked structurally similar... ...they often disagreed about who eats who 😬 So similar-looking food webs can hide very different ecological stories underneath.

💀 Question 3: Do they identify the same drivers of extinction? Again: 🚫 Not really. Different network reconstructions pointed to different mechanisms of collapse and recovery. Same fossils.  Same species.  Different stories.

Most studies ask: 💀 How did food webs change in an extinction event? We flipped the question 🔄 We took a marine community spanning the Early Toarcian extinction (~183 million years ago) And asked: If we reconstruct the food web 6 different ways... Do we reach the same conclusions? (Spoiler: lol no)

📊 Question 1: Do the networks actually look different? Yep. Very much so. Different reconstruction methods produced completely different food-web structures 😵‍💫 BUT Methods built on *similar* underlying ideas tended to cluster together 👯 (ADBM 🤝 ATN) So the assumptions matter.

Ecologists love networks 🕸️ But here's the thing: There are LOTS of ways to build them. Traits 🦷  Energetics ⚡  Or just plain topology 📈 And each one comes with different assumptions🔧 We wanted to know: 👉 If we build the same ecosystem differently... do we get the same story?

16 June

When you receive a rejection for one fellowship application while in the throes of putting together a different fellowship application

@profalexdunhill.bsky.social

4 June

Desk views 🐰✏️🐰

Tanya Strydom reposted

Prof Alex Dunhill

22 May

New R package 📦: pfwim reconstructs ancient food webs from traits + body size rules 🌿🐳🕸️ cran.r-project.org/web/packages... by @tanyadoesscience.bsky.social @jackolivershaw.bsky.social @barankarapunar.bsky.social @beckerhopper.bsky.social with lots of help from @cemac.bsky.social

epic-biodiversity.orgWhere should we look to monitor species interactions? | ÉPICBiodiversity

12 May

It’s been so cool to follow the work coming from @gabdans.bsky.social. Awesome to see someone pushing the field into the applied space and being intentional about thinking about the end use of the cool science that we do!

ÉPICBiodiversity@epic-biodiversity.org

Information about species interactions is very scarce! In a new preprint, @gabdans.bsky.social shows that the methodology that enables biodiversity monitoring and reporting also supports the detection of species interactions, leading to multi-use monitoring. epic-biodiversity.org/blog/2026/05...

Tanya Strydom reposted

Matt Kerr

@mattkerr.bsky.social

11 May

Replying to @mattkerr.bsky.social

This work was masterfully lead by @jonastrepel.bsky.social, and features amazing art by @tanyadoesscience.bsky.social (attached here). It was a pleasure to be part of the discussions - and we hope to spark a wider conversation on developing robust frameworks for evaluating impact.

25 Mar

Once again busy with totally serious science...

20 Mar

More Friday 17:00 thoughts starting to unspool 🙃

26 Feb

Sending love to 6-year-old me who was obsessed with dinosaurs 🦖🦕 Quick science PSA: not actually dinosaurs LOL — Permian marine communities 😂🙈 (Science accuracy > vibes) Still wild to be studying deep time like this... 🥹✨

26 Feb

🚨 NEW MUD DINOSAUR SCIENCE 🦕☄️ Obsessed with seeing networks being built, smashed and stress-tested with real data - not just debated from the sidelines 👀 (self-aware self-own 🙋). 🚀 Paleoecology leveled ⬆️. Big questions + awesome squad → measurable, mind-blowning results 🤯 Here’s what went down 👇✨

Prof Alex Dunhill@profalexdunhill.bsky.social

🚨New preprint out @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social (under review elsewhere!) 🧵 No global collapse of food webs across the Permian–Triassic Mass Extinction (PTME) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Preprint alert 🚨 (yes, I still go online, shocker) Scaling from Metawebs to Realised Webs: A Hierarchical Approach to Network Ecology TL;DR: Networks are like… weirdly finicky and if you want your network analysis to not be a sad chaos, check this preprint: [https://doi.org/10.32942/X2JW8K] 🏠💻

Bottom line: Networks are picky, assumptions are queen, and our framework is a cheat code. 🫡

Shoutout time 📣: Big love to my co-authors @dralexdunhill.bsky.social , Jennifer Dunne, @ctrlalttim.com and @beckerhopper.bsky.social. Couldn’t have done it without you. 🙌💖

3️⃣ Explicit assumptions are essential for evaluation: If you don’t know what assumptions went into making your network, you’re basically guessing 🎲❌🌱. Spell them out ✍️📝 so your analysis isn’t just chaos in disguise ⚡🕸️.

4️⃣ A unified framework improves application and progress: We built something of a 'network GPS' 🗺️🕸️ to help pick the right network for the right question. This keeps everyone from getting lost in the jungle of misinterpretation 🌳😵‍💫 and makes progress actually progress 📈🚀.

1️⃣ Network representations encode different processes: Different networks = different vibes. Some networks are about who eats who 🍴🦌🦅, some are about who hangs out with whom 🫂🌿. Knowing the network’s 'personality' is key to asking the right questions 🧠✨.

2️⃣ Network representations are not interchangeable: There’s no one-size-fits-all 🤷‍♀️🧢. Your favorite network might be great for unicorns 🦄 but terrible for horses 🐴. Pick your network like you pick your Netflix shows 🍿📺—what you’re actually trying to watch.

12 Dec 2025

It should be illegal to have cool science brainwave moments after 16:00 on a Friday - if only to try and keep the work-life balance somewhat respectable

hadley.github.iodplyr but make it bussin fr fr no cap`genzplyr` is an alternative syntax for `dplyr` that replaces boring old function names with GenZ slang. Your data wrangling is about to hit different.

10 Nov 2025

@hadley.nz , you’re so real for this 😭🙌 Lowkey spent my whole day glowin’ up my code with the new `genzplyr` pack — it’s giving ✨clean syntax✨ fr. hadley.github.io/genzplyr/ind...

Tanya Strydom reposted

Saoirse Kelleher

@saoirsekelleher.eco

17 Oct 2025

Happy to announce the next edition of the @sortee.bsky.social Workshop & Webinar series on October 27 at 16:00UTC, ‘The Risks and Rewards of Large Language Models in (open) Scientific Research’ with @tanyadoesscience.bsky.social !! Sign up here: events.humanitix.com/sortee-webin...

events.humanitix.comSORTEE Webinar: The Risks and Rewards of Large Language Models in (Open) Scientific ResearchSORTEE Workshop & Webinar Series

28 July 2025

Whoever decided to host the poster session in the Natural history museum you are my hero! 🤩

Tanya Strydom@tanyadoesscience.bsky.social

Stickers placed = conference mode loading 🤓🤓🤓 Looking forward to learning about DINOSAURS!!!

28 July 2025

Stickers placed = conference mode loading 🤓🤓🤓 Looking forward to learning about DINOSAURS!!!

6 June 2025

They've done it again... This time with adding (unnecessary) visual detail to the zero commit days. Inconsolable 😭😭😭

Tanya Strydom@tanyadoesscience.bsky.social

I feel like GitHub has (very subtly) modified the gradient they use for ones contributions calendar... I am going to need 2-4 business days to come to terms with this…

6 May 2025

“Back in time for tea and medals” Celebrating the end of a fun fieldwork campaign the British way™

25 Mar 2025

I feel like GitHub has (very subtly) modified the gradient they use for ones contributions calendar... I am going to need 2-4 business days to come to terms with this…

Tanya Strydom reposted

Ashkaan K. Fahimipour

@akfbio.bsky.social

19 Mar 2025

New paper! (arxiv.org/abs/2503.14093) I haven’t been this excited about one in a while, and I think the theory @mhab.bsky.social develops here will be a big step forward for the field. Why? Let me explain 🧵...

26 Feb 2025

I've just had two @skypeascientist.bsky.social sessions today, and honestly it might just be the most rewarding part of this job. 🥲 Highly recommended for anyone who has the bandwidth/time for some science outreach

26 Feb 2025

Thanks @gracielle.science for passively convincing me to register! xx

@beckerhopper.bsky.social

20 Feb 2025

Reporting from the trenches - i.e., emerging after a battle trying to use excel formulas and conditional formatting... Why does it all have to be one line though??

Tanya Strydom reposted

Andrew Beckerman

31 Jan 2025

Get simulating! #Biodiversity / #foodweb dynamics with #julialang. Classic bioenergetic model, consolidation of lots of add-ons & super fast. Very happy to share this, a result of amazing collaborators and a rich history of model development. besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.comEcologicalNetworksDynamics.jl: A Julia package to simulate the temporal dynamics of complex ecological networksSpecies interactions play a crucial role in shaping biodiversity, species coexistence, population dynamics, community stability and ecosystem functioning. Our understanding of the role of the dive...

23 Jan 2025

Current me: Right I’ve said yes to this review I’m going to get it done in the next few days and submit my comments nice and early Me in a fortnight: Submitting my review the day before the deadline counts as early right?

10 Dec 2024

I promise I’m a functional adult... Anyway if anyone wants to see me unspool the crazy catch me talking about food webs at poster session one tomorrow #BES2024