In our new article led by Gabriele Midolo, published in Ecology Letters, we show that plant species richness in European plant communities generally decreased between the 1960s and 1980s. However, since the 1990s, this trend seems to have stopped or even reversed.
dx.doi.org/10.1111/ele....

Being stripped of parental rights while in prison, even for minor crimes, is “the family separation crisis that no one knows about,” an advocate says.

In memory of the Christmas Island shrew

Once abundant on Christmas Island, the tiny, five-gram shrew (Crocidura trichura) filled the night forest with its high, thin cry before vanishing into silence.

news.mongabay.com/2025/10/in-m...

substack.com/home/post/p-...

#BookReview📖 by @grrlscientist.bsky.social

#books #BookSky💙📚 #NativeAmerican #mythology #KidLit #ChildrensBooks

I've had to update the plot of the strongest tropical cyclones by ocean basin all too often in recent years, since climate change increases the number of high-end storms. Melissa has joined the club, tied with Dorian (2019) as strongest Atlantic hurricane recorded outside the Gulf of Mexico.

57 now dead in 13 attacks.

Fact sheet now updated at www.wola.org/analysis/fac...

The government of Jamaica has set up a portal for contributing to official relief efforts. I will update this thread if anything analogous opens up for Haiti, Cuba, or the DR

supportjamaica.gov.jm

This World Series commercial shows something crazy. That giant blob of light south of Manitoba is bigger than Chicago but there’s no big city there. It’s actually light from burning off natural gas during the fracking extraction process in the Bakken Oil Fields of North Dakota.

With the Arctic Refuge back in the news (yes, Trump is trying once again to turn it into an oil field), maybe it’s a good time to check out Defending the Arctic Refuge. @uncpress.bsky.social #envhist 📗❄️🦌

"A skilled hunter, naturalist and outdoorsman, York also helped Lewis and Clark during their negotiations and encounters with Native American tribes in the uncharted West. Yet, as a slave, York lacked the agency to tell his own story." www.opb.org/article/2025...

In today's AIP History Weekly Edition, guest contributor Don Opitz looks at the multitudinous scholarly and professional contributions of the late Margaret Rossiter in creating a historiography of women in science. #HPS

Especially rare seeing it perched like that.

Brian Schatz: "This is not about money. There is enough money to bail out Argentina with $20b. There is enough money to purchase a brand new aircraft for $173m for Noem. There is enough money to renovate the WH ballroom. What there isn't enough money for under this Republican government is you."

I consulted my Sibley's guide and would call Common Black Hawk. The thing that throws people off is that we see zone tail Hawks around that location at times.

Going to ask my Central American friends who see a lot of both

Saw that on the birding list serve asking about the inat report! Hooray!! Congrats! I have never heard them this far north.

“.. They are the asylum seekers, the rule followers. They go into the federal building holding papers .. hoping for a measure of due process. Some leave the courthouse with a hearing date set months or years from now. Others disappear into ICE’s prison system.”

@nymag.com
nymag.com/intelligence...

Protesters formed a human banner Saturday morning at S.F.'s Ocean Beach, spelling out “NO KINGS” and “YES ON 50,” encouraging the passage of a measure on the November ballot to redraw California’s congressional districts in response to Texas’ GOP-focused remapping.

📸: Laure Andrillon / AFP

A main organizer of VC Defensa in Ventura County was rammed in his vehicle by federal agents and taken into custody this morning. This video is from VC Defensa IG and shows the ramming. Organizers are thinking he’ll be taken to LA MDC—headed there now

“Nobody Walks Here. It’s Too Hot or Cold or Wet or Dry.” humantransit.org/2025/10/nobo... via @humantransit.bsky.social

California is proud to congratulate FIVE California university-affiliated scholars among this year's Nobel laureates.

From quantum computing to clean energy and medical breakthroughs, these trailblazers reflect the strength, innovation, and creativity that define our state.

My article is out! On how ‘ecosystem services’ went from a word for those aspects of nature that economics cannot express to a word for nature's economic value, and how concerns for planetary habitability disappeared from the environmentalist vocabulary.

www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

One day in the lab, we accidentally discovered that the spines of a cactus 🌵 straighten when exposed to fog. I was intrigued and so were my collaborators. How does this work and what can be gained from it? Here are some of the answers in our new preprint:
doi.org/10.1101/2025...