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Reposted by Nick Freymueller

Whale Tales @whaletalesorg.bsky.social · 23d

Humpbacks in the Great Barrier Reef. Read the full story here: buff.ly/YhLPmzt
Photo by @smilodontology.bsky.social
#WhaleTales #humpback

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Reposted by Nick Freymueller

Sam Andrews @oceanoculus.com · 24d

Have you heard the whalely good news?

The High Seas Treaty, a legally binding global agreement to protect marine life in the high seas, is officially entering into force!

Is it perfect? No-but it’s an incredible milestone for the ocean

I’ll dive deeper into this in my next Ocean Brief newsletter

a large whale is swimming in the ocean with a white background

Alt: humpback whale swims up to the sea surface and jumps out

media.tenor.com

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Nick Freymueller @smilodontology.bsky.social · 25d

FAMM will be particularly useful for researchers seeking to use inter-disciplinary techniques to understand how #Arctic #marine #mammals will respond to the current #ClimateCrisis

Open-Access Link: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🧵 🦴/🦴

Introducing FAMM: An Open‐Access Database of Fossil Arctic Marine Mammals

Motivation The Arctic is currently experiencing the strongest effects of climate change on Earth. These effects, including sea ice loss, are already modifying the ecologies of the 11 species of mari...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Nick Freymueller @smilodontology.bsky.social · 25d

FAMM is by far the largest #fossil database (~3400 specimens), including 3 #Whale 🐋 species, #PolarBear 🐻‍❄️, #Walrus, 6 #Seal species 🦭, and the Steller's Sea Cow.

FAMM is also the FIRST fossil database to harmonize #Radiocarbon ☢️, #StableIsotopes ⚛️, and #AncientDNA 🧬 at the specimen level!

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Bar charts showing sample sizes in the FAMM database. Shown are the total number of specimens, number of specimens with radiocarbon data, number of specimens with stable isotope data, and number of specimens with ancient DNA data.

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Nick Freymueller @smilodontology.bsky.social · 25d

🐋 🐻‍❄️ 🦭 MASSIVE NEW FOSSIL DATABASE 🐋 🐻‍❄️ 🦭

Our FAMM (Fossil Arctic Marine Mammal) database has now been published #OpenAccess in Global Ecology and Biogeography!

Come learn about the cool stuff you can do with #Arctic #fossil material and bio-molecular archives! ☢️ ⚛️ 🧬

Link and thread below!

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Pan-Arctic map of data coverage in the Fossil Arctic Marine Mammal database. Shown is a bivariate choropleth map denoting species richness and number of fossils in 200km x 200 km grid cells

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Reposted by Nick Freymueller

Mick Westbury @mick2474.bsky.social · Sep 12

☠️🧬 2-yr Postdoc in in Genomic Simulations and Extinction Risk Modelling!
Let's figure out the Genomic signs of Extinction @DTU in Denmark.

Start: Feb 2026 (flexible)
Application deadline: 24 Oct 2025

For details click here: tinyurl.com/BioExtPD

Reposts appreciated 😁

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Nick Freymueller @smilodontology.bsky.social · Sep 12

🐋 Big commercial whaling paper (and my last PhD chapter) just submitted to PNAS! 🐋

A screenshot of a submission receipt to the journal PNAS

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Whale Tales @whaletalesorg.bsky.social · Sep 8

It's well known that Bowheads live to be 200+ years old but here's a bonkers thing that we didn't realize until we had Nick on the pod - that means a whale alive today could potentially have been alive before whaling started AND they lived through the decades of whaling & the century of recovery🤯

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Whale Tales @whaletalesorg.bsky.social · Sep 3

Raise your hand if you want to go to Ancient Marine Mammal Park with us! 🙋‍♀️🐋🦴
buff.ly/GHt2fcY

Photo courtesy of my collaborator Arthur S. Dyke

#WhaleTales #WhaleTalesPodcast @smilodontology.bsky.social

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Whale Tales @whaletalesorg.bsky.social · Aug 27

Super nerdy episode this month! We sit down paleoecologist and biogeographer with Nick Freymueller to talk Bowhead Whales, Arctic fossils, his research on how species respond to climate change and many other nerdy things. 🦴🐳🦖

Cue up the theme to Jurassic Park & let's dive right in!
buff.ly/Cuk4X0L

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Elaine Ayers @eayers0.bsky.social · Jul 3

I use BHL every single day in my research and teaching. I could not write my books or articles without it, I don't know what my students would do without it, and I would have to radically rethink my career without it. This is more critical with funding cuts. Please, please someone support BHL.

Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · Jul 2

Foundations: please step up and take over the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). This is an absolutely essential scanned archive of all of the old journals and books from the 1500s to about 1920. Has been indispensable for my research.
about.biodiversitylibrary.org/call-for-sup...

Call for Support: – About BHL

about.biodiversitylibrary.org

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Nick Freymueller @smilodontology.bsky.social · Jun 21

Finally submitted this puppy, yesterday after nearly four years. Defense coming in September. #PhDone

Photo showing the front cover of my PhD thesis titled “Unraveling the resilience of Arctic marine mammals to future climate change using palaeo-archives”, along with me celebrating the submission with some mango champagne.

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André Bellvé @andrebellve.bsky.social · Jun 5

Stoked to finally see this one out in the wide world: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Tube-nosed #seabirds in #Aotearoa #NewZealand have been largely driven extinct on the mainland, since the arrival of humans. Our paper shows just how dramatic this collapse likely was...(1/4)

Burrowing Into the Past: Extending Niche Space Models of Procellariiform Breeding Grounds by Merging Fossil and Historic Data

Aim Predicting species' potential distributions and niches requires multi-scale data encompassing the past and present. Increasingly, researchers have advocated using historical context to inform ec...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Nick Freymueller @smilodontology.bsky.social · Jun 3

🚨🚨 POSTDOC ALERT!!! 🚨🚨

The Global Change, #Ecology, and #Conservation Lab at the Uni of Adelaide is hiring a 2-year #postdoc on #mammal declines in #Australia using #eDNA, #museums, & ecological models 🧬🦘🐨🇦🇺!

Come work in our interdisciplinary lab!

Details 👇
careers.adelaide.edu.au/cw/en/job/51...

Learn more about South Australia's new university for the future.

careers.adelaide.edu.au

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lennartschreiber.bsky.social @lennartschreiber.bsky.social · May 18

Whales, Greenland, and some really old mud. My first PhD chapter now published in @natcomms.nature.com reveals 12,000 years of marine mammal history around Northern Greenland through DNA hidden in marine mud. Check it out: rdcu.be/emdYS
#sedaDNA #Greenland #Arctic #whales #seals

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Nick Freymueller @smilodontology.bsky.social · May 28

Pre-print link with all the cool findings available here:

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Full article to be submitted for publication next week!

Nice way for my final #PhD chapter to be polished off a week before the thesis gets submitted!

🐋/🐋

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Nick Freymueller @smilodontology.bsky.social · May 28

We then combined this with high-resolution ecological niche models and bowhead whale movement patterns (from telemetry) to evaluate if #Holocene habitat connectivity patterns explain the current genetic structure! 🔄

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Nick Freymueller @smilodontology.bsky.social · May 28

We sequenced contemporary bowhead whale #genomes from across their ENTIRE circumpolar range to compare genetic relatedness between the four recognised management stocks! 🧬

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Nick Freymueller @smilodontology.bsky.social · May 28

🐋 ANOTHER ONE 🐋 !!!

We have a hot new #bowhead #whale preprint out now on @biorxiv-bioinfo.bsky.social, co-led with @mick2474.bsky.social !

We show what is possible when you integrate genomic and ecological data to tell an insightful story about this charismatic #Arctic endemic! 🧬

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A map of the Arctic Ocean where the four different management stock boundaries of bowhead whales are colored in (Sea of Okhotsk; Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort; East Canada-West Greenland; East Greenland-Svalbard-Barents). Also shown are arrows highlighting potential Holocene habitat connectivity routes between these different populations.

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Nancy Langston @nancyclimateart.bsky.social · Apr 1

#printPromptMonday theme was #magic. As a scientist, believe magic lies in the astounding interconnections of wildness. Here’s a bowhead whale and her calf, whose songs fill the Arctic Ocean.

Bowhead whale and calf in the Arctic Ocean

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Nick Freymueller @smilodontology.bsky.social · May 21

Paper available here (Open Access): onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Press release available here: www.adelaide.edu.au/newsroom/new...

Thank you co-authors Eline Lorenzen, Stuart Brown, Carsten Rahbek, and Damien Fordham!

🇩🇰 🤝 🇦🇺

🐋/🐋

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Nick Freymueller @smilodontology.bsky.social · May 21

We show that even when using a long-term pre-whaling ecological baseline, we *still* find that this charismatic #Arctic endemic remains vulnerable to future #climate change!

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Nick Freymueller @smilodontology.bsky.social · May 21

We found that bowhead whale suitable habitat was broadly stable throughout the Holocene, despite known climatic fluctuations.

However, their future habitat is expected to contract by up to 75% due to melting sea ice!

In the Sea of Okhotsk, we project all suitable habitat to vanish by 2060!

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Fig. 3 of the paper, showing future projected bowhead whale habitat suitability under moderate (A, C) and extreme (B, D) CO2 emissions scenarios. A & B show habitat contraction, persistence, and contraction. C & D show future projected habitat suitability within the four bowhead whale management stocks.

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Nick Freymueller @smilodontology.bsky.social · May 21

To overcome this, we built ecological niche models using the expansive bowhead whale #fossil record, historical harvests from #whaling logbooks, and contemporary sightings from across the bowhead whale circumpolar range.

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A pan-Arctic map showing the location of over 1000 bowhead whale fossil locations and ages. The current IUCN stock boundaries are also shown in blue

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Nick Freymueller @smilodontology.bsky.social · May 21

Bowhead whales are highly associated with #Arctic sea ice, meaning that future ice melting could cause #habitat contractions.

However, our understanding of this species' resilience to future climate change may be biased as they are still recovering from commercial #whaling.

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A bowhead whale swimming through Arctic sea ice in Disko Bay, Greenland. Credit: Anders Drud Jordan.

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