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 🧵...

Critical role of fossils:
"notion that insect pollination began with the origin of angiosperms is still widespread... insect orders with extant and/or extinct pollinator representatives radiated long before the evolution of flowering plants."
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
🧪 #Paleobio ⚒️

New article out today in @nature.com by Gonçalves-Souza, @nickhaddad.bsky.social, @jon-chase03.bsky.social et al. on forest fragmentation and biodiversity:

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A must read for anyone interested in this topic. See my summary here:

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

An interesting article in @oikosjournal.bsky.social synthesizing the variety of potential warming effects on the stability of consumer-resource interactions.
nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

▶️Environmental filtering, not dispersal history, explains global patterns of phylogenetic turnover in plants ◀️

Great PhD study by "my" only postdoc Lirong Cai (check her work) @lrcai.bsky.social led by @patrickweigelt.bsky.social & Holger Kreft et al.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#macroecology

"Cacio e pepe" physics: In arxiv.org/abs/2501.00536v1, eight Italian scientists from the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems explain the physics behind a perfect dish of "cacio e pepe" and how to eschew the dreaded "mozzarella phase" - work featured @nytimes.com.

What is the role of complexity, nonlinearity and phase transitions in conservation biology? What kind of lessons from maths can help preserve biodiversity? Here's my last paper on Biological Conservation. @ftmaestre.bsky.social
sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The ants are your guides to what the ecosystem is up to.
In the Peruvian Amazon a troop of monkeys just released a splash of urine from the tree tops.
Most of the Amazon is *extremely* salt deprived. Herbivorous Camponotus ants swarm any sodium source, seemingly appearing out of nowhere.

First, we've discovered the conventional fossil record. Then there was a time for trace fossils. And now even more exotic records reveal the ancient life:
Coprolites, cololites and regurgitalites point to the roots of dinosaur supremacy

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧪 #Paleobio ⚒️ #Geology #EvoBio

How does Approximate Bayesian Computation *ABC) work? @rabaath.bsky.social has a classic nice simple intro the ABC using the problem of infering the number of socks in a sample of laundry. There's a movie and a page with all the code. www.sumsar.net/blog/2015/07...

Okie & Storch propose a theory explaining macroecological biodiversity patterns such as the latitudinal diversity gradient that addresses the role of extinction, speciation, resource availability, and the effects of biodiversity on community abundance.
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Are the major evolutionary transitions describable as phase transitions, as in statistical physics? A great example of this is the transition to eukaryotic cells, as shown by this excellent paper by Jordi Bascompte and co-workers europepmc.org/api/fulltext...