Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Allegra Love

cameratraps @ppalencia.bsky.social · Jul 10

A step forward on the use of #cameratrapping for #wildlife monitoring. Now underwater!

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

A new underwater camera trap for freshwater wildlife monitoring

Amphibians are among the most threatened groups of vertebrates worldwide and spend a significant part of their lifecycle in freshwater ecosystems. As for many freshwater organisms, monitoring thei...

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Reposted by Allegra Love

Tess Grainger @tessgrainger.bsky.social · Jul 11

Equilibrium - is it a thing? Jury's still out according to the sticker poll on my poster at #CSEE2025! Stay tuned for the paper!

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Allegra Love @allegralove.bsky.social · Jul 11

I had a great time at @csee-sceemtgs.bsky.social in Sherbrooke, thank you so much to the organizers and volunteers.

And thanks everyone who indulged me for a few minutes to be caribou game show contestants! I had a blast talking about the landscape of disgust with everyone.

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Reposted by Allegra Love

Brian J. Enquist @bjenquist.bsky.social · Jun 10

You’re probably why it takes so long for your paper to get reviewed and your excuses are bad dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2025/06/10/y... 🧪

You’re probably why it takes so long for your paper to get reviewed and your excuses are bad

A weird thing happened in scientific publishing during COVID. And it hasn’t gone away. Publications went up 30-50%. And responses to requests to review went down 30-50%. I know the actual statistic…

dynamicecology.wordpress.com

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Reposted by Allegra Love

Verena @viralemergence.org · Jun 2

An update from the team on the uncertain future of our program and the impact of NSF budget cuts. Please share and reach out 🦠

Some difficult news from the team:

In NSF's FY25-26 Budget Request to Congress, we learned that our program will take a whopping 50% cut - meaning that in September, we'll be $1.25m short of an operating budget that currently supports a cohort of seven PhD students, four postdocs, and three full-time staff.

Verena is one of the largest and last pandemic prevention-focused programs in the United States: since 2020, we've supported the training of over 60 postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduates. Our researchers have established unique laboratory resources for studying animal immune systems, and discovered new antiviral immune adaptations in bats; developed risk assessment algorithms for wildlife and livestock viruses, and diagnostic algorithms for viruses like dengue, Ebola, and Zika; and quantified the effects of climate change, deforestation, and factory farming on spillover risk. Everything we develop is 100% open source, and our data has supported the research of nearly 150 external researchers in 21 countries to date.

We have three months to make up our budget shortfall. Every dollar spent on Verena supports not just our team, but the community of researchers who use our data, code, and resources. You can help us by sharing this post, and reaching out if you're able to support a unique and vulnerable program. Or just head over to viralemergence.org, and take a look at what we do. 🦟 🦇 🦠

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Nicolas Alexandre @nicmalexandre.bsky.social · May 21

🚨New paper alert!🚨
We show that hummingbird beaks have changed in shape & size since around WWII, driven by the rise of commercialized feeders! 🧵
📄 Paper: dx.doi.org/10.1111/gcb....
#ornithology #evolution #GlobalChangeBiology

Supplemental Feeding as a Driver of Population Expansion and Morphological Change in Anna's Hummingbirds

Bird beaks are highly adaptable, with the potential to undergo rapid morphological shifts in response to environmental change such as climatic variation or food availability. Anna's Hummingbirds (Cal...

dx.doi.org

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Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · Jan 26

Researchers paid $9 billion over 5 years for their findings to be freely accessible.

This is based on a study of the global expenditure on article processing charges (APCs) paid to six publishers for open access between 2019 and 2023. arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551

Estimating global article processing charges paid to six publishers for open access between 2019 and 2023

This study presents estimates of the global expenditure on article processing charges (APCs) paid to six publishers for open access between 2019 and 2023. APCs are fees charged for publishing in some ...

arxiv.org

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Allegra Love @allegralove.bsky.social · May 20

How do animals act at risky times in risky places?

We investigated how caribou can use sociality at risky times and places to mitigate risk when facing trade-offs in habitat selection

Congratulations to @mary-atkinson.bsky.social for her first paper!

Sociality and movement change through space and time: implications for anti-predator strategies in caribou

Risk could vary temporally with predator activity levels or as animals age. While risk could vary spatially as a function of habitat complexity, where open habitats are risky because prey are more vis...

cdnsciencepub.com

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Reposted by Allegra Love

Mike Schreiner @mikeschreiner.bsky.social · May 13

Environmental assessments, worker protections, and Indigenous rights are not red tape.

Read my OpEd on why the Ford government needs to drop Bill 5.

www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...

Doug Ford wants to create rules-free zones in Ontario. We shouldn’t let him

Doug Ford is using tariffs to create a false choice. Does Ontario really want to join Russia and China, who also have rules-free special economic zones?

www.thestar.com

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Allegra Love @allegralove.bsky.social · May 12

The government of Ontario is proposing to change the endangered species act. My advisor @qwebber.bsky.social and @ryannorrissci.bsky.social wrote an op-ed about the proposed changes and planned new bill (and a link to proposal). Public consultation closes May 17th, have you submitted a comment yet?

Proposed Bill 5 threatens Ontario wildlife and ecosystems

Proposed Bill 5 threatens Ontario wildlife and ecosystems.

thepointer.com

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Daniel Bolnick @danielbolnick.bsky.social · May 10

When the Romans conquered Carthage they famously salted the fields so nothing new would grow. By killing NSF, MAGA is salting the scientific fields where new economic innovations would have grown

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College of Biological Science @uofgcbs.bsky.social · May 9

Congratulations to the CBS winners of the Student Experience Awards!

🏆Natalie Wilkinson, Biological Science

🏆Audrey Peñafiel, Wildlife Biology & Conservation

🏆Alannah Grant and Jonathan Chu, PhD in Integrative Biology students

🗞️ news.uoguelph.ca/2025/05/cele...

@integrativebiology.bsky.social

Alannah Grant and Jonathan Chu, PhD in Integrative Biology students

Natalie Wilkinson, Biological Science student

Audrey Peñafiel, Wildlife Biology & Conservation student

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College of Biological Science @uofgcbs.bsky.social · Apr 30

Congratulations to @joeybernhardt.bsky.social @integrativebiology.bsky.social, named an Early Career Fellow with the @ecologicalsociety.bsky.social!

The fellowship recognizes outstanding contributions to advancing & applying ecological knowledge.

🗞️ www.uoguelph.ca/cbs/news/202...

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Reposted by Allegra Love

Alexis Heckley @alexisheckley.bsky.social · Dec 12

How does fibrosis (an inflammation and tissue repair response) affect dispersal? We investigated this question with stickleback in a mark-recapture experiment in Alaska: dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3... @danielbolnick.bsky.social @nataliesteinel.bsky.social @ecoevoevoeco.bsky.social

Does Motility‐Restricting Fibrosis Influence Dispersal? An Experiment in Nature With Threespine Stickleback

Factors that affect dispersal can have important eco-evolutionary implications. Here, we show that an inflammation and tissue repair response—peritoneal fibrosis—does not influence threespine stickle...

dx.doi.org

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Allegra Love @allegralove.bsky.social · May 8

Great list can you add me?

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Reposted by Allegra Love

Janay A. Fox, PhD @janayf.bsky.social · Apr 29

How fast can brains epigenetically respond to predation stress?

We found that brain DNA methylation in guppies can shift within 30 minutes of predator exposure — with different time courses between males and females.

New paper from my PhD now out! 🧠🐟
doi.org/10.1111/mec....

Rapid Neural DNA Methylation Responses to Predation Stress in Trinidadian Guppies

DNA methylation (DNAm) is a well-studied epigenetic mechanism implicated in environmentally induced phenotypes and phenotypic plasticity. However, few studies investigate the timescale of DNAm shifts...

doi.org

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Toula Drimonis @mtltoula.bsky.social · Apr 25

“With respect to the retention rate of students from outside Quebec & their ability to integrate into QC society — whether international or out-of-province students — the evidence shows that the minister had no data on the matter, beyond tenuous information.”
www.montrealgazette.com/news/provinc...

Judge rules Quebec’s 33% tuition hike for out-of-province students is ‘unreasonable’

Quebec Superior Court judge also invalidated, effective immediately, the French proficiency rules that the CAQ government had imposed.

www.montrealgazette.com

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Reposted by Allegra Love

Genetics Society UK @gensocuk.bsky.social · Apr 24

🎉 Congratulations @janayf.bsky.social on winning our 2025 Bruce Cattanach Prize!

Janay's talk is on the epigenetic plasticity in response to environmental stress: insights from an evolutionary fish model #Epigenetics2025

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Stephen Heard @stephenbheard.bsky.social · Mar 10

Big news: I've signed the contract for a 3rd edition of 'The Scientist's Guide to Writing', adding coverage of so-called "AI" writing tools. But it's also a chance to update and revise throughout - so I invite your input! See here to leave suggestions: scientistseessquirre...

What would you like to see in a 3rd edition of ‘The Scientist’s Guide to Writing’?

The second edition of The Scientist’s Guide to Writing isn’t quite three years old, but I’ve been talking with the publisher about a third edition. And I want your help with it. I have to admit tha…

scientistseessquirrel.wordpress.com

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Dr Luis Huckstadt @luishuckstadt.bsky.social · Mar 10

🚨New paper out!
By migrating between productive high latitude and oligotrophic regions (Great Baleen Conveyor Belt) large whales 🐋 transport incredible amounts of nutrients to low latitudes @jjkiszka.bsky.social @andrewabraham.bsky.social @dancosta2025.bsky.social

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

Migrating baleen whales transport high-latitude nutrients to tropical and subtropical ecosystems - Nature Communications

Baleen whales migrate from high latitude feeding grounds to subtropical reproductive winter grounds, translocating limiting nutrients across ecosystems. This study estimates the latitudinal movement o...

www.nature.com

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Brent Toderian @brenttoderian.bsky.social · Mar 4

You can’t overstate the historic importance of today’s speech to both American and Canadian citizens by Canada’s Prime Minister.

Please watch it and share it wherever you live, but especially if you’re in the United States. You need to know what Trump is doing, and why. youtu.be/wz_42pckM7w

Watch Trudeau speak directly to Trump during blistering speech

YouTube video by CNN

youtu.be

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Allegra Love @allegralove.bsky.social · Mar 2

I heard it from a mile away

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Allegra Love @allegralove.bsky.social · Mar 1

You seem to know a little too much for a chameleon

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Allegra Love @allegralove.bsky.social · Mar 1

Yeah don’t shame me

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