Dominik Melville
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ecoevodom.bsky.social
Dominik Melville
@ecoevodom.bsky.social
Wildlife microbiology, disease ecology, immunology 🦇🦠 wannabe chef 🥨 married to a Scot 🌈
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Did you know coronavirus infections impact the gut microbial community of #bats? But the effect differs between viruses. Published in @ismepublications.bsky.social - Big team effort: @alice-risely.bsky.social @cdrosten.bsky.social @vmcorman.bsky.social et al. academic.oup.com/ismecommun/a...
Hibecovirus (genus Betacoronavirus) infection linked to gut microbial dysbiosis in bats
Abstract. Little is known about how zoonotic virus infections manifest in wildlife reservoirs. However, a common health consequence of enteric virus infect
academic.oup.com
Reposted by Dominik Melville
How do we make sense of scientific literature that is growing explosively to the point where no-one could read all the relevant papers, and is contaminated with fraudulent and LLM-generated papers? I think that science isn't currently equipped to deal with this, and we need to. #science #metascience
November 20, 2025 at 5:01 PM
The topic of this years ethics in science MSc class @uniulm.bsky.social was the #deextinction of the #direwolf! A key take home was that choosing a grey wolf genome as template was a matter of convenience. Convenience breeds bad #science
November 19, 2025 at 12:02 PM
Reposted by Dominik Melville
We are looking for contributors to our series on the Methods Blog, exploring the experiences of ecologists conducting research in remote field stations during the holiday season 🎄

See previous blogs here 👉 buff.ly/MnMcRqG (1/2)
November 6, 2025 at 12:01 PM
Reposted by Dominik Melville
A big review of the evolution of bats:
www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...
🧪 ⚒️ #Paleobio #EvoBio
November 9, 2025 at 9:56 PM
Reposted by Dominik Melville
🚨 Exciting new work out today led by @carolinecummings.bsky.social! Do bats host deadly viruses? Yes - but only specific bats (that just happen to be found in a lot of places!). Challenging some big ideas in the zoonosis world with data. Well done Caroline and team!!
just in time for #batweek --Phylogenetic and ML analyses show that viral epidemic potential is not uniform among bats: virulence, transmissibility, and death burden cluster within distinct clades.🦇@carolinecummings.bsky.social @colincarlson.bsky.social @viralemergence.org go.sn.pub/acnbg1
October 30, 2025 at 2:57 PM
Reposted by Dominik Melville
"Wir müssen ernst nehmen, dass er diese Aussage als Bundeskanzler getroffen hat, in seinem Amt, bei einem Antrittsbesuch. Bei solchen Terminen und in dieser Rolle müsste er theoretisch für alle Deutschen sprechen. Das hat er ganz offensichtlich nicht getan."

- @danielkubiak.bsky.social

#Stadtbild
"Ich habe das Gefühl, dass bewusst versucht wird, verbal nach rechts zu laufen"
Die Aussagen von Bundeskanzler Merz über ein "Problem" im Stadtbild in Bezug auf Migration sind aus Sicht von Soziologe Daniel Kubiak rassistisch - und haben historische Parallelen in der Nazi-Zeit.
www.rbb24.de
October 21, 2025 at 9:10 AM
Reposted by Dominik Melville
Bats are amazing & an important part of the ecosystem 🦇
#planningbill
“It’s a pay-to-destroy system. Developers will put money into a fund to pay for compensation but it may be nowhere near an important colony which needs help.”
@batconservation.bsky.social

www.theguardian.com/environment/...
‘It’s madness’: bat enthusiasts fear planning bill will derail years of conservation
Research project team say Labour’s proposed nature restoration fund would end up being a ‘pay-to-destroy system’
www.theguardian.com
October 21, 2025 at 7:49 AM
Reposted by Dominik Melville
New publication alert!
Fertilization impacts microbiomes along the grassland trophic chain academic.oup.com/ismecommun/a...

#organicfertilizers #landusechange #microbiome #grasslands #onehealth
Validate User
academic.oup.com
September 18, 2025 at 7:55 AM
Reposted by Dominik Melville
Why should scientists write op-eds? It's tempting to say the facts ought to speak for themselves. But the facts are largely whispering among themselves in the scientific literature. They need us to give them a voice. How? Advice in my latest @natchem.nature.com Thesis rdcu.be/eJlGL #chemsky 1/3
Opinionated science
Nature Chemistry - When the facts can’t speak for themselves, scientists can give them a voice, argues Michelle Francl.
rdcu.be
October 6, 2025 at 2:26 PM
Reposted by Dominik Melville
This year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was just announced:
www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medic...

This seems like a good opportunity for me to explain a bit about peripheral immune tolerance and where the prizewinners' work comes in 🧵
October 6, 2025 at 1:04 PM
The extent to which closely related hosts share similar gut microbiota fascinates me. Work that truely stands out to me comes from @bperezlamarque.bsky.social and colleagues using process-based modelling over correlative approaches - a 'must' read #mevosky academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...
Phylogenetic Comparative Approach Reveals Evolutionary Conservatism, Ancestral Composition, and Integration of Vertebrate Gut Microbiota
Abstract. How host-associated microbial communities evolve as their hosts diversify remains equivocal: how conserved is their composition? What was the com
academic.oup.com
October 6, 2025 at 8:15 AM
Today I was reviewer 2 - I am sorry
September 30, 2025 at 1:39 PM
I am designing my own webpage at the moment - What’s your favourite webpage by fellow scientist and why? Reply with link.
September 21, 2025 at 7:45 AM
Reposted by Dominik Melville
Former staffers of Climate.gov are launching a new site: www.climate.us

🧪
Climate.us
independent, nonprofit, and immune to politics
www.climate.us
September 19, 2025 at 11:36 AM
What made our recent work on #meerkats stand out? - here is an expert summary from the @uniulm.bsky.social press office www.uni-ulm.de/en/nawi/facu... #climatechange #tuberculosis picture credit: Evelin Pandiamakkal - get in touch if you have ideas for other questions to test with this rich dataset
September 17, 2025 at 12:16 AM
Reposted by Dominik Melville
NEXT #MVIF EVENTS:
October 2025: Peter Turnbaugh
November 2025: Deepa Agashe @deepaagashe.bsky.social
December 2025: Katherine Lemon @kathlemon.bsky.social
January 2026: Sara Mitri @saramitri.bsky.social y.social‬
February 2026: Simon Roux @simrouxvirus.bsky.social
Future events
All future events of the Microbiome Virtual International Forum
www.microbiome-vif.org
September 11, 2025 at 3:39 AM
Interesting new work on bird microbiomes challenging the notion of a lacking signal of phylosymbiosis - www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Host filtering and biogeography structure island bird gut microbiomes
Gut microbiomes are central to host ecology and evolution, yet the mechanisms driv-ing their diversification remain elusive, partly because host evolution and biogeography are often confounded. The re...
www.biorxiv.org
September 8, 2025 at 10:55 AM
Reposted by Dominik Melville
Comment out now in Nature Reviews Biodiversity where we argue that blocking renewable energy, esp wind and solar, for biodi reasons is unnecessary - we can manage any tradeoffs. And unchecked climate change is far, far worse! Don't let biodi become political football www.nature.com/articles/s44...
The trade-offs between needed renewable energy transitions and biodiversity can be overcome - Nature Reviews Biodiversity
The expansion of renewable energy is urgently needed to reduce carbon emissions, but it can entail some trade-offs with biodiversity. Here, we argue that synergistic implementation strategies are poss...
www.nature.com
August 25, 2025 at 9:12 PM
Reposted by Dominik Melville
Immune genetic and disease surveillance of a wild meerkat population over 20 years shows that tuberculosis imposes strong pathogen-mediated balancing selection on major histocompatibility complex and identifies underlying mechanisms

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Twenty years of tuberculosis-driven selection shaped the evolution of the meerkat major histocompatibility complex - Nature Ecology & Evolution
Immune genetic and disease surveillance of a wild meerkat population over 20 years shows that tuberculosis imposes strong pathogen-mediated balancing selection on the meerkats’ major histocompatibilit...
www.nature.com
August 25, 2025 at 1:04 PM
New, fantastic work by Nadine Müller-Klein, whose dedication to understanding pathogen-mediated balancing selection drove this effort forward! Great team effort all around -Image credit: Evi Zehntner #meerkats #MHC www.nature.com/articles/s41...
August 25, 2025 at 12:12 PM
What an intriguing idea, #ESEB!
Another way to save CO2 emissions is to offer exclusively vegetarian and vegan food (like The British Ecological Society in their annual meetings) - system change is possible, @eseb.bsky.social

I would be super keen to help organise the meeting in Munich.
August 22, 2025 at 2:19 PM