Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
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frodsan.bsky.social
Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
@frodsan.bsky.social
3.4K followers 160 following 220 posts
Computational Ecologist. Associate Professor @unisevilla.bsky.social. ecology, biogeography, statistics, rstats, GIS, science.

https://frodriguezsanchez.net
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frodsan.bsky.social
Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez @frodsan.bsky.social · Feb 19
1/ New paper @pnas.org on the structure of mutualistic #networks between individuals plants and frugivore species.

Last chapter of @elequintero.bsky.social's PhD thesis

doi.org/10.1073/pnas... #ecopubs
Downscaling mutualistic networks from species to individuals reveals consistent interaction niches and roles within plant populations Species-level networks emerge as the combination of interactions spanning multiple individuals, and their study has received considerable attention over the past 30 y. However, less is known about the structure of interaction configurations within species, even though individuals are the actual interacting units in nature. We compiled 46 empirical, individual-based, interaction networks on plant-animal seed dispersal mutualisms, comprising 1,037 plant individuals across 29 species from various regions. We compared the structure of individual-based networks to that of species-based networks and, by extending the niche concept to interaction assemblages, we explored individual plant specialization. Using a Bayesian framework to account for uncertainty derived from sampling, we examined how plant individuals “explore” the interaction niche of their populations. Both individual-based and species-based networks exhibited high variability in network properties, lacking remarkable structural and topological differences between them. Within populations, frugivores’ interaction allocation among plant individuals was highly heterogeneous, with one to three frugivore species dominating interactions. Regardless of species or bioregion, plant individuals displayed a variety of interaction profiles across populations, with a consistently-small percentage of individuals playing a central role and exhibiting high diversity in their interaction assemblage. Plant populations showed variable mid to low levels of niche specialization; and individuals’ interaction niche “breadth” accounted for 70% of the population interaction diversity, on average. Our results highlight how downscaling from species to individual-based networks helps understanding the structuring of interactions within ecological communities.
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
raphaelwimmer.bsky.social
OpenAI just released Prism, a LaTeX editor with embedded ChatGPT for free.
Writing a paper has never been easier.
Clogging the scientific publishing pipeline has never been easier.
It took me 54 seconds to write up an experiment I did not actually conduct.

prism.openai.com
Screenshot of Prism - I asked it to create a methods, participants, results, and discussion seconds. It did so within 54 seconds...
January 27, 2026 at 11:01 PM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
blasbenito.com
"How AI Impacts Skill Formation", by Judy Hanwen Shen and Alex Tamkin, both working at Anthropic: arxiv.org/abs/2601.20245
igure 1: Overview of results: (Left) We find a significant decrease in library-specific skills (conceptual understanding, code reading, and debugging) among workers using AI assistance for completing tasks with a new python library. (Right) We categorize AI usage patterns and found three high skill development patterns where participants stay cognitively engaged when using AI assistance.
January 30, 2026 at 8:25 AM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
nadineruehr.bsky.social
We are hiring a postdoctoral researcher!🌲 🌳 🌍

📍Interested in boreal and temperate forest productivity and respiration?
💻 Like to work with large datasets, remote sensing and models?
🏔️ Love an alpine setting in a small town?

Come and join us at KIT!

Application details: t1p.de/qctj7
January 22, 2026 at 11:45 AM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
add-hawk.bsky.social
Last term I tried an experiment: I walked into my Tech and Design Ethics class, admitted that I had *no idea* what to do about ChatGPT - so I would let them figure it out.

As in: their first project was to decide and write the ChatGPT policy for the class.

Here's what happened:
January 22, 2026 at 11:36 PM
frodsan.bsky.social
Oooh love this. Easiest way to parallelise anything in #rstats. Just add futurize() to your favourite function call

www.jottr.org/2026/01/22/f...

Thanks @henrikbengtsson.bsky.social HT @rstats.blaze.email
Examples of how to use the new futurize package
January 23, 2026 at 9:04 AM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
adam42smith.bsky.social
Zotero 8 is out in stable: www.zotero.org/blog/zotero-8/
A bunch of new stuff -- the new citation dialog especially is a huge (and long overdue) improvement; massively speeds up anything I do in Word/GDocs with Zotero
Zotero Blog » Blog Archive » Zotero 8
Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share research.
www.zotero.org
January 22, 2026 at 7:15 PM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
danlwarren.bsky.social
Back from holiday and it's finally time to post about this. I am taking on a section editor role for the new diamond open access journal Biogeography, put together by @biogeographyjfab.bsky.social. That means that it's free to publish and free to read. (thread)

biog.journals.sup.org/index.php/bi...
Biogeography
Biogeography is an academic-owned, diamond Open Access journal, published by the academic, non-profit, Stanford University Press (SUP), using the Public Knowledge Project’s Open Journal Systems platfo...
biog.journals.sup.org
January 20, 2026 at 2:48 AM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
ecoinf-aeet.bsky.social
Si tienes ganas de aprender a programar y desarrollar paquetes de R en el campo de la Ecología y aún no te has apuntado al curso, estás a tiempo, que aún quedan plazas!!
💻🌿🌺🐝💻
Recuerda que la inscripción incluye alojamiento y manutención!
⬇️⬇️⬇️
bsky.app/profile/ecoi...
ecoinf-aeet.bsky.social Ecoinformática AEET @ecoinf-aeet.bsky.social · Dec 22
¿No te ha tocado la lotería?

¡Pues no te preocupes porque desde el grupo de Ecoinformática hemos estado preparando algo especial!🎄

🎁 Sabemos que os habéis portado genial este año, así que qué mejor que comenzar el 2026 apuntándote al taller de elaboración de paquetes de R 🚀
shorturl.at/N6J3V
https://shorturl.at/N6J3V
January 19, 2026 at 2:10 PM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
mzloteanu.bsky.social
#statstab #466 {grateful} Facilitate citation of R packages

Thoughts: Great little package to easily cite all the packages you use in a script. (doesn't cite itself unless you ask it)

#rstats #r #packages #acknowledgement #credit #quarto

pakillo.github.io/grateful/ind...
Facilitate Citation of R Packages
Facilitates the citation of R packages used in analysis projects. Scans project for packages used, gets their citations, and produces a document with citations in the preferred bibliography format, re...
pakillo.github.io
January 19, 2026 at 1:51 PM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
nature.com
If we don’t slow down, the research enterprise is going to crash, argues Adrian Barnett

go.nature.com/4pRniHp
I’m going to halve my publication output. You should consider slow science, too
If we don’t slow down, the research enterprise is going to crash, argues Adrian Barnett.
go.nature.com
January 19, 2026 at 12:34 PM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
cosce.bsky.social
"¿Qué es la excelencia? Si el 80% de todos los artículos científicos se publican en revistas de supuesto prestigio, ¿el 80% de los artículos “sobresale”? ¿Puede “sobresalir” el 80% de algo?

@isidroaguillo.bsky.social en @eldiario.es

www.eldiario.es/sociedad/fal...
El 'fallido' sistema de revistas científicas: la mayoría de los estudios más citados salen en publicaciones 'menores'
Durante décadas, los países han dado más importancia a publicar en determinadas revistas, consideradas de prestigio, que al contenido de los artículos; esta política ha pervertido el sistema y perjudi...
www.eldiario.es
December 26, 2025 at 4:02 PM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
tomstafford.mastodon.online.ap.brid.gy
New post!

Where does new knowledge come from when everyone relies on AI models and those models collapse because they only have their own output to train on?

https://tomstafford.substack.com/p/model-collapse
Model collapse
when AI alters our behaviour and our institutions, the risk isn't just theoretical
tomstafford.substack.com
January 17, 2026 at 8:00 AM
frodsan.bsky.social
While the world melts down, the first almond trees, oblivious to everything, have started flowering

And a little animal was already looking forward to it
Almond flower
January 17, 2026 at 2:18 PM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
adamjkucharski.bsky.social
New post, on how AI is coming for open source software: kucharski.substack.com/p/will-your-...
Will your favourite open source software tools soon be closed off?
Freely available software relies on credit. AI is destroying that.
kucharski.substack.com
January 14, 2026 at 7:34 PM
frodsan.bsky.social
[Blog] Should PhD programmes require candidates to have at least one paper published in order to graduate?

frodriguezsanchez.net/post/should-...

#AcademicChatter #AcademicSky
Should PhD programmes require candidates to have at least one paper published in order to graduate? Many PhD programmes require PhD candidates to have one (or more) papers accepted or published in a scientific journal in order to be able to graduate and complete their doctorate. This is of course a well-intentioned idea and may sound good at first, as PhD candidates would gain experience and start learning how to navigate the publication process in scientific journals. Having a publication out the PhD may also help them secure their next position. The publication requirement would also encourage that research results are published and not lost forever, particularly if the new PhD moves on after completing their doctorate. Finally, having a paper accepted at a scientific journal usually means that at least three people (editors and reviewers) have evaluated the research and the editor(s) have considered it good enough for publication, so it could be interpreted as an external validation and signal of quality. Undesired consequences of requiring publication in PhD programmes So far so good. But on second thoughts one can foresee how this publication requirement can create perverse incentives, bring many problems for early career researchers and science in general, and basically do more harm than good. Particularly considering that many PhD programmes last 3-4 years (at least in Europe) and the publication process can take well more than a year from submission to acceptance (more on this below). Thus, a few counter-arguments that come to mind: [continues in the linked website]
January 15, 2026 at 2:50 PM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
adamjkucharski.bsky.social
Want to get the data out of a PDF figure? As in, the actual data – not a rough trace-along-the-lines version?

I made an app you might like: adamkucharski.github.io/pdf2plot/

It all started a few years ago... 🧵
January 13, 2026 at 9:12 PM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
ourworldindata.org
The world dedicates a Poland-sized area of land to producing liquid biofuels such as bioethanol & biodiesel. Is there a more efficient way to generate energy?

Putting solar panels on the land used for biofuels, e.g., would produce enough electricity for all cars and trucks worldwide to go electric.
How much energy can be produced on global land currently used for liquid biofuels? Bar comparison showing energy per year from land currently used for liquid biofuels: Biofuels for transport — 1,400 TWh per year; Solar panels on the same land — 32,000 TWh per year. Side annotations: 31,000 TWh shown for context as the amount of electricity the world generated in 2024; 7,000 TWh per year shown as the amount of electricity the world would need to power all of its cars and trucks if they were electric. Note: This assumes the world uses 32 million hectares of land to grow crops for liquid biofuels, based on net land use which subtracts land allocated to co-products such as animal feed, and assumes solar PV uses 1 hectare of land per GWh. Data source: Energy Institute; Cerulogy; Ember; and author calculations. Chart is licensed CC BY to Our World in Data.
January 13, 2026 at 12:38 PM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
minedogucu.com
📖 Big news! We just released the first five chapters of our new book, Hello Data Science. It is a fully open-access resource written for beginners. Please help us spread the word! A few points about the book are below 👇

🔗 www.hellodata.science

#rstats #datascience #tidyverse
A hex sticker with a text that reads Hello Data Science with green, yellow and pink scatterplot points in the background. There is a web address www.hellodata.science
January 14, 2026 at 5:34 AM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
hansonmark.bsky.social
Most journals practice special issues fairly responsibly. But it's the worst offenders that contribute most of the PISS. ~90% of PISS in our data come from just 150/904 journals.

And it's exactly who you think it is. #MDPI #Frontiers

13/n
January 13, 2026 at 8:27 AM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
hansonmark.bsky.social
We've got ISSUES. Literally.

We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do?

arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563

A 🧵 1/n
January 13, 2026 at 8:27 AM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
jakubnowosad.com
We just published a JOSIS paper on what spatial data science languages have in common and what they still need. Insights from across the R, Python & Julia ecosystems.

URL: doi.org/10.5311/JOSI...

#SpatialDataScience #GISchat #OpenSource #RSpatial #GeoPython #JuliaGeo
January 11, 2026 at 4:01 PM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
palaeoverse.bsky.social
Our job adverts are now live! 🤩
We are hiring a Research Software Engineer and a Community Engagement Coordinator to support @palaeoverse.bsky.social over the next two years, based at UCL.
Apply by January 18th 2026, ideally to start in March 2026 🗓️
More info and links below 👇
January 9, 2026 at 11:06 AM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
nhcooper123.bsky.social
After last year's successful refresh of the BES Reproducible Code guide (www.britishecologicalsociety.org//wp-content/...), this year we're going to refresh the Data Management guide (www.britishecologicalsociety.org//wp-content/...). Exciting! See below for how to get involved...
www.britishecologicalsociety.org
January 7, 2026 at 12:43 PM
frodsan.bsky.social
Interesting new #ecopubs @pnas.org

Seed production failures are more spatially synchronized than mast peaks across temperate tree species

But local synchrony among species is low, so generalist seed consumers unlikely to experience coordinated starvation–satiation

doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
Geography of masting creates greater synchrony in seed scarcity than in seed abundance Interannually highly variable and synchronized production of large seed crops by perennial plants, called masting, drives resource pulses and famines with cascading effects on food webs. While the spatial scale of masting synchrony is well documented, it remains unclear how synchrony differs between years of seed abundance and failure, and how such dynamics extend across species and space. These gaps are important to resolve, as they determine the magnitude and spatial extent of masting effects on food webs. Using a 36-y dataset from 431 sites spanning seven dominant tree species in temperate Europe, we provide evidence that seed failures are more spatially synchronized than mast peaks, indicating that regional coherence in seed production is structured primarily by reproductive failure. Among-species synchrony was localized. This suggests that in temperate forests, mobile seed consumers are unlikely to experience coordinated starvation–satiation cycles, in contrast to highly synchronous tropical dipterocarp systems. From an applied perspective, failure years affect seed availability over broad regions, limiting sourcing options for afforestation and restoration, and underscoring the value of spatially explicit masting forecasting. Because mast peaks and failures differ fundamentally in their food web consequences, our findings highlight the need to better understand and anticipate the ecological impacts of synchronized seed scarcity.
December 23, 2025 at 11:35 AM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
juliagdealedo.bsky.social
🎉 labeleR-paper has been published in @ecosistemas-aeet.bsky.social!
👪 Together with @iramosgutierrez.bsky.social @jimenamateomartin.bsky.social & @frodsan.bsky.social!
📃 We briefly explain how to use it, its advantages and possibilities... Take a look! revistaecosistemas.net/index.php/ec...
December 22, 2025 at 3:52 PM