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Reposted by Daniel Becker

Maya Juman @mayajuman.bsky.social · 16d

Super excited to finally share this! #CollectionsAreEssential

Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 16d

🦇🦠 New preprint - in a long-term effort led by the amazing @mayajuman.bsky.social, we've shown that the ML tools developed by @viralemergence.org let us efficiently screen museum collections for pathogens with pandemic potential

🎉🔓 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Museum collections and machine learning guide discovery of novel coronaviruses and paramyxoviruses

Natural history museum collections are valuable but underutilized resources for viral discovery, offering opportunities to test hypotheses about viral occurrence across space, time, and taxonomic grou...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Daniel Becker

Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 16d

🦇🦠 New preprint - in a long-term effort led by the amazing @mayajuman.bsky.social, we've shown that the ML tools developed by @viralemergence.org let us efficiently screen museum collections for pathogens with pandemic potential

🎉🔓 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Museum collections and machine learning guide discovery of novel coronaviruses and paramyxoviruses

Natural history museum collections are valuable but underutilized resources for viral discovery, offering opportunities to test hypotheses about viral occurrence across space, time, and taxonomic grou...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Daniel Becker

Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 22d

🚨 NEW: Climate change is already causing 30,000 deaths per year - a global annual economic loss of $100-350B USD - but the true damage is probably 10x higher. Out TODAY in Nature Climate Change: the first systematic look at the science of "health impact attribution" 🔓 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

"Health losses attributed to anthropogenic climate change," a brief communication in the journal Nature Climate Change. There's a map showing regions of the world, and pie charts of relevant studies as they apply to different health impacts like "heat-related deaths" and "maternal and child health"

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Reposted by Daniel Becker

Margaret Renkl @margaretrenkl.bsky.social · Sep 1

A few words about purple martins—how to help them, how to help all migratory birds, how to help birds that don’t migrate—in this week’s essay. Gift link via @nytopinion: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...

Opinion | One Way the Earthbound Can Take Flight

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Daniel Becker

SICB journals @sicbjournals.bsky.social · Aug 28

Be sure to check out what a few of the ICB co authors of

Understanding #climate change threats to vertebrate #wildlife by studying #ecoimmunology across #biological scales

doi.org/10.1093/icb/...

are up to

Fagre

www.annafagre.com

Becker & Simonis

beckerlab.weebly.com

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Reposted by Daniel Becker

SICB journals @sicbjournals.bsky.social · Aug 29

ICB
Understand more about how #climate change threatens #organismal health and #ecological stability in a myriad of ways -
read :
Understanding #climatechange threats to #vertebrate #wildlife by studying #ecoimmunology across biological scales
Fagre et al
doi.org/10.1093/icb/...

Figure 1. Coinfection and immune compromise in African lions (Panthera leo) under climate stress and increased abundance of hematophagous arthropods. Extreme drought conditions followed by heavy rainfall triggered the starvation and heavy tick infestation in herbivores, such as Cape buffalo (Syncerus cafferi). As African lions preyed on the herbivores, the ixodid ticks likely switched hosts and began feeding on the lions. Underlying immunosuppression, fueled by climatic conditions and ongoing canine distemper virus (CDV) circulation, exacerbated the clinical impacts of tick-acquired babesiosis

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Reposted by Daniel Becker

Gavin Simpson @gsimpson.bsky.social · Aug 18

🚀 gratia 0.11.0 is out!

Now has a paper in JOSS — please cite 📄 doi.org/10.21105/jos...

Experimental parallel processing ⚡

New assemble() for building plots 🎨

Better support for complex families + new diagnostics 🧪

Lots of bug fixes + polish ✨

👉 gavinsimpson.github.io/gratia/

#Rstats

An R package for working with generalized additive models

Graceful 'ggplot'-based graphics and utility functions for working with generalized additive models (GAMs) fitted using the 'mgcv' package.

gavinsimpson.github.io

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Reposted by Daniel Becker

Dr. Lauren E. Fuess @laurenfuess.bsky.social · Aug 13

Hey wild immunologists of blue sky… do you work on a non-model taxa???

Would you have 15 min to spare to zoom in and share your research with my comparative immunology class?

I’m looking to spotlight real research this semester. Please spread the word and reach out if you’re interested!

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Reposted by Daniel Becker

Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · Jul 30

Are you an early-career biologist or ecologist who would benefit from an invited seminar? Would you like to come to UMaine next fall or spring to give a talk? Leave a brief comment with some info about what you do. I'm co-hosting our seminar series again, and am filling out our rosters.

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Reposted by Daniel Becker

Gates Dupont @gates.bsky.social · Jul 31

🚨 First PhD chapter is out! My work thus far, with @andy2dobson.bsky.social

We found that formerly common species have declined the fastest, on average.

📄 North American bird declines are driven by reductions in common species | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

North American bird declines are driven by reductions in common species

Declines in North American birds are driven not by rare species vanishing but by sharp losses among formerly common species.

www.science.org

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Reposted by Daniel Becker

Vega Shah @dr-alphalyrae.bsky.social · Jul 23

Everyone working in a STEM field should read this - ‘writing is thinking’
www.nature.com/articles/s44...

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Reposted by Daniel Becker

Dr Alison Peel @alibat.bsky.social · Jul 21

🦇 NEW RESEARCH: Our 3-year study of Australian flying foxes identified six co-circulating coronaviruses, with highest rates of infection and co-infection in young bats, and evidence of circulating recombinants 🧪🌏 🧵

Available open access in @natcomms.nature.com

📄 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Synchronized seasonal excretion of multiple coronaviruses coincides with high rates of coinfection in immature bats - Nature Communications

Bats harbor diverse coronaviruses but temporal dynamics are less well studied. Here, the authors analyzed coronaviruses in Australian flying foxes over 3 years showing peak shedding and co-infections ...

doi.org

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Reposted by Daniel Becker

Alice Boyle @birdfiddler.bsky.social · Jul 19

Are you a PhD student, have an offer, or have had an offer recently rescinded from a US university? If so, Western (in London, ON, Canada) has a new scholarship program for you! Check out this news story. I can vouch for this university! You will love it.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Western University launches program to capitalize on shrinking U.S. research funding | CBC News

Western University is looking to capitalize on massive shifts in the academic landscape of the United States with a new initiative designed to turn a difficult situation into a brain gain for both the...

www.cbc.ca

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Reposted by Daniel Becker

Arinjay Banerjee @banerjeelab.ca · Jul 10

The 2025 Bat Infectious Disease meeting is now on. Looking forward to several excellent talks, along with talks by Rita and Victoria from my lab. #BatID
Thanks to Dr. Cara Brook and her lab for organizing and hosting us!

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Reposted by Daniel Becker

Arinjay Banerjee @banerjeelab.ca · Jul 3

🚨 New publication out today. Bats are over 1480 species. In this latest article, we discuss the diversity within bats and their immune systems. Elegantly led by the Becker and Frank laboratories.

nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

@danjbecker.bsky.social @bat-lady.bsky.social

NYAS Publications

Bats are recognized to have distinct immune systems from other vertebrates that may allow them to host virulent pathogens without showing disease. However, these flying mammals are also incredibly di...

nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Reposted by Daniel Becker

Simon Cauchemez @scauchemez.bsky.social · Jul 1

Infectious Disease Modelling starter pack update! Many more modellers have joined Bluesky recently so this update is overdue. Pls keep on sending suggestions! (bio should contain experience relevant for this pack)
IDModelling pack 1: go.bsky.app/86Ao1a5
IDModelling pack 2 : go.bsky.app/2oBB7KX

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Reposted by Daniel Becker

Timothée Poisot @ctrlalttim.com · Jun 30

🦠🌿🐦🧪 How can biodiversity monitoring help global efforts in disease surveillance?

With ✨ fantastic ✨ colleagues from @viralemergence.org and the @geobon.org working group on One Health, we try to identify three key lessons for the future.

🧵 A short thread!

academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...

Biodiversity science and biosurveillance are fellow travelers

The failure to meet the Aichi targets to alleviate global biodiversity decline (Nature 2020) was a wake-up call to the biodiversity monitoring community (T

academic.oup.com

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Reposted by Daniel Becker

EEID forum @eeidforum.bsky.social · Jun 23

We created an initial webpage at EEIDforum.org. We're in beta testing phase, but there is a job board with a few postings, feel free to put up your own EEID related job ads there.

EEID Forum – Connecting people working on host-parasite interactions in natural and human systems

EEIDforum.org

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Reposted by Daniel Becker

The Carlson Lab @ Yale @carlsonlab.bsky.social · Jun 23

Do you study wildlife disease? Don't just share your sequences - share your testing data! We've developed a minimum data standard and an R package to help you, and wrote a little how-to-share-data handbook for disease ecology and One Health surveillance projects 🦇🦟🦠🗺️🔢

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

A minimum data standard for wildlife disease research and surveillance - Scientific Data

Scientific Data - A minimum data standard for wildlife disease research and surveillance

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Daniel Becker

Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · Jun 21

📝 EDITORS and BOARD MEMBERS in the One Health / virology / disease ecology world: We'd love to work with you to incorporate the WDDS standard into your journal's data sharing requirements for wildlife disease studies. It's simple, flexible, and what your authors should already be doing.

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Reposted by Daniel Becker

Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · Jun 21

This project started with pharos.viralemergence.org, which is a global dashboard for wildlife disease research and surveillance. We're still working on improving the PHAROS interface, so in the meantime, we wanted to put tools out there, so every researcher can put their data *somewhere.*

Pharos

Building a global atlas of wildlife disease data

pharos.viralemergence.org

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Reposted by Daniel Becker

Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · Jun 21

NEW! 🎉 We need wildlife disease surveillance to predict epidemics, but data sharing is rare - we found that only 2-3% of studies share raw data. So, we spent three years developing a data standard and R package to help get wildlife disease data into FAIR repositories. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The title of the paper: "A minimum data standard for wildlife disease research and surveillance" - and an example data table

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Reposted by Daniel Becker

Molly Simonis @mollysimonis.bsky.social · Jun 17

We are hiring a technician in the Simonis Lab at Auburn U! This is a two-year position with responsibilities for scouting and performing bat capture surveys at field sites (e.g. private and public lands, highway culverts).

Check out more details and submit materials here: forms.gle/tEUNyRc1hG3f...

forms.gle

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Reposted by Daniel Becker

Zack Steel 🪶🦇🌲🔥 @zacksteel.bsky.social · Jun 10

Vertebrate hotspots are expected to see increased climate extremes in the coming decades; often in places where animals may be most naive to such events. New research out of my lab led by Dr. van den Bosch in @globalchangebio.bsky.social 🧪🌐🌏

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Projected Increases in Climate Extremes Across Global Vertebrate Diversity Hotspots

We identified overlap between areas of high vertebrate diversity and regions predicted to be exposed to increases in extreme drought, heat, and precipitation. Tropical regions, which host the highest...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Reposted by Daniel Becker

Dr. Ralph Simon @ralsimon.bsky.social · Jun 10

Today 10th of June at 4 PM Panama time, I'll be giving a Tupper talk @stri_panama on self-medication in bats. Curious? Join me online and discover what bats are up to when they are immune-challenged! 🍈🦇

smithsonian.zoom.us/j/8724629288...
Password: 438162; Webinar ID: 872 4629 2885

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