Obituary: Jane Goodall (1934-2025) Pioneer primatologist who inspired generations of scientists

go.nature.com/48aWjRU

"All the signals are green here for Enceladus"
www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

A boost for integrative rethinking of resilience in water-driven transitional ecosystems
Hurtado+
doi.org/10.1093/bios...

rethinking resilience of water-driven transitional ecosystems
"characterized by experiencing periodic and reversible alternations of aquatic-terrestrial transitional states"

Watch to the end.

Sometimes I think about how from 1935-1975ish, Bell Labs produced an insane amount of revolutionary science and technology, including 11 Nobel Prizes, the transistor, UNIX, C, the laser, the solar cell, information theory, etc. The secret? Provide scientists with ample, steady, no-strings funding.

No one understood the importance of scientists engaging in society more than #JaneGoodall.

Though she lived a long, vibrant life, I still felt sad today, knowing that we lost an incredible ambassador for science, whose empathy, curiosity, and resilience inspired me and countless others.

(1/5) 🧪

"The prediction I can make with the highest confidence is that the most amazing discoveries will be the ones we are not today wise enough to foresee."

-Carl Sagan, Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium

It was a pleasure to visit Leeds University and to see @josiesouth.bsky.social (one of my favorite colleagues) and her keen group of grad students.

Jane Goodall, known for her pioneering work with chimpanzees, has passed away aged 91

go.nature.com/46K10ja

In the Richelieu River, 25 years' exposure to zebra mussel fouling and food competition has produced a longterm erosion of native unionid mussels, despite the river's chemistry being suboptimal for zebra mussels.
cdnsciencepub.com/doi/10.1139/...

Pre-print: utoronto.scholaris.ca/bitstreams/9...

An extraordinary researcher, conservation advocate, and inspirational figure. Her legacy transcends science. Legend.
www.reuters.com/business/env...

Sabotage by animal rights militants? 😁

Invasional meltdown is a fascinating, poorly understood, and highly consequential phenomenon that can transform entire ecosystems. New models and experiments are needed to inform theory.
#bioinvasions #invasivespecies

"Do doctors really know what they are talking about when they tell us vaccines are safe? Should we take climate experts at their word when they warn us about the perils of global warming? Why should we trust science when our own politicians don’t?" @naomioreskes.bsky.social provides some answers

Count me, too, among the ecologists who are unimpressed with conservation philosophies that embrace/ignore/soft-pedal invasive species.

"I choose to listen to the river for a while, thinking river thoughts, before joining the night and the stars."

- Edward Abbey ('Desert Solitaire', 1968).
#WorldRiversDay #StLawrenceRiver

63 years ago, on the 27th of September 1962, Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring was published. It handled the environmental harm caused by the pesticide DDT and the disinformation spread by the chemical industry. Carson managed to sway public opinion and even policy. #otd #history 🗃️

"We’ve looked at the Ganges and the Caspian Sea, but this could have been about Lake Victoria, or about drying rivers in Europe, or the disappearance of Bolivia’s second largest lake.

It’s not just water that disappears: it’s entire ecosystems and ways of life." theconversation.com/vanishing-wa...

New paper from our lab: The use of #microplastics as case-building material by larval caddisflies facilitates the transfer of plastic (& potentially its associated contaminants) to predatory fish.

There is reason to be concerned. Genetic swapping between flu viruses has likely occurred in farmed pigs, and led to reassortment that created novel avian/swine flus.

The mixing vessel concept is important for understanding the emergence of invasive zoonotic pathogens from farming practices.

A common freshwater fish seems to be attracted to caddisfly cases containing microplastics and consumes their cases (whole or in part) during predation. Incorporation of plastic in larval caddisfly cases leads to another route of transfer into aquatic food webs.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Our research group just published a study in Nature on how fish biodiversity in U.S. rivers and streams has been changing over the past 27 years (1993–2019). The results show sharply diverging trends depending on historic and changing water temperature. 🧵 rdcu.be/eH0l8

Quote: "Endemic ants, finely adapted to local conditions, are now losing ground to invasive species, which thrive in disturbed habitats created by agriculture and urbanization."
www.onegreenplanet.org/news/fijis-a...