Grant Linley

PhD opportunity: Maximising the resilience of grasslands in an age of rapid environmental change

Brief Project Summary: This project aims to address the significant knowledge gap of how species composition may change due to extreme rainfall events (droughts and flooding rainfall), grazing and…

How and why does cognition vary so greatly between individuals and species? In @natrevbiodiv.nature.com, we propose the "Predatory Intelligence Hypothesis" which posits that the cognitive challenges associated with predator–prey interactions drive a cognitive co-evolutionary arms race

rdcu.be/e5KIj

Mapping Your Data with ggplot2 in R with Basemaps and Insets | Oliver C. Stringham Personal website of Oliver C. Stringham

Mapping Your Data with ggplot2 in R with Basemaps and Insets
oliverstringham.com/blog/data-vi...

Exposure of western United States bird communities to predicted high severity fire - Nature Communications Changing fire regimes, leading to higher likelihood of high severity fire, are having unknown impacts on biodiversity. This study identifies regions of high avian biodiversity and individual bird spec...

Where will novel fire regimes threaten birds? Our paper in @natcomms.nature.com shows that most bird diversity hotspots facing future high-sev fire occur in places that historically burned at low severity - a critical mismatch. These are the spots to focus restoration.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Common myna suppression reduced myna relative abundance, but not bird richness or diversity. Species responses were varied, including an increase in noisy miners. This suggests suppression can reshuffle dominance dynamics rather than deliver straightforward community recovery doi.org/10.1071/WR25...

Humans alter the daily timing of animal activity, potentially reshaping predator–prey interactions. This meta-analysis reveals that large predators overlap less with their prey, and large prey overlap more with their predators.

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

Does human disturbance disrupt predator-prey temporal niche partitioning? Today in @natcomms.nature.com
we show that while there is no overall effect, the larger species of the dyad "loses" the temporal response race to humans.

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

Looking back at the fire year that was. The map-graphic shows the ten biggest fire events across Australia in 2025. Two "Terra" fires (>1million ha) burnt over 3.7 million ha. The combined total, including the 8 other "Giga" fires (>100k ha) burnt close to 10million ha in 2025.

A spotted quoll sits in the sun on a rock. A caption invites us to read an open access article titled 'Wiminyji in the Western Desert: Martu knowledge reveals historical declines of northern quolls in arid Australia' in Wildlife Research. The photo is credited as being by CraigRJD, Getty Images Signature.

A new #OpenAccess paper in @wildliferesearchj.bsky.social documents accounts by Martu Elders of wiminyji, the northern quoll, incl. distribution, habitat use & threats, revealing declines in arid Australia, previously undocumented by Western science.

connectsci.au/wr/article/5...

#WildlifeResearch

Using multiple lines of evidence, we show that feral cats and red foxes are strongly implicated in most Australian mammal extinctions and in the ongoing imperilment of numerous extant species. academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...

A large collaborative effort to rebut Wallach and Lundgren (2025).

176 tiny maps (1850-2025)

Maps of temperature anomalies for each year. The progression to warmer, redder colours is evident over virtually the entire planet.

This 'small multiples' #dataviz approach is effective to show that nowhere is escaping from the warming due to us burning fossil fuels.

Numerous fires ignited in the state of Victoria in southeast Australia last week, persisting through this past weekend as they leave behind large burn scars.

The Line scan outline of the two major fires in Victoria overlaid over the base map of Melbourne at the same scale to show the scale of the fires.

Here are the Walwa and Longwood line scans (as of 3:30pm 10 Jan) to give you an idea of the scale of the fires when overlaid on the base Melbourne map.

Yikes!

#VicFires

Hi, bushfire survivor here and NSW RFS volunteer.

If you think you are going to stay and defend your property...Don't.
You are not prepared for the intense radiant heat, the ember showers, the smoke, the collapse of all of your energy.

If you have been instructed to leave.
Leave early.
#Bushfire

'So, I had this idea': Scientists dispense insecticide-coated feathers for birds to build nests Donning a helmet and a well-equipped harness, Dr Fernanda Alves looks like she is set to take on an extreme sport. Instead, she is climbing trees to check nesting boxes for a tiny and very rare bird.

Check out the fascinating work that @febiologia.bsky.social is doing to protect forty-spotted pardalotes!!

www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01...

William Bond, defender of grasslands In recent years, one of the loudest ideas in environmental policy has been that trees are the planet’s universal remedy. Plant enough of them, in enough places, and carbon will be soaked up, water wil...

"Bond’s work leaves behind an inconvenient lesson for an era of climate urgency: that speed is not a substitute for understanding, and that good intentions, applied without care, can erase ancient worlds as efficiently as neglect." A beautiful tribute to William Bond. Forever missed by many.

Have you ever wondered what you would find if you could keep your eyes on a bee for more than a few meters? Us, too!

preprint (with videos!) + thread 🧵

Precise, individualized foraging flights in honey #bees 🐝 revealed by multicopter drone-based tracking

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

1/9

Opportunities ***PhD and MSc openings – Movement ecology and conservation*** I will periodically support graduate students, postdocs, and other staff through the Biology Department at the University of New…

I’m recruiting a PhD and MSC student for fall 2026 working on the movement ecology and conservation of Mexican spotted owls in SW forests and rocky canyonlands. Exciting partnership with Los Alamos National Laboratory. Great vibrant lab group, high impact research! 🦉

gavinmjones.com/opportunities/

Evolutionary dynamics of dietary specialisation – insights from Neotropical mistletoe‐dependent frugivores Mistletoes occur worldwide, with most relying on birds to disperse their sticky seeds to suitable hosts. There has been considerable ecological research on these interactions, emphasizing those birds....

In time for the festive season, my latest paper charts the 25 million year story of how mistletoe and songbirds somersaulted across the Americas, diversifying as they went.  Strap in for an epic ecological tale #MistletoeMunchersFromWayBack 1/12
nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

🚨 🦎 New paper out exploring shingleback lizard movement ecology and habitat selection in a fragmented agricultural landscape

🌳 Main takeaway: retaining small patches of native vegetation is crucial to provide habitat and maintain landscape connectivity

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Basic light pollution diagram showing four different streetlight set ups ranging from more light pollution on the left to less light pollution on the right. The most pollution option, labelled "very bad" is a street lamp with a round uncovered bulb on top, making a sphere of light in the air. The next option, labelled "bad" has a tiny cap on top, that limits the upward pollution a bit. The "better" option is mostly uncovered on top, limiting pollution above the streetlight. The final option, labelled "best" has a full shroud overtop, limiting the light to only below the streetlight, where it is needed for pedestrians and vehicles.

Lots of folks captioning aurora photos like "for a few minutes we didn't think about politics"

guess I'm built different, every time I'm out trying to see night sky stuff I frequently think about how much light pollution is entirely preventable with just a tiny bit of regulation

Our new study just came out taking a look at how drought influences human-wildlife conflict reports in California! Check it out here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

What I wish I knew: 33 thoughts for early career researchers Thirty three reflections I wish someone had shared with me early in my research career.

What would you share with an earlier version of yourself?

Two PhD student positions on Fire Resilience of Amazon Forests (Application deadline Nov 26), Wageningen
@masha-vandersande.bsky.social @w-u-r.bsky.social

www.wur.nl/nl/vacature/...

I have been developing techniques for the automated assessment of fire events across Australia using NAFI (firenorth.org.au) data. These are the top 10 largest across Australia so far this year. 3 of them are > 1 million hectares (Terra-Fires, 100x mega fire). The year is not over.

We’re Touching 1.9°C - And It’s Only 2025 Real time data coming out of the world’s climate measurement systems should be stopping us in our tracks. The latest estimate by climate scientist Dr Karsten Haustein shows that, this week, the Earth ...

Real time data coming out of the world’s climate measurement systems should be stopping us in our tracks. The latest estimate shows that, this week, the Earth is 1.9°C warmer than before we began burning fossil fuels.
#climatecrisis #ClimateEmergency #auspol www.lyrebirddreaming.com/post/we-re-t...

Coral die-off marks Earth’s first climate ‘tipping point’, scientists say A surge in global temperatures has caused widespread bleaching and death of warm-water corals around the world.

A surge in global temperatures has caused widespread bleaching and death of warm-water corals around the world.

go.nature.com/4n8cvHn

Watch to the end.

Climate-linked escalation of societally disastrous wildfires Climate change and land mismanagement are creating increasingly fire-prone built and natural environments. However, despite worsening fire seasons, evidence is lacking globally for trends in socially ...

Out today in @science.org, we show wildfire disasters have surged in the last decade, as climate change intensifies fire weather and exacerbates other vulnerabilities.

📄 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

With @pyrogeog.bsky.social @climate-guy.bsky.social

The Mechanisms Through Which Fire Drives Population Change in Terrestrial Biota Understanding the mechanisms through which fire influences populations is necessary to protect species from fire regime change. We develop a cross-taxa framework that identifies mechanisms through wh...

🔥New Paper!🔥 from Julianna Santos,
@ltkelly.bsky.social @lluisbrotons.bsky.social @urbanfrogger.bsky.social @cristinaaponte.bsky.social , Lauren Ponisio, Stephen Mason, and David Keith!

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