New data published on post-fire recovery of threatened plants

New paper published in Austral Ecology: Rapid on-ground assessment after the 2019–2020 megafires reveals new information on rare and threatened plants in northern New South Wales, Australia

Back in 2020 we won a grant from the Commonwealth Government Bushfire Recovery fund to research some very special plant species. This paper was a long time in the works, and I’m very happy to see it finally shared with the world.

The project suffered a few delays from COVID restrictions and extreme weather events, but we managed to collect some excellent data on a bunch of unique species – thanks to our awesome project team, particularly John and James for most of the legwork! We had hoped to write up the results much sooner, but maternity leave and parenting life got priority treatment.

Shape shifting at the research career crossroads

There are many reasons that academics may unexpectedly find themselves at a research career crossroads. This is different to the ‘other’ academic career crossroads, i.e. whether to stay or leave academia generally, which we all reach at some point in our career.

The research crossroads is a place where you suddenly realise that the research direction you thought you were heading in is no longer working for you. This can happen for a few reasons. Competitive effects and funding limitations are now more intense than ever; the fields you thought you were building a presence in aren’t recognising your work; experiments/methodologies you are working with no longer excite you; you can no longer trust the colleagues you trusted; new interests have drawn your attention etc. You have a job and a purpose, but where is your research heading?

AI and Insect SciComm

AI is here (and has been for a while). It provides hope and potential solutions to many scientific problems, but also raises many ethical problems that can’t be ignored.

For insect biodiversity and conservation research, AI tools can support ID and analysis of species, traits, interactions and behaviours and have huge potential for large scale monitoring.  If you use iNaturalist, AI has helped you narrow down your observation ID to relevant ‘suggested species’ (and is usually pretty accurate).

But on social media, does it help or hinder?

Social media declines and the academic blogosphere

At the end of 2022, we all thought Twitter (now called X) was about to break. In my broader twitter network of mostly academia and ecology/enviro interested folks, I started losing connections by the day as many people deleted or walked away from their accounts and started up somewhere else. I hung on because I’m an optimist and it had been such a positive experience for me, so I hoped the storm of new ownership would blow over.

I signed up to Mastodon just in case, but after a few weeks it wasn’t really replicating my Twitter experience at the time and I stayed on at Twitter/X hoping things would improve. I also signed up at LinkedIn and tried out Reddit, but neither filled the twitter-shaped hole.

Spiders, SciComm and Body Butter

In a fitting end to the ridiculous year of misinformation that it was, this fake news story on spiders being attracted to a particular brand of body butter caught my eye.

It’s clickbait, it’s misinformation, it’s disinformation…and it’s a great illustration of how the online universe creates more complex challenges for science communication.

According to the story, a customer wrote a negative review on the website of a popular cosmetics brand claiming that a particular body butter, when applied appropriately, attracted spiders (specifically, wolf spiders) to them. Other people then jumped on to various social media platforms claiming similar experiences with the same body butter.

This phenomenon is not biologically plausible, and I sympathise with the numerous experts who had to interrupt their holidays to explain to multiple journalists that no, it was extremely unlikely that the body butter was bringing all the spiders to the yard.

Mental health and wellbeing effects of the academic grant treadmill

It’s grant rejection time again for far too many Australian researchers. Many will have to jump straight on the application treadmill again, only to find out in 12 months’ time that it too was unsuccessful.

The problems with the ARC (and NHMRC) grant mills are numerous and well documented. I won’t go through them all again, but have a look at these blog posts by ARC Tracker, Shane Huntington and Jasmine Janes as examples.

Like many researchers, I’ve just received yet another ARC rejection – every one of my ARC applications, on top of all my other non-ARC rejections. The imposter syndrome gets worse each time, even though I’m fully aware how miniscule the chances of success are. Over my 13 year career of applying for research grants, I now have an overall personal grant success rate of less than 5% and I need to rethink my future.

How can academia support diverse travel choices?

There’s been a lot of background talk about why academics should reduce their travel for lots of reasons. But the last few years of rapid climate breakdown and ongoing pandemic have made this discussion all the more urgent.

Academics travel a lot. Conferences, field trips, collaboration visits, workshops, meetings, interviews and more. It’s a fun part of the job, and it can be necessary for many reasons.

I don’t think it’s useful to vilify academics that do travel – it’s fun and worthwhile to visit new places and interact with colleagues in person! And there are many valid reasons academics do need to travel sometimes. However, there are also lots of things that academics currently travel for that could very easily be forfeited or substituted with alternatives. (By ‘travel’, I’m mostly referring to international travel or travel outside your general region that usually requires plane travel).

Like most population-level issues, it shouldn’t be left up to the individual to feel guilty (or not) about their actions and have to make hard choices (or not) that may affect their career. This strategy is not equitable and often discriminates against the individuals with fewer privileges.

What do covid, climate change and the biodiversity crisis have in common?

Anyone who has worked in climate and biodiversity sciences over the last few decades has experienced the deep grief, frustration and helplessness that comes from watching leaders (political, corporate and cultural) ignore the science and intensify the crises we face, as society generally carries on as if the world is not burning around us.

Recognition where it matters for peer review

There’s been a lot about quiet quitting and great resignations lately. We’re all tired and burned out from the never-ending pandemic and the gaslighting associated with it, compounded with the toxic productivity culture of academia that just seems to continually intensify.

A recent article in Nature Careers discussed results of a small reader poll where academics identified some of the activities they have been ‘quitting’ to ease their workload. Second on the list was peer review. As anyone working in editorial processes at the moment can attest to, it is getting harder and harder to find qualified reviewers to agree to review papers (or to accept editorial board roles).

I’ve heard multiple anecdotes from authors that some editors are now sending desk rejections claiming that the paper is not worthy of review because they couldn’t find anyone willing to review it after an arbitrary number of invitations were declined. This is a spurious correlation and unethical practice, but it’s a clear sign of an overstressed system.

New paper: Climate influences pollinator roles in plant-pollinator networks

Saunders, Kendall, Lanuza, Hall, Rader, Stavert. Climate mediates roles of pollinator species in plant–pollinator networks, Global Ecology & Biogeography

This was a fun collaboration that started a few years ago when I was postdoc in the Rader Lab. It originated with an idea I proposed one day in a lab meeting to test a common assumption about pollinators: that flies are more common pollinators than bees when it’s cold.

This is one of those anecdotal assumptions that any pollination ecologist ‘knows’ is very likely true, based on what we see in the field and what we know about relevant ecology. There are localised studies that show these patterns occur at particular times and places, but when you need a general reference to cite, there is very little evidence at the global scale to support a general pattern.