Oliver Stringham

Online ads reveal scale — and gaps — in amphibian pet trade into US Much of the pet trade in amphibians is conducted online, but it’s not well understood. Herpetologist Devin Edmonds with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign recently mapped out the trade in…

A new study mapping online U.S. amphibian sales found 8,500 listings covering 301 nonnative species.

Researchers flagged 44 species with no matching import records, suggesting possible illegal trade.

They urge buyers to choose responsibly bred amphibians over wild-caught ones.

iDiv and @uni-jena.de are recruiting a Postdoctoral Researcher (f/m/d) in Trait-Based Community Ecology and Modelling.

Highlights:
🔺Full-time (100%, 40 h/week) with the option to reduce to 80%
🔺Fixed-term for 2 years
🔺Salary up to E13 TV‑L

📆 Apply by: 29 March 2026

www.idiv.de/career/job-o...

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...

Biologist kidnapped in Mexico In the mountains of central Veracruz, scientific work is rarely abstract. It means walking narrow paths through cloud forest, speaking patiently with communities, and learning to read landscapes that…

Biologist kidnapped in Mexico news.mongabay.com/short-articl... 🧪🌎

Trump's new executive order will ban, over the next three years, more than 140,000 spouses, fiancés, and minor children of US citizens and legal permanent residents. Nearly 100,000 nuclear family of US citizens. Unconscionable

For those who already have a kindle, you can jailbreak it.

This is fucked. I had one of these to support my research in grad school, and I was on the review panel after I became a professor. (Also, there was a review happening like right now—I wonder what is happening with those proposals?)

Language models cannot reliably distinguish belief from knowledge and fact www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Two New tidymodels Packages Two new tidymodels packages focus on supervised feature selection.

We’ve released two new tidymodels #rstats packages for feature selection: filter and important.

tidyverse.org/blog/2025/11...

Ecological Engineers & Delivering Integrated Catchment Planning 
📅 27 November 11:00-12:00 (GMT)

A webinar on Nature-based Solutions (NbS) in ecological engineering, specifically in the water industry. There will be a Q&A session. Register -

The UK’s surprising ‘wallaby boom’ The Australian marsupial has ‘colonised’ the Isle of Man and is now making regular appearances on the UK mainland

theweek.com/environment/...

New poetry stresses that our stories are more precious and urgent than ever Three new collections by mid-career poets lay claim to stories of identity, suffering and hope, to a kind of collective subjectivity, to the inner life of a country in the throes of deep pain and uncertainty.

Three new collections by mid-career poets lay claim to stories of identity, suffering and hope, to a kind of collective subjectivity, to the inner life of a country in the throes of deep pain and uncertainty. n.pr/4864WeG

🧪For anyone interested in EBV in autoimmunity, I strongly urge you to read this incredible study by @shady-myounis.bsky.social, Bill Robinson, and @tobiaslanz.bsky.social. It is not only a scientific tour de force, it has a deeply provocative discussion that everyone in the field should consider 1/

At-risk mountain vipers and iguanas, in rare company at key wildlife talks Renewed efforts to protect the world’s most exotic and endangered animals and plants from illegal traders, overexploitation and extinction are set to begin at UN-partnered biodiversity talks in Uzbeki...

Trade in wildlife crosses borders, and so must the effort to protect it.

From Ethiopian mountain vipers to Brazil’s Pernambuco tree, over 30 species could soon receive special protection under the #CITES Convention.

Learn more via UN News: news.un.org/en/story/202...

📢New Publication!

@methodsinecoevol.bsky.social just published our review paper on virtual laser scanning of dynamic scenes (VLS-4D).
@bernhardhofle.bsky.social #3DGeo

Paper: doi.org/10.1111/2041...
Blogpost: giscienceblog.uni-heidelberg.de/2025/11/13/n...
Demo: 3dgeo-heidelberg.github.io/vls-4d/

Social media highlights the overlooked impact of cats on arthropods The impact of domestic cats on vertebrate biodiversity is unequivocal; however, we still know little about their effects on arthropods. By analysing over 17,000 photos and videos from social media p...

Social media data can be valuable for identifying ecological patterns. Cats are a major predator of wild animals worldwide, including invertebrates, and this study documents new observations of cat-arthropod interactions #RESInsectConsDiv resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

The Science of Visual Data Communication: What Works - Steven L. Franconeri, Lace M. Padilla, Priti Shah, Jeffrey M. Zacks, Jessica Hullman, 2021 Effectively designed data visualizations allow viewers to use their powerful visual systems to understand patterns in data across science, education, health, an...

I'm surprised I only came across it now, but this review on improving communication in data visualization is excellent.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Practical {renv} (Shannon Pileggi, The PCCTC) | posit::conf(2025) YouTube video by Posit PBC

The recording of my #rstats posit::conf talk ✨ practical {renv}✨ is available! 🎉

I created this talk for frustrated {renv} users 🫠 and potential {renv} users🤩

youtu.be/l01u7Ue9pIQ?...

Even if {renv} isn't on your radar, you may still find this talk interesting if you are curious about🤔...

GitHub - idmn/ggview: Ggplot picture previewer Ggplot picture previewer. Contribute to idmn/ggview development by creating an account on GitHub.

I normally use camcorder for previewing plots as @libbyheeren.bsky.social suggested but it's not quite working with the latest version of ggplot2.

The ggview package does a similar thing: github.com/idmn/ggview

Rutgers University is hiring a Post Doctoral Associate on Applied Climatology!
To apply, visit our website or contact Dr. Shope. Applications received by December 1st will be given priority!

Thousands of small pools and streams of melted water sitting on top of Greenland’s massive ice sheet are absorbing more heat from the sun than scientists previously realized, according to new research. This discovery means the ice sheet could be melting faster...

Read more at tinyurl.com/57j3jsd4

Opinion | I, Human (Gift Article) We know who we are, at least in part, by finding the words — messy, imprecise, unexpected — to tell others, and ourselves, how we see the world.

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/24/o...

Hey if anyone is considering backing up any datasets for some reason today, the Open Science Framework has free storage up to 5G/private repository, and up to 50G/public repository.

(The OSF is run by a 501c3 (Center for Open Science), so if you do this you might also consider making a donation.)

Está invitado para CIENCIA EN ESPAÑOL

I am hosting an event where University of Arizona scientists will speak about their science in Spanish. It is meant to be a community event with a Zoom option, so share with family too!

events.trellis.arizona.edu/en/f44lNu67/...

#CIENCIAENESPAÑOL

If you're stressing out about tomorrow, there are now over 400 local immigration groups listed on this spreadsheet across all 50 states, DC and Puerto Rico - take a minute, find one near you, and commit to spending an hour volunteering with them.

Job Alert!! Post-Doctoral Research Associate in Biodiversity and Renewable Energy
rcei.rutgers.edu/post-doctora...

The magnitude of legal wildlife trade and implications for species survival
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The pet trade of native species outside of their natural distributions within Australia is a biosecurity risk The trade of alien pets is a clear biosecurity risk but the risks of native pet trade remains poorly studied. We investigated the trade of pets native to Australia and found a high degree of trade oc...

The pet trade of native species outside of their natural distributions within Australia is a biosecurity risk. conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Find Out Why Health Insurance Denied Your Claim You likely have the right to access records that explain why your insurer denied your claim or prior authorization request. Use ProPublica’s free tool to generate a letter requesting your claim file f...

I don't know who needs to know this, but Pro Publica has an online thing that will format a letter to your US health insurance company to demand the records behind a claim denial. (which the insurance is then legally required to provide in most cases)

projects.propublica.org/claimfile/