Nathan Byer

Some massive icicles from Fern. Stay warm out there, everyone!

Haven't seen much chatter about this on Bluesky - but if you use #AHDriFT, there's now an image recognition model for bucket cameras! Greg is looking for additional image contributors too - if you have images, consider contributing!

u.osu.edu/lipps.37/ahd...

Is this what the kids refer to as a crash out? If so, dang.

How scientists can contribute to the social movements essential to protecting climate and nature - npj Climate Action Scientists have much to contribute to the growing social movements pushing for urgent and transformative change to address the climate and biodiversity crises. Depending on their skills, interests and...

There is much to be done, at all levels.

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Shout out to everyone currently experiencing everything

Yup, Greg is a great speaker - and this resonated with me yesterday, too!

My favorite, great feature of Outlook - the right swipe archive shadow zone, where important emails go when you look at them funny

Funny, but also one of the two best career pieces of advice I got -- get exercise, especially when you are too stressed or don't have time for it.

📖Published!

Can hierarchical modelling of co-occurrence data provide accurate inference into species interactions?

This review finds pitfalls in the use of hierarchical models applied to co-occurrence data in understanding species interactions🧪 🌍

Read more:

As someone trained as both a field ecologist and quantitative scientist, this tension runs deep for me. Some of my group are entrenched in the field whereas others work with models for a living.

‘I rarely get outside’: scientists ditch fieldwork in the age of AI www.nature.com/articles/d41...
1/4

And I can't help but wonder what the source material for some of the AI-based coding guidance is... but would hazard to guess that forums comprise a fair bit of it!

Made a lil' vole friend during fieldwork today!

Yes. Really liking it, and grateful for Jeff's passion for the game!

Yup. Shying away from difficult or complex problems or skills is a sign of atrophy, in many ways.

The role of AI in ecology’s computational carbon footprint Click on the article title to read more.

Should ecologists be worried about the carbon footprint of their own use of “AI” and LLMs?

esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Resurfacing on Bluesky to remind people of the camera trapping starter pack!

a man in a suit is walking into the ocean . ALT: a man in a suit is walking into the ocean .

Had a real "shoe on the other foot" moment today! I logged onto a zoom webinar, while finishing up a phone call.

I wasn't muted.

It was a thesis defense.

Bye everyone, gonna go walk into the sea.

Breeding bird sensitivity to urban habitat quality is multi‐scale and strongly dependent on migratory behavior Human-caused conversion of natural habitat areas to developed land cover represents a major driver of habitat loss and fragmentation, leading to reorganization of biological communities. Although pro...

A bit late in announcing this, but we have a manuscript out in Ecological Applications on breeding bird occupancy across urban-rural gradients! Open access link here: doi.org/10.1002/eap..... We also have an RShiny app for the dataset, available here: testudinidude.shinyapps.io/bbsapp/.

Manuscript acceptance on a Wednesday afternoon 🥂 can't wait to share it with you all soon!

Growing up (during my PhD, 25 y ago), I was imprinted with Hurlbert ‘s 1984 paper on « Pseudoreplication and the design of ecological field experiments ».
This new paper is essential reading for all students in ecology (and beyond), digging deeper in terminology of design and design flaws 👇

Unveiling drivers of fecundity in an urban white-tailed deer population over 20 years of active management - Urban Ecosystems White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus; hereafter “deer”) are keystone herbivores that exert considerable ecosystem impacts. Quantifying drivers of urban deer demography, including fecundity (numbe...

Also! In case you missed it, some of our UNH partners (Taylor Readyhough and Rem Moll) just published a paper on some of our deer management data! Check it out:

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

You know it!

A ‘how‐to’ guide for estimating animal diel activity using hierarchical models We illustrate how hierarchical models can be used to estimate animal diel activity whilst accounting for variability in activity levels and sampling effort. These models also allow researchers to mor....

Interested in quantifying animal diel activity with hierarchical models? Check out this amazing how-to guide from @fa-bio-la.bsky.social , @science-action.bsky.social , and John Fieberg! 🧪

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

a color coded image by Freya, comparing the summation and capital pi notation in math, to their equivalent in code using for-loops. The summation notation sums a set of elements, while the product notation multiplies a set of elements. Note that Freya is keenly aware that neither the math notation nor for-loops are fully explained by this image, and that this is only a subset of the use cases, so luckily you don't have to explain that to her, in case you were considering doing that!

btw these large scary math symbols are just for-loops

Alright! First blue sky post! I'm a quantitative ecologist and Conservation biologist in Cleveland OH. I work on lots of fun datasets, but worked with turtles for most of my career!