Pat Taggart

Bogong moths use a stellar compass for long-distance navigation at night - Nature Every spring, Bogong moths use the starry night sky as a compass to navigate up to 1,000 km towards their alpine migratory goal.

cool new paper in @nature.com about moth migration, showing they use the stars to navigate up to the mountains in the summer 🧪🌍🐙

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

Do you use spotlighting to find them or another method?

Thanks Nick, I’ll take a look. I don’t think this is quite what I was thinking of but I guess I’ll find out when I look closer :)

Note data are not genetic/microbiome data

After conducting a PERMANOVA to formally test for differences in animal communities, what is the best/most appropriate way to identify and test what specific species are driving community differences?

Desert salt lake photo for interest

Are there any good, free online toxin/poison databases that describe toxin/poison classifications, modes of action, etc?

Ecologist Bush Heritage Australia - Arid Rangelands or Evelyn Downs Reserve, SA

We’re looking for another ecologist here in SA. Please share widely and check if out yourself. Happy to chat to anyone interested and suitably qualified. Come join the team!

nrmjobs.com.au/jobs/2025/20...

Funded PhD project with scholarship at UTas with Menna Jones menna.jones@utas.edu.au (March 2025) www.utas.edu.au/research/deg...

Woolly mice are cute and impressive – but they won’t bring back mammoths or save endangered species “De-extinction” research is a poor alternative to helping ‘pre-extinction’ animals still alive today.

theconversation.com/woolly-mice-...

Woolly mice are cute and impressive – but they won’t bring back mammoths or save endangered species “De-extinction” research is a poor alternative to helping ‘pre-extinction’ animals still alive today.

Raising the dead ain’t so easy. Saving threatened species, that’s a thing we know how to do!

theconversation.com/woolly-mice-...

@tanyaplibersekmp.bsky.social has been taken to court over her potential failure to protect threatened species. It is good to see public scrutiny if whether the Minister is fulfilling her legal obligation to safeguard these species & could set a precedent for other species.

shorturl.at/Se6AE

Ecologist Bush Heritage Australia - Arid Rangelands or Evelyn Downs Reserve, SA

We’re looking for another ecologist here in SA. Please share widely and check if out yourself. Happy to chat to anyone interested and suitably qualified. Come join the team!

nrmjobs.com.au/jobs/2025/20...

Close-up image of a hand preparing to flip a coin. Stock photo.

Study participants awarded 43% more money to people with whom they shared trivial or random similarities than to people who were different, suggesting that interindividual comparison, not just groupism, underlies discrimination. In PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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Managing multiple threats: Evaluating the efficacy of broad-scale introduced predator management in improving native mammal resilience to fire Preventing further biodiversity loss requires understanding which processes threaten biodiversity and the effectiveness of management actions in mitig…

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Lethal second-generation rat poisons are killing endangered quolls and Tasmanian devils Second generation rat poisons are so potent that they’re banned for home use in Europe and North America. But here, you can pick them up at Bunnings or Coles.

For 7 years we have been studying how rat poisons affect native wildlife. Our initial work focussed on owls, then we found it in reptiles and today we have released our world first study showing it is killing Australia’s threatened quolls and the Tasmanian Devil. theconversation.com/lethal-secon...

Here’s every mangrove snake occurring in the NT. Found within about 30 minutes of each other during a recent slide around in the Darwin mangroves.

-Myron richardsonii (Richardson's mangrove snake)

-Fordonia leucobalia (white-bellied mangrove snake)

-Cerberus australis (Australian Bockadam)

Time series in R and Stan using the mvgam package: hierarchical GAMs YouTube video by Nicholas Clark

Another video in my series on applied time series and forecasting with the {mvgam} #rstats 📦. This one introduces State Space hierarchical GAMs and GPs for tackling multivariate series youtu.be/2POK_FVwCHk?...

Fresh publication alert! 🔥
"Breeding #fattaileddunnarts in #captivity: revised practices to minimise #stress whilst maintaining considerations of wild #biology".
#glucocorticoids #endocrinology #captivemanagement #marsupials doi.org/10.1002/dvdy...

Does baiting feral cats, foxes and dingoes work?
Read the full paper by @ceb-uwa.bsky.social DECRA Research Fellow Yong Zhi Foo, and colleagues @danielwanoble.bsky.social, @tagsecology.bsky.social here: doi.org/10.1016/j.bi...

Poison baits were used on 1,400 feral cats, foxes and dingoes. We studied their fate to see what works Feral cats, foxes and dingoes are routinely baited to protect wildlife and livestock. But does it matter what kind of bait is used? Do cats ignore it?

Yep!

"Baiting is an important and effective tool in reducing predator pressure on threatened species. But its efficacy – and the risk other animals could take the bait – means we have a responsibility to continually optimise its use..."

theconversation.com/poison-baits...

I can't really comment on the abundance or quality of such studies sorry. Our key research questions were separate from this and hence our selection criteria would have excluded many of these studies.

Poison baits were used on 1,400 feral cats, foxes and dingoes. We studied their fate to see what works

Feral cats, foxes and dingoes are routinely baited to protect wildlife and livestock. But does it matter what kind of bait is used? Do cats ignore it?

Effectiveness of toxic baiting for the control of canines and felines Toxic baiting has been widely adopted for the control of exotic canines and felines. However, high variability in findings make it difficult to gauge …

Effectiveness of toxic baiting for the control of canines and felines

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

@danielwanoble.bsky.social

Effectiveness of toxic baiting for the control of canines and felines Toxic baiting has been widely adopted for the control of exotic canines and felines. However, high variability in findings make it difficult to gauge …

This article in @theconversation.com follows the publication of our recent research www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti....

Poison baits were used on 1,400 feral cats, foxes and dingoes. We studied their fate to see what works Feral cats, foxes and dingoes are routinely baited to protect wildlife and livestock. But does it matter what kind of bait is used? Do cats ignore it?

Yong Foo, Dan Noble and I wrote a piece for @theconversation.com @aunz.theconversation.com

Have a read.

Poison baits were used on 1,400 feral cats, foxes and dingoes. We studied their fate to see what works theconversation.com/poison-baits...

The Temple of Saturn stands above ruins of the Roman Forum. Credit: Julian Elliott/Getty

Ice core data reveal that ancient Roman mining caused widespread lead pollution across Europe. A study shows that airborne lead raised childhood blood levels, reducing IQ by 2-3 points, suggesting cognitive impacts on entire populations.
In @science.org: www.science.org/content/arti...

Acute impacts of biologging devices on the diving behaviour of Manx shearwaters - Animal Biotelemetry Biologging studies rely on the assumption that equipped animal behaviours are representative of the ones displayed by unequipped individuals. Identifying any tagging effects is therefore necessary to ...

New paper shows acute impacts of tags on diving seabirds. Birds with heavier tags do shorter & shallower dives with slower ascent rates, and increased resting time between dives.

animalbiotelemetry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

‘I was shocked’: a scientist tracking koalas films startling behaviour between young males Everyone thought koalas were solitary creatures. But a new paper reveals there is more to the social lives of koalas than previously thought.

I have a new article in @theconversation.com today.

In it, I detail some observations I made (during my honours research 9 years ago 😳) of young-adult male koalas engaging in affiliative behaviours.

Check it out. There's a cute little video too

theconversation.com/i-was-shocke...