A feed from Consercation Bytes, a site dedicated to highlighting, discussing and critiquing the science of conservation that has demonstrated measurable, positive effects for global biodiversity.
11 June 2025. A long life can be a disadvantage – Deep-sea sharks include some of the longest-lived vertebrates known. The record holder is the Greenland shark, with a recently estimated maximum age of nearly 400 years. Their slow life cycle makes them vulnerable to fisheries. Humans rarely live longer than 100 years. But many other animals and plants can live for several centuries or even millennia, particularly […]
26 May 2025. Genetics to the rescue – Procreating with a relative is taboo in most human societies for many reasons, but they all stem from avoiding one thing in particular — inbreeding increases the risk of genetic disorders that can seriously compromise a child’s health, life prospects, and survival. While we all inherit potentially harmful mutations from our parents, the effects of […]
7 May 2025. Journal editors struggling to find reviewers — there are some bloody good reasons why – I used to think it was merely a post-COVID19 hiccough, but the extensive delays in receiving reviews for submitted manuscripts that I am seeing near constantly now are the symptoms of a much larger problem. That problem is, in a nutshell, how awfully journals are treating both authors and reviewers these days. I regularly hear […]
5 May 2025. The colour of survival – In boreal forests, many hares adopt white winter coats before the snow arrives. In a snowless landscape, these white hares lack camouflage against predators. However, their early moult from brown into white fur can increase their survival and offers an advantage as the snow season becomes progressively shorter with climate change. Throughout the year, we wear different clothing […]
8 April 2025. Reality check: coral restoration won’t save the world’s reefs – A coral ‘rope’ nursery in the Maldives. Luca Saponari/University of Milan, CC BY-ND Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Flinders University; Clelia Mulà, The University of Western Australia, and Giovanni Strona, University of Helsinki Coral reefs are much more than just a pretty place to visit. They are among the world’s richest ecosystems, hosting about a third […]
31 March 2025. Trapped in the light – Night is the peak activity period for many animal species. In the Western Andes of Ecuador, the Chocó golden scarab flies between forest patches during the night, but urban lighting interferes with their paths and jeopardises populations already struggling to persist in fragmented native forests. Urban development has created a network of illuminated infrastructure that […]
27 February 2025. Trump’s asinine war on climate science is pushing us into a dystopian future – Toa55, Shutterstock Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Flinders University US President Donald Trump’s latest war on the climate includes withdrawing support for any research that mentions the word. He has also launched a purge on government websites hosting climate data, in an apparent attempt to make the evidence disappear. Yes, it’s bad, especially for US-based scientists. […]
24 February 2025. Job advert: Research Associate in Environmental Time-Series Modelling – We have just today advertised a new postdoctoral position funded by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Indigenous and Environmental Histories and Futures (CIEHF) that will be based in the Global Ecology Lab at Flinders University. This is a fixed-term position for up to 3 years, and we are especially targeting Indigenous candidates. […]
22 January 2025. iEcology identifies extent of synthetic polymer habitats – The internet has become an informational telescope to study what happens nearly everywhere the planet. Using internet observations, it has been recently documented that terrestrial hermit crabs use plastic waste as shelter along tropical coasts. Before the internet irrupted, I was living in Spain and frequently travelled from my hometown to universities in Valencia and Barcelona to access scientific journals. Back then, these journals were […]
20 January 2025. The (new) birds and the bees – ‘Nuff said
15 January 2025. Add a voice update to your loops in R – If you’re like me, you use a lot of loops in R. I do not profess to be the most efficient coder, but loops make sense to me and I’m generally not concerned about make the fastest simulations. But sometimes my loops take some time to finish, so I often add a rolling text update […]
6 December 2024. Conservation and ecology journal ranks 2023 – Quite a bit late this year, but I’ve finally put together the 2023 conservation / ecology / sustainability journal ranks based on my (published) journal-ranking method (as I’ve done every year since 2008). After 16 years of doing this exercise, I can’t help but notice that most journals don’t do much differently from year to […]
4 December 2024. 5000 piggies, 500 piggies, 100 piggies, … and there there was none – The Black Summer bushfires of 2019–2020 that razed more than half of the landscape on Kangaroo Island in South Australia left an indelible mark on the island’s unique native biodiversity, which is still struggling to recover. However, one big bonus for the environment’s recovery is the likely eradication of feral pigs (Sus scrofa). Invasive feral pigs cause […]
18 September 2024. Small populations of Stone Age people drove dwarf hippos and elephants to extinction on Cyprus – Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Flinders University; Christian Reepmeyer, Deutsches Archäologisches Institut – German Archaeological Institute, and Theodora Moutsiou, University of Cyprus Imagine growing up beside the eastern Mediterranean Sea 14,000 years ago. You’re an accomplished sailor of the small watercraft you and your fellow villagers make, and you live off both the sea and the […]
22 August 2024. Human impact, extinctions, and the biodiversity crisis – Human overpopulation is often depicted in the media in one of two ways: as either a catastrophic disaster or an overly-exaggerated concern. Yet the data understood by scientists and researchers is clear. So what is the actual state of our overshoot, and, despite our growing numbers, are we already seeing the signs that the sixth […]
30 March 2024. Less affluent countries more prone to damage caused by biological invasions despite lower trade volume – Non-native species introduced mainly via increasing trade of goods and services have huge economic, health, and environmental costs. These ‘biological invasions’ involve the intentional or unintentional transport and release of species beyond their native biogeographical ranges, facilitating their potential spread. Over the last few decades, invasive species have incurred an average cost of at least […]
12 March 2024. Indigenous fire management began more than 11,000 years ago: new research – Wildfire burns between 3.94 million and 5.19 million square kilometres of land every year worldwide. If that area were a single country, it would be the seventh largest in the world. In Australia, most fire occurs in the vast tropical savannas of the country’s north. In new research published in Nature Geoscience, we show Indigenous […]
21 February 2024. New ecosystems, unprecedented climates: more Australian species than ever are struggling to survive – Australia is home to about one in 12 of the world’s species of animals, birds, plants and insects – between 600,000 and 700,000 species. More than 80% of Australian plants and mammals and just under 50% of our birds are found nowhere else. But habitat destruction, climate change, and invasive species are wreaking havoc on Earth’s […]