During this year’s summer break I spent a few days in the beautiful Durmitor National Park, in Montenegro 🇲🇪 Great place to wonder about the beauty of nature and think about the next biodiversity projects to come! #biodiversity #nature #life #mountains

Take-home: Much of "textbook" island ecology and evolution rests on already-altered baselines. We call for more paleo-ecological data, take extinctions into account, and use models to reconstruct what islands looked like before us, in order to explore the true patterns of island biogeography (6/8)

When focusing on interactions, we use Mauritius as an example of how interactions are being rewired: Native seed dispersers like giant tortoises and flying foxes have largely been replaced by introduced seed predators like macaques, reshaping how plants reproduce and disperse across the island (5/8)

Looking at evolutionary patterns, extinction hits species with most extreme traits the most: dwarfs, giants and flightless folks. Studying only living species can underestimate how strong classic "island syndromes" really were. This can became a challenge to study island evolutionary theory (4/8)

But gaining species is not everything: losing unique endemics while gaining similar, widespread introduced species makes islands more similar to each other, a process called biotic homogenisation. It's a bit like every city high street ending up with the same shops instead of local businesses (3/8)

Islands have lost huge numbers of natives to human-driven extinction. Indeed, up to 75% of all extinctions where island endemics, like the famous Dodo 🦤. Yet many islands have gained so many introduced species that total species richness now exceeds prehuman levels in most islands (2/8)

Just presented AVONICHE database paper at @besmacro.bsky.social meeting held at @uniofreading.bsky.social Hope it will be useful for many macroecologists! #macroecology #birds

Just to clarify, all of them are co-supervised with other researchers at different institutions: U of Birmingham, U of Basque Country, U of Girona & Creaf. Fir whole-group meetings, we have to do it online so it felt super nice to met in person. And even better to do it outside.

First time all my PhD students met in person! It was the perfect excuse to spent the day in Montseny Natural Park and setting camera traps for the wildcat monitoring project. A great day of fieldwork and teamwork! Marina, Natàlia, Ignasi, Nerea, Maria, I am very proud of all your hard work 💪🏻

A fun fact, the initial idea from this came during the conference dinner of @biogeography.bsky.social in Prague 2024. The results where presented two years later at @tibsaarhus2026.bsky.social, and the paper was published online on the exact day of the conference dinner! 📷 Søren talk at TIBS 2026

🔎 Major findings: 🐦 The unrecorded avian extinctions seem to had a lower PD compared to the recorded extinctions. 🏝️ Why? A disproportionate number of unrecorded extinctions are predicted to have been from islands in the eastern Pacific, which tend to have lower PD compared to other regions.

It was an amazing week in Aarhus for @tibsaarhus2026.bsky.social, attending so many great talks and catching up with colleagues and collaborators. A big congrats to the local organizers! Long live to @biogeography.bsky.social 🌍🌐

New paper out! 🐦📊 We realease AVONICHE, a global dataset with detailed information on the proportional use of 32 foraging niches, combining dietary categories with the behaviours and substrates used to access resources. Openly access the paper and data in GEB: doi.org/10.1111/geb....

First day in Aarhus, joining the @tibsaarhus2026.bsky.social biennal conference of TIBS @biogeography.bsky.social. Very nice to meet many colleagues and collaborators, looking forward to three days of talks on spatial patterns of biodiversity 🦏🐅🐊🐟🦆🦀🐙🌲🌴🌹🌻🍄 #science #conferences #biogeography

Excited to start the workshop on the potential link between animal and plant traits to ecosystem functioning, taking place in Frankfurt, Germany. 🇩🇪🌳🐦‍⬛🦌🌎 #science #biodiversity #ecosystems #resilience

Interesting talks on the Living Planet Index applied to the catalan territory (LPI-Cat) at @biologiaub.bsky.social. Amazing work to document biodiversity changes in the last decades, and many more to be done! 🦊🦌🦇🐦‍⬛🦋🐸🐟

While working from home, Iet’s make sure to be surrounded by nice creatures 🐦‍⬛🐅🌱 It helps to remember me that all these .csv and .doc files in my pc relate to real live out there 🌏

Using passerine birds as our focus of study, we found that aridity preferences interact with traits like clutch size, diet, habitat range, and migration to influence vulnerability. This interaction is stronger for projected future risks, highlighting new conservation priorities.

Biodiversity is in crisis, and increasing global aridity is a raising threat of species survival. But how do birds’ preferences & tolerance for dry conditions affect their risk of extinction?

Honoured to present my work at @sibecol.bsky.social meeting, about the functional and phylogenetic loss from anthropogenic bird extinctions 🦤. It is important to be aware of what we have already lost, in order to protect our remaining natural heritage. 🦅🦆🦜🦢

Exciting to see the Tenerife speckled lizard (Gallotia intermedia), a Critically endangered species. The lizards are literally hanging on the cliff of extinction due to predation by feral cats, pushing them to sub-optimal, more vertical, habitats #biodivesity #extinctionrisk #canaries #tenerife

A small taste of island live in Tenerife. Teide National Park 🗻 #Canaries #CanaryIslands #IslandBiology #Biodiversity #Plants #Animals

Great story by @daniel-a-villar.bsky.social about engaging local communities with conservation of the Titicaca grebe, published on the laest NICHE issue from @britishecologicalsociety.org

Here a graphical abstract summarising our findings!