Marc Robinson-RechaviFeb 14, 2025
3rd keynote of #Biology25: Andeanna Welch starts with a powerful reminder of both the biodiversity crisis and the lack diversity in people studying biodiversity (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-021-01522-z).
Anti-racist interventions to transform ecology, evolution and conservation biology departments - Nature Ecology & Evolution

This Perspective presents a toolkit of evidence-based interventions to foster anti-racism in ecology, evolution and conservation biology in the classroom, within research laboratories and department wide.

Nature
Show threadMarc Robinson-Rechavi
Procellariiformes seabirds are the order of birds with the largest size range, from storm petrels to albatrosses #Biology25. Their taxonomy and phylogeny are contentious, e.g. relation of the diving petrels to other members of the order. DNA extracted from museum collections have been key to solving this phylogeny.
Feb 14, 2025 at 8:23amWeb
Show threadMarc Robinson-RechaviFeb 14, 2025
Andreanna Welch reminds us that Natural history museums are very important, but also have a difficult history linked to colonisation https://bluesci.co.uk/posts/natural-history-museums #Biology25.
Also, she’s solved the Procellariiformes phylogeny: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.27.453752v1.abstract (why write “unpublished” on your slides when you have a preprint?)
Decolonising Natural History Museums | Bluesci

Show threadMarc Robinson-RechaviFeb 14, 2025
Urbanisation impacts different birds according to their diets: more anthropogenic food (bread, seed feeders), less nutritious arthropods #Biology25
Blue tits do better in the winter in urban environments, but the food is lowerrquality -> less eggs, less success (less fledging) of chicks.
Show threadMarc Robinson-RechaviFeb 14, 2025
How to communicate our science? Terminology has the potential to perpetuate injustice, we should consider more our terminology and how we communicate. Yet communication with the public is important, and also has a cultural side. #Biology25
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002933
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1317510111
Terminology in ecology and evolutionary biology disproportionately harms marginalized groups

The discipline of ecology and evolutionary biology has long grappled with issues of inclusivity and representation. This study finds that individuals from marginalized groups were more likely to be harmed by terminology in ecology and evolutionary biology, and found over 200 discipline-specific terms were perceived by participants as harmful.

Show threadMarc Robinson-RechaviFeb 14, 2025
I don't think I've ever seen a scientific talk which weaves so much and so well ethical concerns with scientific results as Andreanna Welch’s #Biology25 keynote. Now discussing helicopter science in relation to a study on cocoa farming ecosystems.
https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1365-2664.14563
https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/conl.12947