Here’s a rant about ecology from a Thai ecologist. working in southern Thailand. Also growing up most of family members and people around me didn’t support or like this subject. I’m just tired, we were trying so hard to educate people and it’s just doesn’t work out. I’m 21 and might give up being ecologist here and just doing other job, I’m 21 and don’t think I could tolerate this that much.

There are serious issues with the local communities and farmers here. They frequently engage in harmful practices like poaching wild plants and wildlife, doing laundry directly in rivers, and releasing invasive fish into natural waters to gain religious merit.
Many locals openly dislike national parks, asking questions like, "What do we actually get from this?" or suggesting, "Let’s dam the area so farmers can use all the water." Superstitious beliefs also drive destructive actions, such as decapitating dugongs for charms.

Corruption makes this worse. Right now, there’s a push to dam a waterfall inside a national park (to power AI data centers illegally), a detail largely censored by Thai media, ignored in Western media. Local communities seem to support it simply because "it makes the land useful."

It’s the same when forests are cleared, local populations often welcome deforestation because it turn into agriculture, the palm plantation. But when the large floods hit, Western media portray these same groups solely as helpless victims of global warming. Then we need to "strengthen local communities" to combat climate change, or romanticizing bad practices as "traditional local wisdom."

Whenever concrete waterways are built and ecologists comments on social media, locals ridicule us. I remember warning people against planting very invasive riparian plants along riverbanks, and people were hostiled toward us.

Also the same thing when we found new (unknown) species, they just think it’s dumb, scientific names are dumb, And they often say “We see this one often (insert commong name here), why interests in it, when infact what they always see is the same family but not this exact species.

Overseas media seems to misses about reality. We are all human, and anyone is capable of doing environmental damage. Good and bad people exist everywhere, and romanticizing local communities just isn’t it. Maybe focusing on individuals might be better, this person is doing the right thing etc.

Conifers native to the Northern Hemisphere planted in the Southern Hemisphere grow faster and are more drought-resistant.

From the abstract: "This paradoxical combination of high growth rates yet resilience to drought emphasizes the importance of integrating eco-evolutionary history into ecological theory and is relevant for assessing the ultimate role of afforestation as global carbon sinks."

Hi guys! I’m getting more into ecology and starting a two-year ecology program soon. I already have the basics like good binoculars, hiking shoes, and outdoor gear, but my birthday is coming up and I’d love to get something useful for fieldwork.

I was thinking about a Leatherman/multitool, a hand lens for plants and insects, or maybe something else that ecologists commonly use in the field.

What’s a piece of gear you find really useful or just really cool to have when doing fieldwork?

I have to decide whether to go to an academically challenging college with prestige in another country or my local college. I'd get a better grade in my local college, and more experience in the field like i'm planning to get my bird ringing license, bat handling experience, driving license, and contact some of my college's professors to volunteer to help on their research projects.

However, the foreign university I have a place for is Imperial College London, and I need advice as to whether the name brand outweighs the extracurriculars of the other university, as I've already attended one year there but found I didn't have time to participate in any extra curricular stuff because the course was so demanding, and personally I could only see myself getting a 2:1 there with no field work experience. But does it matter more that it's one of the top colleges in Europe for ecology?

Six Eastern hemlock trees in my back yard have hemlock woolly adelgid. They are about 25 feet tall. They look healthy now, but I'm told HWA will spread and kill them if not treated. I already had to cut down three trees that were in worse shape.

The treatments recommended by arborists are dinotefuran and imidacloprid, either by injection or spraying the lower trunks. I have checked with my state's Extension and Department of Natural Resources, as well as an arboretum nearby and the Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware. Everyone on the tree side seems to agree that the only sure way to save the trees is to use these pesticides.

However, I am concerned about the effects of neonicotinoids on insects and other creatures, as well as the groundwater. My yard is full of pollinator-friendly native plants. Birds, squirrels, possums, and cats all move through here. The Schuylkill River is less than a mile away.

What is the most ecologically responsible choice? To treat the trees with pesticide, to cut them down, or to let the insects kill them over the next several years? I am looking for a way to save the trees without harming other creatures, but I don't know if that's possible. Thanks in advance for any advice.

Native trees are not equal: it is evident that some species of trees produce a higher quantity of caterpillars, and birds target them at higher rates when rearing their young. Considering the importance of caterpillars in the food chain, a forest skewed towards these productive trees may increase the density of birds, bats and predatory insects relative to a forest with greater plant biodiversity (greater plant species richness and/or evenness).

I manage a small, 1 acre forest in need of thinning. I have documented over 120 lepidopterans in the vicinity and have found an Excel sheet published with their host plants. While this gives me biodiversity metrics that could help thinning decisions, in order to create a forest maximally productive to the food web, my information is incomplete. I feel the next step is the measurement of caterpillar density on trees/shrubs etc. I will do this with and without bird exclusion nets in order to understand the background density and the impact of bird predation. This caterpillar density information will put a significant finger on the scale of my forest management decisions.

Now, I am by no means going to raise a monoculture. I strive for a forest that is dense, species rich, with a understory and multileveled canopy, and I will consider the non-Lepidopteran ecosystem services of trees in decisions. However, we often hold up biodiversity in the highest regard, as opposed to ecosystem production. While I love biodiversity, the reality of nature is far deeper than this one metric.

I am curious to hear your thoughts on my opinion here, in favor or otherwise.

Edit: I am not advocating for the destruction of unique and intact ecosystems in the name of caterpillars. Think of the consideration of caterpillar production as one of the main tools to address a successful restoration project. The plants used should be native and locally/historically present. For instance, I live on the Oregon Coast, outside of oak habitat. I'm not spreading oaks out here in hopes of a caterpillar boom. Rather, I'm testing local species for their caterpillar/leaf area and using this metric upon which to value the species. Species with high caterpillar density will be favored in the acre plot of land.

The current heatwave and drought are doing more than drying up the Rhine and Danube. They may also be undermining their resilience to future events. The good news is that insurance can be rebuilt.

See also: The study as it was published in the journal Ecology

Hi Reddit community,

I have never done this before so apologies if this is the wrong place to ask. Anyway, so I have previously after completing bachelor of biodiversiry and conservation degree (uni decided to remove the word science for a while) in 2011. I have been working in bush regen and related fields eg. Green army supervisor ever since.

However, over the last 2 years or so I have been starting work for an ecological consultant hoping to move my skills further into that direction. However, after working for 2 different companies already so far I feel like I am getting nowhere and my past of bush regen and not other skills such as actual environmental management and policy is holding me back.

Any thoughts?

Currently working and living in SEQ but completed my degree and first couple of years of regen in Sydney and Newcastle.

Happy to move anywhere but within reason and if its for a role that will work out.

Thanks

Caecilian

Hey all,

I’m one of the organisers for IENE 2026, an international conference happening in Bristol 21st-25th September.

It’s the 30th anniversary of the Infrastructure & Ecology Network Europe, which for those who haven't come across it, it is a network for people working at the intersection of transport/infrastructure and biodiversity (think wildlife crossings, habitat connectivity, nature-based solutions for climate resilience, that kind of thing).

A few highlights:
Talks and workshops from people across Europe and beyond working on everything from AI-driven wildlife crossing design to how you actually value nature in infrastructure decision-making.

Keynotes from Tony Juniper CBE (Chair of Natural England) and Steve Elderkin OBE (National Highways / co-founder of Rebuilding Nature), Jonathan Hess (French Ministry for ecology transition)

Field trips to sites around Bristol, including some nature-based infrastructure projects and Stonehenge of course.

There's remote/online access too if you can't make it to Bristol in person with full access to live sessions plus recordings afterwards.

Full programme's here if anyone wants to have a look: iene2026.info

Happy to answer questions if anyone has them, no obligation obviously, just thought it was worth flagging for anyone in this space who might not have heard of it.

The decrease of insect populations and fauna, and the mass extinction we are living in, is now a fact. In reverse, I was wondering whether the agriculture and farming originally (pre-pesticides) contributed to the growth of the populations of animals (as it did for us). We grew progressively genetically modified fruits and vegetables with increasing amounts of nutrients and sugars. Did this possibly led to a growth of nonhuman animal populations?

Found this outside my door around 11pm. Looks like two slugs entwined with some mucus ball or something between them. No idea what’s going on here.

So I want to know if this is actually a scientific thing. I've noticed over the last few years that in the summer we tend to have a specific kind of bug that is literally EVERYWHERE and it's almost never the same bug twice.

One summer we had winged termites everywhere, the streets were blanketed in them at night when they swarmed around the lights.

Another time we had grasshoppers, you couldn't walk anywhere without a grasshopper jumping against your legs or stepping on one.

Most recently it was cream striped owl moths. My house was full of them and I'm pretty sure I accidentally domesticated a few. (They would sit on me when I took naps)

There are other examples of this but these were the most notable. Can someone please explain this to me and tell me if it's a normal thing? I live in South Africa, specifically the Karoo region if that makes a difference.

Dr. Courtney Duchardt explains how prairie dogs are ecosystem engineers, the ecological implications of Sylvatic plague, and the complex ways that livestock and wildlife coexist.

https://youtu.be/R2LX5ntuVyw?si=8l7cy7Br2lQu_rJa

I have a natural and degraded site and at each site I sample (core sample for macrofauna), I sample 4 habitats each 5 times for a total of 40 samples.

When performing permanova to compare these two sites should I use the replicates (40 samples) or the 8 site+habitat combinations? Im assuming that because of the experimental design the samples are dependent and thus I should use the site+habitat in my analysis.

Am I wrong?

In this experimental design I'm not certain about the independence of the variables so I'd love some feedback!!

Thank you so much!

was just thinking about a local proposed development that i hugely oppose, and wondering how i’d feel if it was a project we were contracted to do surveys for.

has anyone ever experienced this?