Adrian Stier

New paper alert! We just published a massive meta-analysis in @Ecology_Letters asking: How does crowding affect survival in reef fish populations? The answer? It's way more complicated than we thought. 🧵 Thread on what 147 studies taught us (1/8)

Been using Claude Code for a few months. My R scripts no longer make me want to walk into the sea (which, as a marine biologist, is occupationally inconvenient). Made codewithclaude.net for researchers who've been meaning to learn AI coding.

Bottom line: Population regulation isn't a fixed property—it's contingent on ecological context. Want to dive deeper? 📖 Paper: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/el… Big thanks to @OsenbergLab and everyone who shared their data! 🙏 (8/8)

Why does this matter? Understanding density-dependence is crucial for: 🔹 Managing fisheries 🔹 Conserving endangered species 🔹 Predicting how populations respond to disturbance (hello, climate change) But we can't predict what we don't understand. (7/8)

New paper alert! We just published a massive meta-analysis in @Ecology_Letters asking: How does crowding affect survival in reef fish populations? The answer? It's way more complicated than we thought. 🧵 Thread on what 147 studies taught us (1/8)

These aren't hypothetical scenarios. We examined Pacific hake, petrale sole, and sablefish on the US West Coast. Between 2005-2022, estimated unfished biomass changed by 25-65% as stock assessments incorporated new data every 1-4 years.

imilar story with carrying capacity. When it dropped, adaptive management increased harvest 36% but reduced biomass 22%. The inverse happened when carrying capacity rose. Not a win-win—a trade-off.

Our new study by @jamealfsamhouri @PLOSClimate reveals an uncomfortable truth about climate-ready fisheries: adaptive management strategies can boost population biomass OR harvest—but rarely both. The 'right' choice depends on what we value as a society. journals.plos.org/climate/articl…

Coral spawning = nature’s biggest party 🎉🌊 But while corals release their eggs + sperm into the night, a hidden guest list shows up hungry… 🦀⭐🐚🦪 @TomShlesinger reveals crabs, barnacles, brittle stars & more secretly feasting on coral spawn. doi.org/10.1002/ecy.70…

🦈 Sharks, skates, and rays aren’t locked into slow, “fixed” life histories. New work in Ecology Letters shows they can shift to higher reproductive output when food availability increases — a surprising plasticity in elasmobranch biology! 👉 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…

Stratford et al. tracked >1,000 coral “babies” in the remote Chagos Archipelago after bleaching. Survival & growth were high, but after 3 yrs they still made up just 2.4% cover. Even “ideal” reefs recover painfully slow. 🌊🌱 👉 link.springer.com/article/10.100…

Take-home: Indonesia’s reefs may be showing more resilience than expected, but cover alone doesn’t capture species shifts, functional change, or hidden vulnerability.

3/ The “shifted baseline” point is key: most data begin after the 1998 global bleaching event. What looks “stable” may already reflect reefs that declined before monitoring began.

1/ New paper in Coral Reefs compiles 7,600+ observations of coral cover across Indonesia (1994–2022). Surprisingly, they find no clear national-level decline in coral cover over nearly 30 years. 🤯 link.springer.com/article/10.100…