Mark Gurney

Pittas are one of my favourite things. Bouncy and bright, they lighten up any dull winter day. Here are nine of them arranged, controversially, in approximate order of splendidness.

African birds colonising Europe. This is one of the most interesting things I have read this year, in @ArdeolaJournal by Ernest Garcia. ardeola.org/en/volumes/712…

🚨Really excited to share our new preprint on the multi-dimensionality of climate-driven shifts! Species have many nested spatial and temporal thermal gradients along which they could shift, but which will they choose? Big thanks to a great team! #SOTM doi.org/10.32942/X2G902

New preprint up! We sequenced hundreds of samples from across one of Earth's oldest living organisms - the Pando aspen clone - to understand how mutations accumulate and spread in long-lived clonal organisms. Our results were…surprising. 1/30

"Most of the peer-reviewed academic articles referenced in ESA listings came from low-IF or no-IF journals that tended to focus on specific taxa or regions." - conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/co…

@PKBook22 That looks right. The adults of this year are hatching out now, but they are less easy to find than in the spring .

@MarkGurn I've been using your guides for a possible ID for this specimen. In my eyes it seems to match Involvulus icosandriae, but would appear to be well out of the stated season for that species? With the usual caveats about photos, am I anywhere close? Brighton 28th Sept

Newly published research on rapid selection for increased #dispersal rates by the #endangered #butterfly #Phengaris (#Maculinea) arion across #RestoredLandscapes Read the #EarlyView here⬇️ resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ic… @RoyEntSoc @WileyEcolEnt #OpenAccess #LargeBlue #reintroduction

The most remarkable story I have covered: the origin of oak mildews is astonishing. Also fascinated by how they make mature trees more susceptible to drought and hinder woodland regeneration. More videos: @bill_sutherland" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">youtube.com/@bill_sutherla…

seems like the proposal for a new name to the northern giant hummingbird (Patagona chaski) was unnecessary, and is now been 'synonymized' by a century-old name: peruviana The late Ecuadorian ornithologist Fernando Ortiz Crespo was right (I highly recommend his 1974 paper)

11 - 16.06.2024 Ballester Alpine Swift Tachymarptis melba

If, like me, you find it fascinating that small migratory birds reach altitudes of 5,000 or 6,000m when crossing ecological barriers, check out our new preprint. We equipped 16 nocturnal migratory species with multi-sensor loggers to study their migration: tinyurl.com/2xs7nvaz

As an ecologist specialising in species' responses to climate change, I am deeply troubled by growing calls pushing for assisted colonisation. Whilst well meaning, this concept is built on a very outdated understanding of how species interact with climate. theguardian.com/environment/ar…

@BSBIscience Nice to see the adult reared out as confirmation.

Found a strange gall on Pink Water-speedwell Veronica catenata at Farnham Gravel Pit, North Yorkshire this weekend. Turns out they are formed by the small weevil Gymnetron villosulum. Here’s one that emerged from a specimen I collected. Of any interest @MarkGurn?

No more typos & some bonus sonograms…tada!

@BrianE_Cambs @BrianLaney2 Looks like Otiorynchus singularis.

@BrianE_Cambs I've had a lot of these on the lower cut section of variegated garden privet in my garden at Long Buckby Northants. Never seen these before. Not sure what they are

@Willowglass12 @chriscx5001 @DerwentBirder @Mightychub @DaNES_Insects It is a broad-nosed weevil, Attactagenus plumbeus.

@chriscx5001 @DerwentBirder @Mightychub @DaNES_Insects Great photo Chris. Difficult group to id but maybe @MarkGurn might be able to shed some light on it.

Bat Detector is now live on the App Store! Free forever, no ads. Connect an inexpensive USB microphone and your iPhone / iPad device becomes a full-featured bat detector and ultrasonic recorder with real-time time-expansion. @_BCT_

"A random half of panelists were shown a CV and only a one-paragraph summary of the proposed research, while the other half were shown a CV and a full proposal. We find that withholding proposal texts from panelists did not detectibly impact rankings." link.springer.com/article/10.100…

Empirical results show dispersal proxies fail to predict actual dispersal. Greater progress may lie in employing innovative measurement of actual dispersal in the field. These words COULD be about seed dispersal, but are from a new aquatic insect paper👉 royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.10…

@PKBook22 Scolytids are not within my expertise, I’m afraid.

@MarkGurn Hi. Is this an Ips species I found in my garden please? If so, are they all notifiable? My best layman's guess, trying to compare elytral declivities is I. acuminatus? Video available. Brighton, 3rd May 24

Seawatch update: 16,210 Common Terns, 3,104 Arctic Terns, 48,BlackTerns, 154 Little Terns, 51 Arctic Skuas, 7 Pomarine Skua, 2 Bonxie etc up to 17.00