iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

omg thank you for reading! I've needed this for sooo long but (as you might guess) I never read the documentation 😅

Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

🔎📷 Want to identify wildlife in camera trap images in #Python? Learn to download & classify images with {galah-python} + {speciesnet}, a deep-learning model for wildlife image classification, in a new ALA Labs guest post by Renuka Sharma & Xiang Zhao labs.ala.org.au/posts/2026-0... #pydata #ML 🧪🌏

An image of a feral pig in Australia in a forest area. The pig has patchy dark brown/grey patches and white patches. The background is full of luscious green foliage and brown leaf litter. The pig is outlined by a red square, identifying its location in the photo, along with text that identifies that this is an animal and that it is possibly a 'wild boar'

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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Only annoying part is it makes all text in-console huge, so it's best used when you are ready for a final save, not mid-analysis

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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

This thread is so great! 🤩 To avoid annoying resizing, figured I'd mention an alternative to {ggview}: {showtext} can resize all text to a specific dpi Text is the part that I find I have to fiddle with most when saving #ggplot2 plots, so this usually works for me 😀 #rstats #dataviz

library(showtext)
showtext_opts(dpi = 300)
ggsave(
plot = my_plot,
file = "file_name.png",
width = 6,
height = 4,
dpi = 300
)

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Joanna Bagniewska @joannabagniewska.com · 30/09/2026

Insect declines threaten wildlife far beyond insect world. Apart from being food, insects provide other species with homes, protection, chemical defence and sanitation - to name a few things. Great review article by @r-cooke.bsky.social with BEAUTIFUL visuals. 🧪🪳 www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Visuals demonstrating the following:

Many freshwater fish eat insects
Parrots nest in termite mounds
Chimpanzees use insects on wounds
Poisonous frogs get toxins from ants and beetles.

73% of studied vertebrate species eat invertebrates

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Robert Tropek @robtrop.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

New study published in @natecoevo.nature.com ! We assembled the largest global dataset of plant–pollinator networks to ask a simple question: do interactions become more specialised towards the tropics? doi.org/10.1038/s415... Study led by @saileesakhalkar.bsky.social and myself ☺️ 1/8

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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

This study captures a part of mate choice that is easy to trivialise Females *want* to choose the best mate, but choosing is hard and they can only do their best. Conditions aren't always perfect - it's dangerous, choice is limited and males are SCREMING all at once 🧪🌏 doi.org/10.1038/d415...

nature.com

Too much mate choice overwhelms frogs

Female treefrogs select less carefully when hearing a chorus of males.

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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

3 decades of data 😮 on this fairy-wren population showed how many cumulative effects of climate change (lower food supply, chick rearing, higher pesticides) can lead to population decline, even for a species categorised as “least concern” on the IUCN Red List 🥺 🌏🧪🦜 news.mongabay.com/2026/08/supe...

news.mongabay.com

Superb fairywrens disappearing in Australia’s capital: Conserving insects could help save them

If you sit in an Australian park or garden for long enough, chances are you might catch a flash of brilliant feathers out of the corner of your eye: the superb fairywren. With its bright blue and soft...

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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Nice one! Yeah it takes a bit of time to refine everything, but it can make data stuff look very fancy

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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

And check out this scrolly-telling article that highlights some of the data stories in the painting! 👀 labs.ala.org.au/stories/stor... (made using Quarto + {closeread}) #rstats 🧪🌏📊 #NationalScienceWeek #quartopub

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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Cultural knowledge + Western data on one canvas! 🖌️ That's the idea our recent intern Gullara McInnes and her mother Ann-Marie Keating had. The result: This incredible painting of biodiversity in their local area featuring occurrence data from the Atlas of Living Australia 🧪🌏📊 #NationalScienceWeek

A painting by Ann-Marie Keating and her daughter Gullara McInnes depicting animals and plants in Mareeba, a rural town near Cairns, Australia. The painting has a black border, and inside there are over 60 species of animals and plants painted using many different painting techniques. Traditional dot art is used on each species to show the number of observational records on the Atlas of Living Australia, Australia's largest data infrastructure of biodiversity data.

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Rebecca R Helm @rebeccarhelm.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

I want to tell you a story, and it begins with this VERY WEIRD animal: Meet Thetys vagina... [a thread 🧵] 📸 m_patton bit.ly/2Mgw8Sf 🌿🧪🦑🐙🌊

tubular clear animal being held near a beach

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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

It is 🙂 Though the data I used was a massive species list of every species on the ALA, and then the record counts were downloaded separately in the code using the galah package I can share the species list if that’s useful?

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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

🐌 How much data do we have of our slimy snail & slug friends? How many species do we know virtually nothing about? Despite having over 1.5 million observations of gastropods in Australia, many species have fewer than 10 records, or no records at all 😯 Code & high-res 📷 👇 🧪🌏📊 #rstats #dataviz

A waffle bar chart showing the taxonomic coverage of gastropod records in the Atlas of Living Australia. The plot shows the number of species in each gastropod suborder with 100+ records, 10+ records, 1+ records or no records at all. In general, there is quite a high proportion of species (between 13% and 36% depending on the group) with fewer than 10 records or no records at all.

The waffle chart consists of squares in different shades of purple to show species record count. Each group is shown in a separate bar. The background is a very dark purple. Example images of snails from each suborder group are shown below each bar.

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iNaturalist @inaturalist.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

Very special hermit crab for your feed. This is potentially only the second-ever iNaturalist observation of the species Dardanus insignis!

A vibrant orange-red hermit crab with large textured claws and big eyes crawls across wet sand.

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Crystal Lewis @cghlewis.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

Issue 40 of #rdmweekly is out! 📬 ➡️ Reproducible R Code @daxkellie.bsky.social @sortee.bsky.social ➡️ Generating Universes Within Universes with a Single Seed @andrew.heiss.phd ➡️ AEA Replication Tracker @paulgp.com ➡️ Informed Consent Template and more! rdmweekly.substack.com/p/rdm-weekly...

rdmweekly.substack.com

RDM Weekly - Issue 040

A weekly roundup of Research Data Management resources.

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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

galah 2.2.0 is on CRAN! 📦 🛡️ Authorised users can access sensitive data from the command line 🌏 GBIF gets full support for predicate or DOI queries, new support for the Flemish and Kew Gardens portals 🗂️ We’ve tidied scripts to be more versatile, efficient & consistent galah.ala.org.au/R/ #rstats

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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

Whoa when this invasive mushroom grows on a dead or dying hardwood tree, the fungal diversity of that tree is cut in half (on average) 😯🍄 Spreading across the US & Canada as well as Switzerland, Italy, Hungary, Serbia & Germany, this fungus could have a huge cascading impact on global ecosystems 🧪🌏

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Shandiya Balasubramaniam 🍉 @shandiya.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Happy National Eucalypt Day! I summarised 100 years' of eucalypt data from the Atlas of Living Australia as a landscape #EucalyptoftheYear #rstats @eucalyptaus.bsky.social 📊🧪 See more here: shandiya.com/dataviz.html...

This is a stylised landscape with the sea in the foreground, which is in shades of dark blue with ripples on it, and seven hills in shades of brown, orange, and yellow in the middle ground. The background is of a night sky, with a thin crescent moon and stars in an ascending pattern from left to right.

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Saoirse Kelleher @saoirsekelleher.eco · 17/03/2026

Missed @daxkellie.bsky.social’s @sortee.bsky.social webinar this morning? Now up on YouTube! youtu.be/2_Aum45rYlU

youtu.be

Webinar: Dax Kellie on reproducible R code

YouTube video by SORTEE

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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

If you missed my talk today about how to make your R code more reproducible and why it's good for science, the recording is already online! Apologies for the internet issues, I hope you can forgive me, they do go away after a few minutes 😅 #rstats 🧪🌏 @sortee.bsky.social youtu.be/2_Aum45rYlU

youtu.be

Webinar: Dax Kellie on reproducible R code

YouTube video by SORTEE

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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

Ah that’s too bad, but yes it is recorded! Should have a link to share in the next few days

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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

This is happening tomorrow! See you then 😀 #rstats 🌏🧪

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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

Huge news, congrats! 🎉🎉

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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

It should start at 10:30pm UTC I believe 🙂

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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

Awesome dataviz 🤩 So interesting how much variation there is in phrases like "Realistic possibility" compared to "About even" No wonder it's so difficult to use experimental survey data as strong evidence in research. People are too varied at interpreting scales! 🧪 #psychscisky

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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

A nice visual, and a worthwhile one to remember when considering gaps and biases in biodiversity data in Australia 🦘🌱 Nearly 70% of the population lives in a greater capital city, meaning that incidental observations of animals and plants outside of those areas are rare and valuable 🧪🌏📊

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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

In one week I'll be talking about tips for reproducible R code and why science would love you to try these tips on your own code too 🧪😍🌏 It's an online talk, so feel free to watch comfortably from your couch. Hope to see you there! @sortee.bsky.social #rstats events.humanitix.com/sortee-webin...

events.humanitix.com

SORTEE Webinar: On what makes good sharable and reproducible R code, how to do it, and why it’s good for science

For this month's SORTEE webinar, Dr. Dax Kellie from the Atlas of Living Australia will present on good, sharable, and reproducible R code in science

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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

Want to make your code better at running again in the future? My talk next month will be filled with lots of tips about how to write sharable, reproducible R code and why it's good for science Hope to see you there! #rstats 🌏🧪👩‍💻

media.tenor.com

a woman in a yellow sweater is using a laptop

Alt: a woman in a yellow sweater typing with some real confident swagger on her laptop

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Simon Evans @sevans.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

Wow, this is spectacular! Evolution of beak size in an urban population of juncos in response to the loss of supplementary food (bird feeders) during the COVID pandemic, and subsequent regression. Is the UCLA campus the new Daphne Major? pnas.org/doi/full/10....

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Seva @seva.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

I just finished a three-year term as an editor at an international relations journal. I began at the start of the LLM era but ended right in the middle of it. Our volume of submissions tripled and our desk reject rate rose to 75%. I have some thoughts. open.substack.com/pub/hegemon/...

open.substack.com

The Age of Academic Slop is Upon Us

what happens when AI automates "normal science"?

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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

I listened to 171 albums in 2025 apparently. These were my favourites 💿🎶🤘

Yellow and purple text on a navy background:

Favourite albums 2025
10–Sault
Choke enough –Oklou
Lotus–Lil Simz
🥇The Passionate Ones–Nourished by Time
LOVED–Parcels
The Crux–Djo
Getting Killed–Geese
Baby–Dijon
Guitar–Mac DeMarco
Showbiz!–MIKE

Honourable mentions
DONT’T TAP THE GLASS–Tyler, the Creator
Deadbeat–Tame Impala
Big City Life - Smerz
Joni’s Jazz–Joni Mitchell

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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 30/12/2025

What a massive loss for science in Australia. Emma was a force, and responsible for many of my friends’ careers in biology. Very sad news, my condolences to her friends and family www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12...

abc.net.au

Family, colleagues in 'disbelief' after leading scientist dies aged 52

University of Melbourne vice-chancellor Emma Johnston has died from complications associated with cancer, aged 52.

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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

These photos were made by talented scientists and citizen scientists (not me!). Photo credits are in the alt text

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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

It's December!🎄 But where are all the Christmas beetles? 😕🪲 Share any Christmas beetle observations with @inaturalist.bsky.social to help figure out why they seem to have disappeared. Even if you're unsure, mis-ID'd observations are valuable too! www.inaturalist.org/projects/chr... 🧪🌏📊 #rstats

An orange, burly round christmas beetle on a green leaf, facing the camera. Photo by nature-lover2 2025 (CC-BY-NC 4.0 (Int))

An orange christmas beetle with green, shimmering colouration reflecting off of its exoskeleton, sitting on a brown leaf. Christmas beetles are well-known for their bright, reflective colouration (known as iridescence).

A bar plot showing observation counts of Christmas beetles since 1900 in the Atlas of Living Australia. The bars are red and the background is a beige/cream colour. The plot shows that despite huge numbers of Christmas beetles historically, there are relatively few records over the last 100 years of Christmas beetles. This lack of data makes it difficult to know why Christmas beetles seem to be disappearing. After the Christmas Beetle Count began in 2021, the number of observations had a large spike in number in subsequent years.

A series of 3 bar plots showing the number of observations of 3 taxa commonly misidentified as Christmas beetles - Argentinian scarab beetles (invasive), Golden stag beetles and June beetles. The growth of Christmas beetle records after the Christmas Beetle Count initiative began in 2021 coincides with a spike in data for these other taxa as well, a positive but unintended outcome of more people interested in recording Christmas beetle observations!

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Nature Portfolio @natureportfolio.nature.com · 13/12/2025

Killer whales or orca have been observed hunting with Pacific white-sided dolphins in the waters off British Columbia, Canada, and sharing fish scraps with them after making a kill, according to research in Scientific Reports. go.nature.com/4rZ08RJ 🧪

A Pacific white-sided dolphin approaching a Northern Resident Killer Whale.

Credit: University of British Columbia (A.Trites), Dalhousie University (S. Fortune), Hakai Institute (K. Holmes), Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (X. Cheng)

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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

This is so friggin good 🤩 Thanks for sharing, it’s a wonderful resource!

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Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 09/12/2025

Big new blogpost! My guide to data visualization, which includes a very long table of contents, tons of charts, and more. --> Why data visualization matters and how to make charts more effective, clear, transparent, and sometimes, beautiful. www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/salonis-gu...

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samuel mehr @mehr.nz · 28/11/2025

New in Science, Macaques tap to the beat. Very cool study for its main result and its null one: consistent with nearly every other comparative study of music, monkeys don't differentiate beats by their relative strength—which even young children do innately. Monkeys have rhythm but not meter!

science.org

Monkeys have rhythm

Synchronizing movements to music is a hallmark of human culture, but its evolutionary and neurobiological origins remain unknown. This ability requires (i) extracting a steady rhythmic pulse, or beat,...

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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

Ooo yes of course! I used {styler} so much to help me format messy code into something readable over the years, so {Air} is definitely an important part of this clean code workflow. Thanks!

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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

If you missed my talk but still want some tips for writing good code for scientists, my slides are here: daxkellie.quarto.pub/a-guide-to-w... All the links and references are there too in case you want to see more! 😀🧪🌏 #ESA2025 #rstats #quartopub

Title slide with text:
A guide to writing good code for the busy scientist

Black text over stripey pale brown-green background

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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

I am blinking with great enthusiasm for helping scientists code better 😆

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