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Gopal Murali

@gopalmurali.bsky.social
1.9K followers 6.2K following 18 posts

Herp obsessed🦎🐍🐸🐢| DST-INSPIRE Faculty Fellow, Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc | Fulbright Alum @uofa-eeb.bsky.social | biodiversity informatics | colsci | macroecology | macroevolution | global change biology | www.gopalmurali.in

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Gopal Murali @gopalmurali.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Thank you so much! 🙏🙏 Glad you found it interesting.
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Gopal Murali @gopalmurali.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
📰 For a clear and accessible overview of our study, see this excellent news story by @rthornton28.bsky.social. bsky.app/profile/rtho...
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Gopal Murali @gopalmurali.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
🙏 This study would not have been possible without the support of Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Fellowship ( #Fulbright #USIEF). Many thanks to the @uofa-eeb.bsky.social @uarizona.bsky.social for hosting me, and to UArizona High Performance Computing for the resources that made this work possible.
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Gopal Murali @gopalmurali.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
📄 Interested in learning more? 📖 Paper: doi.org/10.1038/s415... 🔓 Free full-text version (no subscription): rdcu.be/fo5a0 📝 A more accessible summary of the study: rdcu.be/fqAt2
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Gopal Murali @gopalmurali.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
🙏 Many thanks to my co-authors, John Wiens and Dirk Karger (@dirknkarger.bsky.social), and to the researchers worldwide who collected and generously shared the biodiversity data that made this study possible. Special thanks to Dirk for his help generating the daily climate data used in this study.
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Gopal Murali @gopalmurali.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
One final point: these are not model predictions. They are climate-related local extinctions already observed across thousands of populations during recent climate warming. Climate change is already reshaping biodiversity worldwide.🌍📈🌡️🌳🪲🦎🦩🦔🐟
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Gopal Murali @gopalmurali.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Take away: Climate-driven biodiversity loss is becoming a global crisis. Our findings suggest climate risks to temperate biodiversity have been underestimated and challenge long-held assumptions about where biodiversity faces the greatest climate risks.
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Gopal Murali @gopalmurali.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
🌴Does this mean tropical species are no longer vulnerable? No. In several tropical animals, >50% of species surveyed experienced climate-related local extinctions. Our findings show climate risks to temperate biodiversity may have been underestimated, not that tropical species are less vulnerable.
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Gopal Murali @gopalmurali.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
But could species simply escape climate change by moving to cooler places? Not in most cases. More than 70% of species showed no evidence of expanding their ranges into cooler areas. For many species, persistence may depend more on avoiding local extinction than on range expansion.
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Gopal Murali @gopalmurali.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
🚨Another important difference: In temperate species, climate impacts weren't limited to the warmest edge of their ranges. Local extinctions also occurred across the rest of their ranges and increased with recent warming. In tropical species, extinctions remained concentrated at the warmest edge.
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Gopal Murali @gopalmurali.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
🌡️ So why were temperate species more affected? One major reason is that many temperate regions have warmed more rapidly in recent decades than the tropics. Across our dataset, climate-related local extinctions were more frequent in regions that experienced greater warming.
Left: Warming was greatest in many temperate regions, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere, for both mean annual and maximum temperatures. Right: The probability of warm-edge local extinction increased with mean annual warming in both tropical and temperate species, with temperate species generally showing slightly higher extinction probabilities.
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Gopal Murali @gopalmurali.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
🔍 Could this simply reflect factors other than climate change? We took several steps to minimize that possibility, including carefully filtering out sites affected by land-use change and showing that differences in survey methods and effort across studies could not explain the pattern.
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Gopal Murali @gopalmurali.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
📊❗Surprisingly, we found climate-related local #extinctions were more frequent in temperate species than tropical species. Nearly half of temperate species (49%) had already disappeared locally from the warmest parts of their ranges, compared with one-third (33%) of tropical species.
Across all 5,151 species, 49% of temperate species experienced climate-related local extinctions, compared to 33% of tropical species. Similar trends were observed in most taxonomic groups and habitats.
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Gopal Murali @gopalmurali.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
🗺️ To find out, we compiled data from 63 studies that surveyed species at the same locations over time, spanning 5,151 species and 39,157 survey sites. We then compared how often species had already disappeared locally from the warmest parts of their ranges across tropical and temperate regions.
Map of 1,610 survey sites used in the study, representing the warm range edges of 5,151 species. Colors indicate terrestrial (brown), freshwater (purple), and marine (blue) ecosystems.
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Gopal Murali @gopalmurali.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
🍁But recent studies have suggested that the answer may not be so simple. As #heatwaves become more frequent and intense, and warming accelerates in many temperate regions, some studies predict that the strongest future impacts of climate change on biodiversity may also occur outside the tropics.
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Gopal Murali @gopalmurali.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
🏝️ So why were #tropical species expected to be especially vulnerable to climate change? Because tropical climates are relatively stable year-round, many species were thought to be adapted to a narrower range of temperatures and already live close to the warmest temperatures they can tolerate.
doi.org
Putting the Heat on Tropical Animals
Impacts of climate warming in the tropics—the cradle of biodiversity—are often predicted to be small relative to those in temperate regions (1, 2), because the rate of climate warming in the tropics i...
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Gopal Murali @gopalmurali.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
🚨New paper🚨 For decades, it was widely assumed tropical species would be hit hardest by #ClimateChange. Turns out climate-related local #extinctions are already more frequent among temperate species. Read our new study 🧵 @natclimate.nature.com doi.org/10.1038/s415... #BiodiversityLoss #SciSky
doi.org
Temperate local extinctions from climate change are outpacing tropical extinctions - Nature Climate Change
The authors analyse global-scale resurvey data for 5,151 species to reveal the sensitivity of tropical versus temperate species to climate change. They show significantly higher frequencies of local e...
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Prof Ian Hall @ianhall.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
Surprising result: Temperate local extinctions from climate change are outpacing tropical extinctions. Across 39,157 sites, climate-related local extinctions affected 49% of temperate species compared with 33% of tropical spp. Biodiversity loss is a global crisis. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Temperate local extinctions from climate change are outpacing tropical extinctions - Nature Climate Change
The authors analyse global-scale resurvey data for 5,151 species to reveal the sensitivity of tropical versus temperate species to climate change. They show significantly higher frequencies of local e...
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MUSER PRESS @muser.press · 22/06/2026
A global study of 5,151 species found climate-driven local extinctions are more common in temperate regions than in the tropics. The findings suggest biodiversity is already being reshaped by rising temperatures. DOI: doi.org/hb77dp #ClimateChange #Biodiversity #TemperateRegions
muser.press
Temperate species found more vulnerable to climate change than previously thought • Muser Press
Local extinctions associated with climate change are occurring more frequently in temperate regions than in tropical ones, according to a global analysis
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Oded Berger-Tal @odedberger-tal.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
@yaelbird.bsky.social and @gopalmurali.bsky.social developed a wildlife-oriented soundscape map for Israel, revealing that road noise negatively impacts 43% of non-urban lands and 23% of protected areas. Open access in @peopleandnature.bsky.social besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Effect distances of road traffic noise on wildlife behaviour: A soundscape mapping approach using bird habitat selection
Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
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Corey Bradshaw @conservbytes.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
Effects of future climate extreme heat events and land use changes on land vertebrates "By [2100], ... 7895 species are expected to face extreme heat events and/or unsuitable land use changes across their entire range, & thus potentially go globally extinct" onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Effects of Future Climate Extreme Heat Events and Land Use Changes on Land Vertebrates
Our study demonstrates how the combined effects of extreme heat events resulting from climate change and land-use change may impact land vertebrates worldwide by 2100. Using global projections across...
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Ambio - A Journal of Environment and Society @ambio-journal.bsky.social · 08/11/2025
New publication: Rethinking desert definitions: Bridging the gap between science, policy, and conservation Open access link: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
link.springer.com
Rethinking desert definitions: Bridging the gap between science, policy, and conservation - Ambio
Deserts are often misperceived as desolate, non-productive landscapes. This perception contributes to the misuse of terms like ‘semiarid’ and ‘desertification’, creating ambiguity in how deserts are d...
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PLOS Biology @plosbiology.org · 22/10/2025
Human-induced pressures are expected to intensify this century. @uriroll.bsky.social &co present #ProactiveConservationIndex, a new tool for #conservation prioritization regarding future threats for any group of species, & apply it to all terrestrial #vertebrates @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/3WVRpRH
Distribution of variables used in the calculation of Proactive Conservation Index (PCI) for six species of land vertebrates. Values in spider plots were scaled between 0 and 1. Values on the upper part of each photograph indicate our assigned PCI scores (inner, values closer to 1 indicate a higher conservation priority, relative to other species in the same class), and their IUCN Red List categories (outer, LC, Least Concern; CR, Critically Endangered; DD, Data Deficient; NE, Non-Evaluated). To keep the area of spider plots proportional to PCI scores, the authors have inverted variables that reduce PCI score, and changed their names here accordingly: inverted brood size is named “Reproductive Restriction,” inverted range size is named “Range Restriction,” and inverted protected range is named “Unprotected Range.” Cyrtodactylus metropolis photograph provided by L. Lee Grismer, Latonia nigriventer image by UR, all other photographs obtained from Wikimedia Commons (authors: Momofelit, Ólafur Larsen, Charles Lam, Omid Mozaffari).
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Simon Baeckens @simonbaeckens.bsky.social · 08/09/2025
Extreme climate events can catalyze rapid evolutionary change! in our new Current Biology (@currentbiology.bsky.social) piece, Colin and I argue it’s time to study their evolutionary consequences systematically — beyond opportunistic observations. www.cell.com/current-biol...
cell.com
Evolutionary consequences of extreme climate events
Simon Baeckens and Colin Donihue review case studies of rapid evolutionary change in response to extreme climate events and sketch a framework for future studies in the rapidly changing climate of the...
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Gopal Murali @gopalmurali.bsky.social · 01/09/2025
Congratulations!!🥳
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Nature @nature.com · 11/08/2025
Nature research paper: Stronger El Niños reduce tropical forest arthropod diversity and function go.nature.com/40WEeCG
go.nature.com
Stronger El Niños reduce tropical forest arthropod diversity and function - Nature
Time-series data from tropical forests tracking weather and declines in arthropod diversity and function show that fluctuations in species were largely dependent on their El Niño sensitivity and ecological specialization.
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Eliot Miller @eliotmiller.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
🫠. A tree came out today with 9,072 bird species, all placements based on actual DNA. It looks like they used eBird 2022 taxonomy; 10,096 were recognized back then. That means these folks just dropped (molecularly well informed) knowledge on 83% of the world's birds. www.cell.com/current-biol...
cell.com
A new time tree of birds reveals the interplay between dispersal, geographic range size, and diversification
Flight may affect the dispersal and evolution of birds. Using a new evolutionary tree, Claramunt et al. find that efficient fliers have broader geographic ranges, and speciation reduces range size, bu...
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Sam England @samjakeengland.bsky.social · 24/07/2025
Why do treehoppers look so weird?! Our latest paper, out this week in @pnas.org, suggests a perhaps unexpected reason - static electricity ⚡ We show that treehoppers can detect the electrostatic cues of predators and that their crazy shapes may boost their electrosensitivity! doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
doi.org
Electroreception in treehoppers: How extreme morphologies can increase electrical sensitivity | PNAS
The link between form and function of an organism’s morphology is usually apparent or intuitive. However, some clades of organisms show remarkable ...
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BES Macro @besmacro.bsky.social · 30/06/2025
Ecology and Biogeography of Sexual Size Dimorphism in Squamates, Liang et al., GEB onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
a figure from the linked paper, showing size global maps and lots of strong geographic gradients
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 11/06/2025
maybe my favorite paper I've written, I have a synthesis out today early access in @asn-amnat.bsky.social today that attempts to answer a simple but slippery question: what is an elevational range? doi.org/10.1086/737130
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Jeremy Cohen @drjerbs.bsky.social · 10/06/2025
NEW SCIENCE! 🚨🚨🚨🧪🪶🌐 Our paper is now online at @natecoevo.nature.com! “Geographic redistributions are insufficient to mitigate exposure to climate change in North American birds”. We know birds are moving north with climate change, but what are the consequences? www.nature.com/articles/s41...
bird
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Brian J. Enquist @bjenquist.bsky.social · 10/06/2025
“observed patterns of island biodiversity … demonstrate that neutral models can make accurate predictions of higher-order diversity statistics. “ onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1... 🧪🌐
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Quantitatively Testing Predictions From Mechanistic Models: A Case Study for Island Biodiversity
A key test of an ecological model is whether it can quantitatively predict unseen aspects of the data not used in model fitting. Here, we test whether a model fitted only to island alpha diversity ca....
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🍁 Alex Smith 🍁 @alexsmithants.bsky.social · 03/06/2025
“There’s just no moths on that sheet.” @tessairini.bsky.social writes in the @theguardian.com about #InsectDecline with #DanJanzen, #WinnieHallwachs and the caterpillars of the Area de Conservacion Guanacaste #ACG in #CostaRica @gdfcf.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Photo of Dan Janzen holding a caterpillar - image from Guardian article where the photo credit reads: Daniel Janzen has been monitoring insects since the 1970s in Costa Rica’s Guanacaste conservation area. He says he has seen biodiversity crash even in pristine environments.
Photograph: P Greenfield/Guardian Photo of Winnie Hallwachs and Dan Janzen in ACG from Guardian article where the photo credit reads, Janzen and Hallwachs say that while the lack of insects in areas with heavy pesticide use is well documented, the collapse in protected areas is relatively new.
Photograph: P Greenfield/GuardianPhoto of light sheet collecting insects in 1984. Photo credit in Guardian article reads, A light trap set up by Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs two weeks after the beginning of the rainy season in 1984 and at the same period in 2019Photo of light sheet collecting insects in 2019. Photo credit in Guardian article reads, A light trap set up by Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs two weeks after the beginning of the rainy season in 1984 and at the same period in 2019
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Brian J. Enquist @bjenquist.bsky.social · 02/06/2025
Amazon rainforest adjusts to long-term experimental drought ..."After elevated tree mortality during the first 15 years, ecosystem-level structural changes resulted in the remaining trees no longer experiencing drought stress." 🧪🌐🌾 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Amazon rainforest adjusts to long-term experimental drought - Nature Ecology & Evolution
Drought is a growing issue in tropical rainforests. Here, the authors revisit a long-term rainfall manipulation experiment in the Amazon to show that tree mortality was followed by community-level adj...
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ignacio quintero @ignacioq.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
Happy to share my new article on how morphological diversification proceeds during evolutionary radiations: "The diffused evolutionary dynamics of morphological novelty" www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 🧵 1/12
pnas.org
The diffused evolutionary dynamics of morphological novelty | PNAS
Rates of evolution are fundamental to understand the processes that shaped the history of life. The predominant view holds that high rates of pheno...
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Patrick Waeber @powaeber.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
Human pressures reshape biodiversity, but not always in expected ways. No global biotic homogenization found. Impacts vary by threat, taxa, and scale. #LandUse #Overexploitation #Pollution #ClimateChange #Invasives 👉Conservation must get specific #KnowYourPressure #TailorYourStrategy #BendTheCurve
nature.com
The global human impact on biodiversity - Nature
Key measures of biodiversity were quantified and found to be affected by human pressures that shifted community composition and decreased local diversity across terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecos...
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James T. Stroud @jameststroud.bsky.social · 25/03/2025
Exciting news! @wcratcliff.bsky.social and I published an essay last week in @nature.com reviewing the substantial contributions of 'long-term' studies to evolutionary biology www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/n
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Dan Baldassarre @evornithology.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Welp this is horrifying. These researchers quantified the "stratigraphy" of plastic waste used in Common Coot nests. Using expiration dates, they found one nest that contained 635 (!!!) pieces of trash, including plastic dating back to 1991. esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
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Nicholas Wu @nicholaswu.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
New paper in @nature.com led by @patricepottier.bsky.social! We demonstrated global vulnerability of amphibians to warming, threatening 10% of >5,000 species examined. How did we do it? See thread🧵 Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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Adrián García-Rodríguez @adriangarcia-r.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
📢Our new paper on alien vertebrates in the world's mountains is now out @naturecomms.bsky.social. Using data on 700+ spp across ~3,000 mountains we explore their distribution patterns,flows across realms, presence in protected areas, and the factors driving these trends. 🐟🐸🦎🦜🦝⛰️ 👉 rdcu.be/ebidu
rdcu.be
The global distribution patterns of alien vertebrate richness in mountains
Nature Communications - Among contemporary threats to mountain biodiversity, biological invasions have been understudied. This large-scale synthesis on alien vertebrates in global mountains delves...
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Daniel Jablonski @dj-herpetology.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
Our study on Duttaphrynus melanostictus evolution published in Nature Communication. We showed how these toads likely spread across the Indian Ocean via human transport, from ancient trade routes to modern shipping. 🌍🐸 @chrisdufresnes.bsky.social @naturecomms.bsky.social @comeniusuni.bsky.social
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Michael Kearney @ecophys.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
The late Eric Pianka made thousands of observations of desert lizard body temperature and activity. We used them to test biophysical models of their cost of living and projected the models to past and future climates in Africa and Australia #unimelb #ARC @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
Climate change and the cost-of-living squeeze in desert lizards
Climate warming can induce a cost-of-living “squeeze” in ectotherms by increasing energetic expenditures while reducing foraging gains. We used biophysical models (validated by 2685 field observations...
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Alex Slavenko @alexsla.bsky.social · 23/12/2024
I'm very happy to announce I just published a paper from my post doc with Gavin Thomas in @natureecoevo.bsky.social! So if you're interested in #macroevolution, #phylogenetics and sexual size dimorphism (SSD), strap in doi.org/10.1038/s415...
doi.org
Evolution of sexual size dimorphism in tetrapods is driven by varying patterns of sex-specific selection on size - Nature Ecology & Evolution
A phylogenetic comparative analysis of male and female body size across tetrapods globally shows that directional change in size is usually greater in males but reveals different underlying mechanisms...
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Alex Gunderson @agunderson.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
New work from the lab! Annelise Blanchette found that brown anole lizards may be the most lead (pb) tolerant vertebrate known to date by integrating physiological studies of field and lab exposed animals and transcriptomics #urbanecology #ecotox #anolis 🦎 1/n www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Extreme lead tolerance in an urban lizard
Lead (Pb) is an extremely toxic heavy metal pollutant pervasive in many environments with serious health consequences for humans and wildlife. Identifying organisms that can serve as biomonitors of le...
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Milan Chytrý @milanchytry.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
🌍🌱 It’s often believed that plant communities with greater phylogenetic diversity also have higher functional diversity. In other words, the more evolutionary lineages present, the greater the range of traits. But is this always true?
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Clara Marino @claramarino.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
🚨Paper out! I am very proud to announce the publication of my very last #PhD article, exploring the vulnerability of terrestrial #vertebrates to #invasivespecies. Check the paper: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... With C. Bellard @celinebellard.bsky.social, B. Leroy, and G. Latombe
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Exposure and Sensitivity of Terrestrial Vertebrates to Biological Invasions Worldwide
To reach the COP 15 objective of diminishing the impacts of biological invasions on native biota, one needs to identify the most vulnerable areas to this threat for prioritizing conservation actions.....
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Mike Barker @barkerms.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
Come join us in Tucson!! I am excited to announce a tenure track faculty position on the genomics of resilience @uofa-eeb.bsky.social! Read more about the position in the updated link below! We will begin reviewing applications on December 9! arizona.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...
A photo of the Sonoran Desert at night with a saguaro cactus in the foreground with the top glowing from the moonlight. A field of stars is visible in the sky behind the cactus.
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Gwen Pearson @bug-gwen.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
Why are so many bugs shiny? New experiments with jumping spiders suggest the bling is visually confusing! Story also includes disco balls and Harry Styles. For Reasons 😆🧪 pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/a-b...
pursuit.unimelb.edu.au
A bit of bling helps insects dazzle their predators
Beyond just looking stunning, shininess may help insects confuse predators to avoid being eaten, finds a University of Melbourne study
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Richard Murphy @richardjmurphy.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
The world has to smell the climate change coffee www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/11... Climate change is real, and progressing very fast. Despite that COP29 offered less than 0.3% of world GDP to emerging economies to help them address the problems that the developed world created.
taxresearch.org.uk
The world has to smell the climate change coffee
The world is apparently unaware of the importance of climate change. According to the IMF, world GDP is about $110 trillion per annum: Yesterday, COP 29 agreed to provide assistance of £300 billio...
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Keller Kopf @kellerfish.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
First post here. I’ll unpack our new paper @science.org highlighting the loss of old animals and calling for ‘longevity conservation’ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
Loss of Earth’s old, wise, and large animals
Earth’s old animals are in decline. Despite this, emerging research is revealing the vital contributions of older individuals to cultural transmission, population dynamics, and ecosystem processes and...
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