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michael catchen

@mdcatchen.bsky.social

4.3K followers 488 following 70 posts

data scientist/research software engineer, Schmidt Center for Data Science and Environment @ UC Berkeley. building open software for bioacoustic monitoring. phd in ML for biogeography of species interaction networks. gottacatchenall.github.io he/him

Posts Replies Media

michael catchen @mdcatchen.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

it still has pretty figures, i promise!

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michael catchen @mdcatchen.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

In the hardest-hit spots, up to half of local interactions are lost, with the potential for new gained interactions not keeping up. But -- that mismatch map is also a priority map for monitoring the impact of network change on ecosystem function and implementing conservation action.

Scientific figure showing hotspots of projected losses of interactions in a bumble bee pollination network.

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michael catchen @mdcatchen.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

🚨 New preprint! What happens to bumblebee pollination networks as species ranges shift due to climate change? 🐝🪻🕸️ In the Rocky Mountains, we predict these networks are becoming "vertically disassembled" as the ranges of interacting species shift upward in elevation at different rates.

Scientific figure depicting species elevational range shifts under three different climate scenarios in the top left, and bivariate plots depicting hotspots of species gain and loss in the southern rocky mountains on the right.

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michael catchen @mdcatchen.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

🚨🐭🦠 New preprint! Monitoring wildlife disease is expensive, so we need to be smart about where we sample to get as much useful info as possible. We show how SDMs can guide adaptive sampling for zoonotic disease surveillance, using case studies in rodents.

A conceptual figure outlining a protocol for using species distribution models to prioritize sampling for pathogens in wildlife

A scientific figure showing a case study of the protocol applied to Arenaviridae in rodents in India

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michael catchen @mdcatchen.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

sometimes you write interesting sentences in ecology

the phrase "but we see a large increase in absolute loser bees" in an excerpt from a draft scientific manuscript

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michael catchen @mdcatchen.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

learning interesting things on LinkedIn

A LinkedIn comment with text: "We celebrate Christ who MAY HAVE actually been quantum too. He dissappear for 3 days but some scholars think he just shrank down VERY SMALL until he able to find growth ray or pill or liquid (unknown). It a test of our faith to believe in that which we cannot see like molecules or ants.
MORE STUDY"

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michael catchen @mdcatchen.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

tapping the sign

A passage from "The Dialectical Biologist" by Levins and Lewontin. The paragraph reads:

"One form of reductionist materialism regards abstractions as a form of idealism, so materialism in science necessarily overthrows abstractions and replaces them with some sort of “real” entities, each of which is then unique because of the immense complexity of interacting forces on each and because of the underlying stochasticity of nature. It is obvious, however, that we cannot eliminate all abstractions, or else nothing would remain but chronicles of events. If any causal explanations are to be given, except in the trivial sense that a historically antecedent state is said to be the cause of later ones, then some degree of abstraction is indispensable. There can be no predictability or manipulation of the world except by grouping events into classes, and this grouping in turn means ignoring the unique properties of events and abstracting the events. We can hardly have a serious discussion of a science without abstraction. What makes science materialist is that the process of abstraction is explicit and recognized as historically contingent within the science. Abstraction becomes destructive when the abstract is reified and when the historical process of abstraction is forgotten, so that the abstract descriptions are taken for descriptions of the actual objects."

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michael catchen @mdcatchen.bsky.social · 07/11/2024

it sure doesn't feel like bonus points promoting my own work, but my favorite part of my thesis is the opening epigraph

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michael catchen @mdcatchen.bsky.social · 28/10/2024

🚨 New Paper! BON in a Box: An Open and Collaborative Platform for Biodiversity Monitoring, Indicator Calculation, and Reporting. Led by Jory Griffith, along with many other collaborators ( @ctrlalttim.bsky.social) feat. some of the favorite figures I've ever made ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

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michael catchen @mdcatchen.bsky.social · 17/10/2023

Clippy the annoying paperclip saying "It looks like the best lack all convictions. Would you like some help with that?" Below is a checkbox that reads "Don't show me this tip again"

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michael catchen @mdcatchen.bsky.social · 12/08/2023

i'm the marginal encouraging rat

Text: In addition, exercises that are especially recommended are marked by a marginal encouraging rat. Drawing of a cartoon rat.

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