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Rahul Mehrotra @noxaspidea.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

Grateful to @luminocean.bsky.social and Ocean Gardener for inviting me to give a talk on our recent study documenting annual daytime coral spawning. We explored this and the history of coral spawning from Thailand and the wider region, and its role in conservation. www.youtube.com/watch?v=00jN...

youtube.com

Daytime spawning in the Gulf of Thailand - Webinar

YouTube video by Luminocean

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Rahul Mehrotra @noxaspidea.bsky.social · 21/02/2026

After years of hard work and casting a wide net of collaboration, we are happy to share the first consistent spawning of this kind from the northern hemisphere. This is a huge step for our regional conservation planning as we shift toward long term goals. Link in the comments! #MarineEcology 🌐🌏🪸🌊🦑

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Rahul Mehrotra @noxaspidea.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

Last year, ATMEC produced one of the largest assessments of Thai coral reefs to date. A new article in Mongabay has explored the findings from our work in the context of larger issues, reinforcing the value of foundational research to conservation! Link in the comments! #MarineEcology 🌐🌏🪸🌊🦑

https://news.mongabay.com/2026/01/coast-to-coast-coral-assessment-reveals-thailands-reefs-losing-complexity/

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Leon Simons @leonsimons.com · 17/01/2026

A crazy amount of heat has accumulated in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean over the past two months. Hold on to your hats when this reaches the surface with the next El Niño. Y-axis shows depth, X-axis shows degree longitude (one degree equals 111 km) and colors temp anomalies. @noaa.gov PMEL data

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Sabhrina Aninta @sagitaninta.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

Our Q&A article on inbreeding for conservation is out in BMC Biology! We discuss some important key concepts related to inbreeding in the light of new genomic tools and what it means for conservation when we want to improve species survival. #consgen bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com

Q&A: inbreeding and its implications for conservation - BMC Biology

Inbreeding depression plays a role in the decline, endangerment, and extinction of small populations, and thus inbreeding has received much attention in conservation biology. The term inbreeding is us...

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Rahul Mehrotra @noxaspidea.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

A particular concern for modern coral conservation practices!

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Rahul Mehrotra @noxaspidea.bsky.social · 13/12/2025

Last paper of the year! A new nudibranch species as a result of exploring the feeding ecology of hydroid feeding nudis in Thailand! Since I started this work almost 10 years ago, there's finally been some trickling of global nudi ecology research which is great! Link in comments #MarineEcology 🌐🌏🌊🦑

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David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈 @whysharksmatter.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

An all-too-common interaction I've had: Scientist: Our research can help shape policy to protect this endangered animal. Me: Neat! How? What policy? What is it now, and what should it be instead? Scientist: Uhhhhh..... Our new paper can help! www.southernfriedscience.com/shark-scient... 🧪🦑🌍🦈

southernfriedscience.com

Shark scientists want their research to help save threatened species, but don’t know how. Our new paper can help.

Sharks are some of the most threatened animals on Earth, and accordingly many scientists who study sharks want their research to be useful for conservation. However, most scientific training does n…

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Rahul Mehrotra @noxaspidea.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

Hot off the press, our work on reviewing one of the most taxonomically complex group of scleractinian corals, based on new records from Thailand. This investigation is the precursor to a couple of rather interesting ecological findings (coming soon 😉). rdcu.be/ePm3r #MarineBiodiversity 🦑🌏🪸🌊

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Rahul Mehrotra @noxaspidea.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

I am pleased to announce the publication of the most extensive assessment of the coral reefs of Thailand conducted to date! This took years of work, but we are now placed for conservation action to embrace the nuances and complexity of reef ecosystems! Link in the comments! #MarineEcology 🌐🌏🪸🌊🦑

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Rahul Mehrotra @noxaspidea.bsky.social · 19/09/2025

As we prepare for the follow-up study on the impact of discarded fishing gear on #marinelife I wanted to throw back to this great article by @mongabay.com on our work studying this issue (link in the comments). Slowly disentangling this problem across the region🦑 news.mongabay.com/2025/01/unde...

news.mongabay.com

Underwater citizen science reveals the specter of ghost fishing in Thailand

Marine biologists diving in the Gulf of Thailand were thrilled in 2023 to rediscover several colonies of a rare type of ocean sponge once thought to be extinct in the wild. But their excitement quickl...

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Rahul Mehrotra @noxaspidea.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

Our next paper from this year is the first-of-its-kind for Thailand! A multidisciplinary look into the bridge between SCUBA tourism, biodiversity, economics, taxonomy and awareness. Marine biodiversity valuations can guide funding and policy! #MarineBiodiversity 🦑🌐🌏🪸🌊 www.mdpi.com/3042-4658/2/...

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ZooKeys @zookeys.pensoft.net · 28/07/2025

A new scorpion species is described from Thailand's Doi Phu Kha National Park. Find out more about it here: doi.org/10.3897/zook... #ecology #scorpions #taxonomy

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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

In an unconscionable decision, the Smithsonian Institute has decided to no longer support the Biodiversity Heritage Library from 1 Jan 2026. Please someone step up and take it over.

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Rahul Mehrotra @noxaspidea.bsky.social · 12/07/2025

Our newest paper just out: Coral recruits and juveniles on artificial substrates differ in their competitive capacity in comparison to their mature reef counterparts! We focused on a single area, so would love to see if the same trends are found elsewhere! Link in the comments! #MarineEcology 🌐🌏🪸🌊

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Rahul Mehrotra @noxaspidea.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

We have just finished reviewing our 2024 data for Tao Talay Aow Thai, the largest sea turtle citizen science program in Thailand! Our trend of observations continued to grow, largely driven by areas with the greatest SCUBA diving activity and resident turtle populations. tinyurl.com/y433r466 🌐🌏🐢🌊

atmec.org

TTAT Progress 2024

Tao Talay Aow Thai project highlights from 2024!

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Rahul Mehrotra @noxaspidea.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

Next stop in our coral connectivity project at ATMEC is the western Gulf of Thailand! This time, the team were able confirm a synchronized coral spawning event with more than 50 corals from 7 genera along with their dispersal patterns. Exciting updates coming soon! 🌐🌏#MarineEcology

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Disentis Roadmap @libroscope.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

Check out the brand new portal for the Biodiversity Literature Repository! www.biolitrepo.org, hosted by Zenodo @cern.bsky.social @plazi-species.bsky.social @gbif.org @sib.swiss

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Terry Hughes @profterryhughes.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

For context, the Great Barrier Reef has more than a million hectares of coral reef habitat.

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ZooKeys @zookeys.pensoft.net · 12/03/2025

Fossil evidence confirms that the Indian (Rhinoceros unicornis) and Sundaic (Rhinoceros sondaicus)rhinoceroses evolved independently over a long period of time, and the differences between them reflect deep evolutionary adaptations, a new ZooKeys study found.

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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences @pnas.org · 04/03/2025

Vertebrates receive 82.9% of conservation funding, according to a study of @IUCN data, with large-bodied mammals receiving the largest shares. Algae and fungi received less than 0.2% of funding. The authors call for this bias to be addressed. In PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Amphibians, illustrated here by a frog species from Venezuela, received less than 3% of the conservation funding over the 25-year period studied.

CREDIT: Benoit Guénard

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Rahul Mehrotra @noxaspidea.bsky.social · 02/03/2025

Our latest paper just out! After almost a decade of monitoring, we find growing evidence of community distinction and change in 21st century coral recruits when compared to their mature reef counterparts. A rare work looking into succession on reefs and more! Paper: rdcu.be/ebLaw #MarineEcology 🌐

Fig. 3 Non-metric MDS ordination of coral community variation among surveyed natural and artificial substrate sites in Survey 1 (2018/2019) and Survey 2 (2023) (stress 0.16 and 0.13 respectively). Ellipses represent the 95% confidence interval.

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spencer roberts 🦈 @unpopularscience.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

We programmed a crawler to search open web marketplaces for every animal on the IUCN red list. Nearly 2/3 of our matches were shark jaws, comprising 9 of the top 10 openly traded threatened species. A glimpse of the global trophy trade of endangered sharks: 🌏 🦑 🧪 🧵 urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...

Fig. 1. Threatened animal listings in major online marketplaces: Wedges indicate the proportion of unique full matches by English and Latin scientific names identified within a 15-week automated search crawl. A total of 546 matches were identified advertising body parts or eggs of 83 species listed as vulnerable or endangered by the IUCN or banned in international trade by CITES. 96 % of listings were hosted on domains ebay.com, etsy.com, thetaxidermystore.com, and gumtree.com.

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Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Huge analysis out as a preprint today! For every 9 years an animal spends in the wildlife trade, it shares an additional pathogen with humans. Clear long-term impacts based on 40 years of global trade data 🧪😷 biorxiv.org/content/earl...

Phylogenetic map of wildlife trade; graphs showing overlap with other traits like synanthropy; path analysis showing impact on zoonotic host status

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Rahul Mehrotra @noxaspidea.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

If this hasn't been shared around already, this work reinforces what evidence-based conservation has already been saying. Within the world of coral reefs, there are a large number of 'conservation' practices that make this particular issue worse, not better. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

Global meta-analysis shows action is needed to halt genetic diversity loss - Nature

A comprehensive meta-analysis of global terrestrial and marine genetic diversity covering more than three decades of research demonstrates rapid loss of genetic diversity and identifies conservation i...

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Rahul Mehrotra @noxaspidea.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

New article written about our paper on the MARsCI program to study ecological impacts of discarded fishing gear in Thailand. As always, we're happy to have ATMEC acknowledged in our efforts to improve biodiversity conservation and research in Thailand! #marineconservation 🌏🐠🐡🦀🦈 tinyurl.com/ym45sr5p

tinyurl.com

Underwater citizen science reveals the specter of ghost fishing in Thailand

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Rahul Mehrotra @noxaspidea.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

Every year, there is an uproar in Thailand about the growing spikes in air pollution. Public outcry in Thailand is sometimes enough to drive action by the powers that be. Alas on this, what is the cost of 'progress'? This morning, Thailand sits in a neat bubble connecting China and India. #Pollution

Credit to real time data by https://aqicn.org/map/

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Richard Smyth @rsmythfreelance.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

"What even are subspecies, these neither-this-nor-that intermediates, these creatures caught between binomials, like actors surprised mid-costume change?" I wrote about Noah's ark, wrens, ruddy ducks and Booming Ben, for @aeon.co. aeon.co/essays/the-c...

aeon.co

The case for subspecies – the neglected unit of conservation | Aeon Essays

To lump or to split? Deciding whether an animal is a species or subspecies profoundly influences our conservation priorities

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The International Biogeography Society @biogeography.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

Our first Funk lecture of the new year is tomorrow! For more information and to register please visit our website: www.biogeography.org/news/news/gh...

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Rahul Mehrotra @noxaspidea.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

Weekend spent starting a big new chapter for Thai coral reef science, big things to come over the next two years! This is what collaboration looks like, in the field and the lab! #Fieldwork #Marinebiology #DMCR #ATMEC

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Antoine Champreux @toinechampreux.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

What is a #biome? 🌳🌲🌱 How can we delineate past, present and future biomes, despite the patchy and incomplete data we have on the distribution of nature on Earth? 🌍🌐 Our review 👉 doi.org/10.1002/ecm.... 🧪 #ecology #biogeography #paleoecology #climate #vegetation #FunctionalTraits

Figure 1 from the study by Champreux et al. (published in Ecological Monographs) showing four global biome maps using different biome-delimitation criteria resulting in various geographic divisions, biome names, and number of biomes.

Caption from the study: Global biome maps compared in this study. (a) Compilation biome map of World Wildlife Fund Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World (Olson et al., 2001). (b) Simulated biome map from Holdridge's (1967) life zones (Leemans, 1990a, 1990b) and two functional biome maps: (c) MODIS-IGBP land-cover-type product (Friedl et al., 2010; Loveland & Belward, 1997) and (d) dominant biome distribution over 31 years from global functional biome scheme from Higgins et al. (2016, 2017). Biome names are derived from three letters (1) tall versus short, (2) low, medium, and high vegetation productivity index, and (3) cold, dry, both cold and dry, nonseasonal for growth limitation index.

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Hassan Salem @hassansalem.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

How do animals compensate for trait loss? In beetles, symbiosis is a consistent strategy. Where the repeated loss of endogenous digestive enzymes is offset by functionally convergent symbioses: www.cell.com/current-biol... Excited to share our latest, out today in @currentbiology.bsky.social!

Symbiotic leaf beetles and the organs that allow them to stably maintain beneficial microbes.

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Dr. Jenny Morber @jrmorber.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

As a sci journo, part of my job is interrogating research to make sure I report on sound science. Ten years ago that meant checking researchers against retractions list, checking stats and methods. Today, I have to answer questions like "are these researchers real?" and "is this all bullshit?"

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ZooKeys @zookeys.pensoft.net · 15/01/2025

A taxonomic inventory of faunal diversity at the methane seeps on the Pacific margin of Costa Rica: doi.org/10.3897/zook... #biodiversity #biogeography #ecology @etilic.bsky.social

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Rahul Mehrotra @noxaspidea.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

Often coral reef conservation and science discourse with policy makers (particularly in SE Asia) is mired in the usual swamp of saving face. How refreshing then it was this week to participate in a collaborative movement to do something new and evidence-based in reef conservation. More to come.

Representatives from half a dozen universities, NGOs and the DMCR of Thailand trying to pave the way for the next decade of coral conservation.

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microscopic images. @microscopicture.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

electron microscope image of a coriander leaf

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Rahul Mehrotra @noxaspidea.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

Started the year with micro-morphology for nerdy taxonomy #2 - Micro-CT scanning of some upcoming (new?) species. Huge thanks to staff at the STREC @ Chulalongkorn University for technical expertise and @elm00.bsky.social for nerd support! #microscopy #microCT #marinebiodiversity #whosthatpokemon

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Scripps Institution of Oceanography @scrippsocean.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

A new study led by Scripps Oceanography researchers sheds light on the evolutionary magic behind the evolution of anglerfish. From their glowing lures to their bizarre mating habits, these deep-sea fish are a testament to the wonders of adaptation. Discover how these creatures thrive in the deep.

today.ucsd.edu

Evolution of Deep-Sea Anglerfish Illuminated in New Study

A multi-institutional team of biologists has produced new insights into the evolution of anglerfish, deep-sea dwellers known for their extraordinary adaptations.

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Rahul Mehrotra @noxaspidea.bsky.social · 25/12/2024

Yesterday marked 10 years since my first academic publication. Despite being a decade later, I'm about to start a new adventure back into synchronised spawning. Just a reminder that the Venn diagram between careers in the ecological sciences and the adult film industry may never truly disappear.

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Dr Charlie Gardner @charliejgardner.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

1/ Some scientists hold back from engaging in advocacy for fear it'll harm public trust in science - but new research from @colognaviktoria.bsky.social and colleagues shows the opposite can happen 🧵

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Rahul Mehrotra @noxaspidea.bsky.social · 24/12/2024

Mei Lin's work in Singapore has long been an inspiration for many of our recent and upcoming work in Thailand

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Rahul Mehrotra @noxaspidea.bsky.social · 24/12/2024

Ending the year with micro-morphology for nerdy taxonomy #1 - Scanning Electron Microscopy never gets old @ Prince of Songkla University, Hat Yai! ps: Any Diatom people around? We're finding a lot of funky stuff..

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