iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Overall, a super fun experience and so lucky to work with my amazing collaborators: @ornithoale.bsky.social who inspired a lot of this work as well as @katherinelauck.bsky.social and Julian Tattoni who TAed the class and helped create this course-based research experience :)

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Reposted by Alejandra Echeverri, PhD

Finally, larger, more attractive species were consistently more likely to be marketed. This is despite prior work arguing that an emphasis on novel birds translates into dedicated birdwatchers preferring dull species. Dedicated birdwatchers may value beauty in birds, just like everyone else.

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Reposted by Alejandra Echeverri, PhD

Second, we were surprised that regularly observed species were more likely to be mentioned in trip itineraries. Maybe tour operators are balancing novelty with the risk of disappointing clients when they inevitably fail to encounter rare species?

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Ok, so what did we find? First, tour operators recognized that birdwatchers value novelty above all else. Range-restricted species were ten times more likely to appear in trip itineraries than cosmopolitan species.

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The most unique part: this was a multi-year class project! So fun to have undergrads help us collect the data, form their own questions, present posters, and then, eventually, have it turn into a published product! (photos are example student posters)

Reposted by Alejandra Echeverri, PhD

Alejandra Echeverri, PhD @ornithoale.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

Stoked to share our new paper, just out in @amornith.bsky.social, that explores the traits that predict which species that appear in Costa Rican bird itineraries! (open access link below, thread to follow) academic.oup.com/condor/advan...

academic.oup.com

Validate User

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New paper out today led by Prof. @dskarp.bsky.social Marketing birds: The traits birdwatching tourism companies highlight in Costa Rican tour itineraries

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Liam U. Taylor @liamtaylor.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

the worst part of every manuscript for an ornithologist, yes, worse than tough reviewers worse even than outright rejection when they typeset the paper and all the species names are lower case

media.tenor.com

a man in a suit is crying in the rain .

ALT: a man in a suit is crying in the rain .

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Harman Jaggi @harmanjaggi.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

Happy to share our research on traditional farming landscapes in northwest Himalaya is out in Science Advances! Thanks to my advisor Tulja & all the wonderful collaborators- Ale @ornithoale.bsky.social, Katie @kasolari.bsky.social, Akshata, Kullu, Rinchen, Lamaji. 1/7 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

science.org

Biocultural vulnerability of traditional crops in the Indian Trans-Himalaya

Traditional understudied crops in Indian Trans-Himalaya offer unique ecological, genetic, and nutritional potential.

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Alejandra Echeverri, PhD @ornithoale.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

Check out our newest study published in Science Advances last Friday ❤️

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Jorge Ramos, PhD @jorgerh2o.bsky.social · 08/08/2025

See you at #ESA2025 next week!Find me at the ESA SEEDS events, Wed, 10:30 AM Panel on Careers at a Research Station with OBFS friends; and Thu, 5 PM Poster LB 13-177 on Wildfire resilience initiatives at Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve ('Ootchamin 'Ooyakma)!

Wednesday, August 13, 2025, 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM EDT
Preparing for a Career at a Research Station
Career Central Room 1 (Exhibit Hall)

Presentations
LB 13-177 - Wildfire resilience initiatives at Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve ('Ootchamin 'Ooyakma) with outcomes in collaboration, research, education and stewardship.
Thursday, August 14, 2025, 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM EDT
Presenting Author - Jorge Ramos

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Katherine Xue @ksxue.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

The Xue lab at UC Irvine is looking for a staff scientist to support our work investigating how microbes interact and evolve in the gut microbiome! Open to a wide range of previous experience levels, see ad for more. recruit.ap.uci.edu/JPF09601

recruit.ap.uci.edu

Junior, Assistant, or Associate Specialist – Xue Lab

University of California, Irvine is hiring. Apply now!

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D. Allan Drummond @dadrummond.art · 07/07/2025

Of course the main purpose of a yard is to attract bugs, and the best way to attract bugs is with native plants, so that’s mostly what we do. Here’s a sampling—descriptions in alt text. 🐝🦋🐛🐜🪰🪲🐞 (Remaining grass lets us play games and lets doggies chase balls, but is slowly going to clover)

A nine panel overview of native insects on native plants from our yard. Starting in the upper left, Agapostemon (a native bee) on echinacea, a young grasshopper, a Mydas fly swamp milkweed, a woolcarder bee with just its butt showing out of an obedient plant flower, two mating milkweed bugs (strikingly yellow and red) on milkweed, a hoverfly on a cherry blossom, another hoverfly on queen of the prairie flowerbuds, a monarch butterfly on blazing star, and a great black wasp on mountain mint.

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Kaitlyn Gaynor @kaitlyngaynor.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

Have you ever cited or come across a mention of the 'human shield hypothesis' and wondered: what is the evidence for this hypothesis, and what is the quality of that evidence? Wonder no more! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

The Human Shield Hypothesis: Does Predator Avoidance of Humans Create Refuges for Prey?

The human shield hypothesis posits that predators avoid areas of human disturbance due to perceived risk from humans, and prey therefore seeks refuge in these areas of perceived safety. Our systemati....

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Kelley Langhans (she/her) @kelleylanghans.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

It was a pleasure to work with my amazing interdisciplinary team of coauthors: @ornithoale.bsky.social, Maya Xu, @flamingmuffinz.bsky.social, Mei Li Palmeri, Meggie Callahan, Nicole Ardoin, and Gretchen Daily

Kelley Langhans (she/her) @kelleylanghans.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Reposted by Alejandra Echeverri, PhD

This underscores the importance of urban community gardens - not only do they provide habitat for biodiversity and opportunities to access nature, but also many other benefits: social connections, education, and food sovereignty. Let’s work to protect and advocate for urban community gardens!

Kelley Langhans (she/her) @kelleylanghans.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Reposted by Alejandra Echeverri, PhD

Regardless, these results are exciting - they suggest that community gardens have the potential to provide access to nature across an income gradient! People in both high and low income neighborhoods in San Francisco can have positive interactions with birds in gardens.

Kelley Langhans (she/her) @kelleylanghans.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Reposted by Alejandra Echeverri, PhD

Why might this be? It could be because birds are highly mobile organisms, the nature of San Francisco (compact, lots of greenspace, heterogenous), regional effects (luxury effect is stronger in tropical and arid environments), or community gardens themselves.

Kelley Langhans (she/her) @kelleylanghans.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Reposted by Alejandra Echeverri, PhD

For example, we expected lower income neighborhoods to have less canopy cover and therefore less avian species richness, but instead found all three of these variables were unrelated!

Kelley Langhans (she/her) @kelleylanghans.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Reposted by Alejandra Echeverri, PhD

Instead, we found that avian species richness and abundance were predicted by local and landscape-scale environmental factors, very few of which were correlated with income.

Kelley Langhans (she/her) @kelleylanghans.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Reposted by Alejandra Echeverri, PhD

Surprisingly, given past studies on the luxury effect that show higher biodiversity in higher income neighborhoods, we found no relationships between any of these metrics and garden income!

Kelley Langhans (she/her) @kelleylanghans.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Reposted by Alejandra Echeverri, PhD

For each garden, we compared three bird metrics with garden income: species richness, abundance, and a species access metric, a metric for our 10 focal species that was higher where there were more individuals from species people noticed and cared about.

Kelley Langhans (she/her) @kelleylanghans.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Reposted by Alejandra Echeverri, PhD

We dug into why attitudes differed. While less-popular species had mostly aesthetic disservices, popular species had both ecological and aesthetic services. This suggests that providing education about species’ ecological roles could be an important conservation tool!

Kelley Langhans (she/her) @kelleylanghans.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Reposted by Alejandra Echeverri, PhD

However, we also wanted to understand how much gardeners noticed each species. When we weighted sentiment scores by recognition, the scores of less-charismatic species like the Black Phoebe dropped.

Kelley Langhans (she/her) @kelleylanghans.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Reposted by Alejandra Echeverri, PhD

Using these results, we were able to assign each species a “sentiment score” and rank them in terms of positive sentiment. Most species had more positive than negative words associated with them, while corvids were the exception.

Kelley Langhans (she/her) @kelleylanghans.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Reposted by Alejandra Echeverri, PhD

For each species, we performed a sentiment analysis, classifying words into positive, negative and neutral. While species like the Anna’s Hummingbird had primarily positive associations, others like the American Crow, were more controversial.

Kelley Langhans (she/her) @kelleylanghans.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Reposted by Alejandra Echeverri, PhD

We also examined gardener attitudes towards 10 common garden species, chosen to capture a range of traits, through a word association task.

Kelley Langhans (she/her) @kelleylanghans.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Reposted by Alejandra Echeverri, PhD

Through our surveys, we learned that gardeners felt positively about birds overall, showing high agreement with a number of positive statements about birds in the garden!

Kelley Langhans (she/her) @kelleylanghans.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Reposted by Alejandra Echeverri, PhD

We worked in 20 community gardens across an income gradient in San Francisco, CA, surveying gardeners, performing avian point counts, and survey vegetation.

Kelley Langhans (she/her) @kelleylanghans.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Reposted by Alejandra Echeverri, PhD

We studied a specific type of access to nature, human/bird interactions, through an interdisciplinary lens. We wanted to understand how people felt about birds overall as well as specific species, and where people came into contact with those species as well as diverse bird communities.

Kelley Langhans (she/her) @kelleylanghans.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Reposted by Alejandra Echeverri, PhD

This means we miss some crucial components: understanding how specific components of nature (like wildlife!) contribute to access, and understanding whether people actually benefit from and enjoy coming into contact with that nature.

Kelley Langhans (she/her) @kelleylanghans.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Reposted by Alejandra Echeverri, PhD

Access to nature provides myriad benefits to people, but those benefits are not equitably distributed. In addition, most studies of access to nature focus on physical access to greenspace.