iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Russell Dinnage

Matt Grainger @drmattg.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

🚀 New paper led by Dr Becks Spake! We make the case for precision ecology—using big data & predictive tools to tailor conservation actions to local contexts. Can ecology learn from medicine & marketing to boost impact? We think so. Read it here: rdcu.be/eoaR4 #Conservation #Ecology #BigData

rdcu.be

Precision ecology for targeted conservation action

Nature Ecology & Evolution - The fields of medicine and marketing use large data volumes and computational power to target individuals. This Perspective argues that applied ecologists should...

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Russell Dinnage @rdinnager.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

NicheFlow learns an underlying numerical representation of species' niches, letting you do neat things like interpolating between two species, generating hypothetical niches of non-existent species. This animation also shows how the model treats environmental and geographic space separately.

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Russell Dinnage @rdinnager.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

I am currently training NicheFlow 2.0 on several hundreds of thousands of species' range maps and will be releasing it publicly in the coming months. Join me at the #ESA2025 meeting in August to learn more about it. Stay tuned for an announcement of my #ESA2025 short course on foundation models.

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Russell Dinnage @rdinnager.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

The magic? NicheFlow uses generative AI to: 🌍 Share knowledge across species 🧬 Capture complex environmental relationships 📊 Work with limited data 🔮 Predict distributions for rare species Preprint: biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.15.618541v1 P.S. 'It's not magic.'

biorxiv.org

NicheFlow: Towards a foundation model for Species Distribution Modelling

1. Species distribution models (SDMs) are crucial tools for understanding and predicting biodiversity patterns, yet they often struggle with limited data, biased sampling, and complex species-environm...

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Russell Dinnage @rdinnager.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

Excited to share my latest preprint: NicheFlow - which aims to be one of the first true foundation models for ecology! 🎉 It's like having an AI ecologist that learns from millions of species observations to predict where ANY species might live. Ask me about it and its applications at #Evol2025! 🧵👇

biorxiv.org

NicheFlow: Towards a foundation model for Species Distribution Modelling

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Reposted by Russell Dinnage

Dan Warren @danlwarren.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

Hey everybody! A few months ago @americanbeetles.bsky.social had the idea to do a Schoolhouse Rock-style video about the important work insect taxonomists do, so I wrote a song and she illustrated it. Please share as widely as you can! youtu.be/yYSIhzb14QI

youtu.be

The Pest Is Still To Come

YouTube video by Dan Warren

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Russell Dinnage @rdinnager.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

I am also actively recruiting graduate student for my new Assistant Professor role starting in July at the University of Alberta. If you will be at #Evol2025 and are looking for opportunities to study at the intersection of AI/ML and biology (especially evolution), let's talk in Athens!

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Russell Dinnage @rdinnager.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

What if we could teach machines to think in the logic of evolution? 🌱🤖 That's what I'll be discussing at #Evol2025 in Athens, Georgia - showing how AI reveals that evolution moves along curved paths, not straight lines. June 24, 12:15pm, Computational Biology session. See you there? 🧵👇

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Russell Dinnage @rdinnager.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

Currently funded by NSF to develop AI that learns ecological principles from species distributions. Looking forward to connecting with the computational biology community here! Lab: rdinnager.github.io/dinnage_lab_website/ Code: github.com/rdinnager 3/3

rdinnager.github.io

Dinnage Lab

Biological | Computational | Eco-Evolutionary Systems Welcome to the Dinnage Lab at Florida International University, where we develop foundation models for understanding complex biological systems.

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Russell Dinnage @rdinnager.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

Recent highlights: 📚 NicheFlow: First foundation model for species distributions 🌸 PhenoVision: AI analyzing 53M field photos (98.5% accuracy!) 📦 Open-source R packages: slimr, ENMTools, phyr I believe in democratizing computational methods for all biologists. 2/3

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Russell Dinnage @rdinnager.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

New to Bluesky! I'm Russell Dinnage, developing AI foundation models for organismal biology @FIU (moving to @UAlberta July 2025) My mission: Create AI systems that understand life from molecules to ecosystems, bridging computational innovation with biological insight 🧬🤖 🧵1/3

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