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Rory Gibb

@roryjgibb.bsky.social
1.3K followers 334 following 11 posts

Biologist/ecologist and writer of some kind, researching how climate and ecosystems shape infection, disease and public health. UCL Excellence Fellow at UCL CBER/People & Nature Lab. Sounds, systems, stats, viruses. (he/him)

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Reposted by Rory Gibb
Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
New preprint! 🥳🎉 We looked at viral coinfection patterns at the largest scale ever in wildlife. We found a strong association among CoVs, PMVs, and influenza A, and higher coinfection rates in wildlife trade; plus, evidence that bats accumulate persistent infections. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Figure 3 of our paper, which shows viral coinfection networks at the virus level
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Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 25/07/2025
New workshop paper out today with 60 of our closest friends, providing guidance on how to design a study attributing health impacts to climate change. Hopefully this helps expand the field and start closing the representation gaps we discuss in our forthcoming work link.springer.com/article/10.1...
link.springer.com
The attribution of human health outcomes to climate change: transdisciplinary practical guidance - Climatic Change
For over 30 years, detection and attribution (D&A) studies have informed key conclusions in international and national assessments of climate science, providing compelling evidence for the reality and...
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Timothée Poisot @ctrlalttim.com · 30/06/2025
🦠🌿🐦🧪 How can biodiversity monitoring help global efforts in disease surveillance? With ✨ fantastic ✨ colleagues from @viralemergence.org and the @geobon.org working group on One Health, we try to identify three key lessons for the future. 🧵 A short thread! academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...
academic.oup.com
Biodiversity science and biosurveillance are fellow travelers
The failure to meet the Aichi targets to alleviate global biodiversity decline (Nature 2020) was a wake-up call to the biodiversity monitoring community (T
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Rory Gibb @roryjgibb.bsky.social · 02/06/2025
Please read and share, on the US budget cuts now imminently impacting Verena. bsky.app/profile/vira...
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TheBlindboyPodcast @blindboyboatclub.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
New podcast. I chat with independent socialist politician Jeremy Corbyn about compassionate politics, the history of neoliberalism, kneecap, jenoside, and a United ireland. Dog Bless open.spotify.com/episode/3F7g...
open.spotify.com
Jeremy Corbyn
The Blindboy Podcast · Episode
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Gregg Gonsalves @gregggonsalves.bsky.social · 26/05/2025
I subscribe to the @newyorker.com, I was part of ACT UP, I knew Larry Kramer well and know Tony Fauci too. Daniel Immerwahr's piece on RFKJr, features this and other passages that need a reponse. 1/
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
that said, at some point we will have to reckon with the political consequences of putting this scale of wealth at the personal, unilateral discretion of individual human beings (generations ago would've been nice, but I'll settle for now)
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Rory Gibb @roryjgibb.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
The next meeting of London Infection & Ecology Network is tomorrow! 2pm at RVC in Camden with excellent speakers on mosquitoes, viral evolution, climate and more, plus optional pub afterwards. It'd be fantastic to see you there. bsky.app/profile/jrag...
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
LLMs are nothing more than models of the distribution of the word forms in their training data, with weights modified by post-training to produce somewhat different distributions. Unless your use case requires a model of a distribution of word forms in text, indeed, they suck and aren't useful.
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Adam Kucharski @adamjkucharski.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
Nice overview of mathematical approaches to analyse age-stratified serological data: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
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Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 17/03/2025
Lungfish xkcd.com/3064
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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 17/03/2025
Harding very much influenced how I think and understand the world, and I met her once and she was great. RIP to a real one.
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Tim Newbold @tnewbold31.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
In the UCL Dept of Genetics, Evolution & Environment, we are advertising for people interested in applying for senior fellowship funding. I can say personally that it is a fantastic place to hold a fellowship. Apply at www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/... @ucllifesciences.bsky.social @uclcber.bsky.social
ucl.ac.uk
UCL – University College London
UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 05/03/2025
Nothing to see here, just Nature advocating LLM peer review. “Feed your dictated notes into an offline large language model (LLM) to clarify and organize your feedback. A simple prompt such as “Write a critical reviewer letter based on the following notes. Maintain a professional tone throughout”
nature.com
Three AI-powered steps to faster, smarter peer review
Tired of spending countless hours on peer reviews? An AI-assisted workflow could help.
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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
I wholeheartedly agree with this piece from @kityates.bsky.social. The Royal Society has to take may things into consideration, including what its US members feel - but even so, I think the right course in this instance is very clear, and they ducked it. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
Elon Musk is a proven danger to good science, but the Royal Society won’t say so. That’s why I resigned | Kit Yates
It is vital to act, and I urge colleagues to do so. How can we stand by and laud this man while he undermines scientific integrity? asks academic and author Kit Yates
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Steph N. Seifert, PhD @stephseifertphd.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
🚨Excited to share our latest research published in @commsbio.bsky.social , where we've developed a predictive model that integrates both host ecological traits and viral genomic features to identify potential reservoir hosts for Orthopoxviruses, including mpox virus. www.nature.com/articles/s42...
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Taal Levi @taaltree.bsky.social · 24/02/2025
The Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases NSF program has been archived. Huge loss. Does anyone know if the current proposals in the queue for funding will not be reviewed or are panels still happening?
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Julia PG Jones @juliajones.bsky.social · 25/02/2025
Two really important papers for anyone interested in causal inference in ecology came out recently in Ecology Letters. 1st up (by @lauradee.bsky.social & @katherinesiegel.bsky.social) is this over-view paper. Really useful for both experts and beginners. buff.ly/4gZgTWa
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Boze Herrington, Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
Ursula le Guin, on the accusation that fantasy is an escape from reality
[“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape? The moneylenders, the know-nothings, the authoritarians have us all in prison; if we value the freedom of the mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can.”]
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Moritz Kraemer @mugkraemer.bsky.social · 20/02/2025
AI is poised to accelerate understanding in infectious diseases, but its value needs to be demonstrated through close collaboration between research, industry, society, and policy. Paper free to read: rdcu.be/eaxEw Summary here: www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-02...
rdcu.be
Artificial intelligence for modelling infectious disease epidemics
Nature - This Perspective considers the application to infectious disease modelling of AI systems that combine machine learning, computational statistics, information retrieval and data science.
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Stephen Curry @scurry.bsky.social · 13/02/2025
Thanks to the more than *1100* members of the scientific community who have signed the letter to insist that the Royal Society remains true to values that we all hold dear but that Musk FRS has ridden roughshod over. Please keep signing & sharing. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
docs.google.com
Open letter to the President of the Royal Society – time to stand up for your values
If you wish to show your support for the letter below regarding apparent inaction by the Royal Society in the face of breaches of its code of conduct by Elon Musk FRS, please sign below. I invite anyo...
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Simon Cauchemez @scauchemez.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
Serological data provide key insights on pathogen circulation. We introduce a new R package, Rsero, which is a pipeline to store and analyze age-stratified sero data, estimate the history of pathogen circulation and compare different transmission models. journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
journals.plos.org
RSero: A user-friendly R package to reconstruct pathogen circulation history from seroprevalence studies
Author summary Antibodies are immune markers of past infections. Seroprevalence studies that characterize the seropositivity status in the population have been used for decades in epidemiological stud...
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Rafa Lopes @rafalpx.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
This a summary of last part o my Ph.D. We investigated how temperature can affect the outcome of dengue infection. The study covers a 10y period in all five regions of Brasil and all sub-climates of the country We conclude that higher temperature makes risk of hospitalizations due dengue bigger!
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The Ferrari Lab @theferrarilab.bsky.social · 10/02/2025
I can't begin to convey how horrible this would be. The US and UK, collectively, have supported 15-20% of Gavi's budget in the last several funding cycles. To understand the impact here you have to know that Gavi does much more that just buy vaccines 1/ (disclosure - I receive funding from Gavi)
theguardian.com
Dismay as UK poised to cut funding for global vaccination group Gavi
Exclusive: Aid charities alarmed as decision would come in wake of Donald Trump’s decision to freeze USAid activities
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I-Ting Tu @itingtu.bsky.social · 10/02/2025
Our new paper on bat influenza transmission dynamics is out. Check it out 👀🦇🦠 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
Dynamics of influenza transmission in vampire bats revealed by longitudinal monitoring and a large-scale anthropogenic perturbation
Common vampire bats maintain bat-associated influenza virus H18N11 across Peru.
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 04/02/2025
Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? Jevin West (@jevinwest.bsky.social) and I have spent the last eight months developing the course on large language models (LLMs) that we think every college freshman needs to take. thebullshitmachines.com
thebullshitmachines.com
INTRODUCTION
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 04/02/2025
what a disaster. if this decision is not reversed immediately, its damage on science & society will be unravelling in infinite nuanced ways for decades to come
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TheBlindboyPodcast @blindboyboatclub.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
New podcast, I loved making this. It's 51 minutes of me deciding wether or not to lick a window, which delves into transactional analysis psychology and stories of fish landing in forests during the great storm of 1839 open.spotify.com/episode/2XuJ...
open.spotify.com
In defence of licking dirt off a window
The Blindboy Podcast · Episode
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Jayna Raghwani @jraghwani.bsky.social · 31/01/2025
Just over week until the deadline👇
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Ollie Wearn @olliewearn.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
Interesting updates from Ben Bolker on modelling approaches (see paper) In sum: - Doing hypothesis testing or measuring the strength of effects? Then you can use your fullest, maximal model w/ all covariates* ✅ - Doing prediction? Then carry on w/ AIC model selection & averaging ✅ *wisely chosen!
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Laura Dee @lauradee.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
Foundations and future directions for causal inference in ecological research, forthcoming w/ @katherinesiegel.bsky.social: tinyurl.com/4mm57zzd. We wrote it based on our experience teaching causal inference to ecologists w/ some stuff we wish other papers had reviewed to share w/ the students 1/n
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Dr Liam Brierley @liambrierley.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
Just as there is "no such thing as a fish", there is no such thing as a "human pathogen" if you set put your evolutionary timescale goggles on. Supplementary Note 1 does a nice job of articulating and framing the ancient history of virus host jumps! static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10...
static-content.springer.com
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UCL Faculty of Life Sciences @ucllifesciences.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
Special edition of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society published, which includes UCL research highlighting the threat to biodiversity from global warming and arguing for a better understanding of the effects of biodiversity loss on infectious diseases. www.ucl.ac.uk/biosciences/...
ucl.ac.uk
Georgina Mace remembered in special edition of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
A special edition of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (Biological Sciences) dedicated to the life’s work and memory of Professor Dame Georgina Mace, founding Director of UCL's Centr...
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Kate Jones 🦇 @profkatej.bsky.social · 14/01/2025
Job Alert! Lecturer/Assoc Prof in Biodiversity, Climate Change & Health Deadline 18th Feb 2025 Join us at UCL People & Nature Lab to lead innovative ‘One Health’ research & teaching to tackle ecological & public health challenges. tinyurl.com/4s2j7fyj
ucl.ac.uk
UCL – University College London
UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).
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Timothée Poisot @ctrlalttim.com · 16/01/2025
Pandemics, global change, and biodiversity loss? In a new paper published in the first issue of @natrevbiodiv.bsky.social, we argue that these are three facets of an ongoing polycrisis, with common roots, and hopefully common solution. A short thread. 🧪😷 www.nature.com/articles/s44...
nature.com
Pathogens and planetary change - Nature Reviews Biodiversity
This Review explores the relationship between emerging infectious diseases and biodiversity loss, and how both are connected to global environmental changes in the Anthropocene.
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Rory Gibb @roryjgibb.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
Great thread by @colincarlson.bsky.social summarising our new paper in @natrevbiodiv.bsky.social 🦠🦟🧪😷 bsky.app/profile/coli...
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Torre Lavelle @torrelavelle.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
🚨New paper out @natrevbiodiv.bsky.social on how pathogens and parasites are responding to global change, and implications for pandemic prevention and biodiversity conservation. Check it out below!
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Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
If you take one thing away from our paper, I hope it's this: there's no safe path through the Pandemicene without action on environmental protection, sustainable development, and health system strengthening. Single-issue advocacy and siloed solutions put the world at greater risk from pandemics.
header of our paper "Pathogens and planetary change"
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Nature Reviews Biodiversity @natrevbiodiv.nature.com · 15/01/2025
Here we go! The first issue of Nature Reviews Biodiversity is now live🥳🎉🥂. Thank you to our authors, reviewers, and community for the support! We hope you enjoy the reading. www.nature.com/nrbd/volumes...
Two birds of different species looking at each other from different sides of a river
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Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
Second: We need more evidence on causal relationships between human activities, ecosystem function, and infectious disease risk - especially for pandemic threats, but also for other priorities like neglected tropical diseases. We also need observational studies on which interventions work, and why.
Two perspectives on the relationship between anthropogenic environmental change and disease emergence. The top panel shows the 'eco-immunological' perspective, where one flows into the other in a series of cascading causes. The bottom panel shows the 'social-ecological' perspective, which focuses more on variation across landscapes, and how health risks shift in different types of ecosystems.
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Benny Borremans 🇧🇪🇺🇸 @bennyborremans.wildlifehero.org · 15/01/2025
Lucid insights on where we’re at on actually understanding pandemics, and where we’re not (yet) at:
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Rory Gibb @roryjgibb.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
How are pathogens and parasites responding to planetary change, what does this mean for people and biodiversity, and what is to be done? New @viralemergence.org synthesis out today in Nature Rev Biodiversity (@natrevbiodiv.bsky.social) with a fantastic author team🧪😷 www.nature.com/articles/s44...
nature.com
Pathogens and planetary change - Nature Reviews Biodiversity
This Review explores the relationship between emerging infectious diseases and biodiversity loss, and how both are connected to global environmental changes in the Anthropocene.
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Samantha M. Wisely @profwisely.bsky.social · 14/01/2025
doi.org/10.1098/rstb... This new paper asks us to alter the paradigm of disease ecology to integrate ecological with socio-economic data. Humans are not separate from the ecosystem, yet most research treats humans as the endpoint. This perspective shift can create more equitable outcomes. 👩🏻‍🔬🧪🌎
doi.org
Towards a ‘people and nature’ paradigm for biodiversity and infectious disease | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Zoonotic and vector-borne infectious diseases are among the most direct human health consequences of biodiversity change. The COVID-19 pandemic increased health policymakers’ attention on the links be...
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Heather Ferguson @drheatherferg.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
New paper from #MosquitoScotland project led by Dr Georgia Kirby @uofgsbohvm.bsky.social - a review of Ecological risk factors for the establishment of West Nile virus in Britain. Article reviews the ecology of British mosquitoes to assess risk of WNV establishment. ⏬ doi.org/10.1016/j.pt...
Photo shows Dr Georgia Kirby  (from waist up) standing outside near a tree, hanging a Biogents mosquito trap from a tree branch.  The Biogents mosquito trap looks like an inverted funnel, with the wider part at the bottom, and a narrow end at the top.  The top is black plastic ring with an opening.  There is a source of carbon dioxide in the trap that draws mosquitoes into the opening.  They then get trapped in the funnel, which is made of netting material supported by a wire frame.  Georgia is wearing a black tshirt, has shoulder length dark hair and is wearing glasses.
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Erwan Rivault @erwanrivault.com · 10/01/2025
NEW: 2024 has just been confirmed as the warmest year on record, and the first to breach the 1.5C threshold. We used a ridgeline (Joy Division inspired) chart to visualise daily temperature anomalies since 1940. 2024 clearly stands out with 100% of its days above 1.3C and 75% above 1.5C.
Ridgeline chart showing the distribution of global daily air temperature differences from the pre-industrial reference period (1850-1900), for every year between 1940 and 2024. Each individual year resembles a hill, shaded in a darker shade of red and further to the right for warmer years. The trend is clearly towards warmer years, with 2024 standing out as first year above 1.5C.
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Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
We’re on the cusp of the next pandemic starting in the USA, and journalists are still cherry-picking data to tell this tired, racist story about spillover being a problem of the Global South (because scientists keep telling them that story) www.ft.com/content/a714...
Map of the “global menace” of spillover events but it’s just a few points in Africa and one in South AmericaSome more points in Asia and one in Aus
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Sagan Friant @saganfriant.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
Thank @roryjgibb.bsky.social for the opportunity to contribute toward building a 'people and nature' paradigm for biodiversity-disease research and action as part of this new special issue.
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Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
This is a really fantastic read - a great tour of modern views on conservation, and how they can help us move beyond 'longstanding scientific narratives of human involvement in zoonotic disease systems, which have largely framed people as ecological disruptors' and look to solutions. 🌸🤝🦠
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Joseph Williamson @josephwilliamson.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
🚨New paper 🚨We argue that abrupt biodiversity losses can be driven by populations sharing similar tolerances to warming 🦋🌎🥵. Out now in @royalsocietypublishing.org. Summary thread below 🧵 royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/epdf/10....
screenshot of the article in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B titled 'Clustered warming tolerances and the nonlinear risks of biodiversity loss on a warming planet'
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Andy Purvis @andypurvisnhm.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
‘Bending the curve towards nature recovery: building on Georgina Mace's legacy for a biodiverse future’ - a special issue of Phil Trans R Soc B in honour of a very special biodiversity scientist - is published today by @royalsociety.org. royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/202...
royalsocietypublishing.org
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences: Vol 380, No 1917
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