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Uriel Menalled

@urielmenalled.bsky.social
1.6K followers 808 following 130 posts

Assistant Professor of Agroecology at Montana State University 🏔️ #Rstats Lab website: urielmenalled.github.io/lab-website

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Uriel Menalled @urielmenalled.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
First fieldwork day at Montana State University in the books! We sampled soils from various berry species for a crop rotation study. This matters because berry farmers invest heavily in infrastructure (bird netting, trellises, etc.) that limits their rotation capacity when production drops.
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Anthony Ricciardi @ecoinvasions.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
... Part of the story is documented here: www.researchgate.net/publication/... and here: www.researchgate.net/publication/... The photos below show the contrast in forest understory in uninvaded (top) and invaded (bottom) sites on Christmas Island by the yellow crazy ant.
Impacts of invasion of Christmas Island rain forest by the yellow crazy ant. 
(Top) Uninvaded site with open understorey maintained largely by the foraging activities of the red land crab.

(Bottom) Invaded site 1–2 years after ant invasion with a dense & diverse seedling cover and thick litter layer. Photos by Peter Green.
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Journal of Applied Ecology @jappliedecology.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
📖 New research📖 These findings demonstrate that landscape forest cover plays a critical role in modulating edge effects in plant communities in this study system, but not all woody crop systems provide buffering benefits 🌳 🪾 🌲 👉️ besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
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New Phytologist @newphyt.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
✨ Paper spotlight ✨ (🧵1/4) Still standing: persistence traits capture belowground plant functions beyond resource exploration and acquisition nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Fig. 1 Conceptual linkages between traits and plant functioning lead to three dimensions of variation in the belowground functional space.
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Uriel Menalled @urielmenalled.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
First day of work at Montana State University! It's official: I'm a professor now!
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IPES-Food @ipes-food.org · 06/08/2026
The same companies profiting from fossil fuels are driving the #climatecrisis disrupting food production. As conflict pushed up oil prices, 8 oil giants made $93bn in just 3 months. Meanwhile, farmers faced higher costs, harvests suffered, & food prices rose. www.theguardian.com/business/ng-...
theguardian.com
Revealed: major oil firms make $93bn profits amid war and climate crisis
Iran conflict windfall over three months reignites calls for companies ‘cashing in on human misery’ to pay for environmental damage
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EcoSnippets @ecosnippets.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
Eat Your Privacy Screen. Learn more here -> www.ecosnippets.com/permaculture/ed…
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Uriel Menalled @urielmenalled.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
A universal credit system tied to ORCID to address the problems editors are having with finding peer reviewers. Honestly, it seems like a good idea: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... #STEM #Science 🧪
pnas.org
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
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Uriel Menalled @urielmenalled.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
I recommend academics look into university-hosted AI (🧵 1/2): I'm lucky enough to access Gemma 4-31B via my university's HPC using an API key to code in #rstats. For now, I've been able to avoid any (increasingly expensive) subscriptions with that and #GitHub Copilot's "free" educator AI tools.
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Uriel Menalled @urielmenalled.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
#rstats, now that Positron Databot is being replaced by Posit Assistant, does that mean that I will have to pay a subscription fee to use AI in Positron? Even if I use locally-hosted models? youtu.be/4er6aua7zyI?...
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Philip Boucher-Hayes @philipb-h.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
15% of fossil fuels extracted each year are used to make fertiliser, run farms, process foods and transport them. In a very real sense our food is made from oil and gas. We are about to feel a very painful food shock. 1/
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Uriel Menalled @urielmenalled.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
🚨A new publication is out! 🚨 My first foray into chemical ecology and plant insect interactions.
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Agroecology Coalition @agroecology.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
🌱Episode 1 of Agroecology Uprooted by @iatp.bsky.social looks at the current food system and the potential for a radically sustainable approach to food and agriculture: Agroecology. 🎧 Listen here: www.iatp.org/agroecology-... #Agroecology #FoodSystems #FoodSystemsTransformation
iatp.org
Agroecology Uprooted Episode One: System Failure
As the war in Iran squeezes fertilizer and fuel supplies, there is renewed attention on the vulnerability of global food systems. But the roots of this current crisis go much deeper.
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Global Change Biology @globalchangebio.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
Climate Change Can Generate Enemy‐Free Space for Crop‐Feeding Herbivores 🔗 buff.ly/PyqDhA1
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Uriel Menalled @urielmenalled.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
How to deal with non-i.i.d data in machine learning open.substack.com/pub/mindfulm...
open.substack.com
How to deal with non-i.i.d data in machine learning
Ignoring this common problem can lead to data leakage, overfitting, and overly optimistic evaluation.
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Oded Rechavi @odedrechavi.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
Every PI
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Uriel Menalled @urielmenalled.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
How far do birds spread plant #seeds? Here's a cool paper that answers that very question. Dispersal range across plant species: - mean = 9–45 km - max = 58–521 km In the context of #agriculture, this means constant weed seed rain. #ecology royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...
royalsocietypublishing.org
How far can frugivorous birds disperse seeds during migration?
Abstract. Long-distance seed dispersal plays a crucial role in shaping plant distributions. The annual migration of millions of frugivorous birds holds sub
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Uriel Menalled @urielmenalled.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
Fun paper on the infamous corpse flower. One of the most interesting findings was that pollution degraded plant volatiles. Potentially, some interesting links to urban ecology, where pollution could reduce plant-insect interactions. 🤔 agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...
agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Efficient Pollination Stinks: Corpse Flowers Use Floral Trapping and Persistent Emissions
Sulfur compounds dominated the female flowers of a Titan arum bloom, while the male flowers had more chemically diverse floral emissions We identified evidence toward the use of floral trapping d...
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Uriel Menalled @urielmenalled.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
Fresh new website, coded with the help of #Claude! Theoretically, my publications and code will update automatically every 30 days! Amazing what AI can do. urielmenalled.github.io/lab-website/
urielmenalled.github.io
The Agroecology Lab at Montana State University
A research lab dedicated to supporting sustainable agriculture.
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Uriel Menalled @urielmenalled.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
True confession of a nerd 🤓: Is anyone else obsessed with GitHub? I just get so much satisfaction from seeing all my #rstats code in a tidy repo.
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Uriel Menalled @urielmenalled.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
I am honored to have been interviewed about #agroecology by Unsustainable magazine, a publication dedicated to exploring human interactions with the #environment and promoting #sustainability. www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsQS...
youtube.com
Agroecology and the Future of Farming
YouTube video by Unsustainable
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Nature Plants @natplants.nature.com · 05/02/2026
Now with a News & Views: "Novel crop rotation via de novo pennycress domestication" rdcu.be/e2vpe A new winter-rotation oilseed crop has been generated from a freeze-tolerant wild field pennycress by de novo domestication.
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Nature Plants @natplants.nature.com · 26/01/2026
New Article: "Creating a new oilseed crop, pennycress, by combining key domestication traits using CRISPR genome editing" rdcu.be/e0NAR De novo domestication by identifying and stacking CRISPR-induced mutations to create a new intermediate off-season oilseed crop.
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Grant McDermott @gmcd.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
ICYMI with a quick screenshot as sales pitch. Simply feed your estimation a bunch of .parquet files on disk and run it as normal. This example takes 180m rows of NYC taxi data and computes the model in < 1 second. On a laptop.
dbreg example showing how to estimate a model against a large dataset, comprising parquet files on disk. The model takes < 1 to run, including the time needed to read the data from disk.

dbreg(
   tip_amount ~ fare_amount + passenger_count | month + vendor_name,
   path     = "read_parquet('nyc-taxi/**/*.parquet')",
   vcov     = ~month,    # clustered SEs
   strategy = "compress" # skip auto strategy overhead
)
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Uriel Menalled @urielmenalled.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
Victor Jara's song "El Derecho de Vivir en Paz" (The Right to Live in Peace) is a good reminder that everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness because, as our nation's forefathers astutely pointed out, we are all created equal. youtu.be/V_xRSfjCyrg?...
youtu.be
El derecho de vivir en paz
YouTube video by Música Espacio Kuyen
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Alexander J. Stein @ajstein.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
Models are used to explore the global #foodsystem, incl. implications for #nutrition, with unclear confidence. In a #SensitivityAnalysis of a model, variations in the calculated supply of some nutrients led to qualitative changes from sufficient to insufficient global supply: doi.org/10.1007/s125...
doi.org
Client Challenge
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Uriel Menalled @urielmenalled.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
Why research #agroecology? Because the way we manage our farmland is one of the largest drivers of natural habitat loss and greenhouse gas emissions. #Sustainable agriculture is not just about food production; it's also about #conservation and climate change mitigation. #Farming #Agriculture
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Uriel Menalled @urielmenalled.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
Are you stuck on the fundamentals of Bayesian analysis? For a long time, I was. Sure, I was familiar with the equation P(A|B) = [P(B|A)*P(A)] / P(B), but it was hard to internalize. To this end, I've made an #RStats workshop on Bayesian analysis. Check it out on GitHub: github.com/UrielMenalle...
github.com
GitHub - UrielMenalled/workshop-BayesianR: Learn about Bayesian analysis theory and its application in R
Learn about Bayesian analysis theory and its application in R - UrielMenalled/workshop-BayesianR
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Uriel Menalled @urielmenalled.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
Big news! I'm starting a tenure-track position in Agroecology at Montana State University in Fall 2026! I feel incredibly honored to have this opportunity. To learn more about the position, check out the lab website: urielmenalled.wixsite.com/theagroecolo...
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Western SARE @westernsare.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
Reminder: Western SARE announces 2 new Calls for Proposals releases - Sabbatical Research & Education and the Graduate Student Research & Education grant programs. Due March 5, 2026. All Calls: ow.ly/oO6050XnZTu photo: Vo von Sehlen
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Nolan is growing mushrooms 🍄‍🟫 @ndmonaghan.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
A while ago, I wrote about the future of Kernza and perennial grain research. A concern I voiced was that, as grain yields increase, the plant would move from investing resources in roots and biomass in favor of seed yield, denuding the plants ability to curtail erosion and improve soil health. (🧵)
A field of Kernza with the sun peaking behind it
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Journal of Experimental Botany @jxbotany.bsky.social · 22/11/2025
🧪 EXPERT VIEW 🧪 🚜 One of the main challenges facing agriculture is the control of plant development without using chemical compounds harmful to the environment. 💡 Here, Thuleau et. al. present regulatory peptides as interesting potential alternatives. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/jxb/... #PlantScience
Fig. 2.Global overview of the mode of action of miPEPs and cPEPs. In red, remaining questions (see corresponding numbers in ‘Conclusion: future prospects’). Adapted from Lauressergues et al. (2022) and Ormancey et al. (2023b). Created with BioRender.com
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Martin A. Nuñez @martin-nunez.bsky.social · 03/11/2025
a century of glaciers melting 🧪🌐
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Anne Scheel @annemscheel.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
2) But the real elephant in the room is *your effect of interest*. @aaronjfisher.bsky.social is right in that statistical significance doesn't tell you if an effect is practically or theoretically meaningful. But that neither means that p-values are useless, nor does it depend on the sample size. >
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Uriel Menalled @urielmenalled.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
You can find anything on the Earth's surface. Anything detectable from space using Earth Index, an AI tool that you train quickly by selecting examples of your target (i.e., farms, wastewater, etc). What an epic tool from @earthgenome.org for geospatial analysis: www.earthgenome.org/earth-index#...
earthgenome.org
Earth Index | Find anything, anywhere
Empowering environmental defenders with AI to understand local trends.
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Earth Genome @earthgenome.org · 22/10/2025
🚀 🌪️ Launched Storm Events Database today w/ #thecommons & #internetofwatercoalition. We're unlocking 1.9 million US severe weather events from 1950 to the present! 🔗https://ourcommoncode.org/digital-service-case-studies/sed Explore the platform: stormevents.internetofwater.app
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Uriel Menalled @urielmenalled.bsky.social · 25/10/2025
Sampling plant and soil microbe communities in apple orchards across the mountains and valleys of Virginia! The prettiest field season I’ve ever had! Now time for some chemical analyses of apple phytochemicals 🧪🍎
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Geoff Zahn @geoffzahn.bsky.social · 14/10/2025
New "Fidelity" #rstats package release with Abbey Neat can quantify and compare the specificity of #microbiome communities associated with certain hosts or groups! It intelligently handles rare taxa removal. And check that handcrafted hex sticker! 😍
Hex sticker for Fidelity R package. Hand drawn artistic tree and mushroom.
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Uriel Menalled @urielmenalled.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
I'm excited about this nice way to collect plot-level species observations, calculating percent coverage or species counts! If you haven't checked our Pl@ntNet, I find it to be the best app for plant ID. @plantnet.bsky.social #PlantEcology #OpenData #CitizenScience youtu.be/BU4ckJgRlHg?...
youtu.be
Intro to Pl@ntNet plots
YouTube video by PlantNet
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DrZP @zarahpattison.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
Source: ScienceDaily search.app/M7ugv
search.app
Why some plants are taking over the world
Plants are spreading across the globe faster than ever, largely due to human activity, and new research shows that the very same traits that make plants thrive in their native lands also drive their s...
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Uriel Menalled @urielmenalled.bsky.social · 09/09/2025
After a master's, PhD, and postdoc at Cornell, I now set my sights on Virginia Tech, where I will be doing my second postdoc. At VTech, I'll be in Susan Whitehead's lab studying how plant and soil microbe diversity impacts apple quality. I'm looking forward to learning some chemical ecology!
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Uriel Menalled @urielmenalled.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
Okay, this is super cool! I wonder if we could use some similar approach to think about the diversity of ancient cropping systems 🤔. Anyone want to collaborate? #Agroecology #STEM #Paleobotany
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Uriel Menalled @urielmenalled.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
I can’t access the Fourth National Climate Assessment—the Trump admin took it down. It shows extreme precipitation will rise across much of the U.S., supporting my case for tillage reduction research. Farmers and researchers need this info! Below is an old screenshot. #ClimateChange #Farming
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Nature @nature.com · 13/08/2025
Predictions of climate change are uncertain. That’s why we need to keep finding out how our atmosphere works, says Tim Palmer go.nature.com/414QrVV
go.nature.com
Just how bad will climate change get? The only way to know is to fund basic research
Predictions of climate change are uncertain. That’s why we need to keep finding out how our atmosphere works.
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Uriel Menalled @urielmenalled.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
Do you ever get frustrated when you open old code and find that functions that ran in the past were deprecated? Enter {renv}, a package that stores all package version information in a within-project library! I've been using it for reproducible analysis and long-term code storage. #Rstats
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Journal of Applied Ecology @jappliedecology.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
Forest cover enhances pest control by birds and bats independently of vineyard management intensity 🌲🧪 Highlights the ecological and economic value of birds and bats as natural pest control agents in vineyards 🦇🌏 🔗 doi.org/10.1111/1365...
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Uriel Menalled @urielmenalled.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
Shout out to the #rstats {performance} package. Its check_model() function is super helpful for model evaluation. #statistics #STEM
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Uriel Menalled @urielmenalled.bsky.social · 11/06/2025
As someone who enjoys meat but is concerned about the environment, I found it interesting to see that poultry is relatively "light" in terms of GHG emissions per 100 g of protein and land use. Is there a catch to eating chicken that I'm missing? Full paper: www.nature.com/articles/s44...
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Uriel Menalled @urielmenalled.bsky.social · 11/06/2025
Two global meta-analyses of cover cropping report that, on average, cover crops increase the yield of following crops by 2.6% (Peng et al. 2024) to 9.1% (He et al. 2025) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... www.nature.com/articles/s44...
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Pablo Garcia-Diaz @pablo-ecology.bsky.social · 23/05/2025
Interested in modelling multiple ecosystem services and their interactions but don't know where to start? Check out our OA new paper! We combined expert knowledge and network analyses to build conceptual system maps and guide data-gathering efforts. 🌎🧪🌐 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Graphical abstract of the paper 'Conceptual system maps to guide research and management of multiple ecosystem services and disservices' showing a map of the Lules river watershed (Tucuman Argentina); two photos of experts working in groups; an arrow indicating that the knowledge derived from experts was encoded into a network; and a network showing the relationships between ecosystem services and disservices and their environmental, social, and economic drivers
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