2019
- This November a workshop on “Diverse careers outside academia” was held at the Leibniz-Institute for freshwater ecology and inland fisheries, a research institute in Berlin. The aim was to give the students and postdocs doing research there institute a chance to meet PhD scientists who have science-related jobs outside academia. Speakers included freelance consultants, scientific sales representative, environmental officers, and a certain Nature Communications editor. Initiatives like this are especially precious for early career ecologists, for whom prospects of non-academic positions may not be as obvious (or even realistic) as for many of their counterparts. (I haven't tried, but I am pretty sure that a PhD in, say, genomics would open more doors in industry than my studies on the effects of climate change on tiny soil worms' populations). About 40 early career researches attended the event, which consisted of 6 talks and timed round-tables with the presenters. The early-career researchers asked me tons of questions on what it takes to be an editor for a Nature journal, what's fun and what's less fun about it, and of course what happens behind the editorial curtains when their manuscripts.
- A new paper in Nature estimates the number and biomass of soil nematodes across the globe, and at least partly solves long-standing questions on how they are distributed across the world's ecosystem. Soil nematodes are the most abundant group of terrestrial animal on the planet, and you may be tempted to conclude that humans working to this paper take second place -- look at that author list! Oh, I am one of those, by the way... I collaborated to this study during my postdoc with Diana Wall at Colorado State University. Besides providing the leading authors with more than a few data points, Diana and I made a small but, I hope, valuable contribution to this research project, from helping define the criteria for sample selection and how to combine data from different sources at the very beginning, to giving tips on how to interpret the results and contextualise them with what was known from previous studies. But of course the real credit goes to lead authors Johan van den Hoogen & Stefan Geisen and Tom Crowther, who not only conceived the idea, assembled the data and performed the analyses, but also made it through the quasi-heroic task of integrating comments and opinions from all the rest of us. Nice to see this published in the very top academic journal!
- An exciting new publication from a project I worked on at Colorado State University is out in PNAS: "Drought suppresses soil predators and promotes root herbivores in mesic, but not in xeric grasslands". To read in simple terms what we did and why it matters, please see this press release, or go here. (The key finding, basically, is that drought in the North American grasslands disrupts the soil food web, potentially at the expense of plants). My friend and colleague Andre Franco led the work, and believe me when I say he wasn't afraid of getting his hands dirty to see the job done. I mean literally dirty: I think he spent more time digging soil and fixing equipment in the field than counting nematodes in the lab – and we counted a lot of nematodes.
I'll never forget my last day of sampling in the short-grass steppe, one of the three study sites of this work. It was late summer. A windy day, as usual in the steppe. En route we had seen a few pronghorns, fast disappearing in the wavy sea of grass and shrubs as our vehicle approached. While we were sampling, a pair of big vultures roamed above us – rather too optimistically, for the work was not as hard as to make us drop dead anytime soon. But then, who am I to judge a bird's hopes.
Update: A second paper from this Wall Lab & Sala Lab collaborative project mentioned above was published in Soil Biology and Biochemistry. In this study, led by yours truly, my colleagues and I show that aridity appears to be an environmental filter against large soil nematodes. To put another way, the drier the climate, the less the nematode community can support big species, even after two years of extremely high precipitation. By the way, if words like "big" and "large" make you smile considering that we're talking about microscopic worms, please bear in mind that the biggest species in this dataset is about 300 times heavier than the smallest one. That's more than the difference between you and an adult elephant. - Starting in May, I am a full-time Associate Editor for Nature Communications, one of the most respected of all academic journals and fully open access. I joined the Genetics, Ecology, Evolution and Zoology team led by Rebecca Furlong, and I will be handling ecology submissions, particularly those having to do with global change, conservation, and sustainability. I am confident that the skills and knowledge I acquired doing research across three continents and very different study systems, writing as well as reviewing research articles, and interacting with researchers from different fields (most notably in a tremendously multidisciplinary Antarctic project I was part of), will all come handy during this work. At the same time I am aware of having a lot to learn from the more experienced editors, and I look forward to it!
- My research proposal for a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions fellowship was not successful. It was, however, awarded the "Seal of Excellence", as one of the proposals that scored very highly (above 85%) yet could not be funded from the call budget. Even before receiving this, I was not wholly dissatisfied with how things went (though I would have preferred to obtain the funding, ça va sans dire): I had won travel grant proposals and the like before, but writing a Marie Curie proposal is a different thing, and I learnt a lot from the experience.
- In December I went to the British Ecological Society annual meeting, this year taking place in Birmingham. The BES meeting is one of the best ecology conferences anywhere on the planet, and I enjoyed it tremendously. Interesting science, a flow of ideas, seeing some old faces and meeting new ones (or people so far I had interacted with only via email!) - it's almost better than a holiday. I gave a talk on an experiment I performed while in Colorado, in which I tested how warming affects food web interactions in an Antarctic soil. It's one of my contributions to the McMurdo Dry Valleys LTER project, and my collaborators and I will soon be at work to finish the analyses and publish the results. BES 2018 was likely my last conference as a Wall lab member, as my affiliation with Colorado State University ends soon. Next year I'll probably be somewhere in Europe, but where? Stay tuned to find out...
- The "Beneath Our Feet" blog of the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative - check out their shining new website - features a post I wrote about my latest paper with Prof. Diana Wall: A soil ecological perspective to trophic rewilding.
- My latest paper is out in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (possibly the oldest scientific journal in the world, as its grandiose and old-fashioned name kind of suggests), and is accessible open access until October 29 here. [Update: If that link no longer works, use this one]. It's part of a thematic issue on trophic rewilding, the (re)introduction of large animals to restore natural ecosystems. In our review article, Diana Wall and I discuss what is known (and, crucially, what is not!) on the impact of rewilding on soil, and in turn how soil organisms may either facilitate or hinder the aims of rewilding. I hope you enjoy reading it!
- An abstract I submitted to the annual meeting of the British Ecological Society has been accepted for a talk in the Soil Ecology session. Want to know what happens to the microbe-feeding nematodes and the nematode-sustaining microbes of a really cold desert soil when global warming hits? This work of mine, a contribution to the MCM-LTER project, will give some clues. Stay tuned.
- On a more personal note, after having the privilege of setting foot on some really far-off islands (Maui, New Zealand, Ross Island...), I finally, indeed belatedly, explored Sicily. Whether you like mountains, the sea, art, history, food, or all of these things, put that place on top of your go-to list.
- A review article I've been working on with Diana Wall this past year has been accepted for publication in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. I'll keep the details undisclosed for now, except that it's part of a theme issue on trophic rewilding, that it was fun to write, and that it was kind of needed, really. Just a hint: the two most recent, major reviews on the topic, and the titles of the > 100 studies in the references of each, mentioned soil--and related things like roots, decomposition, etc.—exactly 0 times. Zero. Maybe most people don't forget their roots, but it looks like most rewilding ecologists forget the roots (quite literally) of the ecosystems they are supposed to help restore. Update- the thematic issue on trophic rewilding is online as of October 22.
- Between research proposals and manuscripts to work on, this summer is being just as busy as I had expected. But this did not deny me the chance to rendezvous with some old friends, and to explore this varied stretch of land that cuts through the Mediterranean, and especially some its most beautiful mountains: the Dolomites in Trentino and Veneto, and the Pollino in Basilicata and Calabria.
- On June 26, after three pretty cool years of science, hiking, and new friendships my adventure in the US came to an end. My time as a postdoctoral researcher in Diana Wall's lab at Colorado State University has been quite productive, with a good amount of field work in beautiful locations, and allowed me to work and/or connect with amazing colleagues; plus of course I made it to Antarctica, twice. And, while my time in Colorado may be over, my work with Diana and the others at CSU is not: until the end of this year I am affiliated with the lab and the Department of Biology at CSU as a "visiting scientist", as we have a few studies to keep working on. In the meantime this summer I will also be working on a funding proposal, reviewing manuscripts for journals, and looking for interesting research opportunities in Europe and elsewhere. While doing all this, I also look forward to travel, especially in Italy, as I've realized I haven't rambled in my native country as much as I would have liked.
- My latest study from the Wall lab is out in Journal of Animal Ecology: "Grazing and resource availability control soil nematode body size and abundance-mass relationship in semi-arid grassland"
- New publication: "Spatial and temporal patterns of microbial mats and associated invertebrates along an Antarctic stream". Full-text can be viewed here.
- Our study on Antarctic soil fauna and climate change was also covered in the Antarctic Sun, the official "newspaper" of the United States Antarctic Program.
- A study on Antarctic soil fauna and climate change I led was highlighted in the non-profit environmental news website Mongabay: Climate change imperils tiny animal in the world’s most extreme continent. Previously, the same study had been reported also in Colorado State University's news and in BioTechniques news
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