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drcairns.bsky.social
Molecular biologist. Genetics and canid nerd. Passion for dingoes, canids, eDNA metabarcoding, citizen science & conservation. Research Fellow at UNSW. threads and insta @dr_cairns
20 posts 1,366 followers 490 following
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Ok, here’s my starter pack! go.bsky.app/4ASwaLv Non-exhaustive list!

Please welcome @agatastaniewicz.bsky.social, the scientist who broke Twitter (when it was still Twitter) with the hashtag #FieldworkFail by telling the story of how she glued herself to a crocodile. 🐊 🌍 🧪 #academicsky fieldworkfail.com/en/

Never gets old

🚨 #DiscoveryProjects #DP25 announcement: ❗️Outcomes announced publicly for Discovery Projects 2025❗️ See ARC's RMS for list ➡️ rms.arc.gov.au/RMS/Report/D... /bot

Interesting - particularly in the context of the cultural value and importance of #dingoes to Indigenous Australians and the massive scale of government dingo culling programs in National Parks. @euanritchie.bsky.social @howlingdingo.bsky.social

Mass bleaching of corals on the Great Barrier Reef in early 2024 was the most severe and most widespread yet recorded - surpassing 1998, 2002, 2016, 2017, 2020 & 2022. The overall mortality rate this year will exceed the 30% loss in 2016. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Let’s start a thread of orgs you support, are important, but are not yet on Bluesky! Reply with the org & their contact info. I’ll gladly contact them & ask them to make the switch! Want to reach out to my fav? Voyagers Wolf Project! www.voyageurswolfproject.org/contact

www.startribune.com/a-clever-wol... Researchers and farmers working together to find a solution to livestock predation that doesn’t involve killing wolves (as much). Turns out barrier fences can and do work to deter wolves, and livestock guardians compliment this strategy.

Sunday chicken coop refresh - the ladies are happy! #chickenclub #chickens #heritagebreeds

Using #eDNA to learn about the diet of predators and thus predation risk using metabarcoding. Our #eDNA source was 💩 and our team includes Traditional Owners, local community members and Gov ecologists/officers. We managed to collect scat from #dingoes, #foxes, #feralcats, #goannas, #owls and more!

The video provided in Supplementary Information from the very interesting paper by Lai and co-authors in Ecology, showing potential pollination by Ethiopian wolves of Kniphofia foliosa! 🐺 Read it here: esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... @pollinet.bsky.social

DNA metabarcoding reveals unexpected diet breadth of the specialist large-headed resin bee (Heriades truncorum) in urbanised areas across Germany @royentsoc.bsky.social resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Bluesky is emerging as the new platform for science. Indeed almost all people who used to be active on climate change on Twitter/X are now here. To get more content: @katharinehayhoe.com has the complete overview and best starter packs, as usual 😀 mikeyoungacademy.dk/bluesky-is-e...

We had our first decent dump of rain in a while at Mt Gibson last night, which means the frogs are back out and about in abundance. At this time of year, the chorus seems to be dominated by the Shoemaker's Frog (Neobatrachus sutor; left) and the Wheatbelt Frog (N. kunapalari; right). #WildOz

Unfortunately demonstrated in the way Australian Governments are failing to shift policy about #dingo conservation follow updated knowledge about their identity and limited evidence of contemporary dingo-dog hybridisation.

Multiple gov'ts and agencies call dingos wild dogs, apparently to increase the social acceptability of dingo control.

A bit late to the game, but I participated in this collaboration of over 100 Australian ecologists, led by the amazing @dadriscoll.bsky.social on Biodiversity impacts of the 2019–2020 Australian megafires that was recently published in @natureportfolio.bsky.social: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our new study out in @ScienceAdvances shows human presence in Tasmania at least 41,600 years ago, nearly 2000 years earlier than previously thought, and Aboriginal people burned and used wet forests. Link: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

So, hypothetically, if a threatened species’ population had declined by up to 70% in 15 years, with loss of genetic diversity too, but there was uncertainty about the data, would you halve decline estimate, landing on ‘vulnerable’ or would you assume estimate is reasonable and land on ‘endangered’?

I’m so chuffed to be a part of this project - doing the eDNA lab work and bioinformatics - connecting western science and TEK to understand the risk of predators to native wildlife on Country. youtu.be/Zp6fkFJaJ5Y?...

michaelwest.com.au/has-australi...

The science is in - the animals killed as “wild dogs” are native dingoes. These bosses of Country need to be protected in National Parks not baited and killed. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Lab view #fridays!

Had a brilliant field week - plenty of carnivore sightings including 3 quolls and +6 dingoes! Looking forward to getting into the lab with more samples 👩🏻‍🔬👩‍💻

Do not stay silent, good people. Do not leave the fight up to too few. This 👇 from 'To the future: An ecology of love, hope, and action' - Prof. John Woinarski onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Short note describing instances of dingoes killing foxes by @HWConflict et al. doi.org/10.7882/AZ.2... A discovery during radio tracking of GPS collared dingoes on the NSW coast.

Dingoes are are under lethal control across large parts of Australia, including in National Parks. In our The Conversation article we highlight how we could live in harmony with our apex land predator drawing on experience from Western and Indigenous knowledge t.co/t6XkInoOe7

Looking forward to some more field work in the next few weeks - scat collecting for diet studies! I’m all about the shit science at the moment 🤭

I’m new to #BlueSky - aiming to continue my scicom about dingoes, dogs and hybridisation. A few months ago I published the results of a 6+ year study updating DNA methods for dingo ancestry testing. Surprisingly we found hybridization was uncommon in Australia! theconversation.com/new-dna-test...

Proud to have written this, with good friends and colleagues, Sonya Grant, Whitney Rassip, Bradley Smith, Kylie Cairns, and Angus Emmott. theconversation.com/the-boss-of-...