Mike Fowler

@theorecol.bsky.social

1449 Followers 779 Following

Theoretical & Quantitative Ecologist. Dad. Whisky lover. Football coach. Relearning the drums. Not necessarily in that order. See also @theorecol@ecoevo.social He/him

Screenshot of the following text from the instructions on a NERC Funding Opportunity web page. "Use of novel, critical technologies in your application UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) is seeking to support researchers and innovators to develop and make use of novel, critical technologies including artificial intelligence, engineering biology, and quantum technologies throughout its investment portfolio. We have also set out our aspirations for the future of data and technology in environmental science in our digital strategy 2021 to 2030. In developing your application to this funding opportunity, you may wish to consider how the innovative use of critical technologies and approaches addressing the ambitions of NERC’s digital strategy, might offer opportunities to address your research questions in new and novel ways. This might include the development of new collaborations across domains and disciplines."
A green roof space at the BIOME Biophilic Living building in Swansea, UK.
A screenshot of my profile with details of the number of followers, followings and posts.
Image of the album cover used by Primal Scream on their "Screamadelica" recording, released in September 1991. The colourscheme (red, yellow, blue white black) and facial like features bear a striking resemblence to the plastid image in the quoted microblog post.
A schematic figure of the position of a model penguin during defaecation and physical parameters used to calculate rectal pressure necessary to expel faecal material over a distance of 40 cm. Taken from a scientific paper by Meyer-Rocho & Gal (2003). Pressures produced when penguins pooh—calculations on avian defaecation. Polar Biology 27: 56-58. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-003-0563-3
A screenshot of a BBC Sport article headline with the subtitle "Scotland captain Andy Robertson speaks to Kelly Cates and her father Sir Kenny Dalglish before his last game for Liverpool."
A screenshot showing "pay to access" details for an academic book chapter titled "The NeoFailure of Neoliberalism".
A jumper, on a bandstand, in the People's Park, Dun Laoghaire. I wondered where that had gone.
Picture of some weird, medieval looking hooked torture device sold by Temu that claims to be the "#1 Teeth Cleaner That Easily Removes Plaque, Tartar and Calculus In Under 5 Mins..."
Roger the alien, doing an uncanny impression of a sycamore tree.
A frequency histogram showing the distribution of p-values from published research analyses, showing a sudden decline in frequencies for values greater than p=0.05. There is a probability less than 1 in 20 that this distribution could arise by chance.
Image of the front cover of the ICES Journal of Marine Science which states "Celebrating 100 years of marine science publishing".
Screenshot of Google Scholar article titied "Experimental evidence that extra-pair mating drives"
Image is a screenshot of a filename titled "Add_a_heading.pdf"
A screen shot of a slide containing the word "Confidential" in red, surrounded by a red box, hovering above a university shield logo and the top half of the name of the university, with the bottom half cropped out. The university name rhymes with G'won-see ballooniversity. That's funny, y'see, because it's run by a bunch of balloons. Which is slang for incompetent, out-of-touch idiots. I probably should've gone for buffooniversity.
Still image of Blackadder asking Baldrick "Is you plan as cunning as a fox who's just been appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University?" taken from Blackadder Goes Forth
Espresso maker, expressing life giving liquids.
A frozen pond reflecting bright moonlight over Swansea Bay
Screenshot of a pdf titled "Expert-led priorities for a response diversity research agenda in ecology" by Sam Ross et al, to be published in the journal Oikos.
Arthur's Seat, waking up to autumnal sunshine, from the Bayes Centre.
A building in Edinburgh advertising, amongst other things, fancy leather goods and woodenware, in faded paint on sooty sandstone.
A sunflower, denuded of its petals, basks in the early autumnal sunshine.
A pavement cracked by tree roots. Organic rubbish bin included for scale.
Screenshot stating "I am currently on a phased return from work due to concussion. My replies will be delayed."
A sculpture of the word "Art" behind a large communal rubbish bin on a well-to-do residential street in Zürich, Switzerland. Photographed in July 2025.
Teams heading onto the pitch at Tannadice Park for Dundee United v UNA Strassen in a UEFA Conference 2nd round qualifier. Supporters arms held in the air, waiting in anticipation for a thrilling 1-0 win for the Terrors against a mediocre team from Luxembourg. United were honking. It's as if the manager doesn't actually want us to win games. Loved it anyway!
Screenshot of a research paper that has collected six hundred and sixty six citations to date.
A Swansea street sign, Little Gam Street.
A beautiful border collie in a garden, who is two neurons short of a recall response.
Comparison of the size of chickens from 1957-2005. Chickens have trebled in size over this timespan.
Two partially overlapping circles with text in each. One circle states "All the things". The other states "All the things that shouldn't be in a Venn diagram". I know. It's a joke. The set-up is the pipe reference.
Details of the Response Diversity Network seminar, given by JF Arnoldi, including a Zoom link and Abstract: Ecosystem functions describe processes like biomass production, respiration, or nutrient cycling, that can be key to the livelihood of humans and other life forms. These functions are collectively performed by the many species that constitute an ecosystem; trees in a forest, plants in a grassland, or bacterial strains in a microbiome. Here, I will use linear algebra to show that generically, there is a sense in which a rare species can have as much importance as an abundant one. The reason why this claim is not obvious comes from the fact that in functional ecology, under the mass-ratio hypothesis, species contributions should be well predicted by their effect traits and abundance. I will illustrate using soil-microbiome data that this hypothesis has merit, even for complex functions related to nutrient cycling. Yet the mass-ratio hypothesis has an awkward corollary: functions are typically performed by just a few dominant species, so that most of an ecosystem's diversity appears redundant, or even useless. To understand why rare species can be important, one has to take a perturbative approach, looking at the sensitivity of a function to say, added mortality (a pathogen) on a given species. Doing so reveals a completely different picture than the one the mass-ratio hypothesis depicts. Via direct and indirect interactions between them, species can have large impacts on a given function, even if those species are rare or if they do not possess traits that relate to the function. 
Image of text in an email, stating "This email is not a travel ticket".
Image of the front cover of Stephen Heard's "The Scientist's Guide to Writing". An excellent work!
View of the Sant Andreu vs Torrent football game in Barcelona.
Screenshot of a bluesky post about the 7.4% of UK universities that have accepted a portrait of King Charles, followed by a response stating that the respondent's church received one that they can't hang up due to the complications of planning permission required "to put a nail in the wall".
Helsingin Rautatientori Asema. 4 miestä suurilla palloilla. Helsinki Railway Station. 4 guys wi big baws.
Screenshot of a Zoom training session titled "The Seven Secrets of Highly Effective Researchers" scheduled to last for 3.5 hrs.
Two monkeys in and in front of a tree
Image of the post author's torso modelling a "Ghostbusters" t-shirt.
Album cover art from Deacon Blue's 1991 masterpiece "Fellow Hoodlums", designed by Jane Carrol and Alistair McCallum of Central Design.
Image of a fish, most certainly not riding a bicycle, lying on a concrete path. Possibly pining for the fjords. Probably not a parrot fish, though.
Screenshot of email with text stating "Please find attached your subproject budget report for period '202502'. Kind Regards, Financial Management and Reporting Team"
Screenshot of an X-premium advert from former Twitter, stating that "X is the world's town square."
Celebration image for Bluesky's 10 millionth user. I am user 1,336,742
Screenshot of my Bluesky thread, juxtaposing two contrasting claims in a lighthearted manner. 1) User A claims they've not seen anyone posting a Bluesky user number >1,000,000 2) User B posts their user number 2,095,554
View of Rhossilli beach from a cliff, Gower, Wales. On a windy day with lots of waves.
Figure taken from Dongbo Li et al's scientific paper showing how heat stress, humidity levels and timing of heatwaves affect insect body sizes.
Figure taken from Dongbo Li et al's scientific paper showing how heat stress, humidity levels and timing of heatwaves affect the development times of insect larvae.
Figure taken from Dongbo Li et al's scientific paper showing how heat stress, humidity levels and timing of heatwaves affect the probability of adult insect emergence.
A Tsunami warning sign indicating 21 metres above sea level.