Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
LightNews LightNews
banner
frodsan.bsky.social
Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
@frodsan.bsky.social
3.3K followers 150 following 190 posts
Computational Ecologist. Researcher @unisevilla.bsky.social. ecology, biogeography, statistics, rstats, GIS, science.

https://frodriguezsanchez.net
Posts Replies Media Videos
Pinned
frodsan.bsky.social
Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez @frodsan.bsky.social · Feb 19
1/ New paper @pnas.org on the structure of mutualistic #networks between individuals plants and frugivore species.

Last chapter of @elequintero.bsky.social's PhD thesis

doi.org/10.1073/pnas... #ecopubs
Downscaling mutualistic networks from species to individuals reveals consistent interaction niches and roles within plant populations Species-level networks emerge as the combination of interactions spanning multiple individuals, and their study has received considerable attention over the past 30 y. However, less is known about the structure of interaction configurations within species, even though individuals are the actual interacting units in nature. We compiled 46 empirical, individual-based, interaction networks on plant-animal seed dispersal mutualisms, comprising 1,037 plant individuals across 29 species from various regions. We compared the structure of individual-based networks to that of species-based networks and, by extending the niche concept to interaction assemblages, we explored individual plant specialization. Using a Bayesian framework to account for uncertainty derived from sampling, we examined how plant individuals “explore” the interaction niche of their populations. Both individual-based and species-based networks exhibited high variability in network properties, lacking remarkable structural and topological differences between them. Within populations, frugivores’ interaction allocation among plant individuals was highly heterogeneous, with one to three frugivore species dominating interactions. Regardless of species or bioregion, plant individuals displayed a variety of interaction profiles across populations, with a consistently-small percentage of individuals playing a central role and exhibiting high diversity in their interaction assemblage. Plant populations showed variable mid to low levels of niche specialization; and individuals’ interaction niche “breadth” accounted for 70% of the population interaction diversity, on average. Our results highlight how downscaling from species to individual-based networks helps understanding the structuring of interactions within ecological communities.
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
hausfath.bsky.social
There are a lot of things I agree with in Bill Gates' new climate memo, but I think it sets up a false dichotomy between reducing emissions and helping the world's poorest. I've put together a piece with my thoughts over at TCB:
On the Gates climate memo
There is a lot of things I agree with in Bill Gates’ new memo on climate change, but I think it fundamentally sets up a false dichotomy.
www.theclimatebrink.com
November 5, 2025 at 5:25 PM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
openrxiv.bsky.social
Enabling options for review: bioRxiv authors now have the option to send their preprints directly to @qedscience.bsky.social , an authors-centered AI review platform, for automated feedback on their paper.

openrxiv.org/enabling-rev...

#OpenScience #Preprints #openrxiv #qedscience #biorxiv
November 6, 2025 at 2:42 PM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
henrikbengtsson.bsky.social
The detectCores() apocalypse is creeping up on us 👻🐛

As more people are getting access to 128+ CPU cores, code spinning up parallel cluster with detectCores() workers fails - not enough #RStats connections available

Friends, do *not* default to detectCores(), bc www.jottr.org/2022/12/05/a...
Please Avoid detectCores() in your R Packages
The detectCores() function of the parallel package is probably one of the most used functions when it comes to setting the number of parallel workers to use in R. In this blog post, I’ll try to explai...
www.jottr.org
November 5, 2025 at 11:55 PM
frodsan.bsky.social
The next @peercommunityin.bsky.social seminar by @simine.com looks interesting

peercommunityin.org/pci-webinar-...
Recognizing and responding to a replication crisis: Lessons from Psychology The last 15 years have been a turbulent period for the field of psychology. Failures to replicate, fraud, and evidence of questionable research practices have all contributed to a crisis of credibility. What has the field done in response to this crisis, and what lessons can be learned from psychology’s crisis? We often hear the self-correcting mechanisms in science invoked as a reason to trust science, but it is not clear what these mechanisms are, or how they could have prevented psychology’s crisis. Some quality control mechanisms, such as peer review for journals, or vetting for textbooks or for public dissemination, did not to provide much of a safeguard against invalid claims in psychology. Instead, I argue that we should look for visible signs of a scientific community’s commitment to self-correction. These signs include transparency in the research and peer review process, investment in error detection and quality control, and an emphasis on calibration rather than popularization. To regain or bolster trust, scientific fields should invest in these hallmarks of credibility.
November 5, 2025 at 11:48 AM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
wkhuber.bsky.social
I regularly get derailed when someone tries to benchmark clustering methods, trying the find the "best" one or the one that agrees with "ground truth".

Which clustering of the below animals is the best or the true one? By row, or by column?
October 16, 2025 at 9:44 AM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
hormiga.bsky.social
I find there's a huge mismatch between the standard advice that people give about scientific conference talks, and how people actually give talks.

So I picked out the most important pieces of advice that are most often ignored. 🧪
The best scientific talk advice that gets ignored
Here are some prescriptions for a case of UCPS (Unengaging Conference Presentation Syndrome).
scienceforeveryone.science
October 28, 2025 at 9:24 PM
frodsan.bsky.social
Thank you @hormiga.bsky.social for writing this book. Beyond learning what may be right/wrong with current practices and many new tips, it makes you think throughout what kind of teacher you want to be and how to get there. Highly recommend

press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo... #teaching #AcademicSky
Book cover of the Chicago guide to college science teaching
November 2, 2025 at 10:11 AM
frodsan.bsky.social
Interesting. 2 lessons here:

1. Don't use LLM output code uncritically, even if it runs smoothly

2. As developers we can protect our #rstats code from such problems e.g. with rlang.r-lib.org/reference/ch...
tjmahr.com tj mahr 🎃 @tjmahr.com · 12d
student used some AI-assisted code to compute ROC stats with weights and the AI hallucinated pROC::roc(…, weights = weights). (the function doesn’t have a weights argument.) and because the function has a … argument, the fake weights argument was ignored without any warning
November 1, 2025 at 5:01 PM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
nature.com
Funders must recognise that great discoveries often come from studies that seeks to advance knowledge for its own sake

go.nature.com/47zrzYZ
From MRI to Ozempic: breakthroughs that show why fundamental research must be protected
In these financially straitened times, funders must recognize that great discoveries often arise from work that was looking for something completely different.
go.nature.com
October 29, 2025 at 12:11 PM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
yomoseco.bsky.social
Announcing 🍱 Lunchbox Models 🍱
– an online seminar series all about ecological modelling & career insights, hosted by the @gfoesoc.bsky.social AKs Computational Ecology and YoMos 🦊

Find the topics and details as well as access to Zoom on our webpage: www.yomos.org/lunchbox-mod...

Please share!
Image shows a poster for the 'Lunchbox Models' seminar series. It shows a sandwich illustration between green boxes with information regarding the seminar series. The left column has general information and the right side has the schedule for the first 11 talks. All the info can be found on the webpage of the seminar series (linked in posting text and QR Code in poster). Several other food item illustrations are used as decoration, e.g. onigiri, coffee/tea cups, and pasta on a fork.
October 14, 2025 at 10:05 AM
frodsan.bsky.social
Still fascinated with #webR and its potential for teaching stats

Here students can play (even from their phones) and find out themselves how the p-value depends on sample size

pakillo.github.io/LM-GLM-GLMM-... #rstats
A screenshot of a statistics tutorial made with R, quarto and webR
October 22, 2025 at 6:36 AM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
nature.com
Success rates for Europe’s leading research grants are declining as a surge in applications far outweighs the funds available

go.nature.com/479Sni6
Is academic research becoming too competitive? Nature examines the data
Applications for European research grants increased in 2025. Scientists say they’re feeling the competition.
go.nature.com
October 17, 2025 at 10:12 AM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
jakubnowosad.com
🗺️ New blog post: introducing Spatial Data Visualization with tmap, a work-in-progress guide to thematic mapping in #RStats.

Learn about the book, its progress, and how to contribute: geocompx.org/post/2025/tm...

#DataViz #Mapping #tmap #geocompx
A screenshot of the blog post A screenshot of the blog post
October 14, 2025 at 1:03 PM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
ibartomeus.bsky.social
We are offering a 2-year postdoctoral position to join the @valor-project.eu Horizon EU project: Values and dependence of society on pollinators bartomeuslab.com/joining-the-...
Joining the lab
2-year Postdoctoral position on VALOR EU-project: We are offering a 2-year postdoctoral position to join the Horizon EU project: Values and dependence of society on pollinators (VALOR; The candidat…
bartomeuslab.com
October 6, 2025 at 1:31 PM
frodsan.bsky.social
Finally using {pins} #rstats package to share heavy files that can't be shared among collaborators through GitHub, and it works like a breeze! Supports data versioning, cache, etc. Thanks @posit.co

Here using Google Drive to share files, but can use many different servers, see pins.rstudio.com
library("pins") # specify folder in Google Drive to store objects board <- board_gdrive("https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/FOLDER_ID") # upload file board |> pin_write(big_dataset, "big_dataset.csv", type = "csv") # retrieve file (e.g. in another computer) board |> pin_read("big_dataset.csv")
October 2, 2025 at 12:27 PM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
chale9.bsky.social
Help! 🚨 Looking for resources on structural equation models—favorite methods papers, example studies, or guides for building an SEM pipeline. Thinking of using one for a dissertation chapter & not sure where to start. Suggestions? Please share!
September 30, 2025 at 8:28 PM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
rmcelreath.bsky.social
Was asked about collinearity again, so here's Vahove's 2019 post on why it isn't a problem that needs a solution. Design the model(s) to answer a formal question and free your mind janhove.github.io/posts/2019-0...
tl;dr Collinearity is a form of lack of information that is appropriately reflected in the output of your statistical model. When collinearity is associated with interpretational difficulties, these difficulties aren’t caused by the collinearity itself. Rather, they reveal that the model was poorly specified (in that it answers a question different to the one of interest), that the analyst overly focuses on significance rather than estimates and the uncertainty about them or that the analyst took a mental shortcut in interpreting the model that could’ve also led them astray in the absence of collinearity. If you do decide to “deal with” collinearity, make sure you can still answer the question of interest.
October 1, 2025 at 5:29 AM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
ipcc.bsky.social
Registration for experts interested in serving as Expert Reviewers and providing scientific comments on the First Order Draft of the Special Report on Climate Change and Cities is now open!

Read more 🔗
www.ipcc.ch/2025/09/17/p...
September 29, 2025 at 1:14 PM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
carlbergstrom.com
Yet again, machine learning — even gussied up via the transformer architecture — encodes and reinforces societal biases.

This study reveals that LLM-based peer review relies heavily on author institution in its decisions.

arxiv.org/abs/2509.15122
Prestige over merit: An adapted audit of LLM bias in peer review
Large language models (LLMs) are playing an increasingly integral, though largely informal, role in scholarly peer review. Yet it remains unclear whether LLMs reproduce the biases observed in human de...
arxiv.org
September 22, 2025 at 6:11 AM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
reassemblynet.bsky.social
Three exciting #PostDoc 🧑‍🔬👩‍🔬🧕 positions on #Ecological #Synthesis at TU Darmstadt @tuda.bsky.social for Reassembly #rainforest 🇪🇨 🌱🌴🦜 & #Biodiversity Exploratories 🌲🐄🚜🪲🐝🥀@bexplo.bsky.social
Please spread widely ✉️♥️▶️ & apply quickly 🙃
www.reassembly.de/the-team/job...
Ecological synthesis including forest ecosystems, grassland, land use, climate change, time series, stability, ecosystem functioning, biodiversity, species interaction networks
September 20, 2025 at 12:36 PM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
asanchez-tojar.bsky.social
📣 Hot off the press at #ProcB!

🔍 Our study checked data/code-sharing policies in 275 eco/evo journals and compliance in Proc B (n=2,340) & Ecology Letters (n=571). Policies exist, but clarity and strictness vary, affecting reproducibility.

🔗 doi.org/10.1098/rspb...
September 17, 2025 at 6:30 AM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
mc-stan.org
MC Stan is here! Follow for the latest Stan news, and tag if you want us to repost your posts about new papers, packages, courses, etc. about Stan
September 17, 2025 at 3:16 PM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
jakubnowosad.com
🚀 Book in progress: Spatial Data Visualization with tmap

A guide to creating thematic maps in R with the tmap package.
Covers everything from loading data to interactive and animated maps, with reproducible code.

Read online: tmap.geocompx.org

#rstats #rspatial #geocompx #gischat #maps
September 14, 2025 at 1:01 PM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
bsky.app
v1.108 is rolling out today 🚚

Now live, at long last: Bookmarks, aka Saved Posts. For all those posts you'll definitely plan to come back to!

Update the app and give it a try. The button is right down there 👇
September 8, 2025 at 6:24 PM
Reposted by Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez
bartlettje.bsky.social
Our contribution to an upcoming book on teaching open science was "how to teach reproducible research". There are plenty of lesson plans or individual courses out there but less on how you can build skills across a whole degree.

osf.io/preprints/ps...
OSF
osf.io
September 8, 2025 at 11:04 AM