1/11 We are excited to announce release of our paper 'Termite sensitivity to temperature affects global wood decay rates' science.org/doi/10.1126/sc… Science Magazine News from Science U.S. National Science Foundation

We think that these results have important implications for understanding how rainforest will respond to fire, and also for rainforest restoration plantings. There's still lots to discover and so we look forward to continuing more flammability studies in the year to come. (5/5)

Surprisingly, we found that many rainforest plants are very flammable, such as members of the Laurel, Lychee, Macadamia and Pea families. However, others like the fig family (mostly Ficus species) did not burn easily. (4/5)

We collected 124 rainforest plant species in the tropical rainforests of the Atherton Tablelands, Queensland. These plants come from diverse families and lifeforms. We conducted burning experiments The School for Field Studies - Australia
TBT twitter.com/davidtng/statu…
(3/5)

Rainforest plants are often thought to be relatively nonflammable, but there has been very few if any studies that have actually measured the flammability of these plants, and certainly not in tropical rainforest. We thought this might be interesting to explore. (2/5)

Happy to share our new paper on rainforest shoot flammability🔥 and congratulations to PhD student Ebony Potts for her first paper 👏 David Tng Deborah Apgaua A/Prof Tim Curran Jayden Engert
authors.elsevier.com/a/1fdOC1L%7EGw…

Very pleased to share our most recent article on plant flammability. Congratulations to the inimitable Ebony Potts for her dedication and skillful 'fire whispering', and also co-authors Dr Susan Laurance Deborah Apgaua A/Prof Tim Curran Jayden Engert . (1/5)
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Really excited to be part of the study led by David Bauman that found Aust. tropical rainforests are experiencing increased mortality rates since the mid-80s. Frankly, I am astonished at how this result coincides with my work from central Amazon where...

Feeling more prepared to receive students again after coming out of a 2 year hibernation. We celebrate also some of our new staff Deborah Apgaua, Liam Bethel and Melanie Ward. Happy birthday also to Deborah, here with a gorgeous fruit cake made by Melanie!

A very satisfying conclusion to the fieldtrips this month where we recensused six 1 hectare savanna forest plots set up 13 years ago as part of the Tropical Biomes in Transition (TROBIT). Looking forward to crunching some data now. #forests #Ecology

Overjoyed to share our new paper 'Tropical wet and dry forest tree species exhibit contrasting hydraulic architecture' and its juicy details in this thread (1/7)
doi.org/10.1016/j.flor…
Deborah Apgaua Dr Susan Laurance
#dryforest #rainforests

Big congratulations to the efforts of lead author Marcelo Silva, who continues his wood anatomy research as a professor at the Federal University of Petolas, & also to Deborah Apgaua (Deborah Apgaua), Cássia C. S. Silva & Lazaro da Silva. Looking forward to more microscope time.

We did a survey to find out how many fishes the members of the fishing community know. The 91 people (49 men, 41 women) we interviewed cited almost 200 types of fishes. Yet the question remained - is there a consensus on how the community experts classify fishes? (3/5)

PPG Ecologia UFBA When we analysed the similarity matrices derived from our triad test data, we found surprisingly little consensus in the way the community members classify fishes. This suggests there is no single way that members of a traditional community classify biological organisms. (5/5)

So Vitor did triad tests with 45 community members, who were shown 30 sets of 3 fish images drawn at random from 10 of the most salient fish species for the community, and they are asked to determine which two fishes among the 3 images are most similar. (4/5)

It was a great pleasure being part of this. A great thanks to the community members of Siribinha who participated in the surveys and congratulations to Vitor for his first PhD paper and to all co-authors
Deborah Apgaua
Charbel El-Hani, Paride Bolletin &
David Ludwig

Indigenous and local knowledge is under threat in many places in the world. In Brazil, some traditional fishing communities still maintain their traditional ecological knowledge, such as in Siribinha, Bahia. (2/5)
#traditionalecologicalknowledge #culturalknowledge #fishermen

Thrilled to be part of this new paper on cultural knowledge in a fishing community led by Vitor Renck, PhD student @ the Federal University of Bahia (PPG Ecologia UFBA). Now out in the Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine. (1/5)
doi.org/10.1186/s13002…
#ethnobiology

The School for Field Studies (Aus) is hiring!
We are seeking a faculty member with marine ecology/environmental science expertise and preferably some social research background. Check out our Job Ad.
linkedin.com/jobs/view/2929…
DM David Tng for inquiries.

The prodigy returns! Very happy to catch up with one of our 2019 students, Louise Gao. She has come to Cairns to pursue a Master degree. Wishing her all the best. And also missing all the smiles from our DRY 2019 cohort! #thesfs