Conferences are an integral part of academia, providing researchers with the opportunity to collaborate and disseminate their research. Traditionally these conferences have been in-person, but COVID-19 restrictions and growing recognition of systematic barriers have led many academic societies to reimagine the conference format. Social media platforms are often used to promote and broadcast in-person academic conferences, so with the development of online conferences they have naturally become hosting platforms. For example, during the peak of COVID-19 restrictions, when in-person meetings were not possible, Twitter conferences, like the first Global Animal Behaviour Conference (#AnimBehav2021), provided a much needed platform to collaborate and share science. Recently, conferences have returned to an in-person format. In addition, a change in ownership of Twitter led to widespread restructuring of the Twitter workforce and misinformation management policies that resulted in a massive exodus of academics from the platform. During these changes, we organized and held the second Global Animal Behaviour Twitter Conference (#AnimBehav2023) in January 2023. In this paper, we report (1) how engagement in the Twitter conference changed as a result of return to in-person conferences and changes in Twitter ownership, (2) how the community views online conferences in general and Twitter conferences in particular and (3) reflect on how online conferences can be organized moving forward. Given the widespread benefits of and need for online conferences, we urge academic societies and researchers to continue systematically exploring these alternative conference formats to ensure inclusivity and accessibility in academic spaces.

A spreadsheet of the presence (or absence) of parasite species at all study sites that have published data on baboon (Papio) spp. parasite communities. The first tab '2023_Helminths_PrevData' are a list of the macroparasites that have been reported. The second tab '2023_Protozoa_PrevData' are a list of the macroparasites that have been reported. For both these sheets, '1' indicates that a parasite is present, and '0' indicates that a parasite species was not recorded at that study site. The data provided here are collated from all published journal articles and degree theses on baboon parasites up the start of 2023. A list of the publications that contributed are provided in the reference information.

Social media platforms, such as Twitter, provide the opportunity for academics to network and to disseminate research to colleagues and the general public. More recently, Twitter in particular has become a platform for hosting academic conferences in addition to or as an alternative to either traditional in-person academic conferences or virtual conferences, now typical since the onset of COVID. The Animal Behavior Society (ABS) and the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour (ASAB) hosted their first global Animal Behaviour Twitter Conference in January 2021, in which researchers in animal behaviour from around the world shared recent work with fellow academics. Here, we explore the impact of the first global Animal Behaviour Twitter Conference (#AnimBehav2021) using questionnaires and Web site analytics to assess the dissemination of research and networking opportunities the event provided. Ultimately, this Animal Behaviour Twitter Conference increased the global reach and the accessibility of communicating animal behaviour research in comparison to in-person events. Furthermore, we use this case study to describe the logistics of organizing a Twitter conference in the field of animal behaviour, the novel opportunities this conference brought along and how other academic societies in behavioural biology can adapt our approach and benefit from this conference format.

There has been a progressive increase in the number and area of ice-marginal lakes situated along the southwestern margin of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) since the 1980s. The increased prevalence of ice-marginal lakes is notable because of their capacity to enhance mass loss and ice-margin recession through a number of thermo-mechanical controls. Although such effects have been extensively documented at alpine glaciers, an understanding of how ice-marginal lakes impact the dynamics of the GrIS has been limited by a sparsity of observational records. This study employs the Landsat archive to conduct a multi-decadal, regional-scale statistical analysis of ice-margin advance and recession along a similar to 5000 km length of the south-western margin of the GrIS, incorporating its terrestrial, lacustrine and marine ice-margins. We reveal an extended and accelerating phase of ice-margin recession in south-west Greenland from 1992 onwards, irrespective of margin type, but also observe considerable heterogeneity in the behaviour of the different ice-marginal environments. Marine icemargins exhibited the greatest magnitude and variability in ice-margin change, however lacustrine termini were notable for a progressive increase in ice-margin recession rates from 1987 to 2015, which increasingly outpaced those measured at terrestrial ice-margins. Furthermore, significant correlations were identified between lake parameters and rates of lacustrine ice-margin recession, including lake area, latitude, altitude and the length of the lake-ice-margin interface. These results suggest that ice-marginal lakes have become increasingly important drivers of ice-margin recession and thus mass loss at the GrIS, however further research is needed to better parameterise the causal connections between ice-marginal lake evolution and enhanced ice-margin recession. More widely, a detailed understanding of the impacts of ice-marginal lakes on ice-margin dynamics across Greenland is increasingly necessary to accurately forecast the response of the ice sheet to enhanced ice-marginal lake prevalence and thus refine projections of recession, mass loss and sea level rise.

AbstractScientific conferences are a key component of academic communication and development. During the COVID‐19 pandemic, in‐person conferences are rapidly moving online, yet these virtual events may not provide the same opportunities as in‐person conferences. If virtual meetings are to continue to provide effective communication and networking between researchers and stakeholders, they must be adapted to increase delegate engagement and enthusiasm. Here, we present a case study of a recent medium‐sized online conference. We assessed the behavior and engagement of delegates with different components of the meeting using data from website analytics and postconference surveys. Behavior was variable across the available events; talks were particularly popular but engagement with social and networking opportunities was variable. Our conclusions have been summarized in six recommendations to support future online conference organizers in enhancing engagement with their events.

Abstract In‐person academic conferences are important to disseminate research and provide networking opportunities. Whether academics attend in‐person conferences is based on the cost, accessibility, and safety of the event. Therefore, in‐person conferences are less accessible to academics and stakeholders that are unable to overcome some of these factors, which then act as a barrier to equal and inclusive participation. Additionally, the carbon footprint of conference travel is increasingly becoming a factor in deciding on whether to attend a conference. Online conferences may provide opportunities to mitigate these challenges. Here, we illustrate how a learned society can move their conference online. Then, comparing data acquired from the virtual conference and previous in‐person conferences, we explore the aids and barriers influencing the decision of delegates to attend the meetings. Ultimately, moving meetings online aids delegate participation by removing concerns about travel, cost, and carbon emissions, but there remains a barrier to participation as online meetings are perceived as less effective for networking and social opportunities.

OBJECTIVES In many primates, one of the most noticeable morphological developmental traits is the transition from natal fur and skin color to adult coloration. Studying the chronology and average age at such color transitions can be an easy and noninvasive method to (a) estimate the age of infants whose dates of birth were not observed, and (b) detect interindividual differences in the pace of development for infants with known birth dates. MATERIALS AND METHODS Using a combination of photographs and field observations from 73 infant chacma baboons (Papio ursinus) of known ages, we (a) scored the skin color of six different body parts from pink to gray, as well as the color of the fur from black to gray; (b) validated our method of age estimation using photographic and field observations on an independent subset of 22 infants with known date of birth; and (c) investigated ecological, social, and individual determinants of age-related variation in skin and fur color. RESULTS Our results show that transitions in skin color can be used to age infant chacma baboons less than 7 months old with accuracy (median number of days between actual and estimated age = 10, range = 0-86). We also reveal that food availability during the mother's pregnancy, but not during lactation, affects infant color-for-age and therefore acts as a predictor of developmental pace. DISCUSSION This study highlights the potential of monitoring within- and between-infant variation in color to estimate age when age is unknown, and developmental pace when age is known.

Peatlands represent globally-important ecosystems and carbon stores. However, large areas of peat land have been drained for agriculture, or peat has been harvested for use as fuel or in horticulture. Increasingly, these landscapes are being restored through ditch blocking and rewetting primarily to improve biodiversity and promote peat accumulation. To date we have little knowledge of how these interventions influence the microbial communities in peatlands. We compared the responses of dominant microbial consumers (testate amoebae) to drainage ditch restoration relative to unblocked ditches in a UK upland blanket peatland (Migneint, North Wales). Two techniques were used for restoration: (i) dammed ditches with re-profiling; and (ii) dammed ditches with pools of open water behind each dam. Testate communities in the inter-ditch areas changed markedly over time and between treatments illustrating the potential of this group of organisms as indicators of blanket peatland restoration status. However, the responses of testate amoebae to peat rewetting associated with restoration were partially obscured by inter-annual variability in weather conditions through the course of the experiment. Although there was considerable variability in the response of testate amoebae communities to peatland drain blocking, there were clearly more pronounced changes in samples from the dammed and reprofiled treatments including an increase in diversity, and the appearance of unambiguous wet-indicator species in relatively high abundances (includingAmphitrema stenostoma, Archerella flavum, Arcella discoides type, Difflugia bacillifera and Difflugia bacillarium). This reflects a shift towards overall wetter conditions across the site and the creation of new habitats. However, water-table was not a significant control on testate amoebae in this case, suggesting a poor relationship between water table and surface moisture in this sloping blanket peatland. Our findings highlight the potential of testate amoebae as bioindicators of peatland restoration success; however, there is a need for caution as mechanisms driving change in the microbial communities may be more complex than-first assumed. Several factors need to be taken into account when implementing biomonitoring studies in peatlands including: (i) the natural variability of the peatland ecosystem under changing weather conditions; (ii) any disturbance connected with the restoration procedures; and (iii) the timescales over which the ecosystem responds to the management intervention. Our results also suggest an indicator species approach based on population dynamics may be more appropriate for biomonitoring peatland restoration than examining changes at the community level. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The melting of high-latitude permafrost peatlands is a major concern due to a potential positive feedback on global climate change. We examine the ecology of testate amoebae in permafrost peatlands, based on sites in Sweden (~200km north of the Arctic Circle). Multivariate statistical analysis confirms that water-table depth and moisture content are the dominant controls on the distribution of testate amoebae, corroborating the results from studies in mid-latitude peatlands. We present a new testate amoeba-based water table transfer function and thoroughly test it for the effects of spatial autocorrelation, clustered sampling design and uneven sampling gradients. We find that the transfer function has good predictive power; the best-performing model is based on tolerance-downweighted weighted averaging with inverse deshrinking (performance statistics with leave-one-out cross validation: R2=0.87, RMSEP=5.25cm). The new transfer function was applied to a short core from Stordalen mire, and reveals a major shift in peatland ecohydrology coincident with the onset of the Little Ice Age (c. AD 1400). We also applied the model to an independent contemporary dataset from Stordalen and find that it outperforms predictions based on other published transfer functions. The new transfer function will enable palaeohydrological reconstruction from permafrost peatlands in Northern Europe, thereby permitting greatly improved understanding of the long-term ecohydrological dynamics of these important carbon stores as well as their responses to recent climate change.

Transfer functions are now commonly used to reconstruct past environmental variability from palaeoecological data. However, such approaches need to be critically appraised. Testate amoeba-based transfer functions are an established method for the quantitative reconstruction of past water-table variations in peatlands, and have been applied to research questions in palaeoclimatology, peatland ecohydrology and archaeology. We analysed automatically-logged peatland water-table data from dipwells located in England, Wales and Finland and a suite of three year, one year and summer water-table statistics were calculated from each location. Surface moss samples were extracted from beside each dipwell and the testate amoebae community composition was determined. Two published transfer functions were applied to the testate-amoeba data for prediction of water-table depth (England and Europe). Our results show that estimated water-table depths based on the testate amoeba community reflect directional changes, but that they are poor representations of the real mean or median water-table magnitudes for the study sites. We suggest that although testate amoeba-based reconstructions can be used to identify past shifts in peat hydrology, they cannot currently be used to establish precise hydrological baselines such as those needed to inform management and restoration of peatlands. One approach to avoid confusion with contemporary water-table determinations is to use residuals or standardised values for peatland water-table reconstructions. We contend that our test of transfer functions against independent instrumental data sets may be more powerful than relying on statistical testing alone.

Tropical peatlands represent globally important carbon sinks with a unique biodiversity and are currently threatened by climate change and human activities. It is now imperative that proxy methods are developed to understand the ecohydrological dynamics of these systems and for testing peatland development models. Testate amoebae have been used as environmental indicators in ecological and palaeoecological studies of peatlands, primarily in ombrotrophic Sphagnum-dominated peatlands in the mid- and high-latitudes. We present the first ecological analysis of testate amoebae in a tropical peatland, a nutrient-poor domed bog in western (Peruvian) Amazonia. Litter samples were collected from different hydrological microforms (hummock to pool) along a transect from the edge to the interior of the peatland. We recorded 47 taxa from 21 genera. The most common taxa are Cryptodifflugia oviformis, Euglypha rotunda type, Phryganella acropodia, Pseudodifflugia fulva type and Trinema lineare. One species found only in the southern hemisphere, Argynnia spicata, is present. Arcella spp., Centropyxis aculeata and Lesqueresia spiralis are indicators of pools containing standing water. Canonical correspondence analysis and non-metric multidimensional scaling illustrate that water table depth is a significant control on the distribution of testate amoebae, similar to the results from mid- and high-latitude peatlands. A transfer function model for water table based on weighted averaging partial least-squares (WAPLS) regression is presented and performs well under cross-validation (r(2)(apparent)= 0.76, RMSE = 4.29; r(2)(jack)= 0.68, RMSEP =5.18). The transfer function was applied to a 1-m peat core, and sample-specific reconstruction errors were generated using bootstrapping. The reconstruction generally suggests near-surface water tables over the last 3,000 years, with a shift to drier conditions at c. cal. 1218-1273 AD.