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Taal Levi Profile picture
Taal Levi
@taaltree
Wildlife ecology and conservation, metabarcoding, eDNA, disease ecology, mathematical modeling. Prof of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation at Oregon State U
2 subscribers
Apr 27 • 43 tweets • 8 min read
A lot of people at sitting at the peak of mount stupid right now. Let me add some minimally politicized complexity so that you can join me in the valley of despair, or maybe even the slope of enlightenment.

Judaism is ancient. Let's start way back to the story of Abraham /1 Image The story is of course full of mythology, but in the story famine caused Abraham, the patriarch of the Jews, to leave Israel for Egypt. The Jews remain in Egypt for hundreds of years until Moses and the Exodus, which was just celebrated with the Passover holiday. /2
Oct 9, 2023 • 25 tweets • 5 min read
It's hard to talk to people with strong feelings about Israel, because invariably they know so little about the most complex geopolitical conflict on earth but are sure of their position. A personal story and attempt to explain history. My g-g-grandpa came from Yemen in 1882/1 Yemen was in the Turkish Ottoman empire and he moved within the empire to Israel. People forget that this region had never known nation-states. The Ottomans ruled for 400 years. They conquered it from Egyptian Mamluk empire. Before that were the Crusaders trying to capture/2
Jan 24, 2023 • 12 tweets • 7 min read
We've been working on this paper out today (and open access) for over 7 years, so bear with me while I tell you the story of how we discovered that wolves kill and eat sea otters (Panels A-D) and what this means for wolves, otters, and deer. /1

pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn… DNA metabarcoding of scats was new back in 2014, and we wanted to use it to study the natural history of wolves in the Alexander Archipelago, motivated in part by their potential listing under the Endangered Species Act. Had no idea we'd find sea otters/2

esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.10…
Nov 18, 2022 • 17 tweets • 10 min read
Want to know why this text from @masseyaimee1 is one of the best I've ever received?

Back in 2021, Aimee decided to forego a fellowship with @CDCgov to instead stay in the lab and find viruses in the Amazon with an @NSF fellowship. /1 In September 2021, we brought a ridiculous amount of equipment to catch mosquitos in a remote part of the Amazon along the Jurua River. Because Aimee got a fellowship and we started the project a few months later, we had no funding for field or labwork/2
Oct 29, 2022 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
OK, I'll oblige. Twitter will give you the false impression that there is some consensus of hate for academia. Many of us really love this job and feel grateful for it. There are many legitimate complaints, and it can be hard to make it, but it can also be pretty wonderful... Academia is highly variable by field, institution, and individual. This is partly why people have such different experiences. When you get started you're typically entering an apprenticeship by joining someone's interests and project. Goal is matching to right project and mentor
Jun 1, 2021 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
A thread on why ecologists interested in animals should consider applying to wildlife graduate programs. I wasn't exposed to wildlife programs until being a prof in one and there are lots of benefits I didn't know

1. A peer community interested in organismal and applied research Most wildlife departments have a balance of basic science and applied research, but this is weighted much more heavily toward applied work. One of the benefits of this is

2. Wildlife programs have much more access to agency $$. Less TAing and more robust field projects possible.
Jan 30, 2021 • 16 tweets • 7 min read
How do bears, bobcats, and coyotes interact with cougars and their kills?

Really excited for new paper from Joel Ruprecht. 51 GPS collared animals from 4 species, 972 DNA metabarcoded scats, 128 cougar kill investigations, and videos from carcasses
Cougar chasing coyote at kill A common idea in large carnivore ecology is that large predators often suppress smaller predators, but they also supply them with carrion. How to think about the relative strength of suppression (killing) and facilitation (provisioning)? How are different species affected?
SOUND!
Jan 29, 2021 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
I'm finding the Jewish response to being accused by a member of congress of deploying lasers from space to start forest fires in CA to be...predictably hilarious. I'll just compile some of the best ones here

Jul 12, 2020 • 20 tweets • 5 min read
Fall is coming. Some advice for prospective graduate students in ecology and wildlife science in particular. Feel free to contribute.

1. Hear from multiple people and triangulate advice. People give advice that works for them, but we're all different with distinct goals 2. Most people going to graduate school in these fields will find a non-academic career. In our field, there are fantastic options. Many PhD colleagues do amazing things like directing NGOs @weiwei82, scientist at NGO @ConservationBug, or federal agency @TCastanea outside unis
Apr 10, 2020 • 29 tweets • 7 min read
Antibody tests are coming online. Never before have humans needed to understand Bayes rule more. Let's talk about why it's critical NOT to assume you are immune to covid-19 when you have a positive antibody test. Seriously, people need to understand this to prevent many deaths. Several companies have tests of varying quality, but Cellex makes a FDA-approved antibody test. The goal is to test for immunity due to prior exposure rather than an active infection. Cellex's test has a "sensitivity" of 93.8% and a "specificity" of 95.6%. Lets interpret this
Mar 19, 2020 • 23 tweets • 5 min read
You're home. What else do you and/or your kids have to do but learn something about DNA, RNA, and RT-PCR? Never a more important time to understand some of the details. A thread on how we detect the novel coronavirus starting with the basics of DNA and RNA. The first thing to remember is that many of the most important ingredients for life are chains of molecules called polymers. Starch and fiber are polymers of sugar molecules. Proteins are polymers of amino acids. DNA and RNA are polymers of nucleic acids.
Mar 18, 2020 • 21 tweets • 5 min read
Over the past two days we've covered math of exponential growth and epidemics. Today we'll talk about the new Imperial College of London report "Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID19 mortality and healthcare demand"

The report is based on an individual-based model published in 2005 and 2006 papers in Nature. "Strategies for containing an emerging influenza pandemic in SE Asia" and "Strategies for mitigating an influenza pandemic"

imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial…
Mar 17, 2020 • 22 tweets • 6 min read
Yesterday we went through some mathematics of exponential and geometric growth applied to COVID-19. Today epidemic models. This is more complex because we need to understand something about differential equations, but they're actually not so hard.

Let's call cases at time t, N(t). In a short time, dt, the number of cases change from N(t) to N(t+dt). The rate of change (cases per time) is then [N(t+dt) - N(t)]/dt. Now, as dt approaches 0 we call this the "derivative of N with respect to t" and write it as dN/dt.
Mar 17, 2020 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
So you're stuck at home with the kids. Why don't you and/or your kids learn some math with this *long* thread on exponential growth? I'll try to make it accessible given twitter limitations, but feel free to ask questions! Exponential growth today and epidemic models tomorrow. Let’s start by learning about exponential growth. It's very important to understanding our predicament.

Both the cumulative (total) number of COVID-19 cases and the number of new cases are growing exponentially. What does that mean?