I will be talking about The Tree of Life at the Linnean Society on 25th June. If you are interested you can find out a little more and sign up for a ticket at the link below. Hope to see some of you there! members.linnean.org/events/69f21...

IQ-TREE 3: Phylogenomic Inference Software using Complex Evolutionary Models academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...

Excited to publish my first article for @newscientist.com for over ten years. It’s on the subject of - you’ll never guess - huge numbers. www.newscientist.com/article/2521...

A new publication from the TWCF-funded “Rationality and Reason Beyond the Individual Project” found evidence that chimpanzees may be able to reason about mutually exclusive future possibilities. Read more below. 👇

Opportunity: A fully funded PhD position for statisticians passionate about epidemiology. University of Leeds, start in September 2026. phd.leeds.ac.uk/project/2470...

Final version of record here: elifesciences.org/articles/107... Enjoy tracking

Can chimpanzees prepare for mutually exclusive possibilities individually or collectively? Check out our new paper in Phil Trans @royalsociety.org, led by @drelizabethwarren.bsky.social, and funded by @templetonworld.bsky.social! And stay tuned for the next paper, clarifying the mechanism!

New paper alert! 📢 Out now, fully #openaccess, in a special issue of Phil Trans on the evolution of collective intelligence (1/4) royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...

In a new book, mathematician Richard Elwes shares how mathematical boundaries have been broken time and time again, thanks to the creative explorers of the biggest numbers known. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/huge-numbers-book-math-googology

A special moment when something which has been buzzing around your brain and computer for ages finally achieves a physical form!

Intelligent agents can still take irrational actions and, sometimes, groups of animals are better at making good decisions than their constituent individuals. Read the latest article from the TWCF-funded project, “Rationality and Reason beyond the Individual“ project below.

Does being in a collective buffer against individual forgetting, when it comes to navigation? New paper by Joe Morford: we find that collectives of homing pigeons remember their routes better than individuals @dorabiro.bsky.social @richardpmann.bsky.social Thanks to @templetonworld.bsky.social !

Collective wisdom emerges in pigeons through forgetting randomly-different information over time doi.org/10.1038/s415...

I’m looking for a post doc (up to five years) interested in phylogenetics and earth systems - please spread the word!

Call for fully funded PhD positions at our Lab. All positions are open worldwide. Students develop their own project within any area of complex systems (for our PhD track). Please share with potential applicants and, if relevant to you, visit the link or DM for info. sys.imtlucca.it/program-over...

Inviting anyone who is interested to come to my inaugural lecture, 'Why the Cambrian Explosion happened', on March 24 at the University of Leeds eps.leeds.ac.uk/faculty-engi...

From Knowable Magazine: The curious life of a clever slime mold | Knowable Magazine knowablemagazine.org/content/arti...

This #FossilFriday I am delighted to share a postdoctoral position that we @deeptimeecology.bsky.social @camzoology.bsky.social are advertising on early animal evolution in the #Ediacaran. www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/postdoc...

I’ve written something for The Conversation on a fascinating recent paper by @grahbudd.bsky.social and @richardpmann.bsky.social on problems with molecular clocks. academic.oup.com/sysbio/artic... theconversation.com/a-speeding-c...

I'm teaching Statistical Rethinking again starting Jan 2026. This time with live lectures, divided into Beginner and Experienced sections. Will be a lot more work for me, but I hope much better for students. I will record lectures & all will be found at this link: github.com/rmcelreath/s...

I'm really enjoying this memoir on the history of numerical methods in phylogenetics by F. James Rohlf: academic.oup.com/sysbio/advan...

Call is out for Champalimaud International Neuroscience Doctoral Programme 2026! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

I recently gave a seminar at CITP on the barriers to evidence based tech policy. It’s online to watch now! H/t @princetoncitp.bsky.social spia.princeton.edu/events/citp-...

PhD position available in evolutionary genomics/bioinformatics (hoehnalab.github.io/job_adverts/...). Topic: analyzing gene expression evolution across several firefly species and linking expression changes to genomic architecture. The position is jointly supervised with @anaevolcatalan.bsky.social

My book 'The Tree of Life' is published in the USA and Canada today. Available as book, on kindle and as audio. I would be really grateful for reposts. www.amazon.com/Tree-Life-So... www.amazon.ca/Tree-Life-So...

Want to do a PhD linking palaeontology, ecological modelling and polar ecosystems? Look no further than this NERC GW4+ DLTP funded project with @rowanwhittlebas.bsky.social at @bas.ac.uk & @bristolpalaeo.bsky.social and others (inc me). www.bristol.ac.uk/media-librar...

Interested in a PhD in ornithology? Funding available for projects at the interface of ecology, behaviour & evolution from Oct '26 working on long-term population studies of tits at Wytham, based in @biology.ox.ac.uk in the new Life & Mind Building in Oxford www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Infinite games of Beggar-My-Neighbour: now out in The American Mathematical Monthly. Congratulations again to Brayden Casella who discovered the infinite game and knocked one off the Wikipedia lost of unsolved maths problems. doi.org/10.1080/0002...

Great piece on the absurdity of brute force multiverse analyses. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

📢 OUT NOW: Global Tipping Points Report 2025 📢 Professor Viktoria Spaiser contributes to a new report providing a temperature check on the status of dangerous Earth system #TippingPoints and opportunities in #PositiveTippingPoints across sectors. #GTPR2025 #COP30

The second Global Tipping Points Report has been launched today. Please see our press release here: www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article... Find the full report here: global-tipping-points.org @gsiexeter.bsky.social #TippingPoints #COP30

I'm super excited to announce that ISBA @isba-bayesian.bsky.social has voted to start a new section on Bayesian Social Sciences! It will be a great way to further collaborations with many disciplines in the Social Sciences and Humanities. bss-isba.github.io

Our co-produced #PolicyBrief following our event "Accelerating #SocialChange in Response to the #Climate and #EcologicalCrisis", is out now, see here: cdp.leeds.ac.uk/wp-content/u...

People do care! Exposure to moral appeals (moral implications of fossil fuels etc.) can reduce people's carbon footprints, while also increasing climate-related civic and political action, though it may backfire among individuals with strong egoistic values. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

The z-curve guy dropping AI slop post peer review in the wake of the @richarddmorey.bsky.social paper is peak garbage Metascience. replicationindex.com/2025/08/08/r...

Just a standard reminder that statistics is a stand-alone discipline because it’s really hard and it is very easy to get catastrophically wrong. (This example is p-curves, beloved of the reproducibility/scientific fraud warriors, absolutely indefensible in practice)

Our covariant model of evolution is now out in @systbiol.bsky.social. In it, rates of diversification and molecular and morphological evolution all covary governed by a “tempo” variable which itself also varies at a rate equal to its own value. @richardpmann.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/sysb...

Do diversification rates and molecular evolution covary? Maybe, maybe not, but it’s surprising how much falls into place if we assume they do doi.org/10.1093/sysb...

It has been a pleasure to host two students from Dedan Kimathi University of Technology in Kenya www.leeds.ac.uk/news-global/...

A real must-read post from @rmcelreath.bsky.social that resonates particularly well after having spent the last couple of days on a matters arising for an open, pre-registered paper in a high-profile journal for which the results and story they support are largely a statistical artifact.

How to cooperate for a sustainable future? We don't know (yet), but I'm thrilled to share that our new perspective piece has just been published in @pnas.org. Bridging complexity science and multiagent reinforcement learning can lead to a much-needed science of collective, cooperative intelligence.

Long in the making, finally happening this week at Brussels: #GenAIResearchRetreat2025 - Exploring new generative #AI methods for understanding dynamic complex social and socio-ecological systems. Exciting programme, great group: computationalclimateactionlab.github.io/genai2025rr/...

Wonderfully kind and fulsome review of my book 'The Tree of Life' in the TLS by Charles Foster. "breezy, scholarly, whimsical, rigorous and companionable…" "extraordinary, adventurous book." I am absolutely THRILLED! @johnmurrays.bsky.social www.the-tls.co.uk/science-tech...

1/3 www.swansea.ac.uk/postgraduate... PhD studentship! Comparative Analysis and Modelling of Collective Behaviour in Natural and Artificial Systems. **this scholarship for UK residents only, as defined by UKCISA regulations** Details below! Please RT (AI-generated image)

It took us many years to improve idtracker.ai in both accuracy and tracking time. Here it is.

New entry into the sponge/ctenophore debate.... Have the chromosome fusions separating ctenophores from all other animals been given too much weight? Beautifully clearly written paper covering complex arguments from @rcply.bsky.social. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I am seriously becoming of the opinion that there should be a (ideally permanent, but at least a few years) moratorium on publication of molecular clock papers. This would allow authors to reflect on the idea that their results invariably involve “event x happened 10s - 100s Myrs before we thought”.

Starting this account with a link to a nice recent Youtube video on the infinite game of Beggar-My-Neighbour www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HwK...