Want to learn the ins and outs of diversification, trait and biogeographic evolution models? I will be giving another edition of "Dive Deep into Probabilistic Phylogenetic Comparative Methods" in Oct! @tscourses.bsky.social www.transmittingscience.com/courses/evol...

🦋 New preprint showing the convergent evolution of iridescence, a conspicuous colouration that likely participates in the ability of Morpho butterflies to escape their predators! We bring evidence supporting evasive mimicry, i.e. the evolution of similar confusing patterns in hard-to-catch prey.

Why is there such variation in the birds encountered as you go up or down a mountain? New paper in #ScienceAdvances examines how climate and ecological interactions drive bird distributions in mountains throughout the year: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 1/10 ⬇️

New PhD alert! We'll be applying animal welfare ideas to look at how stress affects bees, looking at the effect on bee brains with @lenariab.bsky.social, and working with @sensibee.bsky.social developing new monitoring methods. Please spread the word! #bees #PhD 🧪 www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

New paper out: “allopatric” Drosophila species aren’t so allopatric after all. We show that most currently allopatric species pairs probably overlapped in the past and exchanged genes at levels similar to sympatric pairs. @evolletters.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/evle... [1/6]

Like traits? Plants? Interactions between humans and the natural world? Are you looking for a PhD? There's still time left to apply for a fully-funded PhD in my lab, on macroevolutionary approaches to the ornamental plant trade! Deadline Jan. 14th. www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

🧪🐠 I am hiring a postdoc! Work will be on patterns of biodiversity across phylogenetic scales using teleost fishes as a model. Apply by end of Jan 2026 for full consideration apply.interfolio.com/179070 I encourage folks to reach out with any questions. Please Share!

Looking for a PhD opportunity? I'm hoping to recruit someone to my group at Durham University to work on a project combining fieldwork and labwork to study speciation in rubyspot damselflies: iapetus.ac.uk/studentships... Get in touch if you want to chat!

*Guaranteed funding* PhD opportunity in my group. Work with damselflies, UN global biodiversity targets, genetic data, and NatureScot policy groups; the project will advance comparative population genetics and provide evidence feeding directly to policy. www.findaphd.com/phds/project....

A new #PhD opportunity supervised by @drmambobob.bsky.social and me at the @uniofreading.bsky.social on dragonfly and damselfly evolution! It is competition funded through the CROCUS partnership, and involves a mix of palaeontology and comparative biology. www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

It was a pleasure to show some of my later PhD's work on developing new phylogenetic comparative methods to detect the effect of inter-specific competition on long-term trait evolution at #2025SVP 🦕 The models I showed should be available soon in the RPANDA Package, stay tunned !

Feast your eyes on this magnificent figure from Margaret Nice’s (1943) Studies in the Life History of the Song Sparrow

Looking for a PhD opportunity? I'm hoping to recruit someone to my group at Durham University to work on a project combining fieldwork and labwork to study speciation in rubyspot damselflies: iapetus.ac.uk/studentships... Get in touch if you want to chat!

Check out the recent publication in Annual Reviews of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics where the authors explore genomic species delimitation in depth. You'll see a number of #sciart figures I created to help explain some of the concepts! www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

#PCM folks: What tools are out there for forward-in-time simulation under historical biogeography models (e.g., DEC) that include simulation of both range and lineage dynamics?

Excited to share our new paper where we find that the rise, decline and fall of clades is not explained by the usual suspects (diversity-dependence, ecological opportunities) but rather by species' insidious loss of macroevolutionary fitness: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/3

Over the moon to pass my viva today with no corrections, couldn’t have done it without the amazing supervision of @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social. Many thanks to @josephtobias.bsky.social and Sally street for examining! 🦜

Super proud of Dr. Dan Nesbit @dannesbit.bsky.social, who passed his viva today (with no corrections!). Thanks to @josephtobias.bsky.social and Sally Street for examining! 🥳

First post here to show a bit the work I did with Joëlle Barido-Sottani and Hélène Morlon on phylogenetic diversification models with heterogeneous rates in a Fossilized BD Framework 🦴: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... The paper is still under review but the method is already available in BEAST 2 !

Now published in Cell! We found that ~15% of SNPs from divergent refs did not liftover as SNPs in the gray fox ref—half mapped to monomorphic sites, half failed to map. Co-authored with Matthew Genchev, @elliecat.bsky.social, and @jazlynmooney.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Another @durham-university.bsky.social Belize field course in the books! Already looking forward to 2026…

I will soon open up calls for a PhD student (free choice of topic as long as it fits to our group) and a scientific programmer / ecological data scientist. If you know what we are doing and would like to join our team, feel free to get in touch.

Excited to share our new paper in Molecular Ecology! Using whole-genome and morphological data from silvereyes, we explore their evolutionary history and find that water barriers are more effective than continental distances in driving population divergence 🐤🧬 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🧪 “There’s just no moths on that sheet.” @tessairini.bsky.social writes in the @theguardian.com about #InsectDecline with #DanJanzen, #WinnieHallwachs and the caterpillars of the Area de Conservacion Guanacaste #ACG in #CostaRica @gdfcf.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Reminder that SSE members in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, India, and 152 low-income countries around the world can still get FREE registration for the virtual Evolution meeting! Please share with your colleagues: www.evolutionsociety.org/index.php?mo...

Interested in a PhD connecting sensory ecology and evolutionary genetics? Applications are now open for a project on the Speciation Genomics of Eye Size Variation in Heliconius Butterflies in our lab at LMU Munich: www.evol.bio.lmu.de/research/mer... Please repost!

🗳️ Ballots went out this week! 🗳️ You have one week remaining to vote. Have you encountered an issue with your ballot? Email [email protected] as soon as possible so we can get you sorted out.

So excited to see this out! Check out what we've learned about smoky rubyspots 👇. Amazing work led by @christophe-patt.bsky.social

Screeching contestants gathered in Belgium on Sunday for the fifth annual European Gull Scream Championship, a competition meant to see who could produce the best imitation of a sea gull. Read more: nyti.ms/4jyRF2M

Does anyone know if there is anywhere you can download #Birdlife International #GlobalFlyways #GIS layers (shapefiles?) from please? For an MSc project. @sheardcat.bsky.social @mothyblackburn.bsky.social @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social or any other bird fans....? Thanks

Starting my post-doc today @uniofnottingham.bsky.social. Had a great time over the last six months organising Marine Citizen Science Week for Natural England, but now back to full-time research! 🧪 Watch this space for sticklebacks! (Still a few damselfly papers in the pipeline don't worry)

And with that, sMacrobehaviour has left the building! What an awesome few days, thanks everyone 🥰🥳😃 Yay science #sDiv @kamarske.bsky.social @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social @theresarueger.bsky.social @ruchakarkarey.bsky.social @sheardcat.bsky.social & co. Looking forward to March 2026

@britishecologicalsociety.org are leading efforts to improve Equality, Diversity & Inclusion in Ecology. On March 3rd they are hosting webinar to discuss developing collaborative solutions intersectional barriers faced by minoritized ecologists. ⏬ www.britishecologicalsociety.org/content/deve...

Last first-author paper finally published! This took too many years but even after leaving research we manage to get it done, with Odile Maliet, @leandrist.bsky.social, @noguesbravo.bsky.social, @n8upham.bsky.social, Walter Jetz, and really supportive Hélène Morlon www.nature.com/articles/s41...

📣 New PhD position on flycatchers with @qvarnstromlab.bsky.social — spread the word! Combine bioinformatics, long-term datasets and field work to explore climate adaptation and speciation in the lovely flycatchers. Join us in Uppsala, Sweden! Apply by Mar 18: www.uu.se/en/about-uu/... #ecoevojob

And in the uk the Newton Fellowships too! royalsociety.org/grants/newto...

A commentary piece from me to you (...if you're an #ethologist / #BehaviouralEcologist) link.springer.com/article/10.1... #Macrobehaviour needs you! @asab.org @biorxiv-behav.bsky.social @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social @abcmicrogrants.bsky.social @besmacro.bsky.social

Congratulations to @biologistrachel.bsky.social‬ for a successful viva on "Investigating the impacts of urbanisation on blue tit diet and reproductive success via faecal DNA metabarcoding". Thanks to examiners @allyphillimore.bsky.social & @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social, and funders @ukri.org!

If you're a non-UK scientist who wants to come to the UK for a postdoc, this year's Newton Fellowships are now open. You'll need a lab to host you (which could be me, but truly, could be any PI, so get in touch with someone you'd like to work with!) royalsociety.org/grants/newto...

Senior Editor position!!! Please feel free to get in touch with me via DM or email if this is of potential interest to you, even if you don't think you're 'ready' (I didn't!). Serving on a @britishecolsoc.bsky.social journal is for me a joy and a privilege.

When I was a young man there were whispered rumors among the elders that they could remember their own elders talking about a time when getting grants had been a means for doing science, rather than vice versa.

"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of my grant application."

Congrats @reefjav.bsky.social on a beast of a paper showing that coral composition, not cover, drives reef fish assemblage change over space & time. 28yrs of #AIMS data over entire #GBR www.nature.com/articles/s41... Not bad for 1st paper of PhD 🤯 @lec-reefs.bsky.social @nickajgraham.bsky.social

Fully-funded PhD: Comparative analysis of collective behaviour in natural and artificial systems. Supervised by Andrew King and myself at Swansea University, @rjpheathcote.bsky.social (Oxford) and Marina Papadopoulou (Tuscia). Come fly in the swaRmverse! www.swansea.ac.uk/postgraduate...

Know anyone looking for a PhD? Like phylogenies and R programming? Think behaviour is really neat? Isabella Capellini, Domhnall Jennings, Karina Vanadzina, and I have a funded PhD project on parental care macroevolution, based at Queen's University Belfast! www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Looks like a female Mountain Chat

I am having the hardest time identifying this species, do your thing #birdsky (I’m in Karoo NP South Africa) #birds

Really happy to share the preprint of my first paper! We investigate the co-existence of Morpho sister-species in sympatry. We find convergent iridescence in sympatry consistent with the hypothesis of evasive mimicry and divergent chemical signals, putatively involved in mate recognition.

That’s a wrap! Thanks so much to everyone that came!

Looking forward to presenting at #BES2024 tomorrow. Last talk of the conference again!