Survey alert! If you're a social behavioural ecologist, please fill in our survey aimed at gauging interest in, barriers and solutions to, comparative social behaviour research. Thanks! forms.gle/KZJDMtLCJhvY...

In our new paper, led by Joelle Hass & with a wonderful collaborative team, we explore the ocular surface microbiome (OSM) of rhesus macaques. Read on to learn how similar their eye bacteria are to ours, and effects of age, sex & living condition. animalmicrobiome.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Congrats to Mark Hauber on winning this year's Quest Award for an outstanding seminal contribution! Mark has studied it all but the biggest themes in his work center around understanding brood parasitism and coloration of bird eggs. Richly deserved @thecowbirdlab.bsky.social ! www.cowbirdlab.org

Congrats to newly elected ABS Fellow: @smacklab.bsky.social ! Noah and his team examine how environmental and demographic changes influence physiology and health focusing mostly on primates and our best buds, dogs. Read more here: smack-lab.com

Our new paper, led by Nicolas Chapoy and Kathy Jack, shows capuchin alpha males have wider faces and bigger balls. Read on for discussion of trait variation with respect to pre- and post- mating competition! Was a large effort by a great team 😍😎🎉 royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/epdf/10....

“People of a remote Amazonian society who learned Spanish as a second language began to interpret colors in a new way, an MIT study has found.” #scicomm #language #colordiscrimination news.mit.edu/2023/how-blu... 🧪

A long-form piece in @science.org covers recent research at Kromdraai, Drimolen, and Swartkrans, South Africa—all adding to the record of Early Pleistocene hominins. The article's lede, “Did they meet” is a bit of a distraction: They certainly met somewhere! www.science.org/content/arti...

Visual information in the dark: Bioluminescence and perceptual design through evolution - Oakley - Functional Ecology - Wiley Online Library besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Our paper on how capuchin pee smells, and why monkeys might rub it all over their bodies is now out in @royalsociety.org RSOS. Led by Alice Poirier, @nellekulick.bsky.social, & a great team of collaborators, this was a complicated but fascinating project. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Hot off the press 📣: one of the most surprising and unsettling findings of my PhD. A novel social tradition emerged in the tool-using white-faced capuchins of Jicarón island… abducting and carrying the infants of another species. Thread with gifs, videos, and all the bizarre details 👇

Why do imperfect mimics (such as many hoverflies) exist? We created 3D printed replicas of flies, wasps and our own custom intermediates and then "asked" various predators what they thought of our 3D stimuli. Read all about it here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excited to share this new paper on chimpanzee foraging cognition from the Primate Ecology and Molecular Anthropology Lab at UCSC! #PEMALab So proud to have contributed to this awesome project as an undergrad!! #termitefishing www.nature.com/articles/s41...

“Early mammals and their close relatives probably sported dark, drab coats from snout to tail... The monochrome ensembles may have helped ancient mammals blend into their nighttime surroundings and evade predators.” #scicomm #sensoryecology #animalcoloration www.sciencenews.org/article/dark... 🧪 🦊

We asked how behavioral diversity & agonistic behaviors relate to group size in wild capuchins. We analyzed >65,000 behavioral scans collected over 15 yrs on 214 capuchins (8 groups) & controlled for # inds sampled. We found behavioral richness, diversity & agonism was higher in larger groups.

I recently did a thoroughly enjoyable two-part podcast with David Sloan Wilson at ProSocial World (@prosocialworld.bsky.social). The topic was Hunter-Gatherer Societies, Human Origins, and Modern Democracies. Feedback welcome!

Happy to share our new paper 'Wild chimpanzees share fermented fruits' @currentbiology.bsky.social Thank you to the amazing team. @kjhockings.bsky.social @joanahbessa.bsky.social , @xavh.bsky.social, Marina Ramon, Elena Bersacola, Matthew Carrigan, @amelinlab.bsky.social . @uniexecec.bsky.social

Please enjoy this small photo dump from nearby a fruiting Ficus in the tropical dry forest, Costa Rica

Analysis of olfactory bulb (OB) size in 181 extant and 41 fossil species reveals that haplorhines have significantly smaller OBs than other primates and Euarchontoglires. The reduction likely began at the crown primate node, with multiple decreases in haplorhines, reflecting parallel evolution:

blog.castac.org/2025/03/foll... A beautiful, introspective, and philosophical blog post co-authored by my PhD student Virendra Mathur on the complicated politics of studying nonhumans in a human-dominated world.

Hot--er, warm--off the press! Strain sharing != Transmission microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Slowly returning to social media…Dips toe in water... Hello! Will start by sharing that I’m thrilled to be part of this ambitious paper. Take a look for #primate #vision #olfaction #sensory-ecology #evolution www.nature.com/articles/s41...