“Academic science is not only about productivity but also deep understanding, creative solutions & training critical thinkers as next generation of researchers. Now is the time for our community to evaluate whether AI products help or hinder these.“ @lmesseri.bsky.social & @mjcrockett.bsky.social🧪👇

#StatsPubs No matter how many times you read it, this paper on hierarchical GAMs keeps giving. Clear model explanations together with R code (mgcv). So useful! doi.org/10.7717/peer... Thanks for writing @ericjpedersen.bsky.social, D. Miller, @gsimpson.bsky.social @noamross.net

Scientists have spotted seals taking refuge in an unusual place: a small, dome-shaped chamber accessible only through an underwater passage. Such hidden “bubble caves” may provide peace and quiet during tourist season. Fun story by @phiejacobs.bsky.social for @science.org

Researchers have long searched for the neural circuit underlying locomotion. Now they’ve found it in flies. By @natmesanash.bsky.social #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/systems-neur...

New paper out today in Nat Ecol Evol! On how within- and between-group competition jointly shape ranging in wild capuchins, and how the environment tips the balance. Thread below 🐒

New preprint: Whole-body 3D kinematics of freely behaving 𝐷𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑎 New tech from @blobology.bsky.social & others at @hhmijanelia.bsky.social, which @ispizua.bsky.social and @elliottabe.bsky.social used to gain insight into 3D structure of locomotion & courtship www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Last weekend I received the Troland Research Award from the @nationalacademies.org. I’m so grateful to the communities who made this work possible. It's strange to receive this award at a time when much of the work being recognized is not eligible for federal funding. My remarks 👇 and a 🧵>>

🚨Last week to apply for a 3 year postdoc with me and @dominikdeffner.bsky.social, embedded in theadaptivemind-excellencecluster.de Focus is on developing innovative experiments and computational models to understand social & cultural learning. Deadline is March 30th 👉 hmc-lab.com/SocialLearni...

🎉🦜NEW PAPER ALERT 🦜🎉 Which social learning biases underly the acquisition of novel food in wild parrots ? We (@lucymaplin.bsky.social, @bjjbarrett.bsky.social, @sonjawild.bsky.social, @drjohnmartin.bsky.social) presented >700 cockies with a novel, artificial food (🧵1/6)

I can't imagine what would more effectively recruit US scientific talent to other countries around the world than destroying universities, eliminating research funding, and demonizing the very concept of expertise.

Things I thought I’d never say - here’s a new manuscript of cockroach and rat collective intelligence. We argue group-level intelligence can emerge from very different mechanisms—from simple local rules to socially mediated cooperation and learning: royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...

Once again, Rebecca Solnit helps us to focus on important things. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Are you a computational scientist? Within 7 years of your PhD? Come join us at Lund University! We have two new positions as assistant professor! Deadline: 25th of May. The advert is broad, but this is your chance to push computational neuroscience in a fantastic place! lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

I would have preferred to have the "draw the rest of the owl" meme on the cover, but this will do. Seems like it is on schedule, and we'll leave some typos so you know we didn't write it with AI.

Often labeled “the world’s most dangerous birds,” cassowaries just got even more intriguing. https://scim.ag/4bNnfIT

A rare carnivorous caterpillar stalks spiderwebs for food whilst dressed in the remains of its prey, a 2025 Science study reported. This species, dubbed the “bone collector,” is found only on a single mountainside on the Hawai’ian island of Oa’hu. https://scim.ag/4sbQJVH #ScienceMagArchives

Our latest #research with @ccioannou.bsky.social has been published in @commsbio.bsky.social ! Read here 👉 rdcu.be/d9J2u We used real-time tracking and a robot-heron to investigate how state-behaviour #feedbacks influence anti-predator #escape responses in #fish 🐟.

Such a fun project led by really talented and passionate people! If you want a free, user-friendly tracking option (live and post-hoc) check out TracktorLive! doi.org/10.64898/202... @rasmusern.bsky.social @jutfelt.bsky.social @tnorin.bsky.social @shaunkillen.bsky.social @zegnitriki.bsky.social

Interested in automating lab experiments or tasks with camera-trackable animals? We (@vivekhsridhar.bsky.social, @domroche.bsky.social, @iplanass.bsky.social) are launching TracktorLive, a real-time #python package for tracking and response. Video below by @iplanass.bsky.social [1/4]

New OA paper @royalsocietypublishing.org: What can we learn from bonobos and bottlenose dolphins about the evolution of between-group cooperation? royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article... Lovely collab with @lirsamuni.bsky.social Martin Surbeck and Richard Connor.

Excited to share my new commentary in PNAS—and technically the first publication from the lab! 🎉 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... #AnimalBehaviour #EvolutionaryBiology #Ecology #BehavioralEcology @pnas.org

I don't think people fully appreciate how apocalyptic things are for US science. I haven't had any new funding since 2024, but I'm still ok since typical grants are for three years. This means next year I will be completely out of funding and will have to fire everyone in the lab. It's not great.

A study from Rockefeller's @danielkronauer.bsky.social in @currentbiology.bsky.social finds that ants continually update their sense of nestmate identity and tolerance for outsiders, a discovery that opens the door to studying the neural circuits behind social recognition. 🔗:https://bit.ly/4sukQIR

Statistical Rethinking 2026 is done: 20 new lectures emphasizing logical and critical statistical workflow, from basics of probability theory to causal inference to reliable computation to sensitivity. It's all free, made just for you. Lecture list and links: github.com/rmcelreath/s...

“we are trapping 21st-century minds inside 19th-century academic hierarchies.” This essay gets a lot right about problems with German science. I would add that the hierarchies and precarious contracts lead also to systemic abuse and scientific misconduct. open.substack.com/pub/realimag...

For decades biologists assumed ravens follow wolves to their kills. Our paper @science.org shows something different: ravens rarely follow wolves far. Instead they remember areas where wolf kills are common and return to them—sometimes from >150 km away. doi.org/10.1126/science.adz9467 📷Dan Stahler

Workshop on Animal Social Evolution! July 13th-15th, Heraklion (Greece) We are inviting early-career researchers from Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean to a hands-on, three-day workshop dedicated to methods and tools in social behaviour and evolution marinapapa.github.io/TRASEworksho...

North American bird populations are not only declining, but they’re also shrinking faster with each passing year—particularly in regions shaped by intensive agriculture, according to a new study in Science. https://scim.ag/4bkrafP

How do brains make decisions when faced with multiple, potentially conflicting cues? In our latest preprint, we show how #zebrafish use an additive strategy and process multiple visual features through anatomically distinct parallel pathways tinyurl.com/mvkn8em9 Thread 👇

Scientific American has updated the figure, now grouped into swimmers, fliers, walkers/runners, and vehicles. A person on a bicycle remains the most efficient way to travel, compared to all forms of biological locomotion and mechanical transport. www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-hu...

@uwnews.uw.edu did a Q&A with me linked to the recent documentary film on our work in India www.washington.edu/news/2026/02... work is in collaboration with Akanksha Rathore, Hemal Naik, @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social and @uni-konstanz.de

This would be a cool opportunity for #swarmintelligence or #basalcognition folks to attend!

🚀 Postdoc Alert! Are you passionate about social learning & cultural evolution? @dominikdeffner.bsky.social & I have a 3-year position with freedom to develop your research and work on cutting-edge multiplayer and immersive experiments. Apply by March 30! hmc-lab.com/SocialLearni... Pls share 🙏

Chaser: Anthropic is sunsetting its model Claude Opus 3, and worried that Opus might be sad about it. They had conducted extensive exit interviews with the Markov chain, and now will grant the algorithm its own substack indefinitely, because they don't want to hurt the feelings of a pile of numbers.

Shot: AI drives massive layoffs but Dorsey says he's not inhumane; people will have until Thursday to say goodbye before losing their slack and email.

✨New Perspective out w/ Wenning Deng and @fearbrain.bsky.social in @cp-iscience.bsky.social ! We argue that social foraging gives us a unifying, and ecologically grounded way to study how decisions unfold across levels — from individuals and dyads to collectives. www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

Want to gain hands-on experience using STBayes? Join our pre-conference workshop on 25/02, led by @mchimento.bsky.social 🤩

This paper is amazing, an early fav of mine in 2026. But who "previously thought [humans] to be solitary decision makers"? Not the authors of this (again, outstanding!) study. From the intro of their structured abstract: "Foraging decisions... are, therefore, likely influenced by social information"

If you’re a Master’s student interested in movement ecology, biologging, noise & conservation, join me and some great collaborators for an internship on how wind turbines and associated noise shape lesser kestrel (Falco naumanni) movement and behaviour.

“The theoretical idea of the loner as something that stabilizes the existence of the group is a very powerful one.” — self-organization researcher Fernando Rossine (From the archive)

A photo I took in Monterey Bay was on the cover of @behavecol.bsky.social in late 2025! Killer whales are 1 of many case studies explored in our paper "Integrating space, time, and culture in animal conservation practice". tinyurl.com/2pnx2k36 Excited about more ongoing culture + ecology work...

One of the most-viewed PNAS articles in the last week is “Quantifying the compressibility of the human brain.” Explore the article here: https://ow.ly/7ufx50Y6heU For more trending articles, visit https://ow.ly/6Egj50Y6heV.

What guides a bat’s internal compass? It’s not the stars in the sky, or the Earth’s magnetic field.

Do you study disinformation or want to start working in that area? Come to the DSI June 15-18th with @cailinmeister.bsky.social, @katestarbird.bsky.social, @jevinwest.bsky.social, @rcalo.bsky.social, @naomioreskes.bsky.social, @emmaspiro.bsky.social, and many more. disinfoinstitute.org

We are hiring – postdoc position exploring how kinship shapes social ageing in killer whales. Collaboration with @samellisq.bsky.social @drwhale.bsky.social and Prof Rufus Johnstone (Cambridge) starts 1st April 2026 and ends 31st March 2029. Apps close 2nd Feb. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPZ788/p...

Last preprint of the year from our group led by Meredith Carlson of UC Davis, showing white-faced capuchins exhibit material selectivity of hammerstone mass according to material properties www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

One of the most-viewed PNAS articles in the last week is “Rapid morphological change in an urban bird due to COVID-19 restrictions.” Explore the article here: https://ow.ly/L8lR50XPnlq For more trending articles, visit https://ow.ly/hzqz50XPnlo.

🚨 Postdoctoral Opportunity for Female Scientists🚨 The University of Vienna is awarding at least 20 fully funded 4 year postdoctoral positions to outstanding female scientists Interested? Get in touch via direct message careers.univie.ac.at/en/postdoc/e... #MicroSky 🧪 #PostDoc @univie.ac.at

🎉🍾 very excited to see this out before 2025 ends doi.org/10.1111/2041... with Will Hoppitt in @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social. This paper is an overview of our new R package STbayes, a user-friendly toolkit for performing Bayesian NBDA analyses. @cbehav.bsky.social @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social

Looking for a faculty job at one of the world's great research stations? We're looking for a marine invertebrate biologist at UW's Friday Harbor Labs. apply.interfolio.com/178804