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

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...

"misinformation is widespread in biological systems spanning levels of organization, and [...] is probably an inevitable property that inherits from fundamental constraints on biological communication systems, rather than a pathology" royalsocietypublishing.org/rsif/article...

Our newest research in @currentbiology.bsky.social: www.cell.com/current-biol... We find dominant baboons have more interrupted and less rest at night. Author list and story in comments below :-)

Have you ever wondered what you would find if you could keep your eyes on a bee for more than a few meters? Us, too! preprint (with videos!) + thread 🧵 Precise, individualized foraging flights in honey #bees 🐝 revealed by multicopter drone-based tracking www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/9

Excited to share our methods preprint on CapuchinAI! 🐒💻 We built a field touchscreen + real-time facial recognition system (YOLOv7) that lets wild capuchins “log in” and complete individualized cognitive tasks. @emoryuniversity.bsky.social @gatechengineers.bsky.social #PrimateCognition #AI

This Perspective discusses how the field of behavioural ecology has contributed to fundamental science and global challenges, ranging from understanding how natural selection leads to adaptation to optimizing biocontrol of pest species www.nature.com/articles/s41... Free to read: rdcu.be/eRKbv

It’s really hard to defend industry academic collaborations with meta as earnest, if they’re internally burying evidence of harm. www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

This parasitic ant tricks workers into killing their own queen. Learn more: https://scim.ag/43FNdcR

PhD opportunity: MOVE Details: blogs.reading.ac.uk/crocus-dla/c... Deadline: 12/01/26 Supervisors: @shoalgroup.bsky.social, @inesfuertbauer.bsky.social, @wlallen.bsky.social, @nhcooper123.bsky.social, @marinapapa.bsky.social Apply: blogs.reading.ac.uk/crocus-dla/p...

Fungi coat the eggs of stinkbugs, creating a shield that protects the embryos from parasitic wasps, researchers report. Learn more: https://scim.ag/43kl3np

🦇Much can go down in a bat cave. As a bat navigates its physical environment, it’s also navigating a network of social relationships.

Just in time for Halloween, Richard Zare of @stanforduniversity.bsky.social and colleagues explore two spooky mysteries: the source of will-o’-the-wisps and how bats integrate vision with echolocation. Listen now on your favorite platform: https://ow.ly/JJpc50XkZTf

Neuroscience projects last several years, and you are usually a bit jaded by the time you wrap it up. Not this one– spending several months on an island in the middle of nowhere, away from all the craziness of the world reminds you how beautiful the world really is. www.youtube.com/watch?v=46sv...

Neural compass in the sky | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Out today in @plosbiology.org (1/5) Siblings and non-parental adults provide alternative pathways to cultural inheritance in juvenile great tits 🐦🧩 Link to study: 10.0.5.91/journal.pbio... Co-authors: @lucymaplin.bsky.social @galarconnieto.bsky.social

Today IUCN has officially declared the Slender-billed Curlew extinct, marking the first known global extinction of a formerly widespread migratory bird species whose range included mainland Europe, North Africa, and West Asia. Read more here ⬇️ www.unep-aewa.org/fr/node/6632

The first preprint from my PhD work is out! We used C. elegans to define and manipulate heterogeneous groups, exploring how individuals with different behavioural phenotypes interact and shape collective behavior. Check it out here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

@sonjawild.bsky.social @galarconnieto.bsky.social & @lucymaplin.bsky.social show that young #GreatTits, which have limited #ParentalCare, learn to solve a foraging #puzzle socially, but rather than parents, siblings & non-parental adults are preferred role models @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/46JZn6n

I love these new layers of complexity that people are discovering in the brain! Dendrites of different neurons can connect via nanotubes, which transport calcium and cargo such as amyloid-beta www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Are you studying animal sociality? My (now published) first PhD chapter proposes a Bayesian + causal framework to infer the factors shaping the social relationships that animals form with one another. journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

⭐PhD position available!⭐ Come join us @imprs-qbee.bsky.social to study communication and collective behavior in animal groups! We're looking for someone excited to use computational approaches to tackle biological questions, using our full-group tracking datasets imprs-qbee.mpg.de/121465/analy...

📢🦋 Our paper ‘Global selection on insect antipredator coloration’ is out and featured on the cover of @science.org We ran a huge experiment to find out how ecological context favours camouflage and warning colouration as antipredator strategies. 1/6 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Most people are right- some left-handed or ambidextrous - and so are honey buzzards when turning in thermals! But, unlike us, mastering flight means these birds must overcome laterality as they grow. A gem of a preprint led by @enourani.bsky.social. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA 10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

Tenure-track Assistant Professor in Computational Ecology and/or Evolution @columbiauniversity.bsky.social. Deadline to apply September 30. Reach out if you have questions. apply.interfolio.com/172496

🚨 PhD alert! IMPRS brain & behavior in Bonn just opened their calls for applications. Great PhD funding opportunities. Check it out! PS- I just joined their faculty, meaning you could do a rotation in my lab or even a PhD with me on spider sleep 🙃 Apply! 🚨

“Just when you think you’ve seen it all, social insects reveal another surprise.” https://scim.ag/47sVFyS

Ant reproduction is getting weirder and weirder. Here’s the latest: queens of a Mediterranean harvester ant mate with males from a different species and then lay eggs that clonally inherit those males’ genome. I.e., they lay eggs that develop into a different species. 🤯

Queue the song “weird fishes”

@carlbergstrom.com and I have a piece on how to think the risks and benefits of LLMs for things like peer review. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

with @shoalgroup.bsky.social and @lostintheswarm.bsky.social ✨ Link to the paper here: doi.org/10.1111/2041... Made possible by an @asab.org Conference Attendance Grant 🥰🙏

What makes a puzzle hard? I found this video delightful.

🧠 Want to integrate cultural evolution into your course using award winning materials created by the field's experts, and get paid $2000 to do it? 💵 🚨 The Cultural Evolution Society is seeking applications for the ACE Teaching Innovation Awards. 🔖 Apply here: vuw.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

If you hate statistics like I do, then you'll love my free lectures. Putting science before statistics, 20 lectures from basics of inference & causal modeling to multilevel models & dynamic state space models. It's all free, made with love and sympathy. 🧪 #stats www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

No, blue whales aren't going silent off California. Here's why. | When asked whether the blue whales have gone silent since 2021, he replied: "Nope."

Super excited to share that the first work from my PhD is out in @currentbiology.bsky.social www.cell.com/current-biol... We tackle two fundamental questions: 1) How does the brain create a cognitive map solely using auditory information? 2)How does the hippocampus represent a moving object?

In humans, bigger teams often mean less effort per person — the #Ringelmann effect. Weaver #ants 🐜 flip the script: #teamwork makes them superefficient! Video + paper out now in Current Biology! @cellpress.bsky.social tinyurl.com/44yrvp6m tinyurl.com/3jnnevfn

Here's a quick explainer that Dan and I wrote for our paper out today in Current Biology (tinyurl.com/3jnnevfn) on weaver ant pulling chains. theconversation.com/as-human-tea... via @ConversationEDU

1. "'Trusting the experts is not a feature of either a science or democracy," Kennedy said." It's literally a vital feature of both science and of representative democracy. I've written a fair bit about trust in expertise as a vital mechanism in the collective epistemology of science.

New paper out! We found that in pipistrelle bats, social vocalizations carry a stronger phylogenetic signal than echolocation calls, suggesting the former evolve more slowly, while the latter remains flexible and shaped by the environment. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The brachiopod Nucleospira calypta lived on the sea floor around 436 million years ago in a checkerboard pattern determined by the length of its setae--bristle-like appendages likely used for feeding or defense. In PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...