Watson and Crick elucidated the structure of DNA. Stop saying that they discovered DNA! This was done by another guy you probably haven't heard of! And therein lies a story. academic.oup.com/genetics/art...

🧪📍🌊 🦑🍎 @mbarinews.bsky.social is now accepting applications for our 30th summer internship program www.mbari.org/about/career...

Happy to say one of my dissertation projects was accepted for publication in Movement Ecology! We evolved small neural controllers to show how forager perception (visual v. tactile) and target signals generate different movement patterns during pursuit. Pre-print: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

What role(s) can non-human animal culture play in conservation? Much has been written on this topic in recent years, but Dawn Barlow, Taylor Hersh, & I offer some new perspectives: "Integrating space, time, and culture in animal conservation practice" @behavecol.bsky.social tinyurl.com/bdfe9k3j

Lucky to have spent a couple of hours with this Tamandua the other day. They have a unique grace in moving through dense foliage, fascinating to watch

This was a fascinating, uncomfortable episode!

Whoa! New predator-prey interaction just dropped!

I dislike using social media to dunk on science, but it's appropriate to call out deeply misguided opinions published in our most-read journals. "human ingenuity is expressed through the machines we create." An incredibly & disturbingly narrow perception of humanity's collective ingenuity.

Very interesting paper and a very informative thread

🦅PhD position 🦅 in my new group at @fbm-unil.bsky.social in Switzerland, studying how the social and resource landscapes shape the learning process for soaring flight. Deadline: Oct 30. Pls repost! career5.successfactors.eu/career?caree...

⭐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...

At the 26th annual Roger Revelle Commemorative Lecture, MBARI’s Chris Scholin explored how robotics and AI are revolutionizing marine science and emphasized why developing technology and maintaining a persistent presence are critical to understanding our changing ocean: bit.ly/oceanography...

Take note, repost far and wide. The Dechmann Lab are hiring ✨

this matters because 'AI', like any technology, is designed, owned, operated by companies that make choices. In other tech - iPhones, TikTok - we quickly attribute design choices to specific companies. But we still discuss "AI" as if it was some disembodied discovery, more uranium than software.

New article out in Geo: Geography and Environment with an interdisciplinary dream team of coauthors: “From maps to models: Participation and contestability in the dynamic management of natural resources.” doi.org/10.1002/geo2... (open access)

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 🧵)

Sperm whale echolocation loud & clear on the @mbarinews.bsky.social hydrophone live stream right now! www.mbari.org/project/soun... Amazing to have live audio from the deep sea streaming online... & this long-term data enabling discoveries about these cryptic animals' lives tinyurl.com/58a5jefp

We're hiring! My lab is seeking a 2-yr Postdoc in 🌊 marine ecology + 🛰️ remote sensing. You'll work with a big team (including @albertruhi.bsky.social @cgerleinsafdi.bsky.social) to study the impacts of changing rainfall on marine freshwater plumes + coastal organisms. aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05114

History made for the ocean: #BBNJ Agreement enters into force, protecting high seas & deep seabed, safeguarding life under water. “Our ocean is the foundation of our very existence. Today we took an important step forward to save our ocean, & to save our future” - ED @ingerandersen.bsky.social

"Oceanography in the age of intelligent robots and a changing climate" tos.org/oceanography... @mbarinews.bsky.social

first light

We have a cover for next year's Children of Strife!

Huge thanks to Akanksha Rathore and her research group for generously hosting me at BITS-Pilani after #Behaviour2025! A fun end to an inspiring week-plus of behavioural ecology discussions in India

🚨 Junior Research Fellow position (+possible PhD conversion) studying Emergent Collective Intelligence for Ephemeral Resource Tracking. Based with Akanksha Rathore at BITS Pilani (India) and including visits to Konstanz (Germany) to collaborate with us! Apply by 12 September. More info 👇

This is wild! Feels like part of an @aptshadow.bsky.social novel...

“We live on an #ocean planet” write @will-oestreich.bsky.social et al., but much of the ocean is barely known. They state “we must take immediate & sustained collective action to provide #biodiversity data to inform global ocean #protection from the surface to the sea floor” doi.org/10.1111/ele....

Animals don’t just live in their environments—they transform them. And in doing so, they may also shape their own evolutionary trajectories. Our new paper in Trends in Ecology & Evolution introduces a framework for zoogeochemical niche construction. A thread 👇

Lucky to be a part of an inspiring symposium on mechanisms of collective behaviour in Kolkata! Shared our work on oceanic collective behaviour, including specific work on collective behaviour in blue whales and krill across nested oceanic scales @asab.org @behaviour2025.bsky.social

Absolutely. And there is a critical role for similar global cooperation among ocean scientists in the implementation of protections under the High Seas Treaty: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Our science photo book The Radiant Sea is out Sept 2nd!! 30 years of research, 10 years of "we should", and a year of collating pix and writing. Sönke and I show (mostly for the first time) images of how organisms produce, use, and interact with light in the sea. #bioluminescence #fluorescence 🦑🧪🌊

MELA — a short documentary on the Mating Ecology of Lek Breeding Antelope — takes you behind the scenes of an interdisciplinary #UniKonstanz @cbehav.bsky.social @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social research journey. This film reveals how science is done, shared, and lived: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i4d...

7. The paper looks at how researchers might hand off boring "drudge work" such as data collection and cleaning to AI agents, and what could (and IMO will) go wrong as they do so. Here's a key passage.

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."

The High Seas Treaty is poised to be ratified, creating a legal instrument for protected areas in the high seas. We see a crucial role for "Collective Science" to provide robust biodiversity data and to help inform protection of this vast 3D space. Read more in Ecology Letters: tinyurl.com/33637jax

The High Seas Treaty is poised to be ratified, creating a legal instrument for protected areas in the high seas. We see a crucial role for "Collective Science" to provide robust biodiversity data and to help inform protection of this vast 3D space. Read more in Ecology Letters: tinyurl.com/33637jax

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...

New work from MBARI and our collaborators outlines a strategy for the global scientific community to provide the biodiversity data needed to guide international efforts to protect marine life and ecosystems under the UN High Seas Treaty. #BBNJ Learn more: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

"Behavior drives morphological change during human evolution" Our new article is out in @science.org today www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The odd decorations on treehoppers may help them to detect electrostatic charges! That's pretty cool.

The Environmental Policy Lab at @ethz.ch is hiring! 🌱 A Postdoc broadly interested in resilient data infrastructure & policy for biodiversity governance 🌱 Two PhD students interested in biodiversity policy and spatial planning more info here: epl.ethz.ch/the-group/op... Please share widely! 🌍

falling in love with Scotland while attending @divintelligence.bsky.social

Having a blast in St Andrews, collectively foraging for new ideas with the many minds of @divintelligence.bsky.social ! Image 1: tide pool creations Image 2: several of thousands of baby squid found at the tide line Image 3: fog rolls in on the coastal cliffs

Important ideas here, even as LLMs improve & are useful for many tasks. If you agree to review, why would you want to hand the work over to an LLM? This work is uncompensated, except for what you gain (& give) by deeply engaging. If it's to save unpaid time... why are you agreeing to review?

Preprint repositories like ArXiv and OSF are within arms reach of revolutionizing the hellscape of academic publishing with one step: adding in-house editors. 🧵

🚨 New paper alert! 🚨 Excited to share our new review in @royalsocietypublishing.org Proceedings B! 🎉 We synthesize research on social factors influencing animal migration and offer guidelines for future research. Check it out here: doi.org/10.1098/rspb... #OpenAccess #Migration #MovementEcology

Have you ever cited or come across a mention of the 'human shield hypothesis' and wondered: what is the evidence for this hypothesis, and what is the quality of that evidence? Wonder no more! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Ice-pillow nap time Leopard seal (Hydrurga leptonyx), Feb 2020

"How Little We've Seen" Imagine measuring an area the size of Houston, then making generalizations about the entire globe. From analysis of Bell et al., that's just what we're doing with the deep seafloor. www.science.org/doi/full/10....

With the One Ocean Science Congress happening this week & the UN Ocean Conference next week, check out our preprint about the role of accessible, open biodiversity data to enhance protections under the High Seas Treaty: tinyurl.com/3fejy2ms And keep an eye out for the full peer-reviewed paper soon!