Field trip season is in full swing! This week our Level 7 students visited a local RSPB nature reserve to explore landscape-scale conservation, habitat connectivity, and taxon-specific identification,...

new preprint led by @alperyelimlies.bsky.social: Flexibility of territorial aggression in urban and rural Chaffinches www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #ornithology

‼️ Thrilled to share my first article on the Kalahari meerkats ‼️, in @animalecology.bsky.social! Group membership strongly influences gut microbiomes & especially the co-occurrence of beneficial bacteria, beyond animals' age or sex, disease status, or environmental exposure doi.org/10.1111/1365...

Check out our new database (catalogue.ceh.ac.uk/documents/18...) and data paper (www.nature.com/articles/s41...) for the traits of UK ladybirds 🐞 Great to see this out, a really fun team to work with expertly led by @charlieouthwaite.bsky.social @ukladybirds.bsky.social @aru-biology.bsky.social

Open Day at Home Farm - shout out to our fantastic Zoology BSc and Ecology and Conservation BSc students Katy Mae Cockburn, Patrick Silvester, Christian Upham, Caitlin Faber and Ella Burbridge for showcasing some biology related activities on the day

Day two with aru and we’ve been exploring the limestone landscapes of the garrigue. Highlights of this nutrient poor environment were orchids and Gladioli, as well as many butterflies. We even saw a Spanish Festoon butterfly ovipositing on its larval foodplant, 𝘈𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘢. @aru-biology.bsky.social

We spent a great day exploring the Camargue with our visitors from aru. In the northern reedbeds, we saw European Bee-eaters, treefrogs, and seven species of heron including this Squacco Heron that flew right over. Then on to the southern salt marshes for Greater Flamingos. @aru-biology.bsky.social

Yesterday our visitors from aru focussed on insect surveys. We set a moth trap over night and identified our species in the morning, then spent the afternoon surveying the meadows. We even fitted in a trip to the maquis to look at this acidic scrubland habitat. @aru-biology.bsky.social

With MSc students and staff from aru, we visited the Causse Mejéan. This limestone plateau hosts a huge diversity of orchids and other upland plants such as Pasqueflowers. We also stopped by the Przewalski’s Horse breeding area and watched some interesting social behaviours. @aru-biology.bsky.social

We’ve spent a fantastic week hosting MSc students from aru. We’d like to say a big thank you to everyone involved for making this field course work so well. Lots of valuable field skills learned, and amazing wildlife encountered. Good luck with the rest of your studies! @aru-biology.bsky.social

Our field course with MSc students from aru is off to a great start. We’ve explored the local habitats, finding some great animals and plants along the way. We’ve also had an acoustic analysis for bat id workshop, and deployed our camera traps. All in the first day! @aru-biology.bsky.social

A reminder that we have a full PhD scholarship open at ARU in Cambridge, UK, open to candidates of any nationality. The project is on "the comparative anatomy of the mammalian larynx" and links to bioacoustics, evobio, anatomy, socioecology, etc. Please r/t and reach out with questions.

This week our students took a trip up to Hampton Nature Reserve in Peterborough in the company James McAdie of Froglife to complete their commercial amphibian surveying training!

a bit belated but here's an article in the Guardian about our research paper led by Leon Hohl and @alperyelimlies.bsky.social with @klf-univienna.bsky.social on the effect of noise in Galapagos Yellow Warblers www.theguardian.com/science/2025... article link (open access): doi.org/10.1016/j.an...

a nice write-up of the Floreana restoration project that I am privileged to be involved in!

This week our first year Animal & Environmental Biology students took a trip out to the Devil’s Dyke Nature Reserve near Burwell! With compass clinometers, pin quadrats and plant identification guides our students surveyed this unique archaeological earthwork.

We are mid Daffodil (Narcissus) season in the UK. Go out and see what you can find, these daffs are across 3 divisions but there are 12 to find :)

Spring is upon us, and talented natural history photographer and MSc Applied Wildlife Conservation student - Andrew Smith - has been out and about in Cambridge to record the cities wildlife! #urbanwildlife #Cambridge

We are delighted to advertise a 3 year fully funded PhD, generously funded by @camphilsoc.bsky.social on the evolution of the mammalian larynx, hosted @angliaruskin.bsky.social Full details here: findaphd.com/phds/project... Please pass it on!

Great to have our special feature out on Intraspecific Variation in Ecology and Evolution - the irony of the diversity of papers included is not lost! From genes to populations, demography to behaviour, we've got it all. A pleasure editing this issue with @ju-morimoto.bsky.social and Marlène Gamelon

Check out the special feature on 'Intraspecific Variation in Ecology and Evolution' by our lecturer and guest editor @hannah-wht-eco.bsky.social out now in the Journal of Animal Ecology by @britishecologicalsociety.org #ARUproud besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Our lecturer @wascherclaudia.bsky.social will be talking about corvid vocal communication and cognition in @braincoustics.bsky.social seminar series.

Excited to share that MacaqueNet is now out in @animalecology.bsky.social ! Great platform brilliantly put together by @delphinedemoor.bsky.social and the core team, that should launch the next phase of comparative studies in behavioural ecology. Very fortunate to have been a part of this effort!

New paper by former student @coloeus.bsky.social and our lecturer @wascherclaudia.bsky.social on corvid caching behaviour published in Animal Cognition

This week our students were treated to a Biodiversity Net Gain masterclass by Senior Nature Advisor Nicole King from PJA Consulting! Nicole showcased the Statutory Biodiversity Metric and also explained how this can be better framed for greater certainty for wildlife conservation outcomes.

Best of luck to out team 'First things first, Amaryllis' competing in the The Botanical University Challenge. Watch live: www.youtube.com/watch?v=SazH... #BUC2025 #ARUproud

Our students ventured out for a ‘live brief’ challenge last week in partnership with St Andrew’s Healthcare in Northampton. Working alongside our wonderful host – Net Zero Sustainability Manager Danielle Bird – students were able to undertake a supervised ecological assessment.

New paper by our lecturer @wascherclaudia.bsky.social and postgraduate researcher Sam Reynolds: Vocal communication in corvids: a systematic review. #ARUproud #vocalcommunication #corvids #evolution www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Working in collaboration with Hobsons Conduit Trust, this research aims to add to the river conservation evidence-base of the Greater Cambridge Chalk Streams Project. www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Today's IPBES #TransformativeChangeAssessment report highlights the benefits to taking immediate action to address the biodiversity crisis as well as the pitfalls of inaction. 🌍🧪

Congratulations to @aru-biology.bsky.social Prof Anna Nekaris for receiving the Osman Hill Medal from the @primatesocietygb.bsky.social #ARUproud

MSc alumna Francesca Roseo recently got in touch to share an career update following graduation. Our MSc programmes are currently recruiting for a Jan 2025 start, so if you’d like to book a meeting with us please do get in touch: www.aru.ac.uk/study/postgr...; www.aru.ac.uk/study/postgr...

This week our first year students braved the bone chilling winds of the Norfolk coast in our annual visit to the grey seal colony at Horsey. Joined by experts from the Friends of Horsey Seals, students carried out a population census and were even able to see a seal cow give birth to a pup!

One of the questions we are often asked is what do our students do when the graduate from their Masters programme? Check out these biographies and advice from some of our recent graduates to inspire you to land that dream job after studying with us! #ecologyjobs #conservationjobs