Congratulations to Caitlin - the first paper from her PhD! 🥳

What an excellent topic for a study - who makes jokes during talks? 'Jokes eliciting whole-room laughter were rare (9%), while the majority fell flat or landed mildly, earning mostly quiet chuckles (67%)' Ouch!

New research shows that displaying a pair of eyes on food packaging can be enough to stop some gulls pinching your food.

Can we stop gulls from pinching food by sticking eyes 👀 on takeaway boxes? New paper in @ecol-evol.bsky.social suggests it is an effective solution for deterring some gulls from food sources, but not all! tinyurl.com/gulleyes Read a summary in @uk.theconversation.com tinyurl.com/gulleyes2

Nice article by the wonderful Marlene Zuk in National Geographic, featuring my and @neeltjeboogert.bsky.social research on Cornish herring gulls, and how kids got us into gulls 😊 @neeltjeboogert.bsky.social @uniexecec.bsky.social www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...

Another stick in the wall: we removed part of male great bowerbird bower walls to test effect on courtship displays. Males didn’t just focus on rebuilding the wall, they stepped up effort across all aspects of their display, showing they flexibly invest in multiple signals tinyurl.com/4ujmkw95

Interested in the interface of evolution 🧬 and ecology 🌳? Then you cannot miss #ExE2026! Hosted by @uniexecec.bsky.social in beautiful #Cornwall, this #conference has a stellar line-up of speakers and lots of pre-and post-conference workshops. Space is limited, so register now at evoxeco.uk!

Lectureships available with priorities in evolutionary biology, behavioural and sensory ecology, ecology and plants!

Join us! We’re recruiting a PhD researcher to uncover how hedgehogs & other insectivores survive prey toxins. Dive into molecular evolution & protein biochemistry @shabmohammadi.bsky.social @livuni-ives.bsky.social @livuni-ismib.bsky.social @mpi-ce.bsky.social 🦔 www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

New bowerbird paper out, we asked whether male great bowerbirds care about the light environment around the bower where they display to females. Short answer: not really. What they do care about is having a display arena with strong visual contrast on the ground. 🐦 tinyurl.com/2v7rycdz

🚨 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

We're open for abstract submission, and look forward to welcoming you all to Bristol in March! asab-spring-conference2026.github.io @asab-meetings.bsky.social #ASABSpring2026

Thank you so much to everyone who came, it was lovely to catch up with old friends, meet new ones and hear about a lot of amazing sensory science!

And we're off! Innes Cuthill giving the public lecture on concealment in the animal kingdom #asabwinter2025

PhD scholarship alert! Are you interested in cognitive evolution? Do you want to know how development influences cognitive traits? Do you love hanging out with birds in the forest? If the answer to these questions is yes, please apply to work with us! 1/2 🧪 www.wgtn.ac.nz/scholarships...

Turns out gulls don't like being shouted at (or stared at!) New paper led by excellent masters students @uniexecec.bsky.social with @neeltjeboogert.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Key info 🗝️ 💶Fees and stipend included! 🌍Open to students worldwide! 👥 Fabulous co-supervisors @ecologyofvision.bsky.social and @mcgregorlab.bsky.social 📆Start Sept 2026 👩🏽‍💻Online info event 24th Nov ⏰Deadline December 15th Spread the word! 🗣️ Have Qs? Contact me! www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

📣 @asab.org grants BOOSTED! 📣 We've increased most of our research-related grants by 50%, effective from the next deadline of 1st Feb 2026. Check out what we offer here: www.asab.org/grant-overview

🚨🔊 Fully funded PhD!! 🚨🔊 Are you interested in wildlife gut microbiomes? Love birds, fieldwork and bioinformatics? Want to join a collaborative and supportive team? Looking for training to become an independent scientist? Please apply! Informal enquiries welcome! www.uea.ac.uk/course/phd-d...

Also managed to track down some immature male great bowerbirds today, they were displaying at trees to get some practice in (paper on this shorturl.at/jqOQt). Found these two sites due to the birds making a right racket!

One of the risks of bowerbirds sharing space with a university - sometimes scientific equipment (and samples) get pinched! Soy sauce containers also seem to be popular

Back in the land of bowers this week! Investigating how male courtship signals are affected by urbanisation #greatbowerbirds @uniexecec.bsky.social

For those that have registered for #ASABWinter2025, you should have received an email last week asking you to confirm your attendance. If you haven't, please check your spam folders! And don't forget, only one week left until the conference grant deadline (Oct 1) www.asab.org/conference-g...

Deadline for submitting an abstract to give a talk or poster is this Friday!

We are looking for a Postdoc (up to 5 years) who wants to study neural mechanisms of spatial memory in honeybees. This includes tetrode recordings in behaving honeybees. Application Deadline is 1st of October 2025. More details: www.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de/en/services/...

‪Come join us at the @asab.org Winter Conference 2025: how sensory info affects behaviour. 15th & 16th Dec, abstracts due end Aug. More info and registration asabwinter.github.io/2025 Co-hosted with @jtroscianko.bsky.social and Innes Cuthill

New from #ProcB: Immediate and longer-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientific productivity in #ecology and #evolution royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... | #COVID #COVID19

🚨 🪺🐦🦠 PhD opportunity in my lab for UK home fee students. Feel free to contact me for informal enquiries. Please share! shorturl.at/wUo8r

It may feel as though we live in dark times, but here in the UK there are LOADS of science festivals celebrating ideas, sparking curiosity & sharing the latest research (for both adults & kids). Someone told me recently they didn’t know where to look, so I made a list. Here goes… [deep breath]: 1/8

In the current challenging climate of finding reviewers, how long is too long to wait for a manuscript to be reviewed? My PhD student has had her first manuscript in review for six months now, journal has only managed to obtain one review so far 🤷‍♀️

Job alert🐦 2yr post-doc position with Prof. Sue Healy on project "Mistakes in Action: From the Normativity of Goal-Directedness to Novel Investigations of Avian Nest Construction"🪺 Start asap. Contact: sdh11[at]st-andrews.ac.uk @uniofstandrews.bsky.social

Black margins are important for size discrimination - female green swordtails prefer larger males but preference is lost when black margins on tail are absent. Seems they can't judge which male is bigger without black margin! shorturl.at/6GKA2 @uniexecec.bsky.social @royalsocietypublishing.org

We have a fully funded International 4-year position (combined Master of Research+PhD) to study visual navigation in jumping spiders. Project will be supervised by @pipilika.bsky.social, @mherberstein.bsky.social, @dinrao.bsky.social & Ximena Nelson. At Macquarie University, Sydney. Details below

Sign up for ASAB spring meeting, the best conference for early career researchers in my humble opinion!

Postdoc @ evol-lab. A Leverhulme funded 3-year postdoc studying body shape evolution (through a sexual conflict lens) on Exeter's Penryn (UK) campus. Starts April 2025. Contact David Hosken @ U of Exeter for detail.

Congratulations Emma! 🥳

Some great PhD opportunities for 2025 in our fab department @uniexecec.bsky.social in beautiful Cornwall: 1) How does pollution impact behavioural evolution? Project with @ali--wilson.bsky.social spans behaviour, genetics and ecotox, working with cherry shrimp. More info: tinyurl.com/yvthn7xn

How does pollution impact behavioural evolution? We're looking for an awesome PhD student to find out. Project spans behaviour, genetics + ecotox, working with cherry shrimp @exetercec.bsky.social. Cosupervised with @lauraakelley.bsky.social and Dave Spurgeon at CEH. App + info tinyurl.com/yvthn7xn

Congratulations to Menno van Berkel on passing his PhD viva yesterday! 🐦🪺 Huge thanks to @sjportugal.bsky.social and Neeltje Boogert for being excellent examiners and Alex Thornton for being a fab cosupervisor!

Join our team! We're looking for a Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Marine Ecology and Conservation to support our partnership with the University of Khorfakkan, United Arab Emirates (UAE). To find out and apply, visit: jobs.ac.uk/job/DKJ244/l... #ConservationJobs #ConservationCareers #MarineResearch

It's nice to be back!

Good people at #ASABSpring2024, I am advertising a fully funded PhD studentship on perceptual processing during mate choice in 🐟. More details here: www.exeter.ac.uk/study/fundin...

New bowerbird paper! Male great bowerbirds build display courts that are linked to mating success, and we found that object availability 🧱 rather than male building ability 👷 explains variation in court quality rb.gy/vznmm7

I love ordering things from @OrdnanceSurvey as they use mis-printed maps and offcuts as packing paper, which makes me inordinately happy 🗺️

The excellent @KathrynBullough (funded by @royalsociety) flying the flag for PhDs at Exeter's Cornwall campus @UniExeCEC @UniofExeter. Interested in doing a PhD? Wonder what it's like? 👇 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HvjwyOjz1I

Curious about Weber's Law? We (@KathrynBullough, @kuijperbram, @EleanorCaves) have a Quick Guide out in @CurrentBiology this week, free access here https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1huZ93QW8S2RNJ

Any gardeners know who the methodical predator might be? Canna lily in Cornwall.

Normally our deutzia is absolutely hooching with bees when flowering, it's eerily quiet this year 🥺

Finally have a moment for a short thread about new @Ecology_Letters paper led by the amazing @EleanorCaves, available here https://bit.ly/3IzkCvH We tested whether female green swordtails assess male body size in absolute or relative terms. Why is this important? Read on…

Auspicious double rainbow for a day conference with the folks from up the road, pretty good view too!