Fully funded #PhD studentships, start Sept 2026: 1. Weaponry and aggression in wild fiddler crabs, with me, Safi Darden, Martin How tinyurl.com/weaponsPhD 2. The emotional basis of behaviour, with me, Danny Williamson, Andy Higginson tinyurl.com/emotionsPhD #AnimalBehaviour @crab-exeter.bsky.social

Our paper is published today in Current Biology and is featured on the cover! We report a neat, and somewhat counter-intuitive, finding: higher-ranking baboons get less and more interrupted night-time rest.

Late-reporting, but last year some of our CRABbers headed up to Edinburgh to present their posters at the @asab.org Winter meeting. Well done all! @libbychaps.bsky.social @charli-ocean.bsky.social and @ Manuela Carona R

Festive Season in CRAB, which we celebrate with a quiz and by rediscovering the password to the CRAB Bluesky account.

New paper out in iScience. We found the pattern of Guinea baboon meat transfers follows the shape of their nested multi-level society. Transfers of meat are more tolerant at the lower levels of the society and are more likely to occur along stronger social relationships. www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

❓ Want to join us? 📢 Fully funded #PhD for UK-domiciled Black heritage candidates 🐵 Biological market monitoring & manipulation in social animals #mongooses #macaques #fieldwork 👥 With me, #LaurenBrent & #PatrickKennedy 🎓 @bristolbiosci.bsky.social ℹ️ www.findaphd.com/phds/project... 🙏Share widely

MSc by Res opportunity - developing behavioural indicators to inform killer whale conservation with @exeter.ac.uk @whaleresearch.bsky.social @seadocsociety.bsky.social People from underrepresented groups in marine science encouraged to apply. Deadline 19Dec www.exeter.ac.uk/study/fundin...

Social relationships are powerful predictors of fitness across social animals. But *why*? In our new @cp-trendsecolevo.bsky.social paper, we outline testable predictions for why relationship quality and quantity adaptively vary across socio-ecological contexts. tinyurl.com/55dnkeh7

We are hiring - PDRA position exploring how information access shapes social dynamics in killer whales. Collaboration with @samellisq.bsky.social @drwhale.bsky.social Prof Dan Franks (York) start 1st Nov (or ASAP) end 31st Oct 2028. Apps close on 19th Oct. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOT336/p...

Ever stared at a table of regression coefficients & wondered what you're doing with your life? Very excited to share this gentle introduction to another way of making sense of statistical models (w @vincentab.bsky.social) Preprint: doi.org/10.31234/osf... Website: j-rohrer.github.io/marginal-psy...

Pleasure and honour to have the opportunity to discuss some of the work we have been doing on over the last few years. Thanks to @behaviour2025.bsky.social for the invite (and great conference), @asab.org for the funding and everyone who turned up to listen at 9am on day 5.

Animal Behaviour from Exeter and Bristol, plus some of our alumni, went to @behaviour2025.bsky.social in Kolkata and had mountains of rice. @crab-exeter.bsky.social @bristolbiosci.bsky.social @uniexecec.bsky.social

It was a real pleasure to have accidently been involved in Joe Wilde's (not here) paper published last week: doi.org/10.1098/rspb... It has terrifying Bayesian Hidden Markov Models, important insights about dynamic sexual signalling, and a robot crab called "Wavey Dave"- what's not to love?

BEHAVIOR IS THE WAY

🐒🕸️ New preprint! Confused about how to model animal social networks? ASNA can be confusing—but also full of opportunity. We break down 5 common misunderstandings in animal social network analysis and share solutions from behavioural ecology, anthro, stats, & network science. Hope it helps! A 🧵

I learned a lot working on this new paper with this group of network scientists, sociologists, anthropologists and behavioural ecologists. We're hoping it helps anyone who feels (understandably!) lost in the animal social networks weeds.

Loved listening to this discussion, and so pleased our research on the gorillas monitored by @savinggorillas.bsky.social, led by the fantastic Vic Martignac is resonating with so many!

‪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

Geology Murder xkcd.com/3112/

Our #study finds that #male #dominance isn't the norm among #primates, and starts to unravel what shapes flexibility in intersexual power paper (OA) https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2500405122 press release https://www.mpg.de/24986976/0630-evan-beyond-the-alpha-male-150495-x?c=2249

Good Science xkcd.com/3101/

🚨Anyone want a job?🚨 We have two #postdocs up for grabs! 🧪 - cell developmental biology/#evodevo/#neuroevodevo - bioinformatics and molecular biology Both working on brain evolution in Heliconiini butterflies Details below! Please repost 🙏 1/n

Very excited to see our paper using historical data to infer toothed whale lifespans published this week in the Biological Journal of the Linnaean Society (@biojlinnsoc.bsky.social) doi.org/10.1093/biol... w. @darrencroft.bsky.social @drwhale.bsky.social @mialybkaer.bsky.social, Dan Franks

How good is it to get work with this lovely group of people in @crab-exeter.bsky.social every day? Answer: really really good!

it's published! finally! in this week's newsletter: my attempt to go through every single reason why I both dislike and distrust generative AI: youngvulgarian.substack.com/p/11-things-... [free to read!]

Did you know about these tiny shiny ants (red arrow) living with wood ants (blue arrow)? They are Shining Guest Ants (Formicoxenus) and we have recently discovered that a wood ant nest can be home to several genetically distinct colonies of these 'guests'! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author... 1/5

Postdoc job alert! I'm hiring a 3-yr postdoc to work on our Social Modifiers of Primate Lifespans grant. Job info and how to apply below. Deadline June 1. Pls share! jobs.exeter.ac.uk/hrpr_webrecr...

Thrilled to have the 1st project in my @snsf-ch.bsky.social Ambizione fellowship in @pnas.org this week. With Vic Martignac, @samellisq.bsky.social and @savinggorillas.bsky.social we asked what is a good social environment for a gorilla? And the answer was complicated... www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

🐳 UPCOMING BOOK ALERT 🐬 The Evolution of Cetacean Societies Edited by @darrencroft.bsky.social @andrewfoote.bsky.social @ellengarland.bsky.social and myself Preorder available now press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo... #whale #dolphin #animalbehaviour

Bake your paper! Research tech extraordinaire, Macaela Skelton, made a cake of (some of) the study sites in the MacaqueNet database. She ran out of decorations before she could do them all 😆. Link to the paper that's been cake-ified: besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

So exciting to see MacaqueNet out into the world! 🤩 Learn about our global community & database centralizing standardized affiliative & agonistic data from 61 populations across 14 macaque species: doi/10.1111/1365... Explore >600 networks & request data: macaquenet.github.io/database/

Update: Abstract submission for #Behaviour2025 is now extended to Feb 15!

Recruiting a #PhD student to work on collective behaviour in real and artificial systems. Oct 2025 start. Working with @shoalgroup.bsky.social, Rob Heathcote, @willallennz.bsky.social, @joefresna.bsky.social, @marinapapap.bsky.social Advert: www.swansea.ac.uk/postgraduate... Deadline: 24.02

Where are all the field studies? This ⬇️ important but rather depressing paper describes how conducting, & crucially initiating, field studies is becoming harder & rarer. A short 🧵 (and a call for more fieldwork) www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

Less than a week!

Since it is inefficient to attempt to educate every reviewer individually, I am yeeting into your feed this clear paper from Gelman, Hill, and Yajima on how Bayesians can do even better than correcting for multiple comparisons. arxiv.org/abs/0907.2478

Funded PhD Available at the University of Exeter. Loneliness is a global epidemic. We want to use field experiments in wild rabbits to understand why our social connections change with age. Deadline: 11th Dec More info & how to apply here: bpb-eu-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.bristo...

New PhD opportunity on social behaviour in the context of ecological disturbance with me, @mdekauwe.bsky.social, and others. Sept 2025 start, funded by NERC Apply by Jan 13. Project and application details: www.exeter.ac.uk/study/fundin...

Funded PhD Available at the University of Exeter. Loneliness is a global epidemic. We want to use field experiments in wild rabbits to understand why our social connections change with age. Deadline: 11th Dec More info & how to apply here: bpb-eu-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.bristo...

New paper with @gerrycarter.bsky.social just in time for Halloween! Vampire bats' first impressions of each other don't predict the formation of long-term relationships doi.org/10.1111/nyas...

Excellent cetaceans of the Azores in the Guardian today. But I do feel the need to point out that this male is not "escorting" the group from "300m behind". Females lead the group. And males are reliant on their female group mates to survive. The escorting is the other way round

Post Doc available We are looking for someone to come and work here at Exeter on an NIH funded project awarded to me, Lauren Brent, Noah Snyder-Mackler and Kenny Chiou. The aim of the post is to help us investigate comparative primate life history. Details here: jobs.exeter.ac.uk/hrpr_webrecr...

It begins! #ISBE2024 kicks off! As in past years, I'll do my best to skeet something from most talks I attend so follow this thread for the vicarious fun and science if you weren't able to attend yourself

UK Coal xkcd.com/2992

It was really great to welcome everyone to Exeter this week for the @asaborg.bsky.social Spring Conference. Lots of fun and loads of great science presented brilliantly. Thanks for coming everyone!