A fun use of our open-access bird song data: helping argue that the results of a widely publicised study on individually specific, name-like calls in African elephants may instead reflect spuriously learned structure in the acoustic data. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

1/🧵My first preprint!🐛🌡️ We examine how environmental effects experienced during one life-history stage persist and modulate environmental responses in later life-history stages. With Lea Beaupere, @sheldonbirds.bsky.social, @rona-learmonth.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🚨🚨🚨 Field Assistant positions - four of them!! - working with the long-term Wytham project this coming spring. Details below. Previous year's field team - come and join us! Details below ⬇️

New preprint! 🌳🐛 We combined experimental and genomic methods to study local adaptation of winter moths to variation in oak budburst timing in Wytham Woods, UK. With @andreaestandia.bsky.social, Lea Beaupere, Ella Cole, and @sheldonbirds.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Reading this blog post made me sad and uneasy. We shouldn’t so uncritically celebrate tools that can accelerate the spread of poor scientific practices and distance our students from understanding. This hype will only worsen existing problems in academia: more noise, less quality, fewer secure jobs.

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

Happy to share our last work just published in @animalecology.bsky.social. With @claire-doutrelant.bsky.social and Peter Pearman. besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @cnrs.fr @biology.ox.ac.uk

Oh, the joys of fieldwork this time of the year!

Working on an experimental acoustic data explorer - particle & background iterations. #datavis #dataviz

New preprint in collaboration with @babeheim.bsky.social: Vocal mimicry in corvids. We describe vocal mimicry, i.e., copying of sounds produced by another species or the environment, in 31 out of 128 corvid species (24%). (1/2) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A beautiful day for fieldwork — soaking in the sounds of early spring

This cool visualisation by @nilomr.bsky.social of great tit song (or is it the clangers? - 🔊 on) reminded me of how enjoyable it was to talk at length to @sykhalid.bsky.social @timcoulson.bsky.social on @scienceofthetimes.bsky.social about our great tit song paper: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/n...

New paper on the demographic drivers of cultural evolution in Great Tit song published today - epic work led by @nilomr.bsky.social with help from @andreaestandia.bsky.social Ella Cole & Sara Keen. Why did we do this, and what did we find? 🧵 follows: 1/n www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Theory tells us that demography, i.e. pop turnover, immigration & age structure, must be important to animal culture but evidence is rare. Here this cool study on song in the famous great tits of Wytham Woods shows what is possible 🐦 www.washingtonpost.com/science/2025...