New analysis of the major qualitative differences between natural and artificial intelligence (via LLMs). LLMs and humans form judgments differently across seven epistemological stages 🧵 osf.io/preprints/ps...

Multiple anthropogenic stressors can negatively impact species but can a single stressor also have multiple, concurrent impacts? Here we show that light pollution creates several simultaneous impacts to the nocturnal movement ecology of a moth and a spider: tinyurl.com/5eku5bff (1/5)

Creative and important study for understanding visual processing.

Join us for your PhD! Apply by 15th Dec ⏰ to come to @bristolbiosci.bsky.social and study spider eyes, development and visual ecology under light pollution! Open to all nationalities, funded incl. stipend, set in a beautiful city, and with amazing collaborators ✨ www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

A new PhD opportunity in Melbourne!

Thrilled to announce a Postdoc opportunity in our group on the evolutionary genetics and ecology of colour. Wonderful system, great collaborators, and room to shape your own ideas. Apply by 7 Jan: jobs.helsinki.fi/job/13477181...

#colsci @micatoolbox.bsky.social

Larger frogs are better mimics but are more risk-averse in a nontoxic poison frog #Aposematism #WarningSignals #Ampibian doi.org/10.1093/behe...

Make sure you don’t miss our key dates for abstract submission and registration!

I forgot to share that our paper came out a few months ago! We synthesise decades of research showing that conspicuous traits consistently predict attractiveness, condition, and fitness across animals. Check it out if you’re into sexual selection and signalling! doi.org/10.1111/ele....

Very happy to see our opinion article out in @cp-trendsecolevo.bsky.social today. 🥳 We ask whether sexual signals can influence the evolutionary trajectory of naturally selected adaptations, such as protective colouration, for better or for worse 🧐 1/n doi.org/10.1016/j.tr...

New paper out in @behavecol.bsky.social! Multiple studies show that sexually selected traits such as colours can reflect the presence of pathogens/parasites, but, can defensive coloration do the same? L. Schlippe Justicia, @carodittrich.bsky.social, O. Nokelainen & I tackled that question (1/3)

I've been pretty agnostic about mantis colour vision given the evidence so far. This new paper makes a convincing case they have the processing to do so. Mantises (probably) see in colour folks!

Do you work (/want to work) with caterpillars? Or sensory systems? Or BOTH?! Well good golly do we have the paper for you! We explain the senses that caterpillars have, what they use them for, and how anthropogenic sensory pollution might be messing it all up 🐛 doi.org/10.1007/s003...

BehaveAI is live! Our biologically inspired video analysis tool sees motion as colour. Track animals or objects, classify their behaviour, and handle complex natural scenes with ease. Semi-supervised annotation, no GPUs required, user-friendly, free & open source. Pre-print tinyurl.com/BehaveAI

Now out in Cell! Congratulations to all involved, especially @chiarafornetto.bsky.social For a breakdown, see the bluetorial from when we posted the preprint: bsky.app/profile/neur... Funding: @erc.europa.eu @wellcometrust.bsky.social @ukri.org @leverhulme.ac.uk @thelisterinstitute.bsky.social

New #PhD ad alert! Interested in wild #bee #cognition and #brains in different #bumblebees? Want to live in #Newcastle and the beautiful north-east of England? Check out this project with me, @lenariab.bsky.social and Sarah Scott. Contact me for further information. iapetus.ac.uk/studentships...

Humans perceive but animals don’t: pitfalls in using plasticine models for assessing biotic interactions buff.ly/7hcLYXx | #ProcB #Ecology

Exiting career-boosting opportunity for a a skilled and highly motivated postdoctoral researcher: We're hiring a Post-doctoral fellow in Evolutionary Biology! Please apply no later than 31 October! lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

Despite the mess, we are grateful to be funded, have exciting science happening, and have an opening for a postdoc! If you are interested in sensory biology and esp in cilia, thermosensation, or interoception, and would like to join an interactive & supportive group - please email. Please RT 🙏

🚨🚨Job! 🚨🚨Permanent (75% time) job! We are a pretty awesome research group & seek a manager who deals with everything: personnel tasks, organizing retreats, preparing code for teaching / data structures for research... Fluency in German & English essential. stellenboerse.uni-mainz.de#/jgu/job/51527

BIRDBASE, a new publicly available dataset, brings together "ecological and life history traits for 11,589 bird species across 254 families." #ornithology

😍 hardcore #colsci !

Funded PhD position available 🎉 Come and work with me in Helsinki to uncover the pathways producing colourful tiger moth wings. Lots of options for genomics, CRISPR, fieldwork, behaviour experiments… Email with questions! jobs.helsinki.fi/job/Helsinki...

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

new paper, led by Lin Yan from the Elias Lab at UCB Latent preference for red ornamentation drives interspecific mating in nascent jumping spider species (Habronattus americanus group, F. Salticidae) Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Introducing "The SORTEE Guidelines for Data and Code Quality Control in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology" The first standardised set of data editor guidelines. Led by SORTEE with input from numerous data editors across ecology and evolution. 🔗 doi.org/10.32942/X24...

🚨Our new paper is out NOW in @jexpbiol.bsky.social 👀 Here we show that cuttlefish use visual contrast cues to inform their 3D camouflage, but these contrast cues can derive from true background features as well as exposure to dynamic lighting patterns. 🦑🔆 🔗 doi.org/10.1242/jeb....

Why do imperfect mimics (such as many hoverflies) exist? We created 3D printed replicas of flies, wasps and our own custom intermediates and then "asked" various predators what they thought of our 3D stimuli. Read all about it here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Very honoured to have our research highlighted by this very well-written article by Weller & Rabosky. Thank you! 10/10, can recommend if you want a thorough take on what our latest paper is about: besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #colsci

Made the cover! doi.org/10.1111/1365...

www.empiricalimaging.com/2025/05/19/b... Bug fix: Memory overload due to failing to clean up after image processing.

It's out! Read about how to combine advanced animal vision modelling and colour pattern analysis with comparative phylogenetic methods in arguably some of the most incredible critters in the ocean: doi.org/10.1111/1365.... Amazing work with amazing people! #colsci #micaToolbox #AnimalEcology

Bright colors observed across the animal world are often used during mate choice. @dickmerrill.bsky.social explores a @plosbiology.org study of genetic & neural mechanisms contributing to evolution of visual mating decisions in Heliconius butterflies 🧪 Paper: plos.io/4iHQDRd Primer: plos.io/4ipW7QS

'A Standardized Nomenclature for the Rods and Cones of the Vertebrate Retina' #colsci www.preprints.org/manuscript/2...

BUG ALERT: Naive Bayes clustering in QCPA When using Naive Bayes clustering in <v2.3, the standard deviations instead of the means are used for downstream colour pattern analysis. For details & fix, read here: www.empiricalimaging.com/2025/02/05/b... #colsci

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

The birth of fruit fly's central nervous system imaged with multicolor #adaptive #lightsheet microscopy. The microscope self-aligns to a signal that appears during imaging. www.nature.com/articles/nbt...

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

Ecology-Evolution scientific societies on Bluesky: ESEB: @eseb.bsky.social SSE: @sse-evolution.bsky.social ASN: @asn-amnat.bsky.social SMBE: @official-smbe.bsky.social BES: @britishecolsoc.bsky.social CSEE-SCEE: @csee-scee.bsky.social and joining us today, welcome!: SFE2: @sfecologie.bsky.social

BLUESKY MEGA-THREAD Altmetric is thrilled and also LITERALLY RELIEVED to officially announce: We are now tracking research attention as it happens on Bluesky! We have been picking up posts on the site since late Oct. Our team is on Bluesky all day answering questions. Let's get into it!

Help us understand how conspicuous butterflies are by playing this game! mferickson.github.io/findbutterfly/

Still finding it hard to reconnect with everyone from Twitter (X) so here’s an attempt at finding all animal behaviourists, ethologists, behavioural ecologists etc, working with animal behaviour. Just pop a comment and I’ll add you to the list - let’s reconnect 😃 #appliedethology go.bsky.app/8oJ3A8E

A tiger squid (Sepioteuthis lessoniana) is showing off its iridescent beauty during our recent bit of fieldwork in #Australia #MoretonBay. Gotta love #cephalopods ! 🦑🌊🌈

@micatoolbox.bsky.social is a thing now!