Our recent paper on lizard societies now online in a special issue of Animal Behaviour. DM if you want me to send you a PDF.

same ⬇️👏

🦎Tokay gecko (Gekko gecko). Called 'tokay' because that is what the sound of a male sounds like. Max. size 40 cm (15.7"). Found in tropical Asia, from northeastern India in the west to Indonesia in the east. Considered Least Concern by the IUCN. 📷by kuritafsheen77 on Freepik

Abstract (and travel award) submission deadline has been extended to the 7th of January 2026. Don’t miss the chance to submit your contribution and be part of the scientific program of ISBE2026!

2022. Are Goats Smart? Revealing Goat Intelligence. Understanding Domestic Goat Behavior and Cognition. goatjournal.iamcountryside.com/ownership/ar...

It’s a proud moment when your star exPhD student, now early career researcher, is the senior author on a Biology Letters paper in the same issue of Biology Letters as you. And to be precise, the paper above! @lizabeldm.bsky.social

"A lack of contact with nature and limited knowledge about nature can reinforce each other in a negative spiral." #Biophobia - people can fear what they don't know or understand. Education in and about nature is vital phys.org/news/2025-12...

Interested in open, reliable & transparent science in ecology & evolution? Become a member of the Society for Open, Reliable, and Transparent Ecology and Evolutionary Biology @sortee.bsky.social! Membership is open to all and it's optional to join at no cost 👉 sortee.org/join/

A huge congrats to Dr Jai Lake! Jai just gave his exit seminar at Macquarie on why lizards are social. To be slightly more precise, his PhD was about the mechanisms underlying sociality. Papers are submitted and in prep! Watch this space. Jai was cosupervised by Geoff While at Univ. Tasmania.

Adventure time! Off to Kartong Bird Observatory in the Gambia to test out #MotusWTS using a mobile #Sensorgnome and @lotektelemetry.bsky.social Nanotag! Me and my load of tech and trusty duct tape will be repping @ecobird.bsky.social funded by @fwovlaanderen.bsky.social. 🐦📡

New study on the way 📣 I am currently raising cute quails 🐥 to study the effects of enrichment on the development of the brain, cognition, behaviour, and health! I am learning loads of new skills @ecobird.bsky.social

Meet our Plenary Speaker Daniela Rößler Fueled by curiosity and a deep love of natural history Daniela discovered a REM-like sleep state in spiders and uses integrative field, lab and comparative approaches to investigate the function, ecology, and evolution of sleep across the spider tree of life.

New amazing open Postdoc position, w/t opportunities to 1) get closely involved in our next @themanybirds.bsky.social study on innovation and problem-solving; 2) work with @ecobird.bsky.social on avian innovation, cognition & invasiveness. Advert: www.ugent.be/en/work/scie...

The statistical fragility of animal cognition findings: a meta-meta-analytic reappraisal ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

It took almost a year to write this review on causes and consequences of ranging in chicken 🐔! This was a huge collaborative effort by @ecobird.bsky.social @pec-exeter.bsky.social and @vitorhbf.bsky.social ! I am very proud of the outcome. You can check out the preprint here: doi.org/10.32942/X22...

New preprint out on bioRxiv 🌳 doi.org/10.1101/2025... 🌳 Using data from 19 forest plots in Flanders, we found that forest structural complexity isn’t a consistent predictor of multidiversity and responses across taxa were mostly weak or inconsistent. @ecobird.bsky.social | @fornalab.bsky.social

Excited to announce that Eli Garcia-Pelegrin and I are co-editing a special collection for Animal Cognition on "Social Cognition in a Human World". Do you study how urbanization, pollution, heat stress, fragmentation, ... affects cognition? We want to hear from you! link.springer.com/collections/...

This list can really assist peers in avoiding predatory publishers: www.predatoryjournals.org @predatoryjournals.org I have been receiving plenty of generic emails to join editorial boards in MDPI and Frontiers. At exactly the same time, friends receive the same generic emails..

New paper! 🦎 Urbanization reshapes the social behaviour of wall lizards Now out in #BiologyLetters @royalsocietypublishing.org 🔗 royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... @averymaune.bsky.social

Meet Chrissie Painting the new ASSAB president! @cpaintingnz.bsky.social is a Senior Lecturer and behavioural ecologist at the University of Waikato. Her research seeks patterns in animal behaviour and morphology, with a particular focus on insect and arachnid mating systems. 🪰🕷️🪳

Highlights of this year’s Ig Nobel recipients include a nutrition prize for studying the preferred pizza toppings of rainbow lizards at a seaside resort in Togo go.nature.com/3I4wd8E

People who know reptiles well say they don't only experience fleeting pains and pleasures, but also lasting emotional states: happiness & sadness, or at least good & bad moods. But how do you show this in a scientific way? My latest for @nytimes.com on a clever @coldbloodedcog.bsky.social study:

📣 Hot off the press at #ProcB! 🔍 Our study checked data/code-sharing policies in 275 eco/evo journals and compliance in Proc B (n=2,340) & Ecology Letters (n=571). Policies exist, but clarity and strictness vary, affecting reproducibility. 🔗 doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

New in #ProcB - From policy to practice: Progress towards #data- and #code-sharing in ecology and evolution @asanchez-tojar.bsky.social @eivimeycook.bsky.social tell us more in our blog royalsociety.org/blog/2025/09...

Soon giving a talk at the University of Neuchâtel as part of the Biology seminar series. www.unine.ch/biologie/wp-...

Hot off the press! Check out our new paper on sleepy lizard aka shingleback skink fire cue discrimination led by @ecolojolly.bsky.social DM if you want a PDF.

Water anoles take a bubble of air down when they submerge, which they breathe like a tiny scuba tank, and now @lindseyswierk.bsky.social & co reveal that the reptiles may also be using the bubble like a gill, to breathe oxygen directly from the water journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

Looking forward to discussing open methods in comparative cognition, including the challenge of 'species fair' task design as part of the ManyManys webinar series 🤩 🐒🦜🐜🐕👶🦎🐐🐟 📅 September 12, 11:00 a.m. (ET) on Zoom 🔗Registration: airtable.com/app0bcw8jYPv... #openscience #bigteamscience

Successful @ecobird.bsky.social #EOU2025 trip. Great presentations by @cesarepacioni.bsky.social, Jolien Van Malderen, Caoimhe Abdul-Wahab, Mélibée Morel and me! Well done team 👏 Loads of fun, and surprisingly good Welsh weather 😇

New paper alert 🚨 We test quantity discrimination in #magpies using both a cognitive task and playback experiment and find that birds can discriminate between quantities in both! Interestingly, performance in the two task was negatively correlated! 🐦 @mandyridley.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/behe...

🧪ETHOLOGY: Are reversal learning & inhibitory control linked? 🧠⏪🐦 Biagiotti Barchiesi et al. tested urban kelp gulls on reversal & detour tasks. Gulls adapted well, with those showing ledd inhibitory control performing better during reversal. No age effect found. 🔗 doi.org/10.1111/eth.... #Cognition

Cognitive processes are robust to early environmental conditions in two lizard species #Reptile #Learning #DevelopmentalPlasticity doi.org/10.1093/behe...

FINE Fall 2025 will start in just 4 weeks. Here is the preliminary program. Stay tuned!

Heat or stress hormones experienced in early life often impair cognition. A study @jexpbiol.bsky.social shows that spatial learning is unaffected in lizards when the eggs experienced such stressors. 🦎🥚 journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/... @pablorecio93.bsky.social @danielwanoble.bsky.social

Students of ASSAB! You can now apply for the 2025 student research grants here: www.assab.org/grants-2025 We have two grants available for up to AUD$2500, we will also select two highly commended applications. Deadline: August 31st 2025

Research Grants by @asab.org www.asab.org/research-gra... "ASAB’s Grants Committee does not support helicopter or parachute science.... To promote inclusion, ASAB will not fund projects that rely on unpaid volunteers, e.g. for data collection." great to see! #DEI

🚨Job Alert 🚨 Charles Darwin University is looking for a research project coordinator! Apply here: cdu.t1cloud.com/T1Default/Ci...

Another PREPRINT on gecko welfare out at BioRxiv (@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social) How does a change in housing and diet influence nematode output in Tokay geckos? Check it our here: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

‪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

Join us for #ASABWinter2025 in Edinburgh Dec 15-16 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Abstracts for posters/talks due Aug 29 More details here: asabwinter.github.io/2025/

🎟️ DAY PASS for Behaviour 2025 is now live! 🌟 Join us at Biswa Bangla Convention Centre, Kolkata from 25-30 August for world class talks, symposia, workshops & networking with global leaders in animal behaviour! 🚨Hurry up! Day passes are selling fast, Don't miss out! 👉Click on this link below

Well, I am interested in social behaviour. I am more into the nice behaviour not so much the fighting 🤣

📣 Check out the latest preprints related to Tokay gecko welfare! 1. Is physical closeness a good measure for pair bond strength? doi.org/10.32942/X2F... 2. How do incubation environment and social rearing influence development? doi.org/10.32942/X2T... Stay tuned for more coming soon!

The talented Jindong Zhang analyzed 74,000+ papers, revealing how #biomimetic research relies on a narrow slice of biodiversity—missing out on nature’s untapped genius. In our paper, we call for broader, species-level, and comparative approaches! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Another PhD chapter published for Ioanna Gavriilidi @uafunmorph.bsky.social, now in @jzoology.bsky.social! She finds that island-dwelling lizards tend to rely less on chemosensory cues compared to their mainland counterparts. zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Decoding the chaffinch “rain” call: a female-directed alarm call? #bird #bioacoustics #AntiPredator doi.org/10.1093/behe...

The Local Organizing Commitee welcomes behavioral ecologists from across the world and of all career stages to enjoy a five-day meeting rich in top-notch science and ample networking opportunities in Turin (Italy), 20-24 July 2026.

New paper! 🐸🎶 Rocket frogs males respond to rivals depending on their own spectral call attributes, but also pay attention to the temporal properties of the challenger Check it out in Animal Behaviour: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #bioacoustics #prattle

Our letter is out in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social We argue against a recent claim that animals cannot make mental simulations because they supposedly do not reliably memorize sequences. The evidence for model-based animal cognition is too overwhelming. 🧪 authors.elsevier.com/a/1lKMt_V1r-...