Quail egg incubator with an automatic egg-turning feature but with some 3D-printed adapters for zebra finch eggs. Let the developmental study begin!

Email your senators to urge them not to confirm Jim O’Neill as Director of the National Science Foundation. He's not a scientist, has no relevant expertise, promoted vaccine misinformation, helped gut the CDC, and his Silicon Valley ties raise questions about protecting the public interest. (1/2🧵)

More auto feeder action!

The auto feeders are working 🙌🏼

Let the smart feeder assembly begin!

Thank you to everyone who stopped by my talk this morning! #SICB2026 Portland has been incredible so far!

Update: the RFID-based automated bird feeder (a) has passed the leak test in this week’s western Washington atmospheric river and (b) is officially up and running with each box having its own WiFi connection for remote data download! Time to take it to the field!

Do European starling chicks “exercise” prior to fledging and does it impact somatic and physiological development? Though the title gives it away, you can read our most recent paper in @royalsocietypublishing.org #RSOS royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

The RFID-enabled bird feeder is successfully reading and logging PIT tag numbers. Can’t wait to get these out into the field!

Do you love research & writing & all things animal behavior? Well our journal, Animal Behavior, recruiting up to 5 (count em!) new Associate Editors! Editors serve three-year terms beginning January 2026. If you're interested, email Exec Editor Scott Sakaluk ([email protected]) by Oct 31!

The RFID-enabled automated bird feeders are coming along!

Excited to announce that I just started my first postdoc position at Western Washington University in the Templeton lab! I'll be investigating the effects of traffic noise on avian cognition. Stay tuned for lots of posts as I start data collection in the Fall!

Congratulations to @sfubiosciences.bsky.social Dean's Convocation Medal recipient Brett Hodinka. Thesis Title: Inactivity, adaptive mass regulation, and the physiological basis of costs of reproduction ow.ly/lWqx50W5PNw #MySFUGrad

I'm hiring a postdoc! Searching for a candidate interested in the process of speciation to come join me at Georgia Tech in Atlanta -- an exciting place with a growing core of eco-evolutionary researchers. Various skill sets will be applicable. Please share!

Wow this is a game changer. PhD scholarships and postdoctoral fellowships are now open to non-Canadians.

We are inviting submissions to our upcoming Special Issue: The Integrative Biology of Exercise. 🧵1/3 journals.biologists.com/jeb/pages/ex...

Philadelphia will burn to the ground tonight i fear

Interpretation for the non-scientists: When faculty get NIH grants, the University gets some extra cash to make sure the research is supported. NIH just cut that $$ by a LOT. That means Unis are less likely to support research. Most research in the US is done at Unis, so... it's bad 🧪

Letter from the SSE/SSB/ASN councils on the scientific understanding of sex and gender, pls RT

As a Philadelphian, I approve these messages

This is how you do it. Thank you @sicbjournals.bsky.social Read their whole email to membership here mailchi.mp/sicb.org/sic...

- 10,000 research grants flagged for review by NSF Program Directors - Reviews due by 5 p.m. today - They flag grants with "broadening participation" language, foreign aid, climate science, domestic energy, and "discriminatory programs including illegal DEI"

Exclusive: NSF this week began to search through billions of dollars of grants the agency has already awarded for anything touching on topics that President Donald Trump has criticized. And NSF has blocked grantees and trainees from accessing funds while the review is underway. scim.ag/3El0NZh

Apparently all the PhD researchers holding prestigious NSF-funded research fellowships are having their salaries withheld until some unspecified time when the leadership figures out how to eliminate any grant funding that doesn’t align with the president’s political ideology.

A gentle reminder that if we miss the 1.5°C target (and we certainly will), the next target is 1.51°C and not 2°C. We need to keep fighting. Every tonne of CO₂ emitted makes the job of future CO₂ removal harder, and every 0.01°C of temperature increase makes the world more chaotic and dangerous.

The price of eggs in the US is spiking, mostly due to #H5N1 bird flu. Solving the problem requires urgent, important communications from the CDC & FDA* and rapid development of research by the NIH** * Currently paused by Executive Order ** Grant reviews now all canceled www.kcur.org/news/2025-01...

I'm a journalist looking for new/soon-to-be-published studies on animal ecology and biology to write about. DM me!

The ‘Inside JEB’ article for our most recent paper made it into the 2024 @jexpbiol.bsky.social highlights book! Found at #SICB2025

Over 1000 of birds died due to stress from fireworks during New Year in a Bulgarian town, Green Balkans wildlife rescue center said. The necropsy shows that the death of the mountain finches was caused by stress. Massive haemorrhaging was found in the birds' abdomens/skulls bnr.bg/en/post/1020...

From only 200 piping plover breeding pairs in Massachusetts back in 1986, to nearly 1200 last year! 🌎 phys.org/news/2024-12...

I made it to Atlanta for this year's #SICB2025 conference. I'll be presenting my work on avian mass regulation tomorrow in the @sicb-dab.bsky.social Marlene Zuk BSP session!

Me: *opens the nest box lid* The nestlings:

Is it pronounced corticosterone or corticosterone?

😔

Ocean Heat Killed Half the Common Murres Around Alaska https://buff.ly/3ZRJOGc

We've extended the deadline to sign up as a mentor or mentee for our upcoming 2025 meeting in Atlanta! Details in the form below, but please reach out if you have any questions!

Opportunity! We are looking for new editors - application deadline is Monday 20th January. Positions available: Associate Editors Handling Editor Commissioning Editor Details here: jevbio.net/call-for-edi...

What do you do if you find a typo in one of your published papers? It's a spelling error on the x-axis of a figure. Is it even worth fixing?

Ph.D. defended ✔️

In 2024, I attached small weights to zebra finches and fed them a high-fat diet. We found that they can maintain (and then lose) body mass while reducing overall activity and maintaining food intake! doi.org/10.1242/jeb....

There are already many articles for which there is more attention on Bluesky than on other comparable micro-blogging sites, meaning the academic community and the general public have clearly adopted Bluesky as one of its core places to disseminate and discuss new research. A Place of Joy.

5 days until the big defense 🥲

A female snow bunting (Plectrophenax nivalis) in Utquiagvik, Alaska in 2018. #birds 🪶

The @sicb-dab.bsky.social mentor-mentee program is great! If you’re going to SICB in Atlanta this year, consider applying as either a mentor or mentee!

Less than two weeks until I (hopefully) defend my thesis 🥲

Nestling > fledgling Lapland longspurs (Calcarius lapponicus). From my fieldwork in Utqiagvik, Alaska in 2019.

The special issue on Comparative Biology of Sleep & Circadian Rhythms is finally out online. Check out our paper on the fitness consequences of experimentally increased sleep during breeding in two arctic-breeding songbird species! doi.org/10.1002/jez....

New paper! If you use animal tracking data, this one's for you! Proud of this collaboration with fellow @exetercec.bsky.social ECRs @liamlangley1.bsky.social, Stephen Lang, & Luke Ozsanlav-Harris to aid reproducible coding in biologging Open Access @animalecology.bsky.social: tinyurl.com/58k2fa7u

I haven't seen any starter packs made for behavioral ecology yet, so I decided to create one! If you are a behavioral ecologist (any career stage), please reply so I can add you to the list so we can more easily find each other. go.bsky.app/9mAuB6x

A female European starling delivering prey (an earth worm, I believe) to its 5 chicks. Langley, BC 2022. I’m going to miss this field site!