When I say you need a sense of humor in #fieldwork, I don’t mean you can do impressions or be the group clown. What I mean is you can laugh at yourself when the following things happen (all of which have happened to me + my travel buds in the last 5 weeks): (1/x) 🐒 🧪 🪨 🏺

The evolution of reversible plasticity in stable environments doi.org/10.1093/evle... Now in @evolletters.bsky.social by Nicole Walasek et al.

🐦 Tropical bird numbers falling due to extreme heat A new study finds human-driven heat extremes, not average warming, have cut tropical bird abundance by 25–38% since 1950, even in undisturbed habitats. 🔗 doi.org/10.1038/s415... #SciComm 🧪 #ClimateCrisis

Sometimes I don’t feel like an anthropologist, but then I find myself spending hours trying to remember the nickname of an archaic Homo cranium found in the town I’m driving through and it all makes sense

Fun fact - chameleons are little rule breakers in Kiswahili 🧵1/5

Invisibility cloak activated 🔍 mossy leaf-tailed gecko

I saw god in these ring tailed lemurs

A spiritual experience

Truly major respect, makes studying primates in a tropical dry forest feel like a walk in the park

Someone should study the lexicon of car honking in Madagascar

New paper out on the dangers of using patterns across spatial climate gradients to predict what will happen with changing climate. That includes species distribution modeling. Space-for-time substitution can be misleading in sign, not just the magnitude of effects. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Honored and profoundly thankful to have received funding from the NSF DDRIG to support my research. I’ll be assessing how wild capuchins respond to extreme ecological challenges behaviorally and physiologically, with a focus on identifying adaptive qualities of prolonged adrenocortical responses.

Had a wonderful time at #IPS2025! More to come soon on how hormone profiles in male white-faced capuchins change during alpha male replacements (co-led w/ @meganpetersdorf.bsky.social)

One of our first papers in a series that investigates the potential for olfactory communication in wild capuchins is now out! Stay tuned for the next pieces of the story 🧪 🐒 👃

Social anxiety in macaques Tibetan macaques show self-directed behaviors before facing difficult social situations. For example, when females plan to approach higher-ranking females, or when low-ranking males are plan to approach receptive females. (paper) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Awesome field management position open to study Kinda baboons in Zambia!👇🐒 Looking for an August start date so applications will have a quick turnaround – apply now! 🧪

Happy to share our new paper introducing the Animal Culture Database in Scientific Data: We’re putting together a resource consolidating primary research on cultural behaviors in wild animal populations and how they’re affected by human activity (1/5) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

No Kings - Missoula

Real power isn't staged in DC — it rises up everywhere else. Join me on No Kings Day to stand together against cruelty, corruption, and authoritarianism. Find an event near you: nokings.org

Mine changes with nearly every hike in the Rockies and I don’t know what that says about me 😂 (Just an Alberta newb probably) A couple of recent contenders

🚀 New paper led by Dr Becks Spake! We make the case for precision ecology—using big data & predictive tools to tailor conservation actions to local contexts. Can ecology learn from medicine & marketing to boost impact? We think so. Read it here: rdcu.be/eoaR4 #Conservation #Ecology #BigData

there has been a bunch of (many good) papers coming about about integrating Causal Inference and DAGS into research about behavior and ecology (i.e. doi.org/10.1111/brv....) but i thought it might be useful to show some example empirical papers that do so (see growing thread)...

Fascinating latest model of Homo sapiens evolution within Africa. Interesting finding that cultural innovation was accelerated by both population size increases, but also recombination across partially isolated regions (e.g. Morocco and sub-Saharan Africa)

This brings me far more joy than it probably should

Hot off the press 📣: one of the most surprising and unsettling findings of my PhD. A novel social tradition emerged in the tool-using white-faced capuchins of Jicarón island… abducting and carrying the infants of another species. Thread with gifs, videos, and all the bizarre details 👇

I’d know that damn stuffed monkey anywhere

Walking in fields of wild lupines, larkspurs & sunnys thinking about Robin Wall Kimmerer’s question on why purple asters & yellow goldenrod look so beautiful together – their contrast isn’t just striking, but appears biologically meaningful, attracting more pollinators than either plant would alone

The orangutans and bonobos are the first two illustrations of a series on behavior and movement of animals in their environment. #SciArt More coming soon! :) For @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social

Many students are deterred by office hours, thinking they need “good enough” questions or worrying that they’ll be judged or are wasting professors’ time. Short article on the positive impact that establishing office hours norms in class has on learning – www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

🚨PAPER ALERT Chimpanzees expand the meanings of their single calls when combining them. They use a variety of mechanisms, analogous to those found in human language, to alter the meanings of single calls in their combinations. Photo by @lirsamuni.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

TLDR: new paper headed up by @vestaeleuteri.bsky.social & with an awesome team, incl @andrearavignani.bsky.social , showing chimps have rhythm in their drumming & differences b/w east & west drum rhythms! www.cell.com/current-biol... But didn’t we know this already you ask? Well… 🧵1/16

going on a decade of screaming this into the void

I think i planted Gritty

Very cool. Poetry --> Natural history --> Conservation Keep recording what you see in whatever medium works best. You never know who might use it -- even a millennium+ later. 🌎 🧪

🧪 PRACTICAL tip for NSF PIs with terminated grants: You're entitled to recover more closeout costs than a DOGE-fueled NSF may lead you to believe. ➡️ Do this NOW: Send fed reg 2 CFR 200.472 on allowable "termination costs" to your sponsored research office: www.ecfr.gov/current/titl... 1/8 🧵

Hey wildflower season, nice to see ya again 🧚

Thank you to those who put this together. #WithoutNSF I couldn’t have afforded my masters & may not be pursuing my PhD today. #WithoutNSF the longitudinal research projects I have been a part of for >5yrs wouldn’t exist. #WithoutNSF we lose a future of possibility in the U.S. #SupportNSF #SaveNSF

Most scientists in the USA don't understand how dire things are. As of April 21, to accept an award, your institution must certify that there are no DEI programs (poorly defined) on campus. No lawyer is going to sign this. This is an effective ban on new grants. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

Excited to share this new paper on chimpanzee foraging cognition from the Primate Ecology and Molecular Anthropology Lab at UCSC! #PEMALab So proud to have contributed to this awesome project as an undergrad!! #termitefishing www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We asked how behavioral diversity & agonistic behaviors relate to group size in wild capuchins. We analyzed >65,000 behavioral scans collected over 15 yrs on 214 capuchins (8 groups) & controlled for # inds sampled. We found behavioral richness, diversity & agonism was higher in larger groups.

So incredibly grateful to have received an IPS @ips-primatenews.bsky.social Research Grant and an ASP Conservation Small Grant to support my research on capuchin behavioral and physiological flexibility to extreme environmental conditions! 🙏✨ Exciting things to come✨

Delighted to say that my and Amanda Melin's special issue of the American Journal of Primatology on primatology in Canada is now complete with 18 papers(!!) and the Introduction has just been published! Co-authored by Linda Fedigan. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

If only America would protect school children the way it protects Teslas.

Chimpanzees as indicators of mammalian abundance...PanAf metadataset strikes again! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Shifting, expanding, or contracting? Range movement consequences for biodiversity 🌎🌐🧪 www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

We are hiring! We have an open position for a new lab coordinator in #primate #cognition and #behavior in the Cognitive Evolution Group at University of Michigan - Ann Arbor. Find out more at: sites.lsa.umich.edu/cognitive-ev...

I hope America is as lucky as the delta jet - everyone survives but the right wing explodes

Every scientist, long before they were a scientist, was a little kid who stood in front of a fish tank or stared up at the stars or turned over a rock to look at the bugs underneath and said “wow”. On the best days, working in science still feels like that.

1/ I am seeing a lot of comments on the slashing of NIH support along the lines of “universities should just spend their huge endowments.” I’m the last person to cheer on the institutional stratification rising endowments have contributed to. But let me explain why this is not a solution.