🧪🌏 #academicsky

Excellent advice collated by @billsutherland.bsky.social at #BES2025 - how to approach scientific conferences (especially ones as big as those from @britishecologicalsociety.org). Don't be afraid to chat people up, attend talks you fancy, and enjoy yourself! What would you add? #academicsky 🧪

Great talk from @clairebranston.bsky.social at #BES2025, with a Glasgow urban gradient setup similar to that of @mszulkin.bsky.social in Warsaw. Earlier egg laying with greater oak availability. 🧪

Are you at #BES2025 @britishecologicalsociety.org Annual Meeting? Come and say hi to the ecology team from @oxlifelonglearning.bsky.social! #biodiversity #academicSky 🧪🌏🦊

Come to our workshop at @britishecologicalsociety.org Annual Meeting #bes2025 tomorrow lunchtime. We will discuss fieldwork teaching for AI-proofing assessments and improving AI skills - bring your case studies! 🧪 #academicsky 🌍 @drnickworsfold.bsky.social

Animal cafes - hot or not? Exotic animal cafes provide -limited space -poor animal interaction oversight and controls -inadequate feeding -restricted behavioral opportunities resulting in poor welfare. Even cat cafes have low welfare scores. Don't go there. 🧪🐈☕🐾 Research: doi.org/10.1292/jvms...

Can fungi build better homes for cavity-nesting birds? We combine expertise in architecture (@unimelb.bsky.social) and ecology (@ox.ac.uk) to see if nests made out of mycelium (insulating, carbon-neutral and biodegradable fungi roots) attract birds. 🧪🪶🍄 www.birdsonthebrink.co.uk/blog/botb-gr...

Do striped hyenas have a sweet tooth? Yes, yes they do. Here's the first record of honey consumption by a hyena, caught on a camera trap in Kenya: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... 🧪🌍🐾🍯

Some fantastic pedagogical points made here - eloquent and compact. And yes, there needs to be more talk about how explanations are not the same as learning. #AcademicSky

🔊What does the herp say? The first ever record of vocalisation in viviparous lizards is described in The Herpetological Bulletin: www.thebhs.org/publications... - and by my student Johnnie Johnson, no less! FYI, the sound is a "brief chirp". 🧪🌍🦎

The Communicating Scientist strikes again! Before engaging in any sort of communication - speaking, writing, visuals - ask yourself: 🎯What is your purpose? 👤Who is your audience? ⚠️What are your constraints? This is the foundation for tailoring your messages and approaches. #AcademicSky #Scicomm 🧪

Early career ornithologists, this one's for you. 🧪🌍🪶

About time!

🐈 What's TikTok good for? Examining which arthropods are hunted by cats. 🌍 Social media have become an increasingly useful resource in ecological research. 🪲 We now know that cats kill arthropods from 14 different orders. 🧪 Study: resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

💋 Kissing is unhygienic and has no obvious reproductive benefits - but it evolved ~21 million years ago, and stuck with most great apes until today. 🧪 In fact, paper by @matildabrindle.bsky.social shows that Neanderthals and humans probably kissed each other. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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🚨Academic freebie alert 🚨 We're running a workshop on preparing doctoral research proposals; sign up and join online or show up in person in Oxford Uni. #AcademicSky 🧪

For the Aussies, the zoologists and the architects out there. 💩🧊🧪 By @chazhutton.com

🐝New species of Australian bee just dropped! 🐝 It was found during surveys of the critically endangered wildflower Marianthus aquilonarius. Megachile lucifer is named because of the "demon-like horns" of the female. 🧪Discovery by Kit Prendergast and Joshua Campbell: jhr.pensoft.net/article/1663...

🧪 #academicsky

JOB: Assistant Professor in Environmental History, University of Warwick, Coventry campus (UK) www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPK289/a... #envhist

🐀Male and female rats like to be tickled differently - males prefer rougher play. 🤣How do we know? Rats produce ultrasonic giggles that can be monitored with a bat detector. 🧪Why is this relevant? To improve lab animal welfare. Ah, to tickle rats for a living...♥️ f1000research.com/articles/14-...

🦁Jacob the lion, who lost a leg in a poacher's snare, has changed his hunting strategy to account for reduced mobility. 🐆Since he can't overpower his prey like healthy lions do, he sets ambushes instead, like a leopard - and can kill 200-kg forest hogs! 🧪 washingtonweeklytimes.com/science-2/a-...

Love elephants? Love fantastic speakers? Then come to the @oxon-mammal-group.bsky.social seminar, Mon Nov 10, 7pm at @morethanadodo.bsky.social. @redmondi.bsky.social will talk about elephants, biodiversity and climate change - don't miss it. 🧪 🐘 #oxford

Both the sling-jaw wrasse and this video of it are all I hoped for and more. Wait for it... And... Perfection. 🧪 🐟 💋

Parenting in the animal world is nothing like what Bluey, Peppa Pig or 101 Dalmatians would make us believe. Louise Gentle explains what children's stories with animal protagonists are getting massively wrong (cannibalism alert). Always love a good debunking. 🧪🦊🪶 theconversation.com/childrens-bo...

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"A short-legged ground roller catches a pimple-nose chameleon" - my teenage insecurities rolled into one wildlife photo. 🧪 🐦 🦎

Denmark: turning diplomacy into DUPLOmacy. Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelaty was gifted a LEGO set of the Great Pyramid of Giza by the Danish Foreign Minister during his visit for the Grand Egyptian Museum's opening. Look how happy he is.

My Oxford-o-meter is reaching its maximum: apart from lecturing at @oxlifelonglearning.bsky.social, I'm now also a fellow at @kelloggoxford.bsky.social. Wohoo! www.kellogg.ox.ac.uk/our-people/j... #Oxford #AcademicSky

#AcademicSky #OxfordLife #WowIMadeItAcademically

Five or six grams of life, soft-furred and sharp-nosed, darting among the roots and leaf litter of a tiny island in the Indian Ocean. Australia’s only shrew, Crocidura trichura, has been declared extinct. Touching obituary by @rhettayersbutler.bsky.social 🧪🌏🦊 www.butlernature.com/2025/10/24/r...

Halloween is nearing, and Serious Academics need to celebrate. Here's the @oxlifelonglearning.bsky.social undead team - @tomrocksmaths.bsky.social, @jonathanhealey.bsky.social and myself - doing what academics do best: ghosting you. 👻🎃 🧪 #AcademicSky

The Oxford train station is small and overcrowded. What could it possibly need, more than extra seats or ticket machines? A piano. A PIANO. A piano that attracts kids who play Happy Birthday and their parents who butcher the Game of Thrones theme. Sensory hell.

Hot wings coming up! - i.e., brown rats hunt bats IN FLIGHT. 🐀🦇🍴 While this has serious conservation implications for urban bats, I can't help but be amazed by the rats' dexterity and adaptability. Full paper by @berlinbatlab.bsky.social here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 🧪🌍🦊

In Oxford and love astronomy? Join me on Oct 29th, as I speak with @chrislintott.bsky.social about celestial bodies and citizen science. All part of Hevelius Days in the @bodleian.ox.ac.uk. Free event, but booking is essential: visit.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/event/oct25/... 🧪🔭

What can willy bones tell us about the sex lives of extinct bears? I. arctoides could have had 🍆prolonged periods of intromission ♂️a multi-male mating system 🏠large home range sizes and/or lower population density. Also, check out the size of panda bacula 🔍🐼🐻‍❄️🐻. journals.plos.org/plosone/arti... 🧪🌍

This is the more normal part of my job! Please remember that you need to have a license to handle bats, and you shouldn't touch wild animals in general (disturbance as well as disease transfer - wear gloves and a mask to protect both parties). 🧪🦇🌍 #AcademicSky

Academics: We're overworked, underpaid and unappreciated. Academics at @oxlifelonglearning.bsky.social: I spent the afternoon in a bedsheet, being a ghost. That's it. That's what @tomrocksmaths.bsky.social, @jonathanhealey.bsky.social and I are paid to do. Things won't get better. #AcademicSky

⚠️Losing Nemo: Almost all aquarium fish in the US are caught in the wild⚠️ "Across all platforms and 13 popular fish taxonomic families, we found 734 unique species for sale, 89.2% (655 species) of which were sourced exclusively from the wild." 🧪🐠🌍 conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Did you know that recent model iPhone Pros have a LiDAR sensor? You can use it to measure distances, and scientists in Spain used it to recreate a digital version of a cave filled with ancient cave art. 🧪 #scicomm www.forbes.com/sites/evaams...

What do friends do? Friends get you the ultimate nerd status symbol: a giant prickly stick insect, Extatosoma tiaratum. Welcome, Michalina (aka Misia-Patysia)! 🧪 🦂 🌍

I met Jane Goodall in 2005, when she was visiting the @houstonzoo.bsky.social; I was doing my undergrad project there, and she came over to chat about meerkats and mongooses. You can see a glimpse of her in the snapshot a friend took on that day. RIP, Jane. 🌏🧪🐵

Jane Goodall dies age 91. A conservation icon gone. 🧪 🐒 🌍 www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c9...

In October, the British Council will be launching the Climate Skills Global Collaboration Grants 2025, offering grants up to £85,000 for partnerships between the UK and Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, and Viet Nam. opportunities-insight.britishcouncil.org/short-articl... #AcademicSky #climate 🧪

Anyone in need of excellent #teaching resources (UG and postgrad) for #ecology and #conservation? Bill has created some amazing explainer videos, and they're all free and ready for you to use. Enjoy. #AcademicSky 🧪🌍

🐻Why does #FatBearWeek matter, for bears and people?🐻 @antoniouzal.bsky.social writes for @theconversation.com: theconversation.com/alaskas-fat-... Meanwhile, vote in the semi-finals for your favourite chonky bear here: explore.org/fat-bear-week 🧪🌍🦊

🐻🐻🐻🐻 It is finally here. Fat Bear Week 2025. 🐻🐻🐻🐻 Vote for the fattest, portliest, chubbiest bear of Katmai NP (@fatbearweek.bsky.social). Some of these chonks weigh more than half a ton, and have gained over 100kg since July. Who will win this year? Voting is open: explore.org/fat-bear-week 🧪🌍🦊

Calling all chimp enthusiasts! Oxon Mammal Group winter seminar season kicks off with a talk by @pintsizedprimate.bsky.social from @oxford-anthro.bsky.social on chimpanzee cultures, archaeology and conservation. 13 Oct, 7pm, at @morethanadodo.bsky.social. Free for members, 3GBP for non-members. 🧪🐵

#IgNoble prize winner: Painting cows with zebra-like striping reduces biting fly attacks. 💡Painting black-and-white stripes can increase cattle welfare without the use of pesticides, proposing a solution for the problem of pesticide resistance in the environment. 🧪🌍🪰🦓🐮 doi.org/10.1371/jour...