🗞️ The IUCN SSC has launched a Woodlouse Specialist Group. Woodlice are a group of 4,100+ species that drive litter decomposition, nutrient cycling and soil water retention, and yet have been largely overlooked in conservation planning🪵

For the love of mammoths, if you're not going to review a manuscript please decline right away. Don't just ignore the reminders and then let the system auto-decline after two weeks. Happy holidays to all who say "no" in a timely manner, and may those who suggest alternatives have a happy New Year.

We have a new paper out! @jzoology.bsky.social 🐀🧪🐀🧪

Our new paper! Led by @miaryras.bsky.social with @wolfgangwuster.bsky.social and others 🦎

IT'S THIS TIME OF THE YEAR AGAIN!! 🧪🦢🐸🐀 Registration for the Annual Meeting of the Ethological Society is open! Join the science & networking fun in Grünau im Almtal 16-21 February 2026 univie.eventsair.com/etho26-dkcog...

Award alert! 🎖️🚨 Every other year, the Ethologische Gesellschaft awards the Niko Tinbergen Award to outstanding post-doc level researchers in Behavioural Biology (<=6yrs post PhD exam). ...and this year is one of these years! Please send us your nominations! 🫵 Infos: www.etho-ges.de/wordpress/aw...

JOB ALERT: We have an exciting Senior Research Assistant post available for a project tracking predators and prey simultaneously starting early 2026. We need someone with experience tagging adult raptors or wader chicks. This you? app.vacancy-filler.co.uk/salescrm/Car...

Want to know everything about bird smell? I wrote an "Ornithological masterclass" on Avian Olfaction for BTO News @btobirds.bsky.social #ornithology Link to the article 👉 www.researchgate.net/publication/...

With #eseb2025 coming to a close, it is time to start making plans for 2026. Interested in the interface of evolution 🧬 and ecology 🌳? Come to our #ExE conference hosted by @uniexecec.bsky.social in beautiful #Cornwall. Leave your email address at tinyurl.com/EvolxEcol to join our mailing list!

2025. How human activity impacts urban squirrels' problem-solving abilities phys.org/news/2025-09...

Come and work with us! Three new academic posts (including Animal Behaviour) and superb facilities in the new Life & Mind Building

Loving the colors of the sea

Actual footage of me on my way into the weekend...

When you set traps to capture small rodents, but a least weasel only sees an easy meal

Enjoying lizard fieldwork in Croatia

Do animals dream? Here is a bank vole, sleeping (and dreaming?) in a metabolic chamber

Fieldwork prep has started! Looking forward to the next field season here in Münster. Let's hope there are loads of small rodents around

📸🐭🐿️🦔🐇🏙️New paper out! Using camera trap data we found that small mammal community composition, species diversity and evenness do not change along an urbanization gradient in and around Münster, Germany. First published study with @mdammhahn.bsky.social www.publish.csiro.au/WR/WR24196

A quick recap of our South Africa excursion! So much beauty and diversity @mdammhahn.bsky.social

Love the lil flex when they realise they just became the most famous bird in the world.

I am extremely pleased to share this feature articulating why I have lost my sanity lately. www.science.org/content/arti...

How your email finds me

And a dream came true. We got to visit the Kalahari Meerkat Project run by Marta Manser from Zurich

We also visited a very green Addo Elephant National Park

Just came back from a 3 week excursion to South Africa with 11 students and @mdammhahn.bsky.social. We covered over 4500km and explored 5 different biomes. Here are some of my favorite pictures (more to follow)

New paper alert! The function of plants collected by bush Karoo rats (Otomys unisulcatus): Do dried up food plants represent stored food? Fun collaboration using plant data I collected quite some time aho. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Looking forward to the @dzg2025berlin.bsky.social meeting! Who else is going?

2025. #DEI - My experience of speaking at a conference with a baby. Hannah Chance spent a day during her parental leave telling a group of postdocs about her science-policy work. Aidan, aged six months, came along too. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Exciting new paper by Jens Ulrich & Risa Sargent: "Urban landscapes with more natural greenspace support higher pollinator diversity." esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

That's us! Loved working with the wall lizards. Hoping for more to come (fingers crossed for the grant application)

What a week - submitted a reprint, submitted a revised grant proposal 🦎🐁🦠 (with an amazing group of researchers: Isabel Damas Moreira & Öncü Maraci), supervised an exam, analysed new hormone data. Looking forward to this weekend

I usually reserve this account for my personal views; but today I want to represent my position as President of @asn-amnat.bsky.social to post a message that will shortly go out to the membership of the American Society of Naturalists from the ASN Executive Council

WANTED: Suggestions of field ecology/animal behavior papers that have just super great "Methods" sections. Everything is clearly explained and anyone could replicate it just from reading that section. Self-nominations are fine. (Using this for my "marine biology field research methods" course) 🧪🌎🦑

Trying out my new board game - when you're a biologist and it's your birthday... quick and fun game with beautiful art

Join us as a Doctoral student in Biology w/focus in ecological physiology. A PhD project with @cyanistesnord.bsky.social “HotLife – Pathways to survival in a hotter world” supported by @ercresearch.bsky.social. #lunduniversity Please apply no later than 18 February! lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

More than 60 German-speaking universities and research institutes have just jointly announced they will cease activities on X because “the current orientation of the platform is not compatible with their core values” incl. scientific integrity, transparency and democratic discourse” 🧪

Actual footage of me and collaborators trying to fit our proposal to the page limit 🐀🦎🏙️

🎉 New paper out now! 🎉 We found that the unpredictability level in escape behavior of grasshoppers is relatively constant throughout an individual's life, but that differences among individuals increase during ontogeny! More here: authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

What a cool paper! 🤩 Using @inaturalist.bsky.social observations, Mayer et al. found that there are more melanistic snakes in colder regions than in warmer ones AND that melanistic snakes are more abundant with ⬆️ avian predator density 🐍🐦 Have look at it here: doi.org/10.1111/jbi....

PhD position available 🚨Öncu Maraci is looking for a #PhDstudent to study the impact of #anthropogenicnoise on fitness-related behaviours, #geneexpression profiles, and #gutmicrobiome in #birds. Read all about it here: tinyurl.com/4xknfw8n

Very cool new study by @danielwanoble.bsky.social and colleagues

Gemütlich im Mittelbau #einkuscheln?! Ihr wisst: Ich habe #IchBinHanna gestern im Wissenschaftsausschuss des NRW-Landtags vertreten. Was ich da alles gesagt hab? 1 🧵! Da ich vermute, dass Euch das besonders interessiert, fange ich mal mit meiner Reaktion auf das Einkuscheln an. (1/8)

Quite an interesting and important read by @taphozoan.bsky.social and a paper we talked about in our weekly journal club (when talking about the publishing system in general) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Interested in fitness consequences of the gut microbiome in the wild? Keen on being involved with an iconic long-term study system? Check out a PhD opportunity working on Soay sheep microbiomes! Info below and feel free to contact with q's. e4-dtp.ed.ac.uk/e5-dtp/super...

How does pollution impact behavioural evolution? We're looking for an awesome PhD student to find out. Project spans behaviour, genetics + ecotox, working with cherry shrimp @exetercec.bsky.social. Cosupervised with @lauraakelley.bsky.social and Dave Spurgeon at CEH. App + info tinyurl.com/yvthn7xn

This never gets old...also works with grants or teaching...

Phillipines - a very beautiful place with loads of marine wildlife to discover

Throughback to last December when we visited my Dad in the Philippines and went snorkeling every day

Bye Bye cranes... I prefer seeing you come back

Game night with biologists. What do we play? Of course, biology-related board games such as Wingspan 🐦🐛🦢🐧🦆🐓🐔🦉