Great tit perched on a branch, with beak slightly open. Photo credit: Alizée Vernouillet

📢Fully-funded #PhD opportunity with us:

🐦 Quantifying (social) learning and social behaviour in an urbanised world 🐦

Position at @ceec-research.bsky.social

📆29th May deadline
More info: tinyurl.com/yz28s96x
Apply: tinyurl.com/2wpkb64y

#cognition #socialbehaviour #fieldwork #birds

🙏Please Share

Grateful as well to the Deutsche Ornithologische Gesellschaft for the travel grant that made this trip possible and for the pigeon team working on this research
@bram-vdbroecke.bsky.social

9/10
What we can say is that:
• Exposure exists, but is moderate
• Blood ≠ feathers
• Limited health effects overall
• Pb is the only consistent signal
• Colour is not linked to metal load

8/10
Except for #zinc, we found no evidence that darker plumage would have higher levels of heavy metals

At least not in the local context of #Antwerp (Belgium).

7/10
Do darker pigeons handle metals better?

There’s a hypothesis:

Melanin can bind metals →
darker birds might detox better.

(Chatelain et al. 2014)

6/10
But something did matter was where pigeons live.

About 27% of variation in #corticosterone was explained by location

5/10
No link with #infection.
No link with #stress.

4/10
So… does heavy metal #pollution it actually affects #pigeons?

more #Pb = worse body condition

3/10
Except for #lead, the two tissues are uncorrelated.

2/10
I shared our findings on heavy metals in #pigeons and what these #pollutants actually mean for the birds.

We asked four simple questions

1/10

Really happy to have had the chance to present one of my #PhD chapters at the #EOU Fledglings meeting in #Gdansk. 😊

Why a tool-using cow could change how we see farm animals A pet cow has learned to scratch herself with a broom, showing creative problem-solving skills that make it harder to ignore the fact that these animals have minds, says Marta Halina

Love this new evidence of the cognitive sophistication of cows and hope that it might make a few people rethink whether they want meat on their plates
www.newscientist.com/article/2511...

We are looking for a new lab administrator (0.5 FTE) - come and join in pushing forward our research and impact in infectious disease! www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...

The effect of a temperature‐sensitive prophage on the evolution of virulence in an opportunistic bacterial pathogen Viruses are key actors of ecosystems and have major impacts on global biogeochemical cycles. Prophages deserve particular attention as they are ubiquitous in bacterial genomes and can enter a lytic cycle when triggered by environmental conditions. ...

Might be worth checking out some of the data on prophage induction and temperature? pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC... or journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

Thank you!

Friendship is magic: male dolphins with close friends age more slowly Like friendship itself, the slower ageing is more than just skin deep.

Friendship is magic: male dolphins with close friends age more slowly
theconversation.com/friendship-i...

Keynote nominations are now open for the BOU 2027 Spring Conference on Avian Disease Ecology!

Submit via the conference webpage: bou.org.uk/event/avian-...

Also thrilled to announce that Prof. Dana Hawley (@danahawley.bsky.social) will deliver the Alfred Newton Lecture.

Please share!

Thanks Will! Congratulations on your recent rock dove paper as well! It was a really nice read :)

The highlights of the paper 2/2

🩸Blood based screening inflates reported prevalence rates of Chlamydia psittaci in feral pigeons.
🦠Urban disease surveillance should report site-level data, not only one citywide value.

The highlights of the paper 1/2

🏙️ Fine-scale spatial heterogeneity of Chlamydia psittaci prevalence in feral pigeons within Antwerp city.
🔍Variation within Antwerp comparable with differences among cities worldwide.
🔬At least 12 unique sampling sites are needed for reliable city-level prevalence.

377 #pigeons sampled later, I’m happy to share that the first paper from my PhD is published in One Health Journal

It’s about monitoring #disease in the #urban #landscape and why a one number city-level #prevalence report can be misleading

You can read the full PDF here: doi.org/10.1016/j.on...

🚨 New Research Alert!
Urban air pollution harms wildlife too. A study in Journal of Hazardous Materials shows yellow-legged gull chicks in Barcelona act as sentinels for air quality. 🐦🌆

🔗 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2025.140518
#OneHealth

@icmcsic.bsky.social 
@jnavarro.bsky.social

Bird Flu Wiped Out Nearly Half of the Females in the World’s Largest Elephant Seal Population, Drone Images Suggest Scientists recorded a 47 percent drop in breeding females in South Georgia’s three largest elephant seal colonies after bird flu hit. Scaled to the whole island, that’s a potential loss of more than 5...

Half the southern elephant seals on South Georgia Island, one of the major populations, were wiped out by bird flu in the past two years:
www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/b...

EastBio: A host-directed approach to identify novel therapeutic targets of infectious reproductive diseases at Moredun Research Institute on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - EastBio: A host-directed approach to identify novel therapeutic targets of infectious reproductive diseases at Moredun Research Institute, listed on FindAPhD.com

🎓 Funded #PhD studentships in pathogen biology and parasitology

*Cell and Molecular Biology*; *Host-pathogen interactions*

Part of the EastBio Doctoral Landscape Award

Based in the Edinburgh area of Scotland

PhD 1:
bit.ly/Host-pathoge...

PhD 2:
bit.ly/Parasite-sca...

@uoe-eid.bsky.social

Now out in @natcomms.nature.com Kudos to @tylim.bsky.social and @jameshay.bsky.social for a huge effort and thanks to all the collaborators for their hard work. See the final version here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hei Marius! Thanks! Yes, the paper is under review at the moment but the preprint is online. You can check it out here: spkl.io/6188Ab4M8

This week I had the opportunity to present some results from my #PhD project at the #NVG conference. I shared our work on #Chlamydia psittaci prevalence in feral #pigeons within a #OneHealth framework, highlighting why fine-scale reporting is essential when monitoring #disease dynamics in cities. 🏙️

Fig. 1 from the article: A representation of the state of research on the impacts of sleep disturbance on birds. The size of the arrows represents the relative abundance of studies between the connected concepts. Blue arrows indicate that data are available, with thicker arrows indicating a greater amount of data. The grey dotted line represents a relative lack of empirical data.

NEW PAPER: how does urban noise, lights, and stress disrupt birds’ sleep? This review shows that our knowledge about this is fragmeneted and calls for direct tests linking disturbed sleep to bird behavior, fitness, and survival.

➡️ vist.ly/4e7dj

#ornithology #birds #urbanecology 🪶

A different type of office 🐦🦠🏙️

#PhD #pigeons #fieldwork #urbanecology #sampling #diseases