Everybody on bsky is obsessed with this cow and/or heated rivalry!

Four days left to apply for two postdocs in social evolution with me and @dustinrubenstein.com

Based at the University of Bristol (UK), conducting fieldwork with wasps in Cameroon, Kenya, and South Africa.

@rmash.bsky.social from @ucl.ac.uk opening @iussi-nwes.bsky.social winter meeting in Leuven! #CareAsACapacitor

POSTDOC ALERT🚨

Two exciting social evolution postdoc positions live today!

We're looking for two excellent field biologists. Join us to explore the evolution of sociality in wasps across Africa. Apply by 11th January.

Collaboration with
@dustinrubenstein.com

@bristolbiosci.bsky.social

Many Congrats!!!

Shades of blue and red in a slice through an immuno stained brain showing some deliciously lovely looking mushroom body lobes - ripe for investigation during a funded PhD - and the central complex. Image credit: Dr Max Farnworth

🚨RA/PhD position available in evolutionary neurobiology 🚨

Working on a deep dive into circuit changes during mushroom body expansion in Heliconius butterflies @camzoology.bsky.social

- employment benefits
- 4 years funding
- 1000% fun

Deadline: 14/1/2026

Details:
www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...

And that's why I think this is an example of endemic problems in our field. So much of the field thinks of stats as an afterthought. A technicality. The thing you use to tell your story. But if you use faulty heuristics to evaluate the quality of your model, your story could be complete bullshit.

Deadline to submit an abstract for our IUSSI winter meeting in Leuven, 18-19 December is fast approaching! Please come and join us & submit your abstract before the 31st of October! Will be great fun & excellent lineup of speakers, with plenaries by Ido Pen & @rmash.bsky.social!

Mine are mostly cons (if we're talking generic LLMs like ChatGPT and not bespoke ML models developed&trained in-house)
1. I don't trust them. I can't trust them bec they do not/cannot have a sense of truth or care for the integrity of the work. They bullshit randomly and don't know the difference.

📌North-West European IUSSI Winter Meeting 2025

We are happy to announce that our next meeting on the 18–19 December 2025 will be in Leuven, Belgium, hosted by @twenseleers.bsky.social and his team.

Plenary speakers: Ido Pen & Rahia Mashoodh @rmash.bsky.social

More details to follow 🐝🐜🪳🪲

Meta-analysis reveals that phenotypic plasticity and divergent selection promote reproductive isolation during incipient speciation Nature Ecology & Evolution - The authors examine factors affecting reproductive isolation in the early stages of speciation by collating data from 34 experimental speciation studies in 15...

Divergent selection and plasticity increases reproductive isolation early during incipient speciation. Find our new meta-analysis on experimental speciation studies here: rdcu.be/ek019 🧪 @EvolOdonata.ecoevo.social.ap.brid.gy @pipdowning.bsky.social

My highlight so far of the @asab.org Spring conference @ljmuofficial.bsky.social is the opening plenary from @rmash.bsky.social evidencing how parental care in burying beetles shapes evolution of variation within their gene pools over generations. Take home? Parental care = ⬆️ fitness #ASABspring2025

Dr Mashoodh in front of a slide of assorted animals that reads “Parental care shapes the evolution of molecular genetic variation Rahia Mashoodh, PhD Center for Biodiversity & Environment Research Department of Genetics, Evolution & Environment University College London”

Great plenary for #ASABSpring2025 by @rmash.bsky.social on parental care and the evolution of genetic variation 🪲🪲🪲

Postdoc or PhD working on C. elegans? Interested in applying C. elegans techniques to understand the astonishing world of epigenetics in parasitic nematodes? Apply to our Wellcome Trust funded postdoc position, joint between my lab in Oxford and Mark Viney's in Liverpool:
tinyurl.com/5y6cpvcv

Point of View: To be, or not to be, part-time in academia Part-time working can be beneficial for individual academics, and also for academia as a whole.

To be, or not to be, part-time in academia?
This is a tricky question that has faced many of us and in @elife.bsky.social we discuss the benefits and challenges of being part-time. With @emiliapsantos.bsky.social and a fantastic, interdisciplinary team!
elifesciences.org/articles/106...