This project (with Stacy Rosenbaum and Nick Grebe) began in the dark days of Covid, and is finally ready to share. We've built a living database of primate paternity data (52 species, 3000 paternities) and completed first wave of analyses of paternity distribution. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
I am currently building a database of primate age structures and I've realised how little I previously knew about primates. So I've decided to do a "Monkey of the Moment": each day I will introduce a new primate (not all monkeys!) with my favourite new fact about that species.
Hope you enjoy! 🦧🦍🐒
CRAB Posters at #ASABSpring2026 from @helephantmylne.bsky.social , Bryony Jenkins, Eleanor Benson, Sophie Pettit , and Henry Moreau-Smith
(Pictures taken in the very rare gaps when they didn't have customers)
Hi all. I am very excited that after 6 years I finally got my phylogenetic comparative methods book and online exercises online. Feel free to use and share. The book is here: nhcooper123.github.io/pcm-primer/. Note that it is not finished, we had to abandon it before the sunk costs fallacy broke us
Brilliant plenary from @elvarobinson.bsky.social at #ASABSpring2026 . Science! Advice! Ants! And a mention of me! In short everything you could want in a talk.
CRAB are at @asab-spring-2025.bsky.social in Bristol in strength for the next couple of days.
Today @libbychaps.bsky.social presented work from her PhD on rabbit social ontogeny.
More CRABers to come tomorrow!
Me with my academic poster at ASAB Spring conference. Poster is titled "Live and Let Die: Unravelling the variation in primate lifespans.". My research investigates how we can estimate the duration of primate lifespans, so that we can run a comparative model of the causes of lifespan across primates.
How long do primates live? Come and find me at #ASABSpring2026 poster number 2 to find out about my model (or not if you aren't stats keen!) and how we are investigating the evolutionary causes of primate lifespan 🐒🦧
With just over a month to go until #CityNatureChallenge 2026, great to see evidence that it does actually help!
We are entering Exeter for the first time so anyone who would like to help with either species recording over the weekend or IDs across the following 2 weeks would be much appreciated! 🎉
Join us in Copenhagen in June for our summer course on programming in R!
- Aimed at PhD students in behavioural ecology, others also welcome
- No prior programming knowledge needed
Deadline for sign-up: May 1
More info here:
programmingintrocph.weebly.com
Aging may feel gradual… but what if it’s not?
In our recent paper, we tracked fish continuously from puberty until death.
This gave us a unique view of how aging unfolds across the adult lifespan.
🧵
Humpback whale breaching in front of the New Caledonian coastline.
New paper on age-related reproductive tactics & success in humpback whales, published in Current Biology.🐳🧬
doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...
#marmam @seamammalresearch.bsky.social @uniofstandrews.bsky.social @ellengarland.bsky.social @emma-carroll.bsky.social @clairenea.bsky.social @lrendell.bsky.social 1/7
New (competition funded) PhD opportunity with me,
@iaciac.bsky.social and @dralgernon.bsky.social
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
Higher-order networks and animal communication. Suited to someone keen on network science theory/computational modeling and keen to adapt this to ecology & evolution.
A new paper in @plos.org Complex Systems from my time at @nimbios.bsky.social with Nina Fefferman.
We set out some ways of classifying rules for social learning and knowledge exchange in higher-order networks.
doi.org/10.1371/jour...
A white beluga surfacing in greenish-brown waters. Overlaid is the title of a new review published in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology: Beluga Societies: the social and cultural lives of an enigmatic odontocete.
Our new review of beluga sociality and culture just dropped at Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology! Some of our key conclusions summarized 🧵
doi.org/10.1007/s002...
@marine-valeria.bsky.social @dmennill.bsky.social @raincoast.org
Charli Grimes discusses the social ontogeny of resident killer whales, exploring how lifelong social bonds form and change from early life through maturity. 🐋🤝 #UKIRSC26
We are hiring – postdoc position exploring how kinship shapes social ageing in killer whales. Collaboration with @samellisq.bsky.social @drwhale.bsky.social and Prof Rufus Johnstone (Cambridge) starts 1st April 2026 and ends 31st March 2029. Apps close 2nd Feb. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPZ788/p...
Fully funded #PhD studentships, start Sept 2026:
1. Weaponry and aggression in wild fiddler crabs, with me, Safi Darden, Martin How tinyurl.com/weaponsPhD
2. The emotional basis of behaviour, with me, Danny Williamson, Andy Higginson tinyurl.com/emotionsPhD
#AnimalBehaviour @crab-exeter.bsky.social
Cover image with sleeping baboon
Our paper is published today in Current Biology and is featured on the cover!
We report a neat, and somewhat counter-intuitive, finding: higher-ranking baboons get less and more interrupted night-time rest.
Late-reporting, but last year some of our CRABbers headed up to Edinburgh to present their posters at the @asab.org Winter meeting. Well done all! @libbychaps.bsky.social @charli-ocean.bsky.social and @ Manuela Carona R
Festive Season in CRAB, which we celebrate with a quiz and by rediscovering the password to the CRAB Bluesky account.
New paper out in iScience. We found the pattern of Guinea baboon meat transfers follows the shape of their nested multi-level society. Transfers of meat are more tolerant at the lower levels of the society and are more likely to occur along stronger social relationships. www.cell.com/iscience/ful...
Dwarf mongoose
Rhesus macaques grooming
Meerkat
❓ Want to join us?
📢 Fully funded #PhD for UK-domiciled Black heritage candidates
🐵 Biological market monitoring & manipulation in social animals #mongooses #macaques #fieldwork
👥 With me, #LaurenBrent & #PatrickKennedy
🎓 @bristolbiosci.bsky.social
ℹ️ www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
🙏Share widely
MSc by Res opportunity - developing behavioural indicators to inform killer whale conservation with
@exeter.ac.uk @whaleresearch.bsky.social @seadocsociety.bsky.social
People from underrepresented groups in marine science encouraged to apply.
Deadline 19Dec
www.exeter.ac.uk/study/fundin...
The Adaptive Relationships Framework illustrating how broad socioecological pressures shape the social solutions animals use to meet these challenges, and how these lead to social strategies and emergent structures that help them gain access to those solutions.
Social relationships are powerful predictors of fitness across social animals. But *why*?
In our new @cp-trendsecolevo.bsky.social paper, we outline testable predictions for why relationship quality and quantity adaptively vary across socio-ecological contexts.
tinyurl.com/55dnkeh7
We are hiring - PDRA position exploring how information access shapes social dynamics in killer whales. Collaboration with @samellisq.bsky.social @drwhale.bsky.social Prof Dan Franks (York) start 1st Nov (or ASAP) end 31st Oct 2028. Apps close on 19th Oct.
www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOT336/p...
Models as Prediction Machines: How to Convert Confusing Coefficients into Clear Quantities Abstract Psychological researchers usually make sense of regression models by interpreting coefficient estimates directly. This works well enough for simple linear models, but is more challenging for more complex models with, for example, categorical variables, interactions, non-linearities, and hierarchical structures. Here, we introduce an alternative approach to making sense of statistical models. The central idea is to abstract away from the mechanics of estimation, and to treat models as “counterfactual prediction machines,” which are subsequently queried to estimate quantities and conduct tests that matter substantively. This workflow is model-agnostic; it can be applied in a consistent fashion to draw causal or descriptive inference from a wide range of models. We illustrate how to implement this workflow with the marginaleffects package, which supports over 100 different classes of models in R and Python, and present two worked examples. These examples show how the workflow can be applied across designs (e.g., observational study, randomized experiment) to answer different research questions (e.g., associations, causal effects, effect heterogeneity) while facing various challenges (e.g., controlling for confounders in a flexible manner, modelling ordinal outcomes, and interpreting non-linear models).
Figure illustrating model predictions. On the X-axis the predictor, annual gross income in Euro. On the Y-axis the outcome, predicted life satisfaction. A solid line marks the curve of predictions on which individual data points are marked as model-implied outcomes at incomes of interest. Comparing two such predictions gives us a comparison. We can also fit a tangent to the line of predictions, which illustrates the slope at any given point of the curve.
A figure illustrating various ways to include age as a predictor in a model. On the x-axis age (predictor), on the y-axis the outcome (model-implied importance of friends, including confidence intervals). Illustrated are 1. age as a categorical predictor, resultings in the predictions bouncing around a lot with wide confidence intervals 2. age as a linear predictor, which forces a straight line through the data points that has a very tight confidence band and 3. age splines, which lies somewhere in between as it smoothly follows the data but has more uncertainty than the straight line.
Ever stared at a table of regression coefficients & wondered what you're doing with your life?
Very excited to share this gentle introduction to another way of making sense of statistical models (w @vincentab.bsky.social)
Preprint: doi.org/10.31234/osf...
Website: j-rohrer.github.io/marginal-psy...
Pleasure and honour to have the opportunity to discuss some of the work we have been doing on over the last few years.
Thanks to @behaviour2025.bsky.social for the invite (and great conference), @asab.org for the funding and everyone who turned up to listen at 9am on day 5.
Animal Behaviour from Exeter and Bristol, plus some of our alumni, went to @behaviour2025.bsky.social in Kolkata and had mountains of rice. @crab-exeter.bsky.social @bristolbiosci.bsky.social @uniexecec.bsky.social
It was a real pleasure to have accidently been involved in Joe Wilde's (not here) paper published last week: doi.org/10.1098/rspb...
It has terrifying Bayesian Hidden Markov Models, important insights about dynamic sexual signalling, and a robot crab called "Wavey Dave"- what's not to love?
BEHAVIOR IS THE WAY
