Avian senescence: patterns, mechanisms and new perspectives. Photo showing zebra finches of different ages. Photo: Paul Jerem & Glasgow University, courtesy of Pat Monaghan

📣 CALL FOR PAPERS - SPECIAL ISSUE 📣

Avian senescence: patterns, mechanisms and new perspectives

More info: vist.ly/3n8p3mv

Guest editors: Julia Schroeder @jj255.bsky.social #RoxanaTorres, @brittheidinger.bsky.social @jaime-muriel.bsky.social @toblermichi.bsky.social

Please repost 🙏

1st PhD paper from @yuhengsun.bsky.social 🎉 Long-term fitness effects of the early-life environment in a wild bird population @jj255.bsky.social @terryburke.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/behe...

Check out @yuhengsun.bsky.social first pre-print from PhD 🎉: Long-term fitness effects of the early-life environment in a wild bird population doi.org/10.32942/X2Z... @terryburke.bsky.social @jj255.bsky.social

🚨 ESEB 2025, here we come! 🚨

Abstract submissions are now open for our symposium -
"Enhancing Diversity & Transparency in Ecology & Evolution: Reliable Practices for Research & Organizations" 🌍✨

Featuring invited speakers:
🔹 Dr. Malgorzata (Losia) Lagisz
🔹 Dr. Joel Pick

#ESEB2025 #SORTEE

Happy International Women's Day! 

To celebrate, we've brought together a collection of blog posts from our amazing journal editors, showcasing their work as inspiring women in the ecological community.

#IWD2025
🌍🧪

www.britishecologicalsociety.org/international-womens-day...

Animal social networks are robust to changing association definitions - Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology The interconnecting links between individuals in an animal social network are often defined by discrete, directed behaviours, but where these are difficult to observe, a network link (edge) may instea...

New paper out in BEAS! Co-first with @j-dunning.net : we compared three different ways of defining social associations from RFID data across four avian study systems.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Social networks of birds are often constructed from spatio-temporal data streams of feeder visits, but how do we define ‘connection’ and does it matter?
While common definitions yield similar patterns, do consider context of systems and research Qs!
Well led by co-first authors Alex and Jamie!
🧵👇

Second paper out this week 😱😱

We present YOLO-Behaviour, a flexible, easy to implement, robust framework for automated behavioural annotation from videos, published in @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social!!

[paper] doi.org/10.1111/2041...
[documentation] alexhang212.github.io/YOLO_Behavio...

Call for editors, Journal of Evolutionary Biology.
A great journal, and I encourage folks to apply!
jevbio.net/call-for-edi...

There's still time to register your interest to become the Royal Society's Artist in Residence, an opportunity for a creative individual to produce new work in response to our collections and the scientific research of our community. Express your interest here: royalsociety.org/about-us/wor...

🚨Funded PhD opportunity🚨
Topic: The impact of anthropogenic noise on fitness-related behaviours, gene expression profiles, and gut microbiome in birds 🦅🦆🐓
University of Bielefeld, Germany
Learn more: www.uni-bielefeld.de/fakultaeten/...

🎉Janet Chik's @evolletters.bsky.social paper is out on Genotype x Age effects on telomere length in Lundy house sparrows academic-oup-com.proxy-ub.rug.nl/evlett/advan... @jj255.bsky.social

@hannahdugdale.bsky.social

Congratulations to Prof. Josephine Pemberton on being awarded the prestigious Genetics Society Medal! 🏅 Her groundbreaking contributions to genetics, from understanding natural populations to evolutionary biology, continue to inspire us all.
genetics.org.uk/medals-and-p...

Heritability and age-dependent changes in genetic variation of telomere length in a wild house sparrow population Abstract. Telomere length (TL) and/or its rate of change are popular biomarkers of senescence, as telomere dynamics are linked with survival and lifespan.

Age x G effects in telomere length in a wild bird! How cool is this? Another excellent paper by one of our PhD students, Janet Chik! doi.org/10.1093/evle...

Adult telomere length is positively correlated with survival and lifetime reproductive success in a wild passerine Explaining variation in individual fitness is a key goal in evolutionary biology. Recently, telomeres, repeating DNA sequences capping chromosome ends, have gained attention as a biomarker for body s...

Our paper is out in Mol Ecol, led by Janet Chik!
We found adult telomere length was positively linked with survival and lifetime reproductive output in the Lundy house sparrows🐤🧬 @jj255.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1111/mec....

Lundy island with some sheep

Made my way back on Lundy after 3 years! 🌄

Time to stare at some sparrows
@jj255.bsky.social

Extrapair paternity alongside social reproduction increases male lifetime fitness Within breeding years, male birds vary in their reproductive strategy. While some maintain monogamy with a social partner, others also engage with ext…

Our paper on male sparrow reproductive strategies, published earlier this year, has won the @asaborg.bsky.social award for outstanding publication
in Animal Behaviour! 🎉

This was a hugely collaborative effort over several years of Lundy sparrow researchers.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Two house sparrows from the long-term study on Lundy island. #ukbirding #ornithology

a sparrow with colour-rings on Lundy island #ornithology

Our study used social data from the Lundy house sparrows and found that older birds have fewer friends and less influence within their social networks -- royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

We suggest this is driven by morality, and that the benefits of being social may decline with age.

My colleagues and I have contributed a study to a special issue of Philos. Trans. R. Soc. on age and society in wild animal populations (edited by Josh Firth et al.) -- royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/202...
It's had a nice write up in the Guardian today -
www.theguardian.com/science/2024...
🧪🪶

🚨 We're delighted to announce that applications have opened for our residential, long-term volunteer positions in 2025.

Vacant roles:

🪶 Bird Observatory Assistant
🐧 Seabird Fieldworker
🦭 Seal Fieldworker
🪚 Assistant Ranger

Accommodation and meals are provided free for the duration of the roles.

Here’s a link to the paper - doi.org/10.1111/jav....

Both the lead author, @yuhengsun.bsky.social and Lundy bird obs @lundybirds.bsky.social are on Bsky - follow them for more!

We've had a paper published today in @avianbiology.bsky.social.

We demonstrated that some elements of Manx shearwater calls can be used to identify individuals. Something long-suspected, but not tested.

In future, this could be used to measure site fidelity or breeding group size. #ornithology

The awesome @yuhengsun.bsky.social showed that manx shearwater calls are individual - meaning they could use them as names! Absolutely fantastic publication from a masters thesis! @jamiedunning.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

@jamiedunning.bsky.social

New publication out: Alex Chan reading us how to use machine learning to automatically extract behavioural data from videos of sparrows feeding their young! Read it here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Everything you ever wanted to know about divorce and friendships! A great paper from the excellent @jamiedunning.bsky.social

Singing house sparrow male.

Females that divorce more often had more extra-pair partners than monogamous females.

NEW PAPER: support for the intrasexual pleiotropy hypothesis - females who swap mates more frequently within breeding years engage more extra-pair males but do not produce a greater proportion of extra-pair offspring.

full article: vist.ly/k3my

@jamiedunning.bsky.social @jj255.bsky.social 🪶🧪

This article provides the general context quite well. wonkhe.com/wonk-corner/...

My concerns are here in brief form: x.com/vicderbyshir...