Almost 1 in 3 sheep slaughtered in England are not stunned. It's a case where two important values - animal welfare and religious toleration - collide. But mandatory labelling and an export ban are consistent with religious freedom, I argue, and should be enacted now: blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandp...
Dwarf mongoose group in South Africa
Zebra finches on wire in Australia
⏰Time running out - deadline 19th April - to apply for funded #PhD:
🪶Quantifying animal movement patterns & behavioural interactions in a changing world
👥Joint with us @bristolbiosci.bsky.social & #SimonGriffith #MacquarieUniversity
#modelling #birds #mammals #Australia
ℹ️ tinyurl.com/343acaev
Prof. Mark Brown in the Museum of Zoology
🐝What’s killing our bees?🐝Discover the vital work of Museum Director, Professor Mark Brown & why bees really matter. Did you know one-third of the food we eat relies on bee-pollinated crops? @camunivmuseums.bsky.social @camzoology.bsky.social @markjfbrown.bsky.social www.cam.ac.uk/stories/what...
🚨NEW paper in @asab.org #AnimalBehaviour - field #experiments testing how elevated within-group aggression & intergroup threat combine to affect mongoose #behaviour
Led by @josharbon.bsky.social with @juliekern.bsky.social & #AmyMorris-Drake
#mammals #bioacoustics #conflict
doi.org/10.1016/j.an...
A real lesson and reminder for me that perseverance can pay off and that I can sometimes have terrible hunches! Thanks to @andyradford.bsky.social @juliekern.bsky.social and Amy Morris-Drake for their help with the work and @asab.org for publishing it
It took a year for @andyradford.bsky.social to even convince me to analyse the data I had collected (as he likes to remind me) and for once it turns out he was onto something...
Almost as importantly, this paper is the fruit of a very tricky field-season where we ran into difficulties with unseasonal weather, obscene vegetation and quite a few extraneous pressures to say the least.
By simulating aggression within mongoose groups using playback we were able to alter cooperative contributions and social spacing. Some of these effects even persisted in the face of out-group threat, highlighting how social conflict can interact across scales.
The full-fat formatted version of our recent mongoose paper is now online in Animal Behaviour:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Culture was assumed to be unique to humans, but recent scientific discoveries have revealed that it's in fact widespread in the animal kingdom. This #PhilTransB issue is the first to present a comprehensive picture of the science & implications of this: royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3...
Have a look at this great #PhD opportunity on Road Ecology at Aarhus University, Denmark 👇 Timely topic, and a great supervisor! 📅DL: 30.04 phd.tech.au.dk/for-applican...
(📸: coloradosun.com/2025/12/07/p...)
Zebra finches in Australia; one of the study organisms for the PhD
Dwarf mongoose staring at a camera in South Africa; one of the PhD study organisms
📢Fully-funded #PhD opportunity with us
❓Quantifying animal #movement patterns & behavioural #interactions in a changing world
👥Joint position in @bristolbiosci.bsky.social & #MacquarieUniversity
📆19th April deadline
tinyurl.com/343acaev
#maths #modelling #data #fieldwork #Australia
🙏PLEASE SHARE
I had an inspiring day hosting a workshop on positive fieldwork at @asab.org spring meeting yesterday. We shared the motivations and challenges that come along with fieldwork, and developed a set of guiding principles for ECRs to use in the future 🌱 Thanks for inviting me along!
A new study by researchers at the Centre for Ecology and Conservation has indicated that jackdaw chicks learn about predators from other jackdaws!
Clemency, Josh and Lauren in front of a screen with their photos reading Panel Session Clemency White R&D Fellow (Defra), Lauren Vane (Phd Student), Josh Arbon (Herschel Smith Fellow)
Students in groups creating personal principles
After lunch #ASABSpring2026 workshop about creating positive fieldwork experiences by @clemencywhite.bsky.social, including a very interesting panel with @josharbon.bsky.social & @laurenvane.bsky.social, and a thoughtful exercise on developing our own personal principles ✍️
Just love to see a previously widespread and entirely sensible assumption tested to find the answer is something else equally (if not more) interesting!
New paper out! Great tits face distinct challenges from extreme weather during development, based on 60 years data from >83k nestlings in Wytham Woods 🐣 Cold snaps & heavy rain can stunt growth, but earlier breeding may help buffer this! By @devisatarkar.bsky.social et al.
doi.org/10.1111/gcb.70794
A long blue-brown trumpetfish swimming above and close to a blue stoplight parrotfish
🚨NEW PAPER🚨 Need to #camouflage on the move? Easy - simply seek out something that's coloured like you and move along with it! 🐠 Read the latest #trumpetfish instalment here: tinyurl.com/4tb5h5hk
@royalsociety.org
#shadowing #predator #experiment #marine #movement
Schematic of experimental design in new study.
Dwarf mongoose acting as a sentinel in Limpopo Province, South Africa
📢NEW paper alert
📖How #aggression between groupmates can have lasting consequences both for #cooperative #behaviour & responses to #intergroup threats:
doi.org/10.1016/j.an...
👑Led by @josharbon.bsky.social
#fieldwork #experiments #mongooses #mammals #bioacoustics
@bristolbiosci.bsky.social
Lola von Kietzell in Canberra collecting field data.
Lola von Kietzell with a group of white-winged choughs which she worked on for her Masters.
🥂CONGRATULATIONS to Lola von Kietzell on defending her #Masters by Research thesis with no corrections. 👏
🙏THANK you to @josharbon.bsky.social for cosupervising, #Chun-ChiehLiao & #RobMagrath for brilliant #fieldwork support, and @caglarakcay.bsky.social & @stephanielking.bsky.social as examiners.
ExE 2026
Interested in the interface of evolution 🧬 and ecology 🌳? Then you cannot miss #ExE2026! Hosted by @uniexecec.bsky.social in beautiful #Cornwall, this #conference has a stellar line-up of speakers and lots of pre-and post-conference workshops. Space is limited, so register now at evoxeco.uk!
Handwritten note saying: "But I am very poorly today & very stupid & hate everybody & everything."
Let's celebrate #DarwinDay by reminding ourselves that everyone has moments when they feel worse for wear.
Darwin wrote to Charles Lyell in 1861:
"But I am very poorly today & very stupid & hate everybody & everything."
www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-L...
So, hang in there, #academicsky!
🧪🌏🐵
Do you know the origin of the colour-ringed individual?
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.
Delighted to see our paper featured on the cover of the Journal of Animal Ecology @animalecology.bsky.social @britishecologicalsociety.org
Thanks Pam Hurkens for the lovely image of a heavily pregnant meerkat being weighed at our field site.
The principles of experimental design in ecology and evolution has 20k downloads, but unfortunately I still have to reject ~20% of papers without review because they lack replication at the right level. More discussion among mentors and mentees please.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
New blog post!!🚨
Michael Chimento gives an overview of the new R package STbayes, designed for creating, fitting and understanding Bayesian models of social transmission 🌍 🧪
Read the blog here 👇
Just as a counterpoint to general mood: inspirational pair and a much more honest reflection of the UK population in the response they experienced
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
Found it! Apologies to Schiller, it was Kluver in the 30s. Worth a few minutes of anyone's time: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Help me out. I'm looking for a paper I think I saw on bluesky from ~1950s about experiments where chimps were given rats on strings to use as living tools to access out of reach food. I think it might have been Schiller but I can't find it anywhere! Have I gone mad?