📣 EvolDir is now managed by @eseb.bsky.social!

We are delighted to be taking the reins and express our gratitude to both Brian Golding who began this service to the community in the mid-1980s and to @rdmpage.bsky.social who ran this account until now 👏

You can now find evoldir here: evoldir.net

This #PhilTransB theme issue, organised by @ellileadbeater.bsky.social and @cornishjackdaws.bsky.social, explores how and why animal minds have evolved to be so different from one another: royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3...

Amaia is @pinpilinpauxa-aaa.bsky.social 🙂

Really excited to see @borreroja.bsky.social’s tour de force exploring the behavioural consequences of coordinated visual adaptations in *Heliconius*, and how these may break down in hybrids, out in the world. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Spatial, temporal and Notch determination of terminal selector expression controls neuronal cell fate in the Drosophila optic lobe - Nature Neuroscience The authors characterized the spatial origin of Drosophila medulla neurons, completing their previous characterization of the temporal and Notch origins of these neurons and allowing them to correlate...

Félix Simon's paper is out in its final form 😍
When we got into (extreme) detail in the temporal and spatial patterning of neuroblasts, Félix asked a simple question "sure, but how does this translate into neuronal cell fate?". www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hammer time

Vision in flower foraging butterflies: from functional organization of the retina to encoding in the brain Summary: This Review discusses how processing in the retina and lamina in Papilio xuthus is the first element for its tetrachromatic color vision and chromatic motion vision, whereas higher-order neur...

🚨 The tetrachromatic color vision and motion vision of a swallowtail butterfly is explored in this wonderful review by Michiyo Kinoshita & Kentaro Arikawa 🦋🦋🦋

journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

Cute little brain too!

¡Contento de compartir nuestro nuevo artículo sobre el forrajeo de polen en Heliconius himera en @behavecol.bsky.social! 🦋🌼 Exploramos cómo hembras y muchos de H. himera difieren en el forrajeo de polen y rasgos sensoriales. 1/6🧵👇academic.oup.com/beheco/article/37/3/arag...

It’s official: the UK is rejoining Erasmus! 👏🇪🇺

Sexual dimorphism in pollen foraging and sensory traits in Heliconius butterflies Male and female butterflies often face different ecological and sensory demands, yet how this shapes their foraging behaviour remains unclear. In Heliconiu

Excited to share our new paper on pollen foraging in Heliconius himera @behavecol.bsky.social! 🦋🌼
academic.oup.com/beheco/artic...
We explored how female and male H. himera differ in pollen foraging & sensory traits. 1/6🧵👇

Yeah that data was be interesting to see! By impression is numbers of UKRI (or nerc/bbsrc at least) grants getting 8s,9sand 10s have increased, but whether that’s in line with application numbers or the distribution of scores at both ends has changed, I don’t know…

But I enjoyed the blog! And agree on many points, especially the benefit of proper processes to improve grants. I think i just disagree on where most of the waste is. But I’m sure there are analyses of this I am also naive to!

… And so I struggle to see why universities wouldn’t still pressure staff to play the numbers game above a certain standard, which I imagine most people are trying to reach anyway…

…UKRI moving to semi-lottery systems seems to indicate as much, in that theres an acceptance there are now too many grants of high quality. If you remove the bottom 20% -more easily done with 2-stage applications imo- that saves one kind of waste, but it’s still a lottery at the top…

…my experience is “it’s a lottery” is a sign of fatigue from having grants judged “excellent” etc by panels that are not funded. I think the waste is as much in the high quality grants that are not funded, as in the lower quality ones. Especially when UKRI are so restrictive on resubmissions…

Yeah of course. I haven’t seen an analysis of the distributions of UKRI panel scores as application numbers have increased, and maybe I am hopelessly naive, but I do doubt many people are putting in grants just to be seen to be doing so. It’s too much work, and people are already over worked…

Yes, do agree with this. Irrespective of demand management etc we should be trying to help our colleagues succeed, academia is supposed to be a collective endeavour… and just because it’s a nice thing to do!

Thanks, this is an interesting read - unfortunately the links in the article to the Oxford reports don’t work but will try to find them later!

…reduce numbers to some extent and (maybe) improve equality in distributions of grants across institutions. And more likely to work when universities are both desperate for cash and shedding support staff that could help take on the admin burden of making formal internal processes fair.

…in response to demand management. But there are also other ways to stretch funding budgets - capping indirect costs (painful as that may be for some unis) and setting a maximum number of submissions/grants held concurrently could also help…

…and none (that I know) collect data on their decisions, and so I imagine they are intrinsically more prone to bias.

I don’t disagree with the whole gist of the blog, but I don’t get the conceptual difference between what is suggested and what many institutions have put in place (imperfectly)…

I did, but maybe fired off a poorly phrased question. It seems to me to be a call for voluntary demand management processes, which some (maybe many?) universities already do. But none (that I know) have as clear EDI/best practice guides as the UKRI panels I’ve been on…

Isn’t this Demand Management?

(Which is often highly opaque and probably problematic from an EDI perspective…)

Orbán-ished!

This is as beautiful a thing as you'll see in all your life. Hope, after months of darkness.

🇭🇺🥳

‘I see it as trafficking’: the brutal reality of life as a foreign student in the UK The long read: Universities in Britain rely on overseas applicants paying full fees, which has given rise to some unscrupulous recruiters and left many hopefuls and their families deep in debt

Sobering and depressing story about the awful conditions faced by several international students, and how this stems from the terrible politics behind university fees and immigration.

www.theguardian.com/education/ng...

Cambridge University Library, University Museum of Zoology and the University of Cambridge - Collections Connections Communities

Here's an awesome natural history humanities PhD opportunity, working with Cambridge University Library & our insect & archive collections here at @zoologymuseum.bsky.social, exploring the links between entomology, life writing & environmental change. Please share!
www.ccc.cam.ac.uk/initiatives/...