Great tit perched on a branch, with beak slightly open. Photo credit: Alizée Vernouillet

📢Fully-funded #PhD opportunity with us:

🐦 Quantifying (social) learning and social behaviour in an urbanised world 🐦

Position at @ceec-research.bsky.social

📆29th May deadline
More info: tinyurl.com/yz28s96x
Apply: tinyurl.com/2wpkb64y

#cognition #socialbehaviour #fieldwork #birds

🙏Please Share

Thrilled to share that our new paper is now out in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social: "Who knows what? Bayesian Competence Inference guides Knowledge Attribution and Information Search," with @oliviermorin.bsky.social , @hugoreasoning.bsky.social & @tadegquillien.bsky.social!

Link: tinyurl.com/ykyhxcc6

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

Socially learnt predator recognition in nestling jackdaws Abstract. Recognizing whether other species pose a threat is critical to survival. Learning from others avoids the need for dangerous encounters, so it can

Jackdaws on the Biology Letters cover! Our new paper, led by brilliant MbyRes student Hannah Broad, shows that nestlings listen to adults’ responses to learn about novel predators. Pic: Céline Giorgetti. tinyurl.com/mwd8n2jh @guillmcivor.bsky.social @uniexecec.bsky.social @royalsocietypublishing.org

For decades biologists assumed ravens follow wolves to their kills.
Our paper @science.org shows something different: ravens rarely follow wolves far. Instead they remember areas where wolf kills are common and return to them—sometimes from >150 km away.
doi.org/10.1126/science.adz9467
📷Dan Stahler

a white parrot with a yellow crest is standing on a ledge ALT: a white parrot with a yellow crest is standing on a ledge

Social and ecological factors associated with innovation in urban sulphur-crested cockatoos (Cacatua galerita)
#SmartBird #ProblemSolving #UrbanEnvironments

doi.org/10.1093/behe...

Fully funded PhD position on primate parochialism! Study how cooperation within groups and conflict between groups evolve in red-fronted lemurs at our long-term field site in Kirindy Forest, Madagascar. @kirindy.bsky.social & @primatenzentrum.bsky.social. Apply here: www.dpz.eu

Studying social transmission using STbayes Post provided by Michael Chimento. When studying animal culture, it’s important to establish whether novel behaviours or information have spread through social contact, or are rather innovated or p…

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 👇

I am looking for a PhD student to join my new Socio-Eco-Evo group, hosted in Katie Peichel's Evolutionary Ecology Division @ University of Bern. We're offering a fully funded 4-year position, studying social plasticity and behavioral adaptation among stickleback in Greenland. Please share around!

Very happy to see our ice-fishing paper on the cover of @science.org this week! 🎣🎉

We tracked large groups of Finnish competitive ice-fishers to study how social foragers use social information when searching for resources. 🐟

Link: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... (contact me for open access)

The diffusion of cooperative and solo bubble net feeding in Canadian Pacific humpback whales Abstract. Animal culture, information and behaviours acquired and shared by social learning are a form of biodiversity with intrinsic and practical value.

New paper on the social learning of bubble net feeding by humpbacks in British Columbia, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B 🐋
royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

#marmam @bcwhales.bsky.social @seamammalresearch.bsky.social @lrendell.bsky.social @uniofstandrews.bsky.social [1/5]

Uncovering complementary information sharing in spider monkey collective foraging YouTube video by Global Research Centre for Diverse Intelligences

🐒🧠 New paper in npj Complexity: complementary information sharing in fission-fusion dynamics.

Video explainer: youtu.be/PIAhcLWqsO8?...

Full paper (open access): doi.org/10.1038/s442...

Higher-order spatial networks enable distributed foraging knowledge in heterogeneous environments.

👇

New paper out in @animalecology.bsky.social: Social information about others' affective states in a human-altered world. Link: besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
With @jackdawjordan.bsky.social, @margauxvanhussel.bsky.social, Mike Mendl, and @cornishjackdaws.bsky.social

Internships are now available with the Cornish Jackdaw Project! 🐦‍⬛

Duties will include assisting with nest monitoring, bird ringing, data entry, and the potential to help with ongoing research projects.

More information can be found in the description below:

🎉 📣Join today at 1pm GMT to learn about ESLR and get involved!

✨New paper✨
How do juvenile ravens find social groups?

We describe how juvenile common ravens, who have left their natal territories seeking to join non-breeder flocks, use space with respect to other birds, and discuss what this means for social integration.

www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

ESLR Skill Sharing Spring 2026

🎓 Got a skill to share? Pass on your wisdom by hosting a friendly session with the ESLR community online! A great chance to test-run a workshop or rehearse teaching material in a supportive setting. Writing, analysis, academic life… if it's helped you, we'd love to hear it ✨ tinyurl.com/57v7ftd3

Meet Real-time meetings by Google. Using your browser, share your video, desktop, and presentations with teammates and customers.

📣 Join us Wednesday 14 Jan at 1pm GMT 💻🌍 Early career researcher interested in culture, behaviour, and learning? Get involved, learn about ESLR, and meet others in the field. We'll cover 2026 activities including skill-sharing sessions. 🛠️💡 Join: meet.google.com/sun-ddcz-gky

Happy new year! I wanted to share my new Python package called chatter that streamlines the process of applying AI/ML models to animal communication 🦜🦇🐋🐵👨‍🌾 masonyoungblood.github.io/chatter/

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.

If you work on corvid ecology, behaviour, cognition, or conservation, this might be useful for you 👇
I’ve just published CORVIDATA in Scientific Data 🐦
doi.org/10.1038/s415... (1/4)

Our recent paper on lizard societies now online in a special issue of Animal Behaviour. DM if you want me to send you a PDF.

Fantastic new R package to study social transmission. Check it out!

STbayes: An R package for creating, fitting and understanding Bayesian models of social transmission A critical consequence of joining social groups is the possibility of social transmission of information related to novel behaviours or resources. Network-based diffusion analysis (NBDA) has emerg...

🎉🍾 very excited to see this out before 2025 ends doi.org/10.1111/2041... with Will Hoppitt in @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social. This paper is an overview of our new R package STbayes, a user-friendly toolkit for performing Bayesian NBDA analyses. @cbehav.bsky.social @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social

Our newest research in @currentbiology.bsky.social:

www.cell.com/current-biol...

We find dominant baboons have more interrupted and less rest at night.

Author list and story in comments below :-)

Would you like to share your research skills with the ESLR community? Starting next year, we will be hosting regular online sessions serving as a platform of mutual exchange and support among early-career researchers. Please do get in touch if you are interested in hosting a session!

New paper out today w @dalmaijer.bsky.social @barbaraklump.bsky.social and @lucymaplin.bsky.social as part of the Phil Trans special issue doi.org/10.1098/rstb.... Over 2 years, we studied a population of cockatoos thought to be the source of the innovation of bin-opening.

Picture of front cover of Theme Issue entitled "Transforming cultural evolution research and its application to global futures." The image on the front cover is of a Yao honey hunter in Mozambique holding retrieved honeycomb.

Today sees the publication of the Theme Issue featuring the CES Transformation Fund grant scheme. Enjoy! royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3...
@durhamdcerc.bsky.social @durhamanthropology.bsky.social @cultevolfunding.bsky.social @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social

Wild jackdaws recognise the contact calls of their mate - Animal Cognition Animal Cognition - In stable social environments, the ability to recognise other group members and integrate individual cues with previous experience is likely to be beneficial in mediating social...

New paper, led by our former PhD student Victoria Lee. Wild jackdaws recognise the contact calls of their mate: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
@uniexecec.bsky.social @guillmcivor.bsky.social