📣🧬 Postdoc Alert🧬📣
We are hiring a 2+ year NERC-funded postdoc at Edinburgh Uni investigating causes and consequences of sex differences in recombination in house sparrows in Norway. Informal enquiries welcome at [email protected] 🙂
Details here: elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...
Susan Johnston
Nuthatch. An older comic.
Our new Paper with @susanamonso.com and @biotay.bsky.social is out. It tests one of the components of Susana Monso's minimal concept of death in a Touch Screen Setup: sensitivity to permanent non-functionality.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Rosemary Mosco
#HotOffThePress 🔥🖊️ "Investigating the structure of the greylag goose vocal repertoire: what can unsupervised methods tell us?“ 🪿
June 2026. Scientific Reports. @lenagies.bsky.social, Jonas Lesigang, Sonia Kleindorfer & @tecumsehfitch.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1038/s415...
1/16 Do other species understand death?
In this study with cockatoos, we approach this question from its foundation, by studying one of its central components: sensitivity to the permanent loss of a function.
I will explain it in this thread (with videos)
(paper) www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Scientific Reports - Investigating the structure of the greylag goose vocal repertoire: what can unsupervised methods tell us?
First analysis of the #greylaggoose call repertoire using #machinelearning broadly matches early descriptions and shows how much different representations of audio data can influence clustering results.
@univie.ac.at www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Gies et al. 2026, Scientific Reports
📸 M. Klymenko
🎓📢 PhD Alert 🎓📢
Three weeks left to apply for the PhD position on maintaining the balance of power in animal societies!
www.hu-berlin.de/en/universit...
@animalopps.bsky.social
#HotOffThePress 🔥🖊️ "Sensitivity to permanent non-functionality in Goffin’s cockatoos (Cacatua goffiniana)“
June 2026. Scientific Reports. @biotay.bsky.social, Eleonora Rovegno, @susanamonso.com, Remco Folkertsma &
@auersperga.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1038/s415...
Our latest episode of Transmissions is out! This one features Prof. Dr. Lucy Aplin, a leading cognitive ecologist from the University of Zurich and Australian National University.
This marks our very first episode dedicated entirely to understanding animal culture!
youtu.be/M7qCTKRNVuA?...
#HotOffThePress 🔥🖊️ "Fluctuations in direct human presence, not predictable weekly cycles, influence avoidance behaviour in ravens"🐦⬛
June 2026. Movement Ecology. @varalikajain.bsky.social, @matthiasloretto.bsky.social, Thomas Bugnyar & @pesumas.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1186/s404...
Danai Papageorgiou
Cultural Evolution Society
Background Rhythms in human activity create patterns of opportunities and disturbances for wildlife, influencing their behaviour and spatial ecology. The weekend effect hypothesis posits that weekday-weekend routines in human activity can impact wildlife in creating cyclic conditions. At our study site – an outdoor wildlife park – free-flying ravens opportunistically exploit food intended for captive animals on a routine basis. While disturbances from visitor activity levels are typically low on weekdays and high on weekends, they can also vary day-to-day. Our access to data detailing visitor numbers makes our context well-suited to test whether ravens anticipate and respond to predictable weekday-weekend patterns following (1) a ‘5 + 2’ structure, or if they respond (2) flexibly to fluctuations in direct human activity levels. By testing the weekend effect hypothesis from the perspective of a ‘5 + 2’ pattern versus flexibly responding to fluctuations in human activity, we better understand wildlife response strategies to human activity. Methods Using long-term GPS tracking data, we investigated the weekend effect hypothesis by examining raven foraging probability and space use across two temporal scales: (1) daily patterns over five years, encompassing periods of Covid-19 pandemic-related restrictions, and (2) bihourly patterns over six weeks. We hypothesized that increased human activity levels would result in lower foraging probabilities and higher space use in ravens, varying between weekdays and weekends. Results Our findings provided limited support for the weekend effect hypothesis, considering a ‘5 + 2’ pattern in human activity. However, ravens consistently avoided elevated human activity by decreasing in their probability of foraging at the site and increasing space use on a daily level. Conclusions Our study reveals that ravens are behaviourally flexible in their movement responses to disturbance when exploiting anthropogenically created foraging opportunities. Changes influencing anthropogenic resources and disturbances at resources should consider the potential knock-on effects to wildlife.