I love that the size of a ground hornbill nestbox is essentially a small shed. #ornithology

FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology@africanornithology.bsky.social · 2w ago

Artificial nesting sites (nestboxes) can boost breeding opportunities for the Southern Ground-Hornbill. In South Africa, nestboxes increased the number of breeding groups, revealing their value as a conservation tool where natural nest sites are scarce. doi.org/10.1017/S095... #AfricanOrnithology

good scientific writing alert "In the Hawaiian honeycreepers, the progression “rule” is more of a polite suggestion" from nice new paper on Hawaiian honeycreeper phylogeny www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

🚨 Excellent bird sports logo alert! 🚨

Brian Rusnica@neogonzo.bsky.social · 2d ago

@thebirdist.bsky.social we've got a new bird sports logo, for Boston's pro Women's Baseball team, the Hunters.

Happy to share this 'capstone' project from my time as a postdoc @umich.edu, where we show that hierarchically nested bursts of body-shape evolution may underlie much of perching-bird diversification over ~50 million years. Free access link here: rdcu.be/fuxB1

Rates of passerine body plan evolution in time and space

Nature Ecology & Evolution - A reconstruction of the evolutionary history of passerine body plans over the past ~50 Myr shows rare bursts of phenotypic innovation near the origin of major...

rdcu.be

I'm not sure folks have realized just how crazy the second half of 2026 and 2027 will be for global temperatures – on the back of a record-smashing El Niño event. Here is my latest estimate of where both years will end up compared to global temperatures since 1850.

The kite show that the Black Belt Birding Festival is legit.

Please share: Full-time PhD position on Butterfly Evolution at High Elevations 🦋⛰️ The project aims to understand the evolution and adaptation of Andean white butterflies using genomics. DEADLINE: September 11, 2026 More info: pavelmatos.wordpress.com/join-us/

Join us

Opportunities Below are the positions currently open in our lab. Open PhD position (full time) Comparative and Population Genomics of Butterflies at High Elevations. The project aims to understand …

pavelmatos.wordpress.com

(1/4) Really excited that the first analysis of my PhD was published in Proceedings B! After analyzing half a million bird banding records across 92 species from @instbirdpop.bsky.social, we found lower female survival in 35 passerine species. doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

Female North American passerine birds have lower apparent survival than males

Abstract. Survival is a fundamental organismal trait which can vary by sex, yet the extent of sex-biased survival is largely unknown across most taxa. To a

doi.org

Some highlights from last month's field trip in Kazakhstan. 🇰🇿 More photos in the eBird trip report: ebird.org/tripreport/5...

🪶 Have a great weekend, but beware of strange ducks.

Oilbird movement strategies and differences in flight effort. Happy to share the first publication on the oilbird project: link.springer.com/article/10.1... @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social @kamransafi.bsky.social @animaltracking.bsky.social

Oilbirds performing non-seasonal intra-tropical migrations reduce flight effort compared to individuals that frequently return to the colony roost - Movement Ecology

Individual behavioural variation is a driver of population dynamics and key for the adaptation and persistence of species. In colonial species, individuals share the same ecological niche and aggregat...

link.springer.com

Exhilarated to share a 2nd @science.org cover article this month from our lab @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social! A collaboration with US & Mexico colleagues on the role of a Mexican biogeographic holding pen in shaping the Great American Biotic Interchange (GABI)(1/11) www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Just appreciating natural science illustrators, like Jillian Ditner, who turned this "sketch" (a dog's breakfast would be generous) into a clear, beautiful illustration of gene introgression among warblers... www.allaboutbirds.org/news/when-ev...

Apparently Bluesky users enjoy photos of raptors and their pantaloons.

Mayor of MARTA@mayorofmarta.bsky.social · last wk.

Saw this large bird of prey on the ride home.

grateful to have received the lab's first NSF grant to study cyclical processes of speciation with new theory and tools (applied to Melanesian birds). ad to come, but I'll be looking for a postdoc with computational biology chops—please reach out! (and repost) www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/...

fantastic study! & I want to especially commend the authors on this lovely sentence: "We want to acknowledge the late Peter Raven... for the decades of leadership he showed in global conservation going to joust in Washington on all of our behalf so we could play in the mud with bugs and seeds."

🍁 Alex Smith 🍁@alexsmithants.bsky.social · last wk.

🧪 🪲 🌋 🌡️ When are things too hot to handle? Our new paper on insect thermal tolerance across elevation in @pnas.org nas.org suggest perhaps not too far in the future. @gdfcf.bsky.social sky.social @alexandreloureiro.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 🧵

🧵 The Search for Lost Birds is looking for young, adventurous birders to lead expeditions to find “lost” bird species. Currently, 121 birds lack any scientific documentation for a decade or longer (70+ are entirely missing from the Macaulay Library!) Continued... searchforlostbirds.org

Home

Search for Lost Birds

searchforlostbirds.org

this is wild - way to go Jeff!

Jeff Groh@jeffgroh.bsky.social · last wk.

Avocados come in 2 varieties - A-types start each day female and switch to male midday. B-types do the reverse. In work just published from the last chapter of my PhD, we show this system evolved 40+million yrs ago and is regulated by alleles of 1 transcription factor www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Avocados come in 2 varieties - A-types start each day female and switch to male midday. B-types do the reverse. In work just published from the last chapter of my PhD, we show this system evolved 40+million yrs ago and is regulated by alleles of 1 transcription factor www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Balanced polymorphism in a floral transcription factor underlies the ancient rhythm of daily sex alternation in avocado | PNAS

In avocado and certain wild relatives in Lauraceae, a highly synchronized daily rhythm of floral sex timing promotes cross-pollination between two ...

pnas.org

New paper led by @rafnuss.bsky.social! We present a new tool for tracking aerial insectivores such as swifts, swallows, and bee-eaters. For these species, pressure and activity data cannot distinguish stopovers from migratory flight. New sensor and R package help solve this problem. Check it out! 🧭

Raphaël Nussbaumer@rafnuss.bsky.social · 2w ago

Can a tiny magnetic sensor help geolocate migratory birds? 🧭 Earth’s magnetic field varies across the globe in both intensity and inclination. We asked whether those spatial patterns can turn magnetometer data from lightweight tags into location estimates.

My newsletter this week is about my habit of smashing my head against a wall (i.e. checking my book's Amazon sales ranking). Also, goats! elizabethgpreston.substack.com/p/how-to-qui... 🧪

How to Quit Smashing Your Head against a Wall

No, YOU stop hitting yourself!

elizabethgpreston.substack.com

Oh, hey, Evolution did a "digest" of our recent piece on rodent stripes. academic.oup.com/evolut/artic... (OG paper here: academic.oup.com/evolut/artic...)

Florida scrub-jay genomes across space and time reveal impacts of population decline and reduced gene flow: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...

Florida scrub-jay genomes across space and time reveal impacts of population decline and reduced gene flow

By analyzing genomes from 241 Florida scrub-jays across five populations and two time points, Nguyen et al. reveal substantial losses of genetic diversity and increased inbreeding following population...

cell.com

Did you ask for a bird fact? No, but you're getting one whether you like it or not. 🪶

Head-butting goats are giving themselves traumatic brain injuries. Don't be a goat: elizabethgpreston.substack.com/p/how-to-qui... 🧪

How to Quit Smashing Your Head against a Wall

No, YOU stop hitting yourself!

elizabethgpreston.substack.com

The AOS awards seven 2026 Kessel Fellowships for Ornithological Research. Congratulations to our grantees Drs. Audrey Le Pogam, Carrie Ann Adams, David Diez-Méndez, Jennifer L. Houtz, Abby Kimmitt, Amy Yanagitsuru, and Laura E. Nuñez–Rosas! #AOSgrants americanornithology.org/aos-awards-s...

cool paper alert there's a mouse in Chile that lives from sea level to 6700 m. the authors do a whole ton of detailed physiological + genetic work to show local adaptation to both climatic challenges AND food resources along gradient. phenomenal study! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Adaptation across an extreme elevational gradient in Andean leaf-eared mice, the world’s highest-dwelling mammal

Andean leaf-eared mice (Phyllotis vaccarum) live at the highest elevations of any mammal, and they also have the broadest elevational range, from sea level to mountain summits of >6700 meters. Highlan...

science.org

So beyond lucky to get to do my dream* job 👩🏻‍🏫🐝 *minus that one year I wanted to be a fashion designer

Glad to see my last dissertation chapter published! In this experiment, we tested how the arrival times and number of overlapping generations affect competitive outcomes between two flour beetles… doi.org/10.1002/ecy.... @esajournals.bsky.social (1/3)

Consequences of phenological shifts are determined by the number of generations per season

The order and timing of species' arrival in a community can often change species interactions. Termed priority effects, this phenomenon arises in communities with drastically different life histories...

doi.org

dotterels are a delightful mountain bird but they are in steep decline across the UK, even within protected areas. thought to be linked to climate change

The Rare Breeding Birds Panel@ukrbbp.bsky.social · 4w ago

Worrying results from the 2025 national Dotterel survey, with a decline of 73% since the last survey in 2011, and 89% since the late 80s www.rspb.org.uk/whats-happen... #ornithology #birds