New paper out in @currentbiology.bsky.social ! 🎉 Who drives disease transmission? The answer seems obvious: measure who releases or disperses the most parasites. But after dissecting transmission step by step, we found that’s often not the case. 👇 🧵 #EvoSky #IDSky www.cell.com/current-biol...

Transmission heterogeneity emerges from uncoupled parasite shedding and spreading

Silva et al. show that disease transmission emerges from multiple ecological bottlenecks rather than a single host trait. Separating parasite shedding from downstream infection success reveals why hos...

cell.com

Figured out how to turn Gemini (mostly) off: on Google drive go to settings > privacy > manage Workspace smart (!) feature settings > turn off Then, manage apps > unclick use by default

Eloise Newman@eloisenewman.bsky.social · 6d ago

Particularly finding the Google docs Gemini integration irritating

Looking for an Associate Prof position? Interested in behavioural ecology & cultural evolution? Come join us at the Dpt of Ecology and Evolution in Lausanne🇨🇭 @dee-unil.bsky.social @unil.bsky.social! Great department & great place to live. Pls RP. Apply here: wwwfbm.unil.ch/releve/appli...

Particularly finding the Google docs Gemini integration irritating

Dr Neil & Mr Price@drneil.bsky.social · 7d ago

It’s really starting to grind me down

If you are interested in fitness and microbiomes in wild animals, you should definitely check this one out. New @sihorses.bsky.social preprint by @mstothart.bsky.social

bioRxivpreprint@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social · last wk.

Host genetics and social relationships jointly shape fitness-associated microbiome variation in a population of feral horses https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.27.740960v1

📢 JOB ALERT! 📢 I am recruiting a 30-month postdoc to work on modelling the vision of trilobites @hfspo.bsky.social ! If you like 3D data, fossils, and functional morphology, this is the one for you! 📆Deadline 27. Aug Pls contact me with any Qs and share widely! www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...

Giving a talk tomorrow at 11:45 am at #ISBE2026 about relationship disparity across animal systems 🐘🦓🦘🐋 Come find me in the Madrid room! The preprint under review is here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

In the past I have had to change code from base and tidyverse to data.table to gain speed efficiency and reduce memory requirements. I wish I had this guide then!

Vincent Arel-Bundock@vincentab.bsky.social · 2w ago

Here's a useful page with a **ton** of common tasks in #RStats, done with parallel syntax for tidyverse vs. data.table vs. base. arelbundock.com/posts/dt_tb_... #rdatatable #tidyverse

Great to be at #ISBE2026. After a fantastic first day, excited for day two!

Excited to be @isbe2026.bsky.social in Turin. For any #SocialNetworks researchers - planning an informal social tonight. Meeting at registration area after the poster session at 7pm. Please spread the word! #ISBE2026

New post, on AI 'never-skilling': kucharski.substack.com/p/dont-never...

I’ve seen a few of posts over the last few weeks about some journals using AI to determine who to invite as reviewers, overriding experts’ manual invitation. In a world where peer-review is becoming increasingly more important (bc AI) this makes me worried if other publishers follow this trend

Paolo Crosetto@paolocrosetto.bsky.social · 2mo ago

An inevitable development for for-profit Open Access publishers is Fordism: automation & massification. If you earn money piece-rate for each paper you want to increase the flow of papers while minimizing cost. e.g. very low and *uniform* turnaround times at Frontiers and MDPI

1/🧵 Excited to finally share my latest paper (and my first solo paper)! 🎉 Pathogens evolve. Hosts respond. But does pathogen evolution simply change the magnitude of the host response, or does it reshape which host programmes are activated? 🤔 👇 doi.org/10.1038/s420... #Anopheles #EvoSky

#ExE2026 Eloise Newman showing cool analysis on social networks across taxa

Sad that #ExE2026 is over - it was fantastic to visit Falmouth! Thank you so much to all the organisers. From the @egioxford.bsky.social we had a range of talks from @rona-learmonth.bsky.social @davididiaquez.bsky.social @celestineadelmant.bsky.social and Lucy Morley

How do animals cooperate when they aren't even the same species? Our recent review paper dug deep into the literature... 1/ Read the full paper: doi.org/10.1016/j.an...

Thank you for all the #ExE2026 organizers for one of the best conferences I ever been!! From the talks to the whole setup, was an unique experience! Looking forward for #ExE2027 in Edinburgh! :)

Sarah Jose (JoseSci)@sarahjose.bsky.social · last mo.

The sun is setting on another day of #ExE2026. Thanks to the organisers @erikpostma.bsky.social @btschirren.bsky.social @blongdon.bsky.social @ali--wilson.bsky.social and @hansonmark.bsky.social for a fantastic meeting!

This is exciting to see. Before it very much dependent on how you were funded. I would be interested to see the details to see if universities are covering what some funding bodies are not. A shame for no changes for paternity leave (Note DPhil = PhD)

Oxford Clarion@oxfordclarion.bsky.social · last mo.

Oxford University has signed a new charter committing it to at least 52 weeks of maternity leave for female DPhil researchers, including 2 weeks paid leave for partners. There is currently no paid maternity leave for PhD researchers. Men are 3 times more likely to have R&D careers.

It's official! You can now register for #ASABWinter2026 ❄️ It's nice to look forward to cooler times.😮‍💨 Deadline Aug 15

ASABPSGB2026@asabpsgb2026.bsky.social · last mo.

Registration and abstract submission are now open for the ASAB & PSGB Winter Meeting. Deadline is the 15th of August, but registration will close when the venue capacity is reached, so don't hesitate to sign up! asabpsgbwinter.github.io/2026/registr...

People always say "tell a story" but then don't explain how to do so! How is that helping? If we knew how to tell a story we wouldn't need the advice in the first place. 1/

Stephen Turner@stephenturner.us · last mo.

How to give a bad talk www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Very timely! Giving a talk next week at #ExE2026 in Cornwall!

Stephen Turner@stephenturner.us · last mo.

How to give a bad talk www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Super interesting paper - interesting impacts for how we view animal social structures

Ming Liu@mingpapilio.bsky.social · 2mo ago

New paper is out! Disease is often seen as a cost of social life. But can it also shape how complex societies evolve? Here, we use mathematical models to study social immunity: collective disease defence in ants, termites, bees and other group-living insects. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

This looks so cool and useful!

Libby Heeren@libbyheeren.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Did you know you can search for R packages by what they do, as opposed to just their names? Look! 👉🏼 rwarehouse.netlify.app @kylieainslie.bsky.social made The Warehouse for just this purpose. Send it to a new R programmer today ❤️ because it's the resource we all wish we'd had at some point #rstats

Thrilled to share that @minecr.bsky.social and my paper on Ten simple rules for teaching data science is now available from @plos.org Computational Biology! journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

Ten simple rules for teaching data science

journals.plos.org

Beautiful graphic from Celestine on the Wytham woods breeding season!

Celestine Adelmant@celestineadelmant.bsky.social · 2mo ago

That's a wrap on the 2026 Wytham breeding season - the earliest on record! Here are some summary stats from my fieldwork this year 📈🪺🐛🐣 @egioxford.bsky.social

🎦 I’ve had the pleasure of working with Chris Perrins lately. He has been a monumental figure within avian ecology for nearly 70 years. He is also a very nice and pleasant person. So, I sat down and chatted to him about his life in science. Here is the result. ⬇️ m.youtube.com/watch?v=W-7F...

A life in science- Chris Perrins

YouTube video by Naturalist Pod

m.youtube.com

Happy Birthday David Attenborough! From the earliest days of television, to controller of BBC2, to bringing the wonders, beauty and fragility of the natural world to our eyes & attention - you’re a legend! www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

I’ve always wondered about the demographics of transmission studies on cruise ships as they tend to have older average age which may exacerbate transmission, or severity, further

Edward Nirenberg@enirenberg.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Saw this figure from rdcu.be/fhrAX shared by @adamjkucharski.bsky.social. It highlights a really important point: Cruise ships are exceptionally effective at spreading infectious diseases. That means that transmission aboard cruise ships may look more dramatic than it does off of them.

Is bigger always better? For social animals, group size is a dilemma: big groups face more internal competition, yet hold an edge over smaller neighbors. 33 years of data on 12 wild capuchin groups reveals how these forces shape behavior. Out today in *Nat Eco & Evo*: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Here is our Biol. Rev. paper on the downsides of extra-pair behaviour in birds, expertly led (and summarised) by @jorgensoraker.bsky.social 🪶🧪

Jørgen Søraker@jorgensoraker.bsky.social · 3mo ago

New paper out in Biological Reviews📝🚨 When trying to explain why female birds engage in extra-pair copulations/paternity, we mostly focus on the benefits. But what about the costs? Should we not consider the downsides of the behavior we try to understand? 🧵 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...