Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology | Group Leader in Theoretical Biology - Application deadline 📆 Sep 01, 2026

Group Leader in Theoretical Biology (m/f/d)

Experience in Theoretical Biology, Applied Mathematics, Theoretical Physics

mpg.de

My big brother took me to the shop to buy my first CDs - I still listen to one of these regularly!

The old internet@theoldinternet.bsky.social · 7d ago

44 years ago today, the first CD was produced. What is the first CD you owned?

29th August 1985 - An excited Michael Fish gets to deploy the rarely seen red number as the temperature gets up to an incredible 26 degrees in London!

Look at this shiny little beauty 🤩 - a bronze shield bug, I think! Looks quite different from most pics, but apparently the orange bands on the second antennae segments are diagnostic. North Wales coast.

Looking for sci comm opportunities? Join us as a writer for American Naturalist press releases! These write-ups are primarily written by graduate students and other early-career scientists. No experience required; we have editors to help along the way. Apps due Sept 1. Please share widely :D

Looking for Press Release Writers & Editors for The American Naturalist

Sign up for the opportunity to write and/or edit for The American Naturalist! We are seeking authors to write press releases for new journal articles. See examples of recent press releases here. We a...

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#iussi2026 #ants at the conference @boldest-ant.bsky.social is looking for a job! Look for the job hunter!

Look at this shiny little beauty 🤩 - a bronze shield bug, I think! Looks quite different from most pics, but apparently the orange bands on the second antennae segments are diagnostic. North Wales coast.

How crazy is this!? A plant mimicking the smell of ants injured by spiders to fool kleptoparastic flies into performing pollination 🤯 Plant shenanigans is an endless source of wonderful biology! www.cell.com/current-biol...

Olfactory floral mimicry of injured ants mediates the attraction of kleptoparasitic fly pollinators

Mochizuki reports a plant that lures pollinating flies by imitating the scent of ants injured by predators. This study reveals the first known case of ant mimicry in flowers and uncovers previously un...

cell.com

Tag yourselves. I'm B

I did a thing :D First chapter of my PhD out now! 🌱 (first paper ever 🥳) Traits are historically hypothesized to age synchronously, but it is no longer the case. We quantified asynchronous ageing in Seychelles warblers and reviewed potential reasons for why this may be.

Evolution Letters@evolletters.bsky.social · 4w ago

Do all traits age together? A long-term study of wild Seychelles warblers shows ageing is surprisingly asynchronous, with some traits senescing while others remain unchanged. doi.org/10.1093/evle...

Tag yourselves. I'm B

Check out this really interesting preprint by @shikharabhat.bsky.social and @kokkonut.bsky.social on models of senescence and their connection to models of multilevel selection. It seems like these fun jump processes, PDEs, and SPDEs arise in a variety of biological contexts.

Shikhara Bhat@shikharabhat.bsky.social · 2mo ago

If you like multi-level selection, you may enjoy (models of) ageing. @kokkonut.bsky.social and I show that the mortality patterns generated by dem. senescence are formally equivalent to a multi-level selection process! arxiv.org/abs/2607.00262 Confused? So were we! A short explainer thread below

What are the conferences/meetings that plant evolutionary ecologists in the UK attend? It seems silly for us to be siloed by taxonomy, so I’m keen to explore how we can encourage greater discourse. Please RT.

It's been incredibly fun to work with @gauravathreya.bsky.social @yagmurerten.bsky.social @arvidagren.bsky.social @tom-is-kean.bsky.social on internal evolutionary conflicts (also called intragenomic/intraorganismal conflict) and how to model them! See below for Gaurav's great explainer on the paper

Gaurav Athreya@gauravathreya.bsky.social · 4w ago

wanna read the latest overview of “internal evolutionary conflicts” — scenarios where genes spread despite being organism-deleterious? and wanna learn how to model them? look at our new preprint! we introduce unifying ideas, and try hard to write accessibly. small 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

wanna read the latest overview of “internal evolutionary conflicts” — scenarios where genes spread despite being organism-deleterious? and wanna learn how to model them? look at our new preprint! we introduce unifying ideas, and try hard to write accessibly. small 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

⚔️ A fight between two wild lesser #Anteaters is something few people ever witness. Rare footage from #Brazil captured an unusual display of aggressive #Behaviour between two free-ranging adults, grappling with their forelimbs and prehensile tails. 1/3

Really remarkable plant sex allocation study here: hermaphroditic avocado plants alternate sex roles twice daily and hence generate balanced sex allocation- controlled by ancient trans-species polymorphism. Heard a bit about this jaw-dropping work at UC Davis last year - great to see it out!

Jeff Groh@jeffgroh.bsky.social · 4w ago

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/...

📣 Spread the news to any recent graduates who dare to dream big: Only 10 days left to apply to join #Mast-EER, a cohort of MbyRes students based at the @uniexecec.bsky.social in #Cornwall funded by @aria-research.bsky.social. Places are limited, so apply now!

Erik Postma@erikpostma.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Spread the word! 📢 Funded by @aria-research.bsky.social, @uniexecec.bsky.social in beautiful #Cornwall is creating a cohort of 20 (!) MbyRes students that will tackle some of the biggest questions in order to bring about a step-change for ecosystem resilience. For more information, see 👇!

Miraculously, all three of us managed to get our visas on time, and I’m now celebrating by reading the revised version of our MS (soon-to-be a preprint + @gauravathreya.bsky.social will be talking about it in our mini-symposium), accompanied by some Irish beer at a local pub 🤩

I will be presenting some of the first results from a massive behavioural phenotyping effort. We are hoping this work might shed some light on how among-individual variation differs among populations. Come see my talk on Thursday 23rd in the Room Parigi @ 12:45 CET. @isbe2026.bsky.social #ISBE2026

Hey @isbe2026.bsky.social - I’ll be in Turin from tomorrow, and looking to recruit PhD student and postdoc to my lab in Stockholm soon… anyone interested in parasites, sexual selection, transgen effects, fish (guppy) tracking - let’s meet up!

Great paper and interview with Luisa here!

Luisa Jaimes@jaimesnino.bsky.social · last mo.

@jexpbiol.bsky.social / @biologists.bsky.social published our paper on Rescue behaviour in desert ants 🐜🤝🐜! Check it out here journals.biologists.com/jeb/article-... and the ERC spotlight 💡https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/229/14/jeb253034/372247/ECR-Spotlight-Luisa-Maria-Jaimes-Nino

Individual repeatability in dietary specialisation across years and competitive regimes in wild birds doi.org/10.32942/X27...

Stumbled on this spreadsheet I made way back documenting all the deaths described in Sun Kil Moon's 2014 album Benji... Would like to make a #dataviz, but I'm lacking quantitative resolution!

Preprint alert! 🧪 🐟 If you are interested in #LongTermStudies #BalancingSelection #KinCompetition check out our new MS. Mini thread below 🧵:

bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology@biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · last mo.

Competition among kin generates balancing selection in a wild population https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.11.737918v1

Preprint alert! 🧪 🐟 If you are interested in #LongTermStudies #BalancingSelection #KinCompetition check out our new MS. Mini thread below 🧵:

bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology@biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · last mo.

Competition among kin generates balancing selection in a wild population https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.11.737918v1

Hot temperatures devastating the livestock on the Tour

Do you have a background in behavioural ecology and are you interested in doing a PhD in Australia? I’m looking for new grad students so check out our website (BobWongLab.org) or come find me in Torino at #ISBE2026. 🐟🐠

A new group dedicated to evolutionary ecology! This is an opportunity to have a permanent community space for the field, as well as ensure regular conferences like #ExE2026. But it needs your help 👇

BES Evolutionary Ecology Group@bes-evolecol.bsky.social · 2mo ago

We’re now looking for evolutionary ecologists to join our committee to build #ExE2026 into the start of something great, not just a one-off. Details here: www.britishecologicalsociety.org/content/evol...

We started @abcmicrogrants.bsky.social to make a small but real change to barriers students face. Since then, we disbursed >£26,000 in microgrants & matched >120 mentees w. mentors! In our new paper, in #AnimalBehaviourJournal's SI on Biases in Animal Behaviour, we share what we did, why, and how 🐝

Animal Behaviour Collective@abcmicrogrants.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Our paper is out now! 🎉📝 We describe how we work to address barriers faced by students and early-career researchs in the animal behaviour field, through our mentorships and microgrants. We hope that this can inspire and provide practical resources for others hoping to do the same!