We are recruiting 🌟2 postdoctoral researchers🌟 for a NERC Large Grant project on the eco-evolutionary dynamics of badger - bovine tuberculosis (bTB) interactions.
Gabrielle Davidson
@drgdavidson.bsky.social
Behavioural ecologist / comparative psychologist / molecular biologist. Microbiome and cognition in animals. Lecturer at The University of East Anglia.
Are you an ECR and working on wild microbiomes and wish to attend the microbiome workshop during the ExE conference? Funding to support attendance deets here:
@stn-wame.bsky.social · 4mo agoAttention ECRs! WAME is offering support to attend the ExE conference in Falmouth (sites.exeter.ac.uk/exe/) & associated WAME microbiome workshop. For more information and the application form, see below! We hope to see you there! 🦠 docs.google.com/document/d/1...
🚨🔊 Fully funded PhD!! 🚨🔊 Are you interested in wildlife gut microbiomes? Love birds, fieldwork and bioinformatics? Want to join a collaborative and supportive team? Looking for training to become an independent scientist? Please apply! Informal enquiries welcome! www.uea.ac.uk/course/phd-d...
📢🚨Please share! We’re hiring! 📢🚨Have a strong interests in wildlife ecology and gut microbiome bioinformatics? 3 year Senior Research Associate for NERC Pushing the Frontiers grant. Apply here: vacancies.uea.ac.uk/vacancies/18.... Informal enquiries welcome! drgldavidson.github.io/ACMEresearch
3.5-year #Postdoc position on avian microbiomes and reproduction @animalecol-nioo.bsky.social @niooknaw.bsky.social on a fully-funded ERC project focused on understanding the significance of reproductive microbiomes for host biology and fitness. Reach out for more info! nioo.knaw.nl/en/vacancies...
Postdoctoral researcher: avian microbiomes and reproduction
We are looking for a postdoctoral researcher to join our team working on avian reproductive microbiomes at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) in the group of Dr. Melissah Rowe. The postd...
nioo.knaw.nl
ICYMI : #ASABWinter2025 will take place from December 15-16, once again in lovely Edinburgh! Registration is now open 🎉 Abstract submission deadline for posters and talks is August 29 🏃♀️🏃🏃♂️ More information here: asabwinter.github.io/2025/
Why do imperfect mimics (such as many hoverflies) exist? We created 3D printed replicas of flies, wasps and our own custom intermediates and then "asked" various predators what they thought of our 3D stimuli. Read all about it here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Mapping the adaptive landscape of Batesian mimicry using 3D-printed stimuli - Nature
Birds have an excellent ability to learn to discriminate harmless insects from those that they mimic on the basis of subtle differences in appearance.
nature.com
🚨 Job opportunity 🚨 A 3-year post doc position is opening as part of my #APELANG project funded by the @agencerecherche.bsky.social It’s about multimodal combinatorial communication in wild #chimpanzees 🐵 Job ad here: maelleroux-research.weebly.com/apelang.html And here 👇🏻
📢 Fully-funded PhD opportunity! Explore the links between social & communication networks in ring-tailed lemurs! Exciting fieldwork, interdisciplinary team, and innovative technologies! Apply now and join @primatenzentrum.bsky.social & @unigoettingen.bsky.social for this cutting-edge research!
Honeyguides lead you to 🍯, but if you don't reward the bird, next time it will guide you to a lion 🦁! So goes the story, but do honeyguides actually guide to dangerous animals, and is it punishment? New research suggests they do, but it's more "oops" than "revenge!" doi.org/10.1002/ece3...
To Bees or Not to Bees: Greater Honeyguides Sometimes Guide Humans to Animals Other Than Bees, but Likely Not as Punishment
We show that greater honeyguides guide humans to nonbee destinations (snakes and a dead mammal); yet this is a rare occurrence, happening in only 3.7% of human-honeyguide interactions in 1 year and 0...
doi.org
PhD opportunity in #Ecoacoustics at MMU - come and work with us! 🌍🌎🦗🐦🌱🪶🧪 www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
Ecoacoustic monitoring of biodiversity in human-modified tropical forests at Manchester Metropolitan University on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - Ecoacoustic monitoring of biodiversity in human-modified tropical forests at Manchester Metropolitan University, listed on FindAPhD.com
findaphd.com
New Postdoc position! 🐵🐵🐵🐵 On the socioecology of cognition in primates, based in Paris @mnhn.fr @cnrs.fr, with field work It has it all: - the best science - the best macaques - the best beaches - the best people - the best office view #Eiffeltower Join us!
🚨 🪺🐦🦠 PhD opportunity in my lab for UK home fee students. Feel free to contact me for informal enquiries. Please share! shorturl.at/wUo8r
Designing Microbial Interventions to Study Behavioural Effects in Wild Birds (DAVIDSON_U25DTPR) | Doctoral Training Partnership
This project is open to Home Fee Status applicants only. The gut microbiome influences how animals behave and interact with their environment via the microbiome–gut–brain axis (MGBA).
biodtp.norwichresearchpark.ac.uk
The cover of our new book has been approved! Due out this August through MIT Press and the online version will be open access. #neuroskyence #ornithology 🪶🧠
Pet Flea Treatments Are Poisoning Wild Birds: Study out of University of Sussex, published by Science of the Total Environment by @grrlscientist.bsky.social #ornithology🪶 #birds🦉 #Pets #FleaTreatments #Ecology #toxicology #pesticides #conservation🌎 #SciComm🧪 www.forbes.com/sites/grrlsc...
Pet Flea Treatments Are Poisoning Wild Birds: Study
High levels of harmful pesticides from pet flea treatments in birds’ nests lined with animal fur is leading to the increased mortality rate of chicks.
forbes.com
Let's talk about this Nature piece in more detail. I've rarely read something so anti-scientific anywhere short of the National Review. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Three AI-powered steps to faster, smarter peer review
Tired of spending countless hours on peer reviews? An AI-assisted workflow could help.
nature.com
Do you know of a researcher working in the field of zoology and/or conservation who you think has made an outstanding contribution that deserves recognition? Nominations are due on Feb 25th for the ZSL awards program, which spans all career levels from UG onwards www.zsl.org/about-zsl/aw...
Awards | ZSL
ZSL's programme of science and conservation awards recognises outstanding contributions
zsl.org
⭐New paper out on great tits' social behaviour⭐ We manipulated food access & stability of social interactions at feeders (small-scale) to investigate their effects on individual-level social network position & dyadic assoc. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... (birds handled with required permits)
Have/nearly have a PhD? ≤7 years post-doc experience? Working outside UK? Not a UK citizen? BA & Royal Society offering 2-yr Fellowships for early career researchers to come to the UK! 💷 Includes: Research expenses £12k Relocation up to £8k 🗓️ Deadline: Mar 18, 2025 (17:00 GMT) #ResearchFunding
International Fellowships 2025
The International Fellowships Programme enables researchers to work for two years at a UK institution with the aim of building a globally connected, mobile research and innovation workforce.
thebritishacademy.ac.uk
Throwback to that time I talked to David Attenborough about animals and stuff. I thanked him for speaking up about the climate crisis. He said it was young scientists that he should be thanking because they were truly the ones poised to make a difference
🚨 Are you interested in avian ecology and do you have a BSc or MSc diploma? Then we have an interesting vacancy for you! We are looking for a research assistant to help in the lab and the field with a microbiome study on house sparrows. @melissahrowe.bsky.social nioo.knaw.nl/en/vacancies...
Research Assistant on avian ecology
We are looking for an enthusiastic research assistant for the EvolSWARM project funded by the European Research Council.
nioo.knaw.nl
Did you miss #ASABWinter2024 ? Or do you want to re-watch a talk or catch one you missed? Well, its your lucky day. Videos of the conference are now up on youtube for your perusal! Day 1: www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwF8... Day 2: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dz8S...
ASAB Winter Meeting Edinburgh 2024 (Day 1)
YouTube video by Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour
youtube.com
It seems to me that the time is ripe for a Bluesky thread about how—and maybe even why—to befriend crows. (1/n)
In case you missed it: www.bbc.com/news/article... #SmartBirds #AnimalIntelligence #UniversityofCambridge @leverhulme.bsky.social @uniofeastanglia.bsky.social @ueaceec.bsky.social
Wild birds 'remember' where and when they find food - BBC News
Blue and great tits are "opportunistic foragers" and exhibit "episodic-like memory", a study shows.
bbc.com
Scientists now know that birds’ brains can contain elephantine powers of recollection. Some birds can store, or cache, tens or even hundreds of thousands of morsels in trees, or in or on the ground. Why don’t our memories work the same way?
The Elephantine Memories of Food-Caching Birds
Some animals can remember where they’ve buried hundreds of thousands of seeds. Why can’t we remember where we’ve put our eyeglasses?
newyorker.com
This was my first independent collaboration and I sure lucked out getting to do it with @sarahdalesman.bsky.social I learned a lot about snails, one of which is that they eat each others’ poo (future study perhaps?). They are super cool and interesting.
Sarah Dalesman@sarahdalesman.bsky.social · 2y agoHighlights from 2024 #2 Our study led by @drgdavidson.bsky.social in print. We showed antibiotics at environmentally relevant concentrations alter aquatic snail gut microbiome, disrupts memory formation and covariance among pace-of-life traits. Funded by @asab.org academic.oup.com/ismej/articl...
Our latest paper, where we showed how a lactobacillus gut microbe can benefit wild birds, was featured in @forbes.com. Thanks for the article @grrlscientist.bsky.social. @uniofeastanglia.bsky.social @biouea.bsky.social @ucc.bsky.social @apcmicrobiomeirel.bsky.social doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
doi.org
“Let them eat shit”@grrlscientist.bsky.social · 2y agoWild Birds’ Health And Survival Is Affected By Gut Microbiome, study out of University College Cork🇮🇪, published by PNAS by @GrrlScientist #microbiome #microbiology🔬 #birds🪶 #health #conservation #ecology #evolution #SciComm🧪 www.forbes.com/sites/grrlsc...
A crisp morning & our final field data collection before Xmas break. We fit 330 great tits & blue tits with RFID tags + sighted 66 resident birds from last year. Ready to test the birds’ gut microbiomes and learning skills in the wild in Jan. Well done team! @biouea.bsky.social @ueaceec.bsky.social
