(No) Birdbrain at Docville last night🎬 Really interesting take on bird cognition and conservation. Great to see @fredverb.bsky.social and @ecobird.bsky.social research brought to the screen 🐦 A short science documentary by Lode Desmet
Centre for Research on Ecology, Cognition and Behaviour of Birds
@ecobird.bsky.social
Centre for Research on Ecology, Cognition and Behaviour of Birds 🐣 Ghent University, Belgium Posts by @fredverb.bsky.social & @katywillcox.bsky.social
🚨Not one, but two papers now out on response inhibition (also called motoric self-regulation or inhibitory control in the field of animal cognition). Many studies find no link between individual performance on different tasks supposedly measuring response inhibition. 1/6
MAJOR NEWS! We just launched an awesome new tool! The illustrated Birds of the World Phylogeny Explorer lets users trace any bird’s lineage, compare species relationships, and explore major evolutionary milestones with a click of a button. SHARE and EXPLORE! birdsoftheworld.org/bow/news/phy...
New paper out! Early-life social instability increases aggression in chickens, but does not affect response inhibition 🐤 We discuss what this means for developmental links between social environments, cognition, and social behaviour, highlighting strong context dependence Full text: rdcu.be/eYOzC
Very grateful to co-authors @vernouilleta.bsky.social @birgitszabo.bsky.social An Martel, Luc Lens & @fredverb.bsky.social, & other members of @ecobird.bsky.social for their support! Also pleased for this paper to be part of an exciting collection in acta ethologica link.springer.com/collections/...
Client Challenge
link.springer.com
Please repost: 🚨Field assistant position 🐧 We offer a 14-months field assistant position through the French Polar Institute to work on king penguin ecophysiology and behavioral ecology. Requirements: EU citizen < 30yo having experience with harsh fieldwork & wild bird/mammal handling/sampling.
Doing some cool but challenging sciencing in the Gambia 🐦📡 Testing out the detection range for a #MotusWTS installation 🤞 So many cool species seen as well, lots of ideas for projects! @ecobird.bsky.social @fwovlaanderen.bsky.social
Adventure time! Off to Kartong Bird Observatory in the Gambia to test out #MotusWTS using a mobile #Sensorgnome and @lotektelemetry.bsky.social Nanotag! Me and my load of tech and trusty duct tape will be repping @ecobird.bsky.social funded by @fwovlaanderen.bsky.social. 🐦📡
New study on the way 📣 I am currently raising cute quails 🐥 to study the effects of enrichment on the development of the brain, cognition, behaviour, and health! I am learning loads of new skills @ecobird.bsky.social
🐦 EcoBird is hiring a Postdoc in animal cognition! Join us + @themanybirds.bsky.social to investigate innovation & problem-solving in birds. 📅 Start: as early as Jan 2026 🌍 Funded through UGent’s international mobility scheme More info & how to apply ↓ www.ugent.be/en/work/scie...
Postdoctoral fellow
ugent.be
It took almost a year to write this review on causes and consequences of ranging in chicken 🐔! This was a huge collaborative effort by @ecobird.bsky.social @pec-exeter.bsky.social and @vitorhbf.bsky.social ! I am very proud of the outcome. You can check out the preprint here: doi.org/10.32942/X22...
Understanding individual range use in free-range chickens - a systematic review
doi.org
Waiting at Sofia Airport for my flight back to Brussels after an amazing trip to Bulgaria 🇧🇬. The visit was part of our new vulture conservation project with KMDA/ZOO Planckendael, and also connected to the documentary by Lode Desmet (and produced by ASSOCIATE DIRECTORS) on our ECoBird research.
New preprint out on bioRxiv 🌳 doi.org/10.1101/2025... 🌳 Using data from 19 forest plots in Flanders, we found that forest structural complexity isn’t a consistent predictor of multidiversity and responses across taxa were mostly weak or inconsistent. @ecobird.bsky.social | @fornalab.bsky.social
Multitaxon assessment reveals inconsistent biodiversity responses to forest structural complexity in temperate forests
Increasing forest structural complexity is a key objective of future-proof forest management, with potential benefits for biodiversity. However, empirical evidence for consistent biodiversity-structur...
doi.org
Wonderful to see this project published! We were glad to contribute a small part to this impressive collaborative effort through ECoBird.
ManyBirds Project@themanybirds.bsky.social · 10mo ago🐦 Exciting news! Our new paper is out in PLOS Biology: “A large-scale study across the avian clade identifies ecological drivers of neophobia.” Led by the #ManyBirds Project - 129 researchers, 82 institutions, 24 countries 🌍 🔗 journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... @themanybirds.bsky.social
Congratulations @alixkristiansen.bsky.social on your first paper from your PhD - it's out! @ecobird.bsky.social journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...
Home range and activity budget in the Falkland Steamer Duck (Tachyeres brachypterus)
The Falkland Islands support globally important populations of seabirds and coastal birds, underscoring their value for international conservation efforts. However, substantial knowledge gaps impede t...
journals.plos.org
🚨 Calling researchers, students, technicians in cognition 🚨 We’re running a 10-min anonymous survey on how animal cognition is defined and studied across disciplines (from ecology, ethology, psychology, neurology, etc). 🧠✨ Scan the QR code & share widely #AnimalCognition #ResearchSurvey #Science
🚨 Calling researchers, students, technicians in cognition 🚨 We’re running a 10-min anonymous survey on how animal cognition is defined and studied across disciplines (from ecology, ethology, psychology, neurology, etc). 🧠✨ Scan the QR code & share widely #AnimalCognition #ResearchSurvey #Science
Voortaan dr. Charlotte Van Driessche verdedigde vrijdag met succes haar doctoraat ‘Implementation of eDNA metabarcoding as an innovative tool for biomonitoring fish communities in lotic waters’, met @universiteitgent.bsky.social en @fwovlaanderen.bsky.social. Beluister 📻 bit.ly/PhDCharlotte
Had an amazing week in Kolkata at #Behaviour2025! Very grateful for the opportunity to present my work 🐥 Also super glad I got to explore the city and see some of it's wildlife, and to chat cool science with so many nice people!
We had 4 talks, and two posters so great representation of @ecobird.bsky.social from Ghent University.
Successful @ecobird.bsky.social #EOU2025 trip. Great presentations by @cesarepacioni.bsky.social, Jolien Van Malderen, Caoimhe Abdul-Wahab, Mélibée Morel and me! Well done team 👏 Loads of fun, and surprisingly good Welsh weather 😇
@ecobird.bsky.social at #EOU2025 🐦 Looking forward to sharing our work and connecting with the European ornithology community Caoimhe Abdul-Wahab | Poster S1 @lucyjmitchell.bsky.social | Symp 11 Mélibée Morel | Oral 17 @cesarepacioni.bsky.social | Oral 8 Jolien Van Malderen | Symp 2 & Poster S1
Happy to share my last PhD paper where we investigated the istopic niche of black-faced cormorants both for the breeding season and the non-breeding period. doi.org/10.1080/0158... #seabirds #ornithology
Isotopic niche segregation during the non-breeding period in Black-faced Cormorants (Phalacrocorax fuscescens)
Due to environmental changes, prey distribution and availability are predicted to change. This is expected to impact their predators, especially in the highly dynamic and fast-changing marine envir...
doi.org
New paper out! To Peck or Not To Peck: The influence of early-life social environment on response inhibition and impulsive aggression in Japanese quails royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
To peck or not to peck: the influence of early-life social environment on response inhibition and impulsive aggression in Japanese quails | Royal Society Open Science
Deficits in response inhibition (RI; i.e. the ability to suppress inappropriate responses) may contribute to increased impulsive aggression (IA; i.e. unplanned behaviours that harm others). Since earl...
royalsocietypublishing.org
It forms part of an exciting Special Issue of Phil Trans, "Selection shapes diverse animal minds", edited by @ellileadbeater.bsky.social & @cornishjackdaws.bsky.social Co-authors include @ecobird.bsky.social @samellisq.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/202...
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences: Vol 380, No 1929
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royalsocietypublishing.org