Most of the UK is farmland – and bumblebees are struggling to find enough food on it 🐝🍽️ New research from 20 English farms shows that pollen and nectar levels are far too low for bumblebees to thrive. Leo Fordham and Prof Elli Leadbeater tell us more in our guest blog: https://ow.ly/2coK50Zu6xA

Ants normally use about 24% of their energy for brain functions, but when food-deprived, this percentage nearly doubles to 45%. Preferential energy allocation to the brain has previously been found in humans and other mammals. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/kVkU50ZwbrB

Tom Collett’s new book “Insects and How They Navigate Their World” is out and seemingly the pdf is free 👀 (for me anyway) link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

Insects and How They Navigate Their World

Discover how insects navigate using vision, memory and cues from nature. A clear, engaging look at ants, bees, and the remarkable abilities of tiny brains.

link.springer.com

New dispatch in @currentbiology.bsky.social on one of the most interesting pesticide papers this year. It turns out honeybee queens can offload pesticide load to their eggs. Read my review here www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... or the full paper here www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 🐝🐝🐝

I'm delighted and honoured to share that I've taken on the role of Editor-in-Chief of Animal Cognition! This journal has shaped how we think about cognition across species. Huge thanks to Debbie Kelly for 10 years of vision and leadership, and for all her guidance during my time as associate editor.

📢 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...

Lovely to have @itvnews.bsky.social West here today filming the lab and the bees 🐝

New grad student opportunity in my lab (PhD or MS)! Part of a USDA grant determining impacts of ranch management on #pollinators, plants, and soil microbes. Details: cos.unt.edu/biology/lich... 🌎👩🏿‍🔬🌐

📢 Heads-up: I'm currently finalising the job description for a 30-month postdoc modelling visual abilities in these very gorgeous and very dead creatures! If you're interested, please get in touch - anticipated start is late 2026/early 2027 and the project combines great colleagues in UK + S Korea!

Lauren Sumner-Rooney@laurensr.bsky.social · 4mo ago

So excited to have received an #HFSPResearchGrant to study trilobite eyes with Luke Parry @oxuniearthsci.bsky.social and Gil Ju Lee (Pusan National University)!🥳 I'll be recruiting a postdoc @bristolbiosci.bsky.social - if 3D data, optical modelling, and fossils tickle your interest, stay tuned!

Thanks to our colleagues from around the world who signed the Open Letter against redundancies in CRAB. The letter surpassed 700 signatures in just over 1 wk. We hope execs will now see the harm they are doing to the University of Exeter's global reputation. sites.google.com/view/save-cr...

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As of 2026-07-14, this open letter has been signed by 754 people Signatories include 198 Professors and members of 11 National Academies, including 12 Fellows of the Royal Society (FRS) Signatories a...

sites.google.com

We are excited to announce that #Behaviour2027 (XXXIX International Ethological Congress) will be taking place in Vienna, Austria! We are looking forward to having you all join us next year from August 23-27. Please follow and share!

Beyond proud of @atal-pande.bsky.social, whose first PhD chapter is out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social! Atal shows that spiders that use their vision to hunt have convergently evolved similar eye arrangements, which imply lots of resampling of frontal space www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Hunting ecology predicts eye arrangements in the modular visual system of spiders

Vision is one of the most important senses used by animals and contributes to fundamental behaviors, including foraging, navigation, and mate detectio…

sciencedirect.com

Call for Proposals: Advances in Areawide Pest Management in Agroecosystems The Journal of Economic Entomology is seeking proposals for a special collection highlighting technological advances to support sustainable agriculture & IPM through AWPM: academic.oup.com/insect-scien... @academic.oup.com

I've always made sense of the world by looking closely at nature. I finally have somewhere to write about it. Welcome to Lessons from Animals. open.substack.com/pub/lessonsf...

🚨We're recruiting for a Commissioning Editor 🌱Join us in playing a vital role in bringing new ideas to Applied Ecology 🌏Commission new Reviews, Perspectives, Practitioner's Perspectives and Policy Directions as part of a global team 🔎Find out more below: apply.workable.com/britishecolo...

Honoured & humbled to have won the global #KeystoneAward for 'Outstanding Teaching & Mentoring' www.keg.com/keystone-awa... A HUGE thank you to all the amazing #ECRs I have been privileged to work with & who wrote such heart-felt testimonials 🙏 @bristolbiosci.bsky.social @brisunipress.bsky.social

The University of Exeter is not in budget deficit. Yet are proposing to cut 150 academic jobs. This include my job. Please sign and share the petition, write our Vice Chancellor, to your MP, and get the word out about the act of self harm this university is about to commit. c.org/yKcx6Zr29H

This campaign needs you now

Stop Redundancies at the University of Exeter

c.org

We will soon be advertising a 3-year postdoctoral position at Bristol aimed at enhancing our modelling capacity to better characterise vegetation recovery & legacy effects following fire. Please keep us in mind if this is your speciality 😀 🔥🌳 🌱

Good news! Ministers have finally given green light to new #NaturalHistory GCSE. We’ve campaigned so long for this! Big hats off to tireless advocate Mary Colwell 🙌 Now our young people will have a chance to get to know & love the natural world, to feel awe & wonder, & gain skills to protect it 🌷🌳🦡

Natural history GCSE to teach teenagers to plant wildflower-friendly gardens

Long-awaited course to examine human effects on natural world and explore everyday ways to aid biodiversity

theguardian.com

There are four positions to join ASAB council beginning 2027: Ordinary Member, Membership Secretary, Communications Officer and Social Media Officer. Statements and nominations are due June 20! www.asab.org/opportunities

Opportunities — ASAB

asab.org

🚨We're hiring again, this time for a research assistant position 🚨 The position is to help with a project looking at learning and social behaviour in birds along an urban gradient Position at @ceec-research.bsky.social 📆28th June deadline More info: shorturl.at/vBxiW #ringing #fieldwork

Link broke, but now alive again here! www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...

Stephen Montgomery@ebablab.bsky.social · 3mo ago

🚨Job claxon🚨 4-year #Postdoc available in our lab in @camzoology.bsky.social developing molecular and anatomical approaches to mapping evolutionary changes in the brain, using #Heliconiini butterflies. Come join us, we are nice. 🧪 www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...

New paper: MetaBeeAI🐝 an AI pipeline for structured evidence extraction from biological literature A very fun project involving a large interdisciplinary group. I learned so much and am very happy to see this out! If you're interested in using it: metabeeai.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

MetaBeeAI: An AI pipeline for structured evidence extraction from biological literature

The volume and complexity of scientific literature are expanding rapidly, making it increasingly difficult to extract and synthesize information acros…

sciencedirect.com

Choose your weekend spirit bumblebee 🐝 1. Sleeping 💤 2. Seeing friends/family 💚 3. Going out 🌳 4. Working hard 💼 5. Chilling ☮️ 6. Staying in 📺 Is there a spirit bumblebee missing? Let us know! 🎥 Helen King, Chloe Headdon, Julz Sellars, Tom Luck, Steve Darling

We are recruiting 🌟2 postdoctoral researchers🌟 for a NERC Large Grant project on the eco-evolutionary dynamics of badger - bovine tuberculosis (bTB) interactions.

Pollinators matter for human health!🐝 Our new @nature.com paper traces links from wild pollinators>crops>nutrient intake & income of families in rural Nepal—showing how pollinator declines threaten health & livelihoods, but also how farmers can help manage these risks doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Have you ever seen a bumblebee in woodland? 🐝🌳 New research shows that differences in bumblebee vision could explain why some species can thrive in the shade of a forest. Dr Océane Bartholomée shares what this means for bumblebee conservation in our guest blog: https://ow.ly/AIVB50YRMLF

🚨Job claxon🚨 4-year #Postdoc available in our lab in @camzoology.bsky.social developing molecular and anatomical approaches to mapping evolutionary changes in the brain, using #Heliconiini butterflies. Come join us, we are nice. 🧪 www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...

May is a special month for UK bumblebees 💛 👑 Some of these rare and less common queens will emerge from hibernation. Already active queens will produce their first daughters – the workers. 🎱 For the Big Eight, some queens will produce their first workers while others will welcome new males.

We're accepting proposals for our Special Feature! We invite scientists and practitioners to share experiences from management projects that didn't go to plan, but still provided important insights into how best to manage ecosystems and species🌱 ⏰Submit by 30th April More here👇 buff.ly/EXXBFsJ