Kevin Healy
@healyke.bsky.social
Lecturer in Macroecology at the University of Galway #Macroecology Google Scholar: https://l1nk.dev/NJtVI
Alpha rhythm determines speech perception rate? And speeding it up makes unintelligibly fast speech comprehensible? This is nuts! www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
pnas.org
The University of Exeter have announced a programme of academic staff cuts, including all of www.exeter.ac.uk/research/gro... Sign the open letter of support at docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... @crab-exeter.bsky.social
Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour (CRAB) | Research Groups | University of Exeter
exeter.ac.uk
It 100% harms AHSS, but as a bonus, it also harms STEM. Curiosity driven, investigator led research drives innovation where there isn't a more immediate commercial incentive, and industry already pursues research where there is. Universities exist for the public good, not to subsidize industry.
Justin Carville@justinmcarville.bsky.social · 2mo agoAHSS research is already massively underfunded in Ireland, proposals to restructure funding models and prioritise commercialisation of research will disproportionately impact the humanities - Irish academics, post-docs & post-grads past, current and future please add your voice in opposition 👇
An open letter to Minister for Further and Higher Education James Lawless Concern about Research Ireland’s Strategy and Programme Plan openletter.earth/concern-abou...
Concern about Research Ireland’s Strategy and Programme Plan
openletter.earth
🗳️ By-election tallies LIVE! 🚨 🔵 Dublin Central bit.ly/DublinCentral26 🟣 Galway West bit.ly/GalwayWest26 Updates here throughout the day(s)!
Our new paper is out in Neuron! www.cell.com/neuron/fullt... How does the brain decide how much of the past to use when making decisions? In rapidly changing environments, recent experiences matter more; in stable environments, longer histories are useful.
Adaptive reorganization of history encoding in the retrosplenial cortex supports flexible decision-making strategies
Zhang et al. show that mice flexibly adjust how past experiences guide choices in fast- and slow-changing environments. Retrosplenial cortex neurons display a wide range of history-integration timesca...
cell.com
Anyone else feel like we should arrange another meeting?
The final research chapter of my PhD is published! 🥳🥳🥳🥳 It shows how the ability of spider venom to paralyse prey scales isometrically with its ability to cause prey mortality! It is published with open access in Toxicon: X. You can check it out via the following link - doi.org/10.1016/j.to....
Redirecting
doi.org
New paper led by @keithlnotions.bsky.social showing that the ability of a venom to paralysis prey scales isometrically with its ability to kill prey in spiders www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Paralysis efficiency (PD50) scales linearly with lethality (LD50) in spider venoms
Historically, venom potencies have been assessed using measures of lethality, such as the median lethal dose (LD50). However, venoms may be selected p…
sciencedirect.com
Wildlife experts call for ‘misleading’ timber industry book to be removed from schools
Wildlife experts call for ‘misleading’ timber industry book to be removed from schools
Foreword by Michael Healy-Rae champions virtues of commercial Sitka spruce without referencing environmental harms
irishtimes.com
Irish Instagram is quietly radicalising adults, and it's not teenagers you should be worried about. From nostalgia reels to rage-bait algorithms, here's how ordinary feeds are reshaping Irish political opinion.. Read now on Goosed.ie 👉 goosed.ie/news/how-iri...
We're not just scrolling: how Irish Instagram is quietly radicalising adults - Goosed.ie
Irish Instagram is quietly radicalising adults, and it's not teenagers you should be worried about. From nostalgia reels to rage-bait algorithms, here's how ordinary feeds are reshaping Irish political...
goosed.ie
Using phylogenetic comparative methods across 237 species from disparate phyla, the authors show that species with fast-paced ecologies have higher temporal resolution of perception 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Pace of ecology drives the tempo of visual perception across the animal kingdom - Nature Ecology & Evolution
Using phylogenetic comparative methods across 237 species from disparate phyla, the authors show that species with fast-paced ecologies have higher temporal resolution of perception.
nature.com
This study is super cool (connecting ecology and perception), that suggest some aspects of animal's perception (temporal precision) is shaped by their environment (which somehow resonates w our proposal on internal foraging perspectives on perceptual selection www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...)
Pace of ecology drives the tempo of visual perception across the animal kingdom - Nature Ecology & Evolution
Using phylogenetic comparative methods across 237 species from disparate phyla, the authors show that species with fast-paced ecologies have higher temporal resolution of perception.
nature.com
Kevin Healy@healyke.bsky.social · 5mo agoOur new paper is now out showing how time perception in animals is linked to their ecology. Using data from 237 species we show temporal perception is faster in species that fly and pursuit predators www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🌐
Speed of Life Shapes Animal Vision: How Ecology Determines the Pace at Which Animals Perceive Time bioengineer.org/speed-of-lif...
Speed of Life Shapes Animal Vision: How Ecology Determines the Pace at
In the vast tapestry of life on Earth, animals perceive the world around them in ways that profoundly differ, not only in terms of sensory input but in the very fabric of temporal experience. A
bioengineer.org
Our new paper is now out showing how time perception in animals is linked to their ecology. Using data from 237 species we show temporal perception is faster in species that fly and pursuit predators www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🌐
Pace of ecology drives the tempo of visual perception across the animal kingdom
Nature Ecology & Evolution - Using phylogenetic comparative methods across 237 species from disparate phyla, the authors show that species with fast-paced ecologies have higher temporal...
nature.com
"The problem is not simply that cross-species translation is difficult; it is that the field has largely accepted this difficulty rather than treating it as a central scientific challenge. Neuroscience has also struggled to confront the fact that different species often tell different stories."
Neuroscience has a species problem
If neuroscience is serious about building general principles of brain function, cross-species dialogue must become a core organizing principle.
thetransmitter.org
I feel this way about pretty much all vaccine-preventable infectious diseases. You shouldn't be allowed to dump cyanide into municipal drinking water and you shouldn't be allowed to recreationally spread viruses around shared public spaces.
Jillian C. York@jillian.bsky.social · 6mo agoMy most authoritarian opinion is that the MMR vaccine should be mandatory, with only medical (not religious or floofy) exemptions allowed. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
Found an additional graphic that gets even more of these quotes together. I've kept "I hate myself, I hate clover, and I hate bees" pinned above my desk since I first started studying evolutionary biology as an undergraduate. So relatable to get extremely frustrated with your study system.
SK Winnicki, PhD 🏳️⚧️@skwinnicki.bsky.social · 6mo agoHappy birthday, Chuck. Proud to carry on your legacy of studying evolutionary biology while going through it
New Article “Should we patent the 'Woolly Mammoth'? Ecological and animal welfare objections”, funded by @researchireland.ie , published in Journal of Property Law & Practice and co-authored by Dr. David Doyle. You can access the article here: tinyurl.com/amemee3w
Check out our new and improved Fossil Map of Ireland! With an incredible 176 new fossil sites, courtesy of the Irish public - thank you for all your submissions! An amazing citizen science project www.ucc.ie/en/fossil-he... @ucc.ie @thepalass.bsky.social @erc.europa.eu @researchireland.ie
New paper out led by @scanavan.bsky.social were we use twitter usage to help understand how the general public perceives invasive species ecologyandsociety.org/vol30/iss4/a... 🌐
Ecology & Society
A journal of integrative science for resilience and sustainability
ecologyandsociety.org
Proponents of the Galway City Ring Road (GCRR) have argued that moving some of the city traffic away from the centre and onto a by-pass will reduce congestion and free up space for alternatives to the car such as bus and cycle lanes. But will it? www.advertiser.ie/galway/artic...
Will the Ring Road free up space in the city?
This argument is dubious at best, and simply not supported by the data in the GCRR submission, which is currently before An Coimisiún Pleanála (formerly An Bord Pleanála ).
advertiser.ie
It's @besmacro.bsky.social meeting time! Follow #BESMacro2025 for updates on big ecology today and tomorrow 🌏🌐
New paper: in which we get grumpy with GenAI / LLMs polluting the human corpora of text rendering many cultural analyses void. Open access with @healyke.bsky.social @adamdkane.bsky.social @rcorreia.bsky.social doi.org/10.1007/s442... ping @edzitron.com might be of interest?
Generative AI - Signal to Noise - Digital Society
The sudden deployment of large language models (LLMs) has been a seismic event for science, with professional scientists, including biologists, struggling to work out how to fit this new technology in...
doi.org
In our latest commentary piece we highlight that AI has likely already poisoned the well of online data used in culturomic studies that aim to understand shifts in the cultural zeitgeist link.springer.com/article/10.1... 🌐 @yodacomplex.bsky.social
Generative AI - Signal to Noise - Digital Society
The sudden deployment of large language models (LLMs) has been a seismic event for science, with professional scientists, including biologists, struggling to work out how to fit this new technology in...
link.springer.com
Just out our latest commentary piece highlighting that AI has likely already poisoned the well of online data used in culturomic studies that aim to understand shifts in the cultural zeitgeist link.springer.com/article/10.1... #AcademicSky #🌐
Generative AI - Signal to Noise - Digital Society
The sudden deployment of large language models (LLMs) has been a seismic event for science, with professional scientists, including biologists, struggling to work out how to fit this new technology in...
link.springer.com
It's the last day to apply for #BESMacro2025 ! Come join us in beautiful York for two days of awesome macro-scale science (plus an optional pre-conference workshop on scientific storytelling) www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/bes-macro-...
BES Macro 2025
A British Ecological Society specialist group conference for researchers in macroecology and/or macroevolution at any academic career stage.
eventbrite.co.uk
