Lisa Fontana
@lisafontana.bsky.social
PhD Candidate at the Australian National University, working on innovation, cognitive ecology and social learning in sulphur-crested cockatoos 🦜
An exhausting but inspiring 5 days at #ISBE2026 @isbe2026.bsky.social. As always, a highlight was getting to bring the Uni Zurich and Australian National University halves of our lab group together, as well as catching up with past lab members! Even better if 1m long pizza is involved...
Paper alert! 🦎 Can lizards count? How does early-environment affect their quantity discrimination abilities? We investigated these questions. New paper w/ @danielwanoble.bsky.social @cpictus.bsky.social [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10682-026-10412-4]
Feeling incredibly grateful to be presenting at such an important conference in the same city where I completed my master's degree. This is where I used to dream about doing the kind of work I have the privilege to do today @isbe2026.bsky.social
🚨New primate urbanization paper🚨We looked at weather anthropogenic experiences link to within population innovativeness. Our new results from @urbanvervetproject.bsky.social can be found here 👇🏼 Behavioral flexibility and its drivers in semi-urban vervet monkeys academic.oup.com/beheco/artic...
Behavioral flexibility and its drivers in semi-urban vervet monkeys
Monkeys bring their own skills to the city. Urban animals are often seen as especially flexible or innovative—but do urban environments make them that way?
academic.oup.com
Amazing talk by my partner @pablorecio93.bsky.social at ASSAB 2026 (@animbehav.bsky.social), and funnily, about pair bonding in reptiles
Another fantastic talk about the fairywren by Samuele Ramellini @sramellini.bsky.social #ASSAB2026 make sure to check out his paper!
Today I presented my talk at ASSAB 2026 (@animbehav.bsky.social) about my experimental work investigating innovation and social learning in wild cockatoos. Always a privilege to share my work, and hear what everyone else is up to across the Australasian region!
🎉New paper alert 🥳 Does proximity of breeding hollows influence foraging associations in wild cockatoos? doi.org/10.1098/rsbl... (🧵—1/2) With @lucymaplin.bsky.social , A. Csak
🎉🦜NEW PAPER ALERT 🦜🎉 Which social learning biases underly the acquisition of novel food in wild parrots ? We (@lucymaplin.bsky.social, @bjjbarrett.bsky.social, @sonjawild.bsky.social, @drjohnmartin.bsky.social) presented >700 cockies with a novel, artificial food (🧵1/6)
PLOS Biology@plosbiology.org · 4mo agoAdopting novel food is vital to colonize novel environments, but what is the role of social learning? Study of urban #cockatoos by @clevercockierp.bsky.social shows them to rapidly adopt novel food via #SocialLearning, with juveniles showing conformist preferences @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4uq6NVq
There is order in pandemonium 😜 1- We show that wild SC-cockies have sex & age structured hierarchies, stable for at least 3 years 🏆 2- We provide guidance on how to choose the right threshold for your data when using rElo.
The Clever Cockie Research Project@clevercockierp.bsky.social · 6mo agoIt turns out there is order in the apparent cockie chaos! In a new paper from the Clever Cockie Research Group; @julia-penndorf.bsky.social and co-authors show how roost of wild SC-cockies exhibit linear dominance hierarchies that are stable over 3+ years. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
New paper alert! 🦜 We gave wild cockatoos puzzle boxes across Canberra’s urban gradient. The finding? Urban birds approach faster, but are not better solvers. Our results suggest that urbanization shapes neophobia independently from cognitive performance. Read it here: doi.org/10.1093/behe...
Social and ecological factors associated with innovation in urban sulphur-crested cockatoos (Cacatua galerita)
Cities are challenging places for wildlife, but some species, like sulfur-crested cockatoos, adapt by finding new ways to feed and solve problems. We studi
doi.org
The first #kakapo chick for four years hatched two days ago (on Valentine’s Day for those who like to anthropomorphise!). Here’s Tiwhiri-A1-2026 in Yasmine’s nest. 📸: Deidre Vercoe. www.doc.govt.nz/news/media-r... #kakapo2026 #conservation #parrots #birds
A few days short of my 8(!!) year anniversary in the Aplin lab, it‘s time to say goodbye to a truly amazing lab & start a new, exciting, chapter! R: 1st day of PhD fieldwork &1st time having a bird land on me (2018). L: soaked through (but happy!) postdoc with the same bird, Tobruk (103).
Italian friends! Sono stata invitata a partecipare ad un episodio di ‘Disco scienza’ con Andrea Bellati, se siete curiosi di saperne di più sulle mie ricerche andate ad ascoltare 🦜 open.spotify.com/episode/3sFz...
Spotify – Web Player
open.spotify.com
🎉🍾 very excited to see this out before 2025 ends doi.org/10.1111/2041... with Will Hoppitt in @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social. This paper is an overview of our new R package STbayes, a user-friendly toolkit for performing Bayesian NBDA analyses. @cbehav.bsky.social @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social
STbayes: An R package for creating, fitting and understanding Bayesian models of social transmission
A critical consequence of joining social groups is the possibility of social transmission of information related to novel behaviours or resources. Network-based diffusion analysis (NBDA) has emerg...
doi.org
Our paper on cockatoos innovating+social learning the use of bubblers as an urban water source was one of the 10 most popular papers for 2025 in the Royal Society's journals. Couldn't be more pleased! royalsociety.org/blog/2025/12...
My #BirdOfTheDay #Headshots is Sulphur-crested Cockatoo from Lorne, Victoria, Australia #WildOz #birds #birding #parrots 🪶
A teaser for my talk this Saturday. Can't go wrong with a parrot on the title slide...🪶🦜🧠🧪
Excited to share insights on urban cockatoos innovations at the Australasian Ornithological Conference 2025, in Perth
Big day yesterday, CleverCockie lab member Lisa Fontana @lisafontana.bsky.social finished the last day of data collection for her PhD, completing an experiment on social learning in cockatoos. Congratulations Lisa! 🎉
That's the spot...! A trio of allopreening cockies engaging in some social bonding at our field-site, captured by @elliearose.bsky.social. If you'd like to learn more about when and why cockies allopreen, check out a recent paper by @julia-penndorf.bsky.social: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
An extremely clever cockie, or one regretting their life choices? Spotted at our Canberra field-site by @lisafontana.bsky.social, it's first time we've seen a sulphur-crested cockatoo successfully fledge 3 chicks! The usual is 2 eggs laid, resulting in 0-1 chicks.
Hi Bluesky! 👋 We're the account for the Clever Cockie Project, researching culture and cognition in urban sulphur-crested cockatoos. We'll post updates from the field, along with our recent results and publications. You can find more, including our current team, here: www.clevercockies.com/the-team
Learning about those mischievous wild cockatoos with Lisa Fontana from the Australian National University #cultureconference2025 @cultconf.bsky.social
