Non-kin bonds were less stable (shorter-lived & more variable in strength). Younger females & those with fewer kin had more non-kin bonds. BUT females chose non-kin even when they had plenty of kin available. (3/5)

Imagine this choice: Your best buddies can be your close relatives. Or they can be unrelated to you. Evolution would say 'choose family'. Rhesus macaque females often do that, but in this *new paper we show they often don't*. Why? Maybe nonkin provide them with things kin can't? More work needed!

Erin Siracusa@erinsiracusa.bsky.social · 3w ago

Animals are known to prefer kin as social partners. But non-kin bonds are surprisingly common too. So, who forms them, how stable are they & what drives them? In our new @animbehsociety.bsky.social paper we tackle these overlooked questions in free-living rhesus macaques: tinyurl.com/mwsbkjve (1/5)

What a MAMMOTH result. 100% the product of everyone's efforts over the summer.

So grateful to @jacobcdunn.bsky.social and @wascherclaudia.bsky.social for the invitation to be a plenary speaker at #ECBB2026 along with these rockstars (Chris Schell, Tim Caro, @ljnbrent.bsky.social @ahanaaurora.bsky.social [@mherberstein.bsky.social and @andyradford.bsky.social missed the 📸])!

European Conference on Behavioural Biology@ecbb2026.bsky.social · 4w ago

#ECBB2026 and thank you to our plenary speakers!

Please help spread the word: Wilkinson lab at U Maryland, College Park, is hiring a postdoc to join our collaborative ongoing NIH-funded project titled “Social stress, epigenetic and immune function across bat lifespans.” umd.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/UMCP/job/Uni...

Come and work with us (the Kokkonuts) as a postdoc! Our research within (theory-evo-eco) is broad; let's say it's implicitly defined by the journal club papers we read. Which is why the application process includes a JC-related task, I hope it'll be a fun one for you! www.evoldir.net/brian/evoldi...

A thread on the dispute at Exeter Uni. #ucu #defendexeteruni @ucu.org.uk On 15 June HR called Exeter UCU into a confidential meeting and informed us they would be putting over 500 colleagues at risk of redundancy and expected to loose around 200 staff. The number of c.150 you’ll have seen is FTE.

CDBU’s Chair has penned an open letter to the new Prime Minister, read now on our blog: cdbu.org.uk/open-letter-...

Open Letter to the Prime Minister - CDBU

20 July 2026 Dear Prime Minister On behalf of the Council for the Defence of British Universities (CDBU), I request a meeting with you to discuss Higher Education. The sector needs a review of managem...

cdbu.org.uk

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...

Home

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

I've signed and sent a letter - from authors, broadcasters, journalists, artists, scholars and performers - to express our deep concern at @exeter.ac.uk’s troubling plans to make mass redundancies within the Humanities Dept @uniofexeterhass.bsky.social. I would love it if you read and shared widely.

Update from the Univ of Exeter redundancy front... disappointing reading from top to bottom

Something deeply troubling & shocking is happening at Exeter University*, where a mass cull of staff is planned, even though it's in surplus. No good justifications given. @jamesgdyke.info provides the details: www.technosphere.earth/the-bonfire-... *Disclosure: I have a Visiting Fellowship here. +🧵

The bonfire of the humanities

150 academic posts at the University of Exeter are to be cut, most in the humanities but also in social sciences, engineering and environmental sciences

technosphere.earth

This is cultural suicide and intellectual vandalism. In an era where humanities-illiterate tech bros have unearned god-like powers, we need historians, philosophers, ethicists, classicists more than ever.

Francesca Stavrakopoulou@proffrancesca.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I’d love it if you’d sign this. It might not prevent me and my colleagues losing our jobs, but it will draw attention to the ideological vandalism being perpetrated by the wealthy execs running our university. Stop Redundancies at the University of Exeter - sign the petition below! c.org/NpvY4sR9gH

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

A statement from Exeter UCU branch @ucu.org.uk - please share far and wide.

Exeter Green Party stands in solidarity with the Exeter University and College Union in condemning the University of Exeter’s announcement of sweeping job cuts. These plans will recklessly imperil the University’s vital contributions to the social, cultural, and economic life of the city. 1/4

New paper where we explore social and environmental health correlates. We use a citizen science approach (Monkey Health Explorer on Zooniverse) to score ~2000 images of blood smears collected during annual health checks

Royal Society Publishing@royalsocietypublishing.org · 3mo ago

Social connections and environmental shocks influence health, but how they affect the immune system in wild animals is unclear. This #RSOS paper studied rhesus macaques to test how affiliative relationships, age, sex, and social status relate to white blood cells: doi.org/10.1098/rsos...

My first ever croquet! My team didn't win the blue crab trophy but we win some sugar highs off cake and pimms. Success comes in many forms.

Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour (CRAB)@crab-exeter.bsky.social · 4mo ago

CRAB Summer Bash & Croquet Tournament in the beautiful Devon "sunshine"! Congratulations to Lisa, Una, @libbychaps.bsky.social and Sophie- inaugural winners of the coveted BLUE CRAB trophy.

In our new TREE paper, with M. Borgerhoff Mulder, S. Brosnan and E. Strauss we show that power in animal societies can be subject to control. When high-powered individuals use aggression to gain better access to resources, other group members can respond with "levelling". doi.org/10.1016/j.tr...

New paper! We use simulations to test received wisdom on the observational sampling method to use and find that Altmann 1974 was right all along (never bet against Jeanne!). Focal follows capture rare, fleeting behaviours, scans captures long, common behaviours. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Observation methods in animal behaviour: a simulation study of performance

Most behavioural studies rely on systematic behavioural sampling, as observing and recording all behavioural events that occur is rarely feasible. Cho…

sciencedirect.com

Congrats to MacaqueNet and thanks @sortee.bsky.social team for the recognition 🎉😊

SORTEE@sortee.bsky.social · 7mo ago

🎉 2025 SORTEE Commendation Award recipients: EcoEvoApps, Flipping the Script, JuliaPhylo, MacaqueNet, MorphoBank, and Virtual Australian Museum of Palaeontology (VAMP)! Congrats to all for advancing open, reliable, & transparent practices in ecology and evolution. 🔗 Learn more at sortee.org/awards/

🎉 2025 SORTEE Commendation Award recipients: EcoEvoApps, Flipping the Script, JuliaPhylo, MacaqueNet, MorphoBank, and Virtual Australian Museum of Palaeontology (VAMP)! Congrats to all for advancing open, reliable, & transparent practices in ecology and evolution. 🔗 Learn more at sortee.org/awards/

Interested in the interface of evolution 🧬 and ecology 🌳? Then you cannot miss #ExE2026! Hosted by @uniexecec.bsky.social in beautiful #Cornwall, this #conference has a stellar line-up of speakers and lots of pre-and post-conference workshops. Space is limited, so register now at evoxeco.uk!

🚨Roll up, roll up, fully-funded #PhD deadlines approaching... 6th Jan: tinyurl.com/aja54nr6 8th Jan: tinyurl.com/4jfy47pp Social monitoring & manipulation #meerkats #mongooses #macaques #fieldwork #long-termdata @patrick-kennedy.bsky.social @ljnbrent.bsky.social @bristolbiosci.bsky.social

Our call for symposia now open! We are now accepting submissions for symposia, with submissions for oral/poster presentations invited from 31 January 2026. For more info, or to download the proposal form, visit our conference page 👇 www.aru.ac.uk/science-and-...

First ever quiz win! Very proud of my team made up of a random selection of my lab members + Sam for bringing home the Christmas-crab shaped CRAB trophy 🎉.

Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour (CRAB)@crab-exeter.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Congratulations to the winners of the CRAB trophy, and thanks to our excellent 2nd Year PGRs for organising brilliant quiz.

☺️

European Conference on Behavioural Biology@ecbb2026.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Line up! Slither up! Crawl up! Climb up! No matter how you're moving or on how many legs, it's time to find out our first ECBB 2026 plenary speaker. 🥁 🥁 🥁 It's the incredible @ljnbrent.bsky.social!

Come and join our lab! We have TWO fully funded PhD positions AND a paid field assistant opportunity in our Behavioral Ecology group @uni-goettingen.de & @primatenzentrum.bsky.social. Projects will be part of @rtg2906-curiosity.bsky.social & @sfb1528.bsky.social!! Details in thread. Please re-post!

Excited to introduce the Latent Layers Framework – now out in @behavecol.bsky.social – to help think through when and why network differences confound inference in (comparative) social network analysis! 🧵 tinyurl.com/3k3yahwy