Are our #ResearchFunding systems still distinguishing scientific merit from formal polish? Our preprint asks whether standardised evaluation schemes are vulnerable to score compression as application numbers rise and AI makes polished proposals easier to produce. osf.io/preprints/me...

Why have birds evolved complex songs? Across 4,940 passerine species, #BirdSong complexity peaks in temperate regions and is structured by evolutionary history and ecology, but shows weak associations with proxies of sexual selection and cognitive signalling. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

How to force a @nature.com retraction and get zero credit for it. A short thread on "invisible correctors" and bibliographic erasure in top-tier journals. 🧵 Read the full behind-the-scenes story at @retractionwatch.com below. Our preprint: ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v... #OpenScience #ZebraFinch

Critics of birdsong study fight to be named in Nature’s retraction

A zebra finch in New South Wales, Australia. Source: JJ Harrison/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) Researchers who flagged methodological issues in a paper on birdsong a year and a half before Natur…

retractionwatch.com

Sunbirds don’t drink nectar like hummingbirds. They use intralingual suction: the tongue acts like a straw, moving nectar via pressure differences rather than capillarity. A clear case of biomechanical divergence despite ecological convergence. doi.org/10.1016/j.cu... @CurrentBiology #ornithology

🦜🏔️ How did vibrant Amazonian parrot feathers end up in a desert tomb on the Pacific coast of Peru 1,000 years ago? Our new paper on @natcomms.nature.com reveals they didn't just trade feathers, pre-Inca societies transported live macaws and parrots across the Andes!👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Ancient DNA and spatial modeling reveal a pre-Inca trans-Andean parrot trade - Nature Communications

Here, the authors combine ancient DNA, stable isotopes, and computational modeling to study colorful feathers from a pre-Incan tomb in Peru. They identify four species of parrots, which were likely ca...

nature.com

Massive phenomics dataset spanning the #ants tree of life, with 2,000+ whole-body 3D scans! Congratulations to @shubhamgautam.bsky.social , member of our bullab. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New paper out! 🐦📊 We realease AVONICHE, a global dataset with detailed information on the proportional use of 32 foraging niches, combining dietary categories with the behaviours and substrates used to access resources. Openly access the paper and data in GEB: doi.org/10.1111/geb....

Phylogenetic and functional analyses across 34 Lepidoptera and 183 plant species show that hexenal isomerases found in Lepidoptera exhibit functional convergence with those found in plants despite having evolved independently from unrelated enzyme families 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Convergent evolution of hexenal isomerases in Lepidoptera and plants - Nature Ecology & Evolution

Phylogenetic and functional analyses across 34 Lepidoptera and 183 plant species show that hexenal isomerases found in Lepidoptera exhibit functional convergence with those found in plants despite hav...

nature.com

Is #AI turning grant evaluation into a lottery? 🎲 The 2025 generative AI improvement coincides with ~20% of proposals scoring >95% in EU #MSCA call. We’ve reached "excellence saturation." Time to rethink funding? 👉 doi.org/10.31222/osf... w/ @birder158.bsky.social #MetaScience #AcademicSky

Mitochondrial DNA from horses at the Middle Pleistocene archaeological site of Schöningen reveals insight into the evolutionary history of horses, and advances techniques for the analysis of ancient DNA retrieved from highly degraded samples 🧪🐴 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Mitochondrial genomes of Middle Pleistocene horses from the open-air site complex of Schöningen - Nature Ecology & Evolution

Mitochondrial DNA from horses at the Middle Pleistocene archaeological site of Schöningen reveals insight into the evolutionary history of horses and advances techniques for the analysis of ancient DNA retrieved from highly degraded samples.

nature.com

Are our 95% CIs only worth 45% confidence? New preprint authors argue that's too pessimistic and outline extended CIs beyond sampling error. doi.org/10.1101/2025... #statistics #OpenScience #Reproducibility cc @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social @sortee.bsky.social

Are our 95% CIs only worth 45% confidence?

When multiple studies on the same research question, or multiple analyses of the same dataset are summarized in a meta-analysis, our confidence intervals (CIs) are put to a relentless test of reliabil...

doi.org

"Ungeneralizable generalizations? A meta-meta-analysis of the influence of taxonomic bias on the study of behavior." - doi.org/10.32942/X2X...

Tiny hands, tiny birds, big curiosity. 🐦‍⬛✨ We took local grammar school kids bird ringing—and they loved it. From gently holding a warbler to learning why birds wear “bracelets,” they got a front-row seat to real science. 🔍📏💍 = ❤️ 🔗 martinbulla.github.io//bullab/gall... #ornithology #scienceoutreach

Coming soon! A mid-summer special BOW Discovery Webinar on AVILIST - the world's first unified global checklist of birds. Does this sound good? Would you like to join us? Stay tuned for more info. Target is late July. We'll do our best to make this during a globally friendly timeslot.

The deadline for the job application is today.

Martin Bulla@martinbulla.bsky.social · last yr.

We’re hiring a postdoc (2+ years) in macroecology and macroevolution in my new lab at CZU Prague: www.researchgate.net/job/1021667_...

Paper is finally up and open access (www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...), it's a sequel to an earlier paper where we'd argued that there's not good evidence that pre-publication peer review is a net benefit (www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1093/...). So in this one we suggest an alternative.

When performing multiple imputation of missing data, it is essential to evaluate how the imputed values compare to the observed data. The attached image was created with the bwplot() function. More: eepurl.com/gH6myT #rstats #bigdata #businessanalyst #datavisualization

Land use intensification is a major driver of biodiversity change and ecosystem functioning. Here Bagousse-Pinguet et al. identify thresholds of grassland plant community structure and stability in response to land use intensification www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thresholds of functional trait diversity driven by land use intensification - Nature Ecology & Evolution

Land use intensification is a major driver of biodiversity change and ecosystem functioning. Here the authors identify thresholds of grassland plant community structure and stability in response to la...

nature.com

🚨Some required reading for anyone dabbling in trait-based ecology & ecosystem science.

ESA Journals@esajournals.bsky.social · last yr.

A 🆕 #OpenAccess Review in "Ecological Monographs": 8 key limitations in how we link species traits to ecosystem structure & function, and a to-do list to push the field forward 📄Raunkiæran shortfalls: Challenges and perspectives in trait-based ecology doi.org/10.1002/ecm....

New archaeological and ancient genomic data from humans in Papua New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago shed light on regional human admixture and genetic isolation over the past 2,500 years www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The impact of human dispersals and local interactions on the genetic diversity of coastal Papua New Guinea over the past 2,500 years - Nature Ecology & Evolution

New archaeological and ancient genomic data from humans in Papua New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago shed light on regional human admixture and genetic isolation over the past 2,500 years.

nature.com

Another unexpected angle on bird wing evolution: skeletal measurements suggest that wing bone length is shaped not only by aerodynamics of flight but also by thermoregulation (1/4) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #macroecology #ornithology 🧪🌎🌐🪶

Now published!!!! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Repeated behavioural evolution is associated with convergence of gene expression in cavity-nesting songbirds - Nature Ecology & Evolution

The authors performed phylogenetically controlled behavioural assays and analysed brain transcriptomes across five avian families, identifying convergent patterns of gene expression associated with aggression and nesting behaviour in obligate cavity-nesting birds.

nature.com

Sara Lipshutz (she/her)@jacanamama.bsky.social · 2y ago

I am DELIGHTED to share this paper. It began with a rejection - my NSF postdoc fellowship wasn't funded in its first round. But @rosvall-lab.bsky.social invested in me anyhow and we began this massive comparative project on aggression, testosterone, and neurogenomics. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Pollinator decline has captured global attention, but another plant-animal mutualism is quietly unraveling. Our new Nature Reviews Biodiversity article synthesizes global evidence on seed disperser decline and what it means for plant biodiversity, ecosystem recovery, and climate adaptation. 🧵

Drivers and impacts of global seed disperser decline

Nature Reviews Biodiversity - Many plants rely on animals to disperse their seeds, but some groups of these seed-dispersing animals are facing severe declines. This Review summarizes evidence of...

rdcu.be

Unsolicited listicle: My list of the most criminally underused/underappreciated phylogenetic comparative methods. Note, I am not involved in ANY of these methods; but I see them as things people are often asking of comparative data but have been surprised at how infrequently they have been cited.

🚨New paper alert!🚨 We show that hummingbird beaks have changed in shape & size since around WWII, driven by the rise of commercialized feeders! 🧵 📄 Paper: dx.doi.org/10.1111/gcb.... #ornithology #evolution #GlobalChangeBiology

Supplemental Feeding as a Driver of Population Expansion and Morphological Change in Anna's Hummingbirds

Bird beaks are highly adaptable, with the potential to undergo rapid morphological shifts in response to environmental change such as climatic variation or food availability. Anna's Hummingbirds (Cal...

dx.doi.org

We’re hiring a postdoc (2+ years) in macroecology and macroevolution in my new lab at CZU Prague: www.researchgate.net/job/1021667_...

POSTDOCTORAL DATA SCIENTIST IN MACROECOLOGY AND MACROEVOLUTION (2+ YEARS IN PRAGUE) at Czech University of Life Sciences Prague in Prague, CZECHIA

May 12, 2025 | We invite applications for a full-time, two-year data scientist postdoctoralposition (with potential for an extension) spanning large-scale... | NEW JOB

researchgate.net