A pleasure to have contributed some science and graphics to The Wonder of Birds at the @bodleian.ox.ac.uk; inspired by @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social’s words and Jackie Morris’s art, curated by Antonia Harrison. Free admission, through 3 January 2027.

A fun use of our open-access bird song data: helping argue that the results of a widely publicised study on individually specific, name-like calls in African elephants may instead reflect spuriously learned structure in the acoustic data. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Effects of bias when using ‘black box’ models: re-evaluating the evidence for the use of name-like calls by elephants

Machine learning (ML) tools can detect patterns in complex high-dimensional data sets, providing new ways to obtain insights into animal behaviour. Ho…

sciencedirect.com

1/🧵My first preprint!🐛🌡️ We examine how environmental effects experienced during one life-history stage persist and modulate environmental responses in later life-history stages. With Lea Beaupere, @sheldonbirds.bsky.social, @rona-learmonth.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🚨🚨🚨 Field Assistant positions - four of them!! - working with the long-term Wytham project this coming spring. Details below. Previous year's field team - come and join us! Details below ⬇️

Keith McMahon@mcmahok.bsky.social · 9mo ago

We are hiring at the Wytham Woods for the upcoming field season. 4 roles available. Please share with anyone who might be interested. #UKbirds #birdringing

New preprint! 🌳🐛 We combined experimental and genomic methods to study local adaptation of winter moths to variation in oak budburst timing in Wytham Woods, UK. With @andreaestandia.bsky.social, Lea Beaupere, Ella Cole, and @sheldonbirds.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Integrative analysis of fine-scale local adaptation of winter moths to variable oak phenology

For herbivorous insects whose fitness depends on tight phenological synchrony with host plants, spatial variation in plant phenology can impose strong selective pressures and promote local adaptation ...

biorxiv.org

Reading this blog post made me sad and uneasy. We shouldn’t so uncritically celebrate tools that can accelerate the spread of poor scientific practices and distance our students from understanding. This hype will only worsen existing problems in academia: more noise, less quality, fewer secure jobs.

Terry McGlynn@hormiga.bsky.social · last yr.

Y'all. I just got ChatGPT to do everything in R for this manuscript. I mean EVERYTHING. And it's all legit and reproducible. I'm shook. How are we mentoring our trainees in statistics now? Who needs to learn coding in R line by line, and who doesn't? scienceforeveryone.science/statistics-i...

Out today in @plosbiology.org (1/5) Siblings and non-parental adults provide alternative pathways to cultural inheritance in juvenile great tits 🐦🧩 Link to study: 10.0.5.91/journal.pbio... Co-authors: @lucymaplin.bsky.social @galarconnieto.bsky.social

Happy to share our last work just published in @animalecology.bsky.social. With @claire-doutrelant.bsky.social and Peter Pearman. besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @cnrs.fr @biology.ox.ac.uk

Global patterns of colouration complexity in the Paridae: Effects of climate and species characteristics across body regions

Variation in colour complexity in the Paridae is linked to climate, climate variability and several biotic factors. The strength of the associations is patch specific. Variables related to resource c...

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Oh, the joys of fieldwork this time of the year!

Working on an experimental acoustic data explorer - particle & background iterations. #datavis #dataviz

New preprint in collaboration with @babeheim.bsky.social: Vocal mimicry in corvids. We describe vocal mimicry, i.e., copying of sounds produced by another species or the environment, in 31 out of 128 corvid species (24%). (1/2) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A beautiful day for fieldwork — soaking in the sounds of early spring

This cool visualisation by @nilomr.bsky.social of great tit song (or is it the clangers? - 🔊 on) reminded me of how enjoyable it was to talk at length to @sykhalid.bsky.social @timcoulson.bsky.social on @scienceofthetimes.bsky.social about our great tit song paper: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/n...

New paper on the demographic drivers of cultural evolution in Great Tit song published today - epic work led by @nilomr.bsky.social with help from @andreaestandia.bsky.social Ella Cole & Sara Keen. Why did we do this, and what did we find? 🧵 follows: 1/n www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The demographic drivers of cultural evolution in bird song

Social learning can give rise to shared behavioral patterns that persist as culture within animal communities,1,2 such as bird and whale songs and cet…

sciencedirect.com

Theory tells us that demography, i.e. pop turnover, immigration & age structure, must be important to animal culture but evidence is rare. Here this cool study on song in the famous great tits of Wytham Woods shows what is possible 🐦 www.washingtonpost.com/science/2025...

Turns out birdsongs evolve with time and age — just like human music

Birds change their tune over time depending on age, movement and memory, similar to how human dialects are shaped, researchers say following a study of great tits in the U.K.

washingtonpost.com