Welcome to the CAMBRIAN FECAL REVOLUTION. We didn't name it the Cambrian fecal explosion for obvious reasons. I'm happy to share this paper on fecal matter and its role in Cambrian ecosystems. So if you want to read a really shitty paper (50 days free access): authors.elsevier.com/a/1nYg8cZ3X7...

Diversification of Hawaiian honeycreepers: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Among other findings, the ʻiʻiwi does not clade with the extinct mamo (genus Drepanis) and should be restored to its own genus Vestiaria. 🪶🧪 (📷Campana et al.)

FOUND! 🔍 Red Weaver rediscovered in Kenya! The striking Red Weaver has been documented for the first time since 2014. Supported by an Ornis Birding Expeditions x Lost Birds Expedition Grant. More: abcbirds.info/3RTJhSS @rewildorg.bsky.social @birdlifeglobal.bsky.social

Some highlights from last month's field trip in Kazakhstan. 🇰🇿 More photos in the eBird trip report: ebird.org/tripreport/5...

Across 35 North American bird species, adult females had 12.4% lower survival than males on average. The gap was strongest in long-distance migrants, but no clear explanation emerged. doi.org/hcc5sd

Female birds have shorter lifespans than male birds across 35 North American species, researchers find

Birds have a lot to do in their short lives: defend territories, build nests, raise chicks and feed themselves. But the toll of these activities may be greater for female birds than for male birds.

phys.org

A 10-million-year biogeographic holding pen primed the Great American Biotic Interchange | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A 10-million-year biogeographic holding pen primed the Great American Biotic Interchange

The movement of taxa between North and South America across the Panamanian land bridge, known as the Great American Biotic Interchange (GABI), established modern-day mammal assemblages in the Americas...

science.org

This came out in the middle of the move to Cleveland, but my work on the under-appreciated starling genus Aplonis is out in MPE. These understated island-loving starlings hide plenty of biogeographic intrigue and taxonomic complexity: doi.org/10.1016/j.ym... 🧵

🪽🧬 Migration is one of the most spectacular behaviors in nature, yet we still know little about its molecular basis. Our new paper explores whether epigenetic variation contributes to migratory orientation in a songbird hybrid zone. doi.org/10.1098/rstb... tamuartsci.bsky.social columbia.bsky.social

Avocados come in 2 varieties - A-types start each day female and switch to male midday. B-types do the reverse. In work just published from the last chapter of my PhD, we show this system evolved 40+million yrs ago and is regulated by alleles of 1 transcription factor www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Balanced polymorphism in a floral transcription factor underlies the ancient rhythm of daily sex alternation in avocado | PNAS

In avocado and certain wild relatives in Lauraceae, a highly synchronized daily rhythm of floral sex timing promotes cross-pollination between two ...

pnas.org

How does personality affect spring migration timing in Red Knots? We combined experimental food manipulations, measures of exploration speed, and individual tracking to find that fast-exploring birds delayed departure, but only after restricted food access. Read more in our paper👇

British Ornithologists’ Union (BOU)@bou.org.uk · 2w ago

EARLY VIEW in IBIS Exploration speed in Red Knots affects spring migration timing, but only after experimentally constrained fuelling conditions | onlinelibrary.wiley.... Tohar Tal, Allert I. Bijleveld, Karein van Bijssum, Hidde Kressin, Thomas K. Lameris | #ornithology

🧪 🪲 🌋 🌡️ When are things too hot to handle? Our new paper on insect thermal tolerance across elevation in @pnas.org nas.org suggest perhaps not too far in the future. @gdfcf.bsky.social sky.social @alexandreloureiro.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 🧵

how does seasonal migration evolve? this question is to the heart of our focus and here we use common garden approach to characterise the amount of seasonal change in chromatin accessibility in ancestral migratory and derived resident populations of the Eurasian blackcap doi.org/10.1098/rstb...

New paper out! 🖨️ Glad to be part of this study, out in Science Advances: "Emergent patterns of island biodiversity in the Anthropocene" www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Much of what looks natural in island biodiversity is a legacy of human impacts going back millennia. See main findings 👇🧵 (1/8)

Emergent patterns of island biodiversity in the Anthropocene

Human impacts substantially affect our ability to detect and understand natural biodiversity patterns.

science.org

1/ The world's songbirds sing in just 8 basic sounds. And where a bird lives decides which ones it uses. My first PhD paper is out now in @science.org (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aee6239) Here is what we found:

🚨🦋 Thrilled to share my first PhD paper published in PNAS this week, in collaboration with Sören Kannegieser and @anna-stoeckl.bsky.social @insect-vision.bsky.social: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... We found hawkmoths use a convergent visual control strategy for appendage guidance. 👁️🫳 🧵 below.

New paper led by @rafnuss.bsky.social! We present a new tool for tracking aerial insectivores such as swifts, swallows, and bee-eaters. For these species, pressure and activity data cannot distinguish stopovers from migratory flight. New sensor and R package help solve this problem. Check it out! 🧭

Raphaël Nussbaumer@rafnuss.bsky.social · 2w ago

Can a tiny magnetic sensor help geolocate migratory birds? 🧭 Earth’s magnetic field varies across the globe in both intensity and inclination. We asked whether those spatial patterns can turn magnetometer data from lightweight tags into location estimates.

from our cover: hunting strategy correlates with eye arrangement in spiders www.cell.com/current-biol...

Hunting ecology predicts eye arrangements in the modular visual system of spiders

Pande et al. show that visually hunting spiders have convergently evolved forward-facing eyes. The positions and orientations of the eyes show the greatest morphological disparity and fastest evolutio...

cell.com

Happy to share this 'capstone' project from my time as a postdoc @umich.edu, where we show that hierarchically nested bursts of body-shape evolution may underlie much of perching-bird diversification over ~50 million years. Free access link here: rdcu.be/fuxB1

Rates of passerine body plan evolution in time and space

Nature Ecology & Evolution - A reconstruction of the evolutionary history of passerine body plans over the past ~50 Myr shows rare bursts of phenotypic innovation near the origin of major...

rdcu.be

Our new paper led by Jenny Darby is the first to test the acoustic niche hypothesis in human-modified tropical forests - logged and recently burned forests had significantly higher rates of avian vocalisation overlap... nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... #Ornithology

Forest degradation reduces acoustic partitioning in tropical avian communities

The acoustic niche hypothesis posits that species partition acoustic space by frequency and time to avoid signal masking, and that any local loss of species leaves detectable gaps in co-evolved sound...

nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

For me this paper is a career highlight..truly astonishing biology! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A queen odour mediates reproductive suppression in a eusocial mammal - Nature

Naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber) queens produce isopropyl myristate, a low-volatility ester that high-ranking animals detect and avoid, which alters prolactin and progesterone in other females t...

nature.com

The role of viability selection in shaping short- and long-term consequences of early-life conditions: An experiment in the #AlpineSwift AKA my first article as co-senior author! Really amazing job by a great master's student! *proud supervisor* doi.org/10.1111/1365... #ornithology #ecoevo

The role of viability selection in shaping short‐ and long‐term consequences of early‐life conditions: An experiment in the Alpine swift

In an experimental brood-size manipulation in Alpine swifts, smaller nestlings were selectively lost during growth, eliminating treatment differences in adult size, yet individuals from enlarged broo...

doi.org

Powered flight has fundamentally shaped diverse aspects of #birds. This study reveals a robust connection between #flight, #metabolism & #EvolutionaryRates, suggesting that this influence extends to the tempo of #genome #evolution @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/454ay8c

Congrats first author Kyu Min Huh on our paper out in @royalsocietypublishing.org Journal of the RS Interface. Titled "Natural take-off flight performance is repeatable and scalable in mixed flock tit species". Link: doi.org/10.1098/rsif...

Do social bird species have more stable demographic histories? We do not find this to be the case in our new preprint doi.org/10.32942/X2N... Together with @ryangermain.bsky.social and many others

Excited to share our new paper in @science.org on Andean leaf-eared mice, the world’s highest-dwelling mammal. It’s a fun and exciting project to be part of with a great team of collaborators!

Adaptation across an extreme elevational gradient in Andean leaf-eared mice, the world’s highest-dwelling mammal

Andean leaf-eared mice (Phyllotis vaccarum) live at the highest elevations of any mammal, and they also have the broadest elevational range, from sea level to mountain summits of >6700 meters. Highlan...

science.org

Our new commentary rdcu.be/ftx6h in @natecoevo.nature.com written with folks from @inaturalist.bsky.social and @cornellbirds.bsky.social shows that use of AI to manipulate existing or create new wildlife images undermines the huge value of vast citizen science databases. 🌍🪰🪶 #Ornithology 🧵 1/10

Citizen science platforms must mitigate against the threat of generative AI

Nature Ecology & Evolution - Citizen science platforms must mitigate against the threat of generative AI

rdcu.be

📢 happy to share our new paper in @molecology.bsky.social Common chiffchaff subspecies diverge in the same migration-related region as willow warblers (see thread): onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Common Chiffchaffs (<fi>Phylloscopus collybita</fi>) Diverge in a Genomic Region Associated With Migration Differences in Willow Warblers (<fi>Phylloscopus trochilus</fi>)

Despite technological advances in both tracking and sequencing technologies, finding the genetic mechanisms behind migratory traits remains a challenge. Recent studies have shown that migratory direc...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

🐦🌙 Happy to see this big collaborative paper out in @currentbiology.bsky.social! We address a seemingly simple question using geolocator data collected across many species and individuals: how much of bird migration actually happens at night? www.cell.com/current-biol... A short🧵

🐦️ Passerine birds in temperate Europe can fill a role as pollinators, and this may be most functional when the availability of insects, as both pollinators and food, is least reliable 👉️ buff.ly/bIrvaGY

Interested in a postdoc position? Olfaction in poison frog tadpoles! Based in Germany with some field work in Costa Rica (bilateral funding, 3 years). Please share with your froggie and neuro/behavior contacts 🐸 www.uni-giessen.de/de/ueber-uns...