Work with us! Join the team in Bristol studying the functional morphology of trilobite eyes 👀 ✍️ 30 months, @hfspo.bsky.social-funded, start by early 2027 🫵 looking for someone interested in developing new methods to analyse eyes in 3D and simulate vision 📆 Deadline 27. Aug ☎️ @laurensr.bsky.social

Lauren Sumner-Rooney@laurensr.bsky.social · last wk.

📢 JOB ALERT! 📢 I am recruiting a 30-month postdoc to work on modelling the vision of trilobites @hfspo.bsky.social ! If you like 3D data, fossils, and functional morphology, this is the one for you! 📆Deadline 27. Aug Pls contact me with any Qs and share widely! www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...

Incredibly honoured (and nervous) to have been awarded the Young Investigator Award from @neuroethology.org at this year's ICN in Vancouver - thank you so much to Daniel Robert and @laurensr.bsky.social for supporting my application, the society for the award and grant, and the lovely audience! 🥳

🚨🦋 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.

@science.org and @retractionwatch.com partner on a feature today on a clinical trial death that's the saddest, and longest, science story I've edited. But it's also one of the best IMO. Beautifully written and reported by @bborrell.bsky.social We’re grateful to the parents of "Mei" 1/

Having my photograph on the cover of Current Biology is definitely a bucket list item ticked off ✅🙏 all thanks to @atal-pande.bsky.social @multipleye-lab.bsky.social and their super cool study that I was lucky enough to make a small contribution to

Current Biology@currentbiology.bsky.social · 2w ago

Arachnophobes, avert your eyes! NEW issue just dropped🕷️👇 www.cell.com/current-biol... As usual, casting a wide net, across all of biology!🧬 🕸️

🌟CONGRATULATIONS🌟 #HarrySuter on his first #PhD publication out now in @royalsociety.org #ProceedingsB 📑Optimal foraging #modelling to better understand #self-control in non-human animals @bristoluni.bsky.social @bristolbiosci.bsky.social #cognition #ECRs #evolution doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

Self-control: changing our perspective on performance

Abstract. To measure self-control in non-human animals, subjects are typically tested on how long they will wait for a larger–later food reward instead of

doi.org

Our postdoc @roald-arboel.com made a thing! #Croppy is #free and awesome for fast and effective #video #editing and it has a #GUI! Need to crop a part of a video? Need to trim a video? Need to combine videos? Need to compress a video? roald-arboel.com/croppy/

The group's *first* PhD student @atal-pande.bsky.social has published his *first* chapter - time to celebrate spiders and their forward-facing eyes everywhere 🥹 Congratulations Atal, other stellar group members @lucillejmrose.bsky.social and @samjakeengland.bsky.social, and all our co-authors 💛

Atal Pande@atal-pande.bsky.social · last mo.

Really excited to share that my first PhD chapter is now out in @currentbiology.bsky.social! 🕷️👀 We show that visually hunting spiders have repeatedly evolved forward-facing eyes, highlighting the remarkable evolutionary flexibility of their modular visual system. doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...

Really excited to share that my first PhD chapter is now out in @currentbiology.bsky.social! 🕷️👀 We show that visually hunting spiders have repeatedly evolved forward-facing eyes, highlighting the remarkable evolutionary flexibility of their modular visual system. doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...

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

It was a pleasure to talk about the wonderful world of underwater sound and freshwater soundscapes with @helenczerski.bsky.social, @profstevesimpson.bsky.social and others via BBC Radio 4's Rare Earth. www.bbc.com/audio/play/m...

BBC Audio | Rare Earth | The Sound of Water

How new technology lets us listen in to the extraordinary sounds of the planet's waterways

bbc.com

Really chuffed for @atal-pande.bsky.social , and to have played a small part in this really cool deep dive into the evolution of eyes in spiders 👀🕷️

Lauren Sumner-Rooney@laurensr.bsky.social · last mo.

Beyond proud of @atal-pande.bsky.social, whose first PhD chapter is out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social! Atal shows that spiders that use their vision to hunt have convergently evolved similar eye arrangements, which imply lots of resampling of frontal space www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Very excited to share our discovery of an engineering masterpiece from the Australian rainforest! In our latest paper in @currentbiology.bsky.social we report a hunting strategy in a spider, whose web outperforms every known biological catapult system.

Very excited to finally have this out in the world! The first paper from my PhD (and my first first-author publication) makes the case for a new entrant to the world of long-lived animal models: Heliconius butterflies. Out now in @natcomms.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41... (1/10)

Evolution of increased longevity and slowed ageing in a genus of tropical butterfly - Nature Communications

Studying long-lived species across the animal kingdom could provide insights into healthy ageing in humans. This study reveals long lifespans and slowed ageing in Heliconius butterflies, identifying t...

nature.com

🧵 New paper! We’re excited to release OPTICS: software that immediately predicts color sensitivity from any opsin protein sequence. In other words: give OPTICS any opsin sequence, and it predicts the wavelength of light the pigment is most sensitive to 🌈👁️ academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-...

Accessible and Robust Machine Learning Approaches to Improve the Opsin Genotype-Phenotype Map

Abstract. Predicting phenotypes from genetic variation is a central challenge in biology. Here, machine learning (ML) offers great promise, but its use is

academic.oup.com

New paper in @pnas.org - using playback experiments we provide further evidence that bottlenose dolphins can use individual identity signals + social memory to guide decision-making. Female dolphins use individual vocal labels to track coercive males | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Almost synchronously with our new @cp-trendsecolevo.bsky.social paper on “Levelling: behaviours that constrain inequality in animal societies”, I'm also excited to advertise the first PhD student position in my Emmy Noether project @humboldtuni.bsky.social

Leaf-mimicking katydids don’t just use their funky camouflage to survive, they’re using it to find love too! 🥰🍃💘 New paper out now in #ProcB @royalsocietypublishing.org (Photo cred: Christian Ziegler): doi.org/10.1098/rspb... 1/n

New article: We studied how volumes of different brain regions vary between workers, males & alate females in 2 species of Australian ants. First paper from Saroja Ellendula's PhD thesis! Article is available here: bit.ly/4fVwCIN @neuroethology.org @austentsoc.bsky.social @animbehav.bsky.social

📄New Paper!📄 Multimodal courtship in Nursery web spiders involves a nuptial gift AND vibrations. Do males adjust their investment in the vibratory signal based on how nice their nuptial gift is? Out now in @behavecol.bsky.social academic.oup.com/beheco/artic...

In a #NewPaper we could show how valuable single #BioBlitz events like the City Nature Challenge can be for biodiversity monitoring! #CommunityScience #Berlin Find the paper here: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Out today in @royalsocietypublishing.org - we show that crab spiders (the ones you usually see ambushing pollinators on flowers 🕷️🌸) get worse at hunting if their eyes are covered!🫣 Sounds obvious? It's actually quite surprising, here's why... 👀 (1/8) royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article...

Pollinators matter for human health!🐝 Our new @nature.com paper traces links from wild pollinators>crops>nutrient intake & income of families in rural Nepal—showing how pollinator declines threaten health & livelihoods, but also how farmers can help manage these risks doi.org/10.1038/s415...

📢 New pre-print alert! Most spiders have eight eyes, but not all - PhD researcher Antonio Galán Sánchez and Dr Andres Rivera Quiroz @naturalis.bsky.social led an exciting new analysis of the evolution of eye number and losses in spiders on a truly incredible scale! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I am hiring a PhD student to join our group in Lund, Sweden working on an ERC-funded project to untangle color and polarization vision in some amazing crustaceans – minute water fleas and pugnacious mantis shrimp! Please forward this to promising students. Apply here: lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

zoologie.uni-greifswald.de/en/organizat... We have an open PhD position in my group for someone interested in functional morphology, biology of reproduction and evolutionary biology. Please spread the word!🧪🕷🧪🕷🧪🕷🧪

I am hiring a postdoc for scRNA-seq research in Lund, Sweden on the visual systems of non-model inverts as part of an ERC project on the evolution and ecology of advanced color and polarization vision. Apply here or share the link with someone who may be interested! 🧪 lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

Using an online game with human 'predators' we test if toxic butterflies are more conspicuous: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Are Toxic Butterflies More Easily Detected by Human ‘Predators’?

Aposematic signals are often thought to be conspicuous and stable across environments. Yet, butterflies can have distinct colours on their dorsal and ventral sides which contradict this prediction. W...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Any Bristol folks keen to learn more about the spiders we share our city with, or with curious little ones, please come along to the Bristol Spider Group's spider hunt later this month 🕷️🤸‍♂️🕸️ @britishspiders.bsky.social

GREAT PhD opportunity at La Trobe University in Melbourne: domestic Australian student only. Deep-red vision and infrared sensing in jewel beetles. Field and lab studies, inc. electorphys, microscopy, behavioural assays. Team led by Dr Amanda Franklin. PM me for more info!

📢Fully-funded #PhD opportunity with us ❓Quantifying animal #movement patterns & behavioural #interactions in a changing world 👥Joint position in @bristolbiosci.bsky.social & #MacquarieUniversity 📆19th April deadline tinyurl.com/343acaev #maths #modelling #data #fieldwork #Australia 🙏PLEASE SHARE