We have funding for SWARM-E, a long-term group at @zif-bielefeld.bsky.social! I'll be leading with co-leads @marinapapa.bsky.social @joefresna.bsky.social to better understand collective behaviour across biological and artificial systems. First workshop 2027... www.shoalgroup.org/swarm More soon!

Super interesting paper - interesting impacts for how we view animal social structures

Ming Liu@mingpapilio.bsky.social · 2mo ago

New paper is out! Disease is often seen as a cost of social life. But can it also shape how complex societies evolve? Here, we use mathematical models to study social immunity: collective disease defence in ants, termites, bees and other group-living insects. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

There are four positions to join ASAB council beginning 2027: Ordinary Member, Membership Secretary, Communications Officer and Social Media Officer. Statements and nominations are due June 20! www.asab.org/opportunities

Opportunities — ASAB

asab.org

I chat about animal group decision-making with Emily Knight and Becky Ripley's awesome "Naturebang" programme which is out tomorrow at 13.45, on BBC Radio 4, but you can listen here: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Naturebang - African Wild Dogs and Democracy - BBC Sounds

Can we take notes on democracy from a pack of sneezing wild dogs?

bbc.co.uk

Get in touch if you want to develop a proposal around topics me (www.SHOALgroup.org) or colleagues (www.swansea.ac.uk/staff/scienc...) work on in Swansea. I really enjoy supporting ECR applications!

European Commission@ec.europa.eu · 4mo ago

Big opportunities for researchers 🌍 We are investing nearly €400 million to help researchers share their work and collaborate with the best scientific teams across the EU. The 2026 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowships are now open. More: link.europa.eu/PNxpxw

We've got ISSUES. Literally. We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do? arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563 A 🧵 1/n

Our paper is published today in Current Biology and is featured on the cover! We report a neat, and somewhat counter-intuitive, finding: higher-ranking baboons get less and more interrupted night-time rest.

Are you a UK national/resident and identify as Black, Asian, or a minoritised ethnic community? You can apply for a PhD with me and colleagues at Swansea as part of our NERC CROCUS doctoral training programme... and we develop the topic together. Please get in touch if eligible and interested!

We should also thank the ASAB council for making these meetings happen each year! It’s incredible that #ASABWinter2025 is free of charge for participants 😍

ASAB Spring 2026@asab-meetings.bsky.social · 8mo ago

This has been a wonderful conference, a huge thank you to all of the volunteers and especially the organizers of #ASABWinter2025 : Jolyon Troscianko, Innes Cuthill and Laura Kelley 👏🏻

Our newest research in @currentbiology.bsky.social: www.cell.com/current-biol... We find dominant baboons have more interrupted and less rest at night. Author list and story in comments below :-)

More evidence of the benefits of lottery elements in funding.

Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 8mo ago

'The new procedure required applicants to submit only an expression of interest...before 500 were selected, via lottery, to submit a full proposal for peer review....the number of female applicants increased 10 per cent, while the number of funded projects by women rose by 23 per cent.' 2/2

Hey @britishecologicalsociety.org and @asab.org we will all be in Edinburgh at the same time for our Winter conferences. Def have to have an evening meet-up!!!

Are you a UK national/resident and identify as Black, Asian, or a minoritised ethnic community? You can apply for a PhD with me and colleagues at Swansea as part of our NERC CROCUS doctoral training programme... and we develop the topic together. Please get in touch if eligible and interested!

Whooop! New paper online! "A Systems Perspective: How Social–Ecological Networks Can Improve Our Understanding and Management of Biological Invasions" Phenomenal effort by Fiona Rickowski to pull this all together, wrangling a large co-author/bag-of-cats team into shape! doi.org/10.1093/bios...

A Systems Perspective: How Social–Ecological Networks Can Improve Our Understanding and Management of Biological Invasions

Abstract. Reversing biodiversity loss and the sustainability crisis requires approaches that explicitly consider human–nature interdependencies. Social–eco

doi.org

Excited to be in Cardiff for the #PSGB winter conference where I’ll be presenting a poster on one of my PhD chapters! 🦍🦧

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

Awesome PhD opportunity, deadline in one week! Please re-post.

Ines Fürtbauer@inesfuertbauer.bsky.social · 9mo ago

PhD studentship on antimicrobial resistance in wild baboons! Fully-funded by @swbiodtp.bsky.social Application deadline: Wed 3 Dec 2025. More details: bpb-eu-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.bristo.... Apply here: www.swbio.ac.uk/programme/ho... @inesfuertbauer.bsky.social @xavh.bsky.social

PhD opportunity: MOVE Details: blogs.reading.ac.uk/crocus-dla/c... Deadline: 12/01/26 Supervisors: @shoalgroup.bsky.social, @inesfuertbauer.bsky.social, @wlallen.bsky.social, @nhcooper123.bsky.social, @marinapapa.bsky.social Apply: blogs.reading.ac.uk/crocus-dla/p...

PhD studentship on antimicrobial resistance in wild baboons! Fully-funded by @swbiodtp.bsky.social Application deadline: Wed 3 Dec 2025. More details: bpb-eu-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.bristo.... Apply here: www.swbio.ac.uk/programme/ho... @inesfuertbauer.bsky.social @xavh.bsky.social

Registration is open, and the programme is shaping up!

Andrew King@shoalgroup.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Primate Society of Great Britain (PSGB) Meeting National Museum Cardiff, 27-28 November www.psgb.org/pages/14-mee... Registration and abstract submission coming soon! Please share! @mckinneymonkey.bsky.social @inesfuertbauer.bsky.social @willallennz.bsky.social @primatesocietygb.bsky.social

🤦

Hetan Shah@hetanshah.bsky.social · 10mo ago

The costs of the UK’s Global Talent Visa looks a trifle high in comparison to competitor countries - largely through the Immigration Health Surcharge (which critics say is a form of double taxation as they contribute to the NHS through normal tax on their earnings)

Which processes underlie collective intelligence in naturalistic human groups? In new work led by Valerii Chirkov, we show that payoff selectivity is key in transforming a group of individuals into an intelligent collective 🤝🧠 www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY7n... Preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...

First-Person Perspective of the Voluntary Payoff-Sharing (VP) Condition

YouTube video by Valerii Chirkov

youtube.com

⭐PhD position available!⭐ Come join us @imprs-qbee.bsky.social to study communication and collective behavior in animal groups! We're looking for someone excited to use computational approaches to tackle biological questions, using our full-group tracking datasets imprs-qbee.mpg.de/121465/analy...

Analysis of communication and collective behavior in animal groups

imprs-qbee.mpg.de

MSc internship / Field Assistant position available in our group! Impact of urbanisation on avian reproduction 🐦🏙️ 🌳 Deadline: 7 Nov 2025 All details 👉 www.uni-bielefeld.de/fakultaeten/... Please share it around!

📢🦋 Our paper ‘Global selection on insect antipredator coloration’ is out and featured on the cover of @science.org We ran a huge experiment to find out how ecological context favours camouflage and warning colouration as antipredator strategies. 1/6 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Abstract submissions now open too. Registration details won't be long! www.psgb.org/pages/14-mee...

Andrew King@shoalgroup.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Primate Society of Great Britain (PSGB) Meeting National Museum Cardiff, 27-28 November www.psgb.org/pages/14-mee... Registration and abstract submission coming soon! Please share! @mckinneymonkey.bsky.social @inesfuertbauer.bsky.social @willallennz.bsky.social @primatesocietygb.bsky.social

Wahoo, Cécile!!! Can't wait for all the exciting science in the coming years👍

Cécile Sarabian@csarabian.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Time to say I moved to the UK! New chapter at @swanseauni.bsky.social as a @ukri.org / Marie Curie Research Fellow @horizoneu.bsky.social. Will be working w/ @shoalgroup.bsky.social & @inesfuertbauer.bsky.social on baboon adaptations to disease and predation. Stay tuned!

Primate Society of Great Britain (PSGB) Meeting National Museum Cardiff, 27-28 November www.psgb.org/pages/14-mee... Registration and abstract submission coming soon! Please share! @mckinneymonkey.bsky.social @inesfuertbauer.bsky.social @willallennz.bsky.social @primatesocietygb.bsky.social

🧠 What?! A meeting just on disgust?! Yes!! 📍 @iast.fr, France | 🗓 Dec 4–5, 2025 💥 Keynotes by Paul Rozin @upenn.edu, @cr-amo.bsky.social, Philip Powell @sheffielduni.bsky.social & Cindy Kam 🌍 From Psychology to Politics, Biology & beyond 🎓 Abstract submissions until Aug 31: forms.gle/QBmkUB3aLDjY...