Tom Ratz

@tomratz.bsky.social

Evolutionary biologist | Independent Group Leader & SNSF Fellow at University of Zurich | Evolution, plasticity, & social interactions 🪰🐞🦗 🕷 ⍦ tomratz.weebly.com

Males that experience more aggressive encounters achieve greater reproductive success in the highly territorial fly Drosophila prolongata. Congratulations to Gayatri Raina on presenting these exciting findings in her first talk an international conference (and in a huge auditorium!). #ISBE2026

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Tadpole backpacks? Not onlu this season's *hottest* fashion accessory, but Eva Ringler shows this is also a great system for studying the behavioral decisions involved in parental care! Day 2 of ISBE begins!

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🌡️ Excited to share my talk today at Global Change! 🗣️ “When Heat Stress Matters Most” I’ll discuss how stress affects life stages of insect 🐞 and why identifying vulnerable periods to climate change is important. 📅 01/07/2026 🕥 10:30–12:30 📍 Area Descartes — talk at 12:00 #ECE2026Tours

🌡️ Excited to share my talk today at GLOBAL CHANGE: Thermal ecology and climate change 3!

🗣️ “When Heat Stress Matters Most: Identifying Critical Windows of Thermal Vulnerability”
I’ll discuss how thermal stress impacts organisms across life stages and why identifying vulnerable windows is key to understanding responses to climate change.

📅 01/07/2026
🕥 10:30–12:30
📍 Area Descartes — talk at 12:00

Our article on Peer Community In and its journal Peer Community Journal is out!!🎉 I am so proud to have been part of it 😊Dive in to learn all about this alternative publishing model: doi.org/10.1629/uksg... @peercommunityin.bsky.social @peercomjournal.bsky.social

Peer Community In and Peer Community Journal: a two-step diamond OA process giving research communities back control of publishing | Insights

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UKSG@uksg.bsky.social · 2mo ago

The latest from #UKSGInsights "Peer Community In and Peer Community Journal: a two-step diamond OA process giving research communities back control of publishing" by Barbara Class, Denis Bourquet and Thomas Guillemaud dub.sh/cfTzIZS @barbaraclass.bsky.social @tguillemaud.bsky.social

The current academic publishing system faces many well-identified issues. Not only is it slow and costly, but it is also an opaque system that produces a substantial amount of non-reproducible results. Peer Community In (PCI) is a non-profit organization that allows research communities to organize the open and free peer review of preprints on different thematic platforms. The authors of preprints that are recommended by these platforms can then choose to submit them to any journal or to Peer Community Journal (PCJ), a diamond open access journal, which publishes any and only PCI-recommended preprints. Because PCI follows the highest standards for evaluations and openness, many institutions and journals publicly recognize PCI-recommended preprints as being of similar value to accepted journal articles. This two-step process hence decouples the evaluation of research articles from their publication, while offering a free open access publication venue for its recommended preprints. Doing so allows researchers to reappropriate the publishing system, and the increasing number of submissions, publications and communities shows a growing demand for such alternative publishing models. Ongoing developments aim to further increase the robustness and reproducibility of published research via increasing requirements and checks at submission and promoting the use of registered reports.

Our paper about how resource variability shapes the ecology of social information is out in this issue of TREE! This eco-evolutionary lens helps explain why collective sensing has evolved across such a wide range of lifeforms, from microbes to blue whales. www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

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Trends in Ecology & Evolution@cp-trendsecolevo.bsky.social · 3mo ago

May issue of TREE out online now! www.cell.com/ecology-evol... Cover article from Eamonn Wooster et al. Featured articles from Kou et al, Morente et al and Noble et al Articles from Chan et al, Chen & Siemann, Lee et al, Oestreich et al, Perrier et al.

Applications now open for the UNIL Summer School on Modelling for Evolutionary Biology (31 Aug–5 Sep 2026, Lausanne)! For PhD & postdocs interested in formal approaches to evolutionary ecology (incl. social evo, life-history, species interactions). Scholarships available, Pls RP! shorturl.at/fo1GA

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🌺 PhD position in Theoretical Evolutionary Biology! 🌺 There is about two weeks left to apply to come work with me on the evolution of plant reproductive strategies at @unifr.bsky.social ! Contact me or visit here or for more info: tinyurl.com/monoecy Please share! 🌱

A view of the city of Fribourg, Switzerland
Thomas Lesaffre 🌱@thomaslesaffre.bsky.social · 5mo ago

🚨 PhD position available ! 🚨 I am hiring a PhD student to work with me on the evolution of plant sexual systems 🌺 at @unifrbiology.bsky.social ! The position is funded for 4 years by @snsf.ch as part of my Ambizione fellowship. More info here: tinyurl.com/monoecy 🌱 Please RP and share widely ! 🌱

View of the old city of Fribourg from the "Pont du Milieu". 
© Ville de Fribourg

🌱 Nous ouvrons une thèse (financée) sur l’utilisation du perce-oreille européen comme agent de lutte biologique dans les vergers de pommes et poires du Centre-Val de Loire. 📌 Candidature avant le 11 mai 2026 via le portail emploi CNRS uniquement . Plus d’infos via le QR code ci-dessous.

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