Valentin Kiss

Why a tool-using cow could change how we see farm animals A pet cow has learned to scratch herself with a broom, showing creative problem-solving skills that make it harder to ignore the fact that these animals have minds, says Marta Halina

Love this new evidence of the cognitive sophistication of cows and hope that it might make a few people rethink whether they want meat on their plates
www.newscientist.com/article/2511...

We are looking for a new lab administrator (0.5 FTE) - come and join in pushing forward our research and impact in infectious disease! www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...

The effect of a temperature‐sensitive prophage on the evolution of virulence in an opportunistic bacterial pathogen Viruses are key actors of ecosystems and have major impacts on global biogeochemical cycles. Prophages deserve particular attention as they are ubiquitous in bacterial genomes and can enter a lytic cycle when triggered by environmental conditions. ...

Might be worth checking out some of the data on prophage induction and temperature? pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC... or journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

the device:

Thank you!

Friendship is magic: male dolphins with close friends age more slowly Like friendship itself, the slower ageing is more than just skin deep.

Friendship is magic: male dolphins with close friends age more slowly
theconversation.com/friendship-i...

Keynote nominations are now open for the BOU 2027 Spring Conference on Avian Disease Ecology!

Submit via the conference webpage: bou.org.uk/event/avian-...

Also thrilled to announce that Prof. Dana Hawley (@danahawley.bsky.social) will deliver the Alfred Newton Lecture.

Please share!

Thanks Will! Congratulations on your recent rock dove paper as well! It was a really nice read :)

The highlights of the paper 2/2

🩸Blood based screening inflates reported prevalence rates of Chlamydia psittaci in feral pigeons.
🦠Urban disease surveillance should report site-level data, not only one citywide value.

The highlights of the paper 1/2

🏙️ Fine-scale spatial heterogeneity of Chlamydia psittaci prevalence in feral pigeons within Antwerp city.
🔍Variation within Antwerp comparable with differences among cities worldwide.
🔬At least 12 unique sampling sites are needed for reliable city-level prevalence.

377 #pigeons sampled later, I’m happy to share that the first paper from my PhD is published in One Health Journal

It’s about monitoring #disease in the #urban #landscape and why a one number city-level #prevalence report can be misleading

You can read the full PDF here: doi.org/10.1016/j.on...

🚨 New Research Alert!
Urban air pollution harms wildlife too. A study in Journal of Hazardous Materials shows yellow-legged gull chicks in Barcelona act as sentinels for air quality. 🐦🌆

🔗 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2025.140518
#OneHealth

@icmcsic.bsky.social 
@jnavarro.bsky.social

Bird Flu Wiped Out Nearly Half of the Females in the World’s Largest Elephant Seal Population, Drone Images Suggest Scientists recorded a 47 percent drop in breeding females in South Georgia’s three largest elephant seal colonies after bird flu hit. Scaled to the whole island, that’s a potential loss of more than 5...

Half the southern elephant seals on South Georgia Island, one of the major populations, were wiped out by bird flu in the past two years:
www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/b...

EastBio: A host-directed approach to identify novel therapeutic targets of infectious reproductive diseases at Moredun Research Institute on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - EastBio: A host-directed approach to identify novel therapeutic targets of infectious reproductive diseases at Moredun Research Institute, listed on FindAPhD.com

🎓 Funded #PhD studentships in pathogen biology and parasitology

*Cell and Molecular Biology*; *Host-pathogen interactions*

Part of the EastBio Doctoral Landscape Award

Based in the Edinburgh area of Scotland

PhD 1:
bit.ly/Host-pathoge...

PhD 2:
bit.ly/Parasite-sca...

@uoe-eid.bsky.social

Now out in @natcomms.nature.com Kudos to @tylim.bsky.social and @jameshay.bsky.social for a huge effort and thanks to all the collaborators for their hard work. See the final version here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hei Marius! Thanks! Yes, the paper is under review at the moment but the preprint is online. You can check it out here: spkl.io/6188Ab4M8

This week I had the opportunity to present some results from my #PhD project at the #NVG conference. I shared our work on #Chlamydia psittaci prevalence in feral #pigeons within a #OneHealth framework, highlighting why fine-scale reporting is essential when monitoring #disease dynamics in cities. 🏙️

Fig. 1 from the article: A representation of the state of research on the impacts of sleep disturbance on birds. The size of the arrows represents the relative abundance of studies between the connected concepts. Blue arrows indicate that data are available, with thicker arrows indicating a greater amount of data. The grey dotted line represents a relative lack of empirical data.

NEW PAPER: how does urban noise, lights, and stress disrupt birds’ sleep? This review shows that our knowledge about this is fragmeneted and calls for direct tests linking disturbed sleep to bird behavior, fitness, and survival.

➡️ vist.ly/4e7dj

#ornithology #birds #urbanecology 🪶

A different type of office 🐦🦠🏙️

#PhD #pigeons #fieldwork #urbanecology #sampling #diseases

What makes PhD students happy? Good supervision Supervisors who invest in positive mentoring relationships with their PhD candidates also reap the benefits for their own research.

What makes PhD students happy? Good supervision www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Pretty sure

Delighted to see Hannah’s penultimate PhD paper come out today www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Strong evidence against the ‘warmer, sicker world’ hypothesis. Parasites 🪱🦠 and their hosts are just very variable! Another great collaboration with @juliakoricheva.bsky.social @rhulbiology.bsky.social

Left: A wild rock dove perched in a ruined building, Right: A feral pigeon captured in hand.

Comparing the feral city pigeon with its wild form, Early Career Fellow @willjsmith.bsky.social endeavors to reveal whether feral species are experiencing reverse-domestication or proceeding down a new evolutionary trajectory.
media.leverhulme.ac.uk/feature/wsmith @uniofnottingham.bsky.social

When looking #wildlife disease data from cities, we must ask: which human attitudes, #policies, and behaviours have created the ecological conditions we are measuring?

These dynamics mean that #zoonotic risk is not a fixed property of urban dwellings animals. It emerges from feedback between human perceptions, management, and animal #behaviour. Urban disease ecology is therefore inseparable from the (human) #social context in which the animals live.

People’s attitudes translate into action. Feeding increases flock density and contact rates, facilitating disease #transmission. Repealing procedures (noise machines, spikes, and culling) increase stress levels, which may in turn impact immune function and disease shedding.

Mumbai: Pigeon feeding ban sparks debate in India - BBC News Feeding pigeons is common in Indian cities but is now controversial due to rising numbers and health risks.

Perceptions of #pigeons are not trivial. How we see them (either as companions or gross rats with wings) shapes the behaviour and #management policies that structure pigeon populations and the #pathogens they carry.

Shoutout to the pigeon team and many thanks to @fwovlaanderen.bsky.social for the travel grant,
@bangoruniversity.bsky.social for covering the conference fee & the chance to volunteer,
and @uantwerpen.be for funding my PhD project.

Cities aren’t uniform. Neither is disease. 🦠🏙️
Psittacosis in #urban feral #pigeons shows fine-scale heterogeneity, even a few kilometres can make a big difference. City averages risk hiding the true #hotspots without dense spatial sampling

#DiseaseEcology #UrbanEcology #EOU25

One of my undergrad papers on coot eggs was referred to in a talk on blue tit eggs changing shape over time at #EOU2025, during the #BOU
Woodland Birds pre-congress meeting

Cool to see it resurface
doi:10.24193/subbbiol.2021.1.04