Gilles De Meester

The Behaviour and Evolution Lab at @creaf.cat is now on Bluesky. Follow us for updates on research on how animals (🦎🐍🦜) respond and adapt to rapid human-induced changes

Our lab has now a Bluesky! Follow for awesome science on how animals deal with a rapidly changing world 🦎

Amazing topic in the lab of an equally amazing PI 🦎🦎

Individual recognition in guppies does not require large brains - Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology Abstract It is often assumed that group-living animals require larger brains in order to deal with the various social challenges they encounter. One such key challenge is the need to recognize and dis...

New🐟🧠 paper! To better understand what aspects of group-living are cognitively demanding, we tested whether individual recognition depends on relative brain size in guppies. Spoilers: guppies recognized and preferred familiar fish, regardless of brain size!
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

a kitten with the words join us on its face ALT: a kitten with the words join us on its face

We have an open PhD student position in evolutionary ecology in our lab @creaf.cat in Barcelona! 🦎 🌳 🦆 🐍

Applications open until Nov. 10th, 2025. Please help us spread the word!

Link to position description and requirements:
creaf.factorialhr.com/job_posting/...

Lab website:
oriollapiedralab.com

We studied lizards from 12 Croatian islands and found substantial variation in their chemical signal profiles. Ecological factors didn’t explain it. Instead, divergence was best explained by non-adaptive processes 🦎🏝️ @oikosjournal.bsky.social nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Call for Submissions for the Frans de Waal PhD Dissertation prize 2026

📣 Honouring Frans de Waal’s spirit of curiosity & empathy 🧠🐒
The Frans de Waal PhD Dissertation Prize 2026 is now open for submissions. Celebrating #Primatology, #Ethology & the evolution of social behaviour.
🏆 Announced at #CBEN2026 (Leiden, Apr 14)
⏰ Apply by Jan 15, 2026!
@ehbea2026.bsky.social

Love seeing those pretty erhardii's!

Three common wall lizards basking next to each other on a stone wall in an urban habitat in Croatia.

📢 City lizards are more social !
Thrilled to share the first paper from my PhD, out now in #BiologyLetters @royalsocietypublishing.org !

We show that urban lizards are more social than their non-urban counterparts 🦎🏙️🌳🧪

doi.org/10.1098/rsbl...

@behavecobie.bsky.social

Interested in doing your PhD in Spain on 🧠 ? Contact me to discuss projects and apply for this position! www.icp.cat/index.php/en...

ECR Spotlight – Gilles De Meester ECR Spotlight is a series of interviews with early-career authors from a selection of papers published in Journal of Experimental Biology and aims to promote not only the diversity of early-career res...

Also, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by JEB in their ECR Spotlight series, where I talk more about research, fish, biology, and the joy of designing animal cognition experiments. journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

Evolutionary changes in telencephalon size affect both egocentric and allocentric spatial learning in guppies Summary: An artificial selection experiment on guppies shows that enlargement of the telencephalon, relative to the rest of the brain, enhances performance in two distinct spatial learning strategies.

First 🐟 paper published with @annikaboussard.bsky.social ! Guppies artificially selected for a larger telencephalon, relative the the rest of the brain, perform better in both an allo- and egocentric spatial learning task. doi.org/10.1242/jeb....

Urbanization enhances biodiversity loss. Yet sometimes cities may *paradoxically* shelter species threatened by other components of global change

We studied if urban areas are sheltering an endangered iconic lizard 🦎 from a rapidly spreading predator 🐍 in Ibiza👇

📸G. Casbas

doi.org/10.1016/j.ge...

On the flick of the tongue: male island and mainland lizards' responses to self and conspecific chemical stimuli We compared the chemosensory recognition abilities of mainland and island Italian wall lizards (Podarcis siculus). Both populations discriminated between self and conspecific scents, but island lizar...

Another PhD chapter published for Ioanna Gavriilidi @uafunmorph.bsky.social, now in @jzoology.bsky.social! She finds that island-dwelling lizards tend to rely less on chemosensory cues compared to their mainland counterparts. zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

First time catching lizards in 3 years. Still got it 😅

I confess, the Spanish blackout was caused by a bunch of field biologists trying to build some heating for lizards