Como siempre, es un placer volver a las aulas de Oviedo. Gracias @gorizaola.bsky.social por la oportunidad de charlar con los alumnos de biología evolutiva 🧬🐦
10.03.2026 17:38
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Como siempre, es un placer volver a las aulas de Oviedo. Gracias @gorizaola.bsky.social por la oportunidad de charlar con los alumnos de biología evolutiva 🧬🐦
This week's EGI seminar will be given by Prof Hanna Kokko @kokkonut.bsky.social from Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz @unimainz.bsky.social on the role of time in avian trade-offs. All welcome in person in LT1 in LaMB @biology.ox.ac.uk 3.30pm on 6 March. Also live-streamed: details available ⬇️
seminar announcement with photos of speakers and talk titles
The integration of speciation seminar series is restarting, with the first session coming up on *Tuesday March 3rd @ 5pm CET*, featuring two talks by @naturalselection.bsky.social and @andreaestandia.bsky.social + career Q&A with @markravinet.bsky.social as part of the ECR in Speciation theme.
🚨JOB alert🚨
We have three (yes, THREE) 🌟lectureships🌟 advertised in the School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol.
Broad remit, including #AnimalBehaviour & #GlobalChangeBiology
⏱️Deadline: 8th March 2026
🙏Please circulate widely
😊Come join us!
Full #job details: tinyurl.com/y3us95rc
This week's seminar will be given by Dr Paul Acker from NTNU, Norway on "Processes of life-history adaptation to spatio-seasonal environmental changes" - seminar at 3.30 on Friday in Life & Mind Building @biology.ox.ac.uk All welcome & will also be streamed - see details below
In contrast, directly transmitted parasites and those needing intermediate hosts declined sharply with increasing isolation. Take-home: parasite life history and transmission strategy are key to understanding their distributions 🌍🦠
Overall, parasite richness was higher on mainland Australia and declined with island distance but transmission strategy mattered. Parasites spread by flying insect vectors 🦟 were less common on islands 🏝️, yet isolation distance had little extra effect.
Parasites are everywhere, but getting to new places depends on how they’re transmitted. Using WGS data, we detected parasites from the blood of silvereyes (Zosterops lateralis) sampled across 25 Pacific islands 🏝️+ mainland Australia 🌏
New preprint! 🐥🦠🏝️
We study a great speciator, the silvereye, to test whether parasites follow island biogeography rules, and find that parasite diversity and isolation effects depend strongly on transmission strategy.
Led by PhD student Sarah Nichols.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
New review!
Theory & a practical guide to structural variants in popgen🧬
Many thanks to my co-authors: @rebekahoomen.bsky.social
@annatigano.bsky.social @marenwellenreuther.bsky.social @janawold.bsky.social @dlfield.bsky.social @clairemerot.bsky.social
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
This week's EGI seminar will be given by Prof Jon Slate @jon-slate.bsky.social of @sheffielduni.bsky.social at 3.30 on Fri 30 Jan in LT1 in LaMB @biology.ox.ac.uk. OK, it's not quite birds, but our colleagues' work on @soaysheep.bsky.social has much in common with what we do. All welcome: details ⬇️
We are seeking to appoint four full-time field assistants to work on the Wytham Tit Project for 4-8 weeks in spring 2026. Two 8-week field assistants will join the nest monitoring team; duties for these posts will include (i) collecting standardised data from nest-box breeding populations of blue and great tits, (ii) catching and ringing parent birds, (iii) ringing nestlings, and (iv) inputting data collected in the field. These positions with run from approximately Tuesday 7th April to Monday 1st June. Successful candidates for these positions must have (or be qualified to obtain) a BTO permit to ring adult great tits and blue tits. A further two field assistants will be hired to support a project collecting behavioural (foraging) data for great tits breeding in the Wytham population. These roles will involve a significant amount of nightwork. Duties will include (i) setting up and calibrating electronic tracking equipment and nest box cameras in the field, (ii) mapping tracking equipment locations using GPS, (iii) helping with catching and ringing parent birds and fitting tracking devices, (iv) assisting with mistnetting to re-trap tagged parents, and (v) inputting data collected in the field. These positions with be approximately 7 and 4 weeks in duration, starting from 13th April and 4th May, respectively. Possession of a BTO ringing permit with misnet endorsement and driving license are highly desirable for these roles. All fieldwork will take place in Wytham Woods, near Oxford. All Successful candidates must be able to demonstrate skill and enthusiasm for biological research as well as experience of fieldwork under arduous conditions, and both lone work and working as part of a team. Due to the short-term nature of these posts, successsful applicants must already have the right to work in the UK. Salary & Accommodation: Field assistants will be paid at grade 5.2 (£17.37/hour). Contact eleanor.cole@Biology.ox.ac.uk
We are hiring at the Wytham Woods for the upcoming field season. 4 roles available. Please share with anyone who might be interested. #UKbirds #birdringing
🚨 PhD offer (please share)
Fascinated by bird migration and movement ecology? 🦜🌍 Join us at @vogelwarte.bsky.social to study annual cycle energetics with multi-sensor loggers in multiple species
Deadline: 20 Feb 2026
Starting: June 2026
Supervision: Martins Briedis & me
Info: tinyurl.com/2dbv9nzh
This study involved a lot of fieldwork across Tasmania and mainland Australia. Sarah and I spent a big chunk of our PhDs in the field collecting samples, with help from many people. Huge thanks to everyone involved!
Parasites with complex life cycles were shared less between migrant and resident birds, likely explained by ecological constraints in establishing transmission (e.g. vector or secondary host availability). This matters for predicting how diseases spread as climate change alters migration patterns 🌏
With PCR, metabarcoding & high-throughput sequencing, we find higher parasite richness in migrants, largely driven by parasites with simple life cycles, likely reflecting exposure during migration or overwintering.
The silvereye is generally resident on mainland Australia, but the Tasmanian subspecies is partially migratory. Some individuals remain in Tasmania, while others overwinter on the mainland. Using this system, we compare parasites in Tasmanian residents, migrants, and mainland silvereyes.
New preprint!
We explore how bird migration shapes parasite dispersal 🐤 🦠
Led by PhD student Sarah Nichols.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Despite decades of effort, scientists have still not discovered a foolproof way to evaluate colleagues’ work that doesn’t involve reading the paper
Want to study the genomics of repeated adaptation with data from hundreds of species? New funding for non-Canadians @ grad or postdoc level. Internal competition at UCalgary with very short deadline so please get in touch ASAP!!
sshrc-crsh.canada.ca/en/funding/o...
Delighted to begin this term's seminars with Malcolm Burgess @piedflynet.bsky.social from @rspb.bsky.social @uniexecec.bsky.social on Migration behaviour, demography & phenology of declining migratory birds. Seminar at 3.30 on 16 Jan in LT1 in the LaMB @biology.ox.ac.uk: all welcome - see details ⬇️
New paper published! 🧬🐥🦠
Host WGS data can be repurposed to uncover endoparasite diversity at low cost, without destructive sampling, and outperform 18S metabarcoding. We test it in silvereyes.
This work was led by PhD student Sarah Nichols @biology.ox.ac.uk
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Super cool new study from Talavera lab on migratory divide between painted lady (Vanessa cardui) populations north of the equator and south of the equator! They find a candidate gene that might be associated with the differenc ein behaviour.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Cartoon of paleogeographic, biogeographic, and phylogenetic history of an island plant radiation, and plots of hypothesized relationships between regional features and biogeographic rates.
New preprint modeling biogeo diversification of Hawaiian Kadua 🌱🏝️🌋
w/ @ca-naturalist.bsky.social @sswiston.bsky.social @fabiology.bsky.social @phylogeny.bsky.social Warren Wagner, Bruce Baldwin, Ken Wood @ninaronsted.bsky.social @fzapata.bsky.social
biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.16.694722
Winter moth fieldwork in Spain = success! Next up: genomics and experiments in the lab 🧬🦋
with @rona-learmonth.bsky.social and @sheldonbirds.bsky.social back in Oxford and two lovely local collaborators who have helped massively
Great talk by @rona-learmonth.bsky.social at #BES2025 on the absence of small scale local adaptation by winter moths to oak tree bud burst. Read more in this preprint www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Great to see this one published in Molecular Ecology 🐦 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
with @sheldonbirds.bsky.social @nilomr.bsky.social @jon-slate.bsky.social
course schedule as a table. Available at the link in the post.
I'm teaching Statistical Rethinking again starting Jan 2026. This time with live lectures, divided into Beginner and Experienced sections. Will be a lot more work for me, but I hope much better for students.
I will record lectures & all will be found at this link: github.com/rmcelreath/s...
Excited to share our latest preprint!
@mheuertz.bsky.social & I just completed a review covering methods and empirical studies on adaptive introgression in a climate context.
We likely missed a few refs & ideas, so your feedback is highly welcome (ideally by email)!
Preprint➡️ doi.org/10.32942/X2B...
One of the most exciting projects I have ever been involved in: Project Psyche! Read all about our ambitions and aims. It's ground breaking stuff, just mind blowing and even surreal (27 years ago we did single genes for lep phylogenetics)! @projectpsyche.bsky.social
www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...