Samuele Ramellini

🚨ABSTRACT SUBMISSION REMINDER🚨

Submissions for the 2026 ASSAB conference are still open until the 13th of March.

Submit now to take part in a friendly, warm and welcoming conference for behavioural ecologists

We're thrilled to announce the Ctrl-Z Award, a US$2,500 prize for researchers “who discover substantial errors in their published work and take meaningful steps to correct the scientific record."
Covered by @nature.com today; read more here: centerforscientificintegrity.org/2026/03/10/a...

Storm-induced mass mortality results in both immediate and long-term consequences for a migratory songbird Nature Ecology & Evolution - Combining 27 years of citizen science data with whole-genome sequencing, the authors show that mass mortality of purple martins caused by a severe winter...

Spring is arriving, but there's still snow in the forecast! How do late #winter storms affect our migratory #birds? Out now in @natecoevo.nature.com, we ask that Q with 25+yrs of #CitizenScience data and ~400 museum specimens collected after the 2021 Great TX Freeze: rdcu.be/e7aUy
#EcoEvo #evolution

There is No Consensus on Biological Sex At this critical moment when misinformation about sex is being applied to policy globally, scientific clarification on the definition of biological sex is valuable. Here, we evaluate the primary appr...

New paper out in ecology letters! with @andylee.bsky.social @allydefduf.bsky.social

We synthesized the active debate on how scientists define sex, including limitations and assumptions. We believe this discussion will lead to more accurate science.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Join our director, Theresa Crimmins, this Wednesday as she discusses her book, Phenology! Theresa will be in conversation with Dr. Elise Gornish, Director of The Desert Laboratory on Tumamoc Hill.

Marsupials previously thought extinct for millennia discovered in New Guinea The chances of finding one mammal species thought to be lost was ‘almost zero’ and finding two is ‘unprecedented’, biologist Tim Flannery says

😲

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

How are Pacific NW mountain birds responding to climate change?

I got up at 4:00 am for a month to find out.

but first the backstory, or "how I spent seven years telling everyone this project wasn't possible"

new paper here:
esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Big effort, exciting results - our paper on the constraints of thermal limits in tropical insects is now out in @nature.com! 🦋🐝🪰🪲🦗
@ecoresearchzoo3.bsky.social
@biologie-uniwue.bsky.social
@uni-wuerzburg.de

📑📊We have just uploaded a new pre-print where we decompose spatial, temporal and spatial-temporal variation in natural selection on reproductive traits for great tits and blue tits.
With Yimen Araya-Ajoy, @ellafcole.bsky.social and @sheldonbirds.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Seasonal dynamics of urban bird communities: impact of habitat on breeding and wintering bird communities in a northern temperate region - Journal of Ornithology Urbanization transforms natural landscapes, significantly influencing bird communities by reducing species richness and fostering functional homogenization. Birds, a vital component of urban biodivers...

Now online in Journal of #Ornithology

Seasonal dynamics of urban bird communities: impact of habitat on breeding and wintering bird communities in a northern temperate region

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

A regent honeyeater sits on a branch.

Fenner School scientists from the Difficult Bird Research Group have rescued the lost song of the regent honeyeater, offering new hope for the survival of the critically endangered bird: bit.ly/4l2D5Cc @teamswiftparrot.bsky.social

Congrats!!

Surely something I miss about Europe! Even though some invasive blackbirds are found here in Australia as well

Social and ecological factors associated with innovation in urban sulphur-crested cockatoos (Cacatua galerita) Cities are challenging places for wildlife, but some species, like sulfur-crested cockatoos, adapt by finding new ways to feed and solve problems. We studi

New paper alert! 🦜

We gave wild cockatoos puzzle boxes across Canberra’s urban gradient. The finding? Urban birds approach faster, but are not better solvers.

Our results suggest that urbanization shapes neophobia independently from cognitive performance. Read it here:

doi.org/10.1093/behe...

🔊 Nominee for Best ECR IBIS paper 2025

Cooperative and plural breeding by the precocial Vulturine Guineafowl

Brendah Nyaguthii et al

doi.org/10.1111/ibi....

Supported by Leica Camera (UK) | #ornithology 🪶

🔊 VOTE NOW

For your favourite Early Career Researcher paper published in IBIS in 2025

bou.org.uk/ibis/ibis...

Voting closes: 23 March

Supported by Leica Camera (UK) | #ornithology 🪶

🧵 ⬇️

Climate, ecological dynamics, and the seasonal distribution of birds in mountains Ecological dynamics related to energy use and competition drives the seasonal distribution of birds in mountains across the world.

Why is there such variation in the birds encountered as you go up or down a mountain? New paper in #ScienceAdvances examines how climate and ecological interactions drive bird distributions in mountains throughout the year:

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

1/10 ⬇️

Have you created your profile on the ESA Career Center yet? Use it to search for new positions, yes, but also use it to share your info with recruiters and get personalized messages about roles that fit your skills and experience. https://www.esacareercenter.org/

Challenges for wildlife seeking sleep in a disturbed world Summary: Animals must obtain a daily amount of sleep to perform well when awake, but doing so in the modern world is increasingly difficult owing to various forms of human-made disturbance.

Read about the challenges faced by wildlife trying to sleep in a disturbed world

"Challenges for wildlife seeking sleep in a disturbed world"

doi.org/10.1242/jeb....

How Many Deaths Are Too Many? Assessing the Impact of Additional Mortality on a Critically Endangered Bird Small, threatened populations can be vulnerable to changes in vital demographic rates such as mortality. Managers must intervene if mortality outpaces reproduction. We consider whether additional rel...

New research on orange-bellied parrots!

We simulated the consequences of rising mortality rates on the tiny population- an emerging risk in their migration range

We found even a few extra deaths/year negates 💰 conservation efforts

zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

This week’s @egioxford.bsky.social seminar at 3.30 on Friday from @ruthedunn.bsky.social on the key role of seabirds in driving energy & nutrient flows. Details below:

🚨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

Are you an early career biologist seeking a position (Masters up to faculty)? I have talked to so many people who feel alone, like they don't have resources, or who are seeking community during this difficult time in the job market. I created a Discord community to help. discord.gg/nmktHJhUPH

Tomorrow FINE Spring 2026 will start. The 12th season of this free online seminar on social evolution.

Among-trait covariance and cross-year repeatability for direct and indirect individual effects in producer–scrounger behaviour in wild house sparrows Abstract. Variation in traits expressed during social interactions can be attributed to direct individual effects (DIEs) of the focal individual’s identity

Social partners shape phenotypes in house sparrows: direct & indirect social effects covary in producer-scrounger tactics, forming a multivariate syndrome that constrains trait variation:

academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-...

@cdegroot.bsky.social @roriwijnhorst.bsky.social
@dingemanselab.bsky.social

Ecological harshness has a weak influence on reproductive trade-offs in a great tit population Abstract. Lack’s seminal work on bird clutch sizes has spurred expansive research on reproductive trade-offs, especially focusing on offspring quantity–qua

New paper out in @jevbio.bsky.social
Using 58 years of data, we look at the effect of environmental variation on reproductive trade-offs in great tits.

With @jsmartin.bsky.social, @dzchilds.bsky.social, Ella Cole, @sheldonbirds.bsky.social, @paniw.bsky.social & Arpat Ozgul

doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

Degradation of fish food webs in the Anthropocene The decrease in body size driven by the selective species turnover is widely altering fish food web topology and function.

New paper out examining fish food web degradation in the Anthropocene. We show the structure of aquatic food webs are changing-- even when species richness doesn’t. These signals are strongly associated with decreases in body size within fish communities. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🌐🐠🐡🦈🐟

Hiring for 3 positions: Research Assistant, Field Research Coordinator, and Postdoc I am looking to hire 3 people into my lab this year. I am still doing the paperwork to get the jobs officially posted but I want to send the word out and screen potential applications right away. R…

I am hiring a research assistant (vampire bats), a Panama fieldwork coordinator (vampire bats), and also considering postdoc apps (social behavior, any species): socialbat.org/2026/02/19/h...

2nd new postdoc in our group! Looking to hire postdoc in eco-economic modelling for our Amazon ornamental fish project, integrating biological data with supply-chain, livelihood & sustainability analyses. Participatory work in Brazil. Please share! www.jobs.gla.ac.uk/job/research...

The political effects of X's feed algorithm https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10098-2 Received: 16 December 2024 Accepted: 4 January 2026 Published online: 18 February 2026 Open access • Check for updates Germain Gauthier,5, Roland Hodler?5, Philine Widmer35 & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya3,4,5 m Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects'. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk's platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects. Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. To investigate the mechanism, we analysed users' feed content and behaviour. We found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects. These results suggest that initial exposure to X's algorithm has persistent effects on users' current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship.

A new paper shows that less than 2 months of exposure to Twitter’s algorithmic feed significantly shifts people’s political views to the right.

Moving from chronological feed to the algorithmic feed also increases engagement.

This is one of the most concerning papers I’ve read in awhile.