Dr Hannah M. Rowland

Fig. 1 from the article: Associations of malondialdehyde (MDA) and uric acid (UA) with migration distance in birds. Phylogenetic distribution of MDA, UA and migration distance is shown across bird species

Pap et al. present a comparative study across 113 European species that examines links between oxidative lipid damage, uric acid levels and characteristics of species and their migratory journeys.

➡️ https://nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jav.03325

My second DPhil paper is out! A nice example of how continuous long-term monitoring of natural populations can be so valuable for understanding impacts of climate change on wild animals 🪶

📍Wytham Woods, Oxfordshire 🌳🪺

Oh this is fun! 🌈 👀

www.keithcirkel.co.uk/whats-my-jnd/

This was fun!

What's My JND? 0.0074
Can you beat it? www.keithcirkel.co.uk/whats-my-jnd...

Many brightly colored pinned moth specimens in an Entomology collection.

Undergrad and graduate students! Could your work benefit from visiting one of the NHMLAC’s collections? Apply for our Collections Study Award, due Apr. 1. I’d love to have students make use of our Entomology collection!

Details here:
tinyurl.com/bdduefsy

🔊 JOB VACANCY

Would you like to work at the heart of a global ornithological membership society?

BOU are seeking a Journal and Engagement Manager to play a central role in delivering our mission

⏰ Apply by 14 April

bou.org.uk/vacancy-j...

#ornithology 🪶

Intense hot pink morph of an adult female Arota festae. Photographed at 23:32 on 27 March 2025 on Barro Colorado Island, Panama, using a Sony A7CR camera with a LAOWA 90 mm f/2.8 lens and a Godox Speedlite TT350 flash. The final image was produced by focus stacking 4 photographs in Adobe Photoshop, with brightness increased for clarity while leaving saturation and hue unaltered. Photo credit: Zeke W. Rowe.

👏🏻 title of the year?! 👏🏻

Pink cricket club: Dramatic color change in a Neotropical leaf-masquerading katydid

From @benitoexplains.bsky.social & @zekerowe.bsky.social

esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Species-specific spectral tuning of motion vision in butterflies Supple et al. investigate the spectral sensitivity of motion-sensitive descending neurons (DNs) connecting the brain to thoracic motor centers in butterflies. Optic flow-sensitive DNs are spectrally b...

Species-specific spectral tuning of motion vision in butterflies: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...

Never too late! From a hot summer in 2009 spent in the lab molecularly sexing pied flycatchers to a 2026 paper 🐦

Using 2,759 sexed nestlings (1997–2018) tracked through 2023, we show male attractiveness & annual rearing conditions increase the proportion of sons in broods

🔗 doi.org/10.1016/j.an...

This infographic titled "Crocuses, Saffron & Poisonous Imposters" explores the chemistry and botany of crocuses. It explains that saffron comes from Crocus sativus, which contains the deep red pigment crocin. While yellow petals contain carotenoids, purple petals contain anthocyanins like delphinidin. It warns that Colchicum autumnale, also called "autumn crocus," is a toxic lookalike containing colchicine, a dangerous alkaloid that can cause organ failure but is also used to treat gout.

It’s spring in the northern hemisphere and the crocuses are blooming. Find out more about their colours and poisonous lookalikes in this graphic: www.compoundchem.com/2022/03/15/c...

#ChemSky 🧪

Common frog

Look who I met last night

MENI is back! Join us in Dublin this August 2026 for our 3rd Meeting for Microbial Evolution in Ireland. We are delighted to have @rachelmwheatley.bsky.social @drrebeccajhall.bsky.social @jpjhall.bsky.social and @tweethinking.bsky.social join us as keynote speakers this year. miniurl.com/MENI

How does treatment induced antibiotic resistance happen in real-world infections? We analysed 25k Pseudomonas isolates from 180 patients in a clinical trial to find out! TLDR: The ecological and evolutionary paths are surprisingly diverse & complex even in patients receiving identical treatment…

Ladybird

Sun shining ☀️
Birds singing 🎶
And a little seven-spot ladybird soaking it all in 🐞

Picard management tip: Take vacations.

RV SVEA a large blue and white research vessel passes between two rocky headlands heading out to sea

Jobs thread - Lots of aquatic research related jobs open here at SLU Aqua Sweden right now (with a few bonus aquatic jobs in other departments). Around half are English language roles. Come and work with us🙂 1/n

How specific are heritable symbioses?

And what can we learn from swapping obligate symbionts across host species?

We address this in our latest, led by @inespons.bsky.social & in our collaboration w/ @microbiome.bsky.social 🦠🪲 Out today in @natcomms.nature.com!

1/n
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Here is another ant-mimicking spider from Sabah, this time from Danum Valley. This is a jumping spider in the subtribe Myrmarachnina, literally meaning “ant spiders”. Constrictions of the cephalothorax and opisthosoma give it the appearance of an ant with a separate head and “wasp waist”.

Finally out in @nature.com: a new piece of the puzzle of how complex life evolved. Lead by @archaeal.bsky.social & @katyappler.bsky.social. Great collab with @greening.bsky.social and @kassipan.bsky.social. More pieces to follow soon! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

a cartoon uterus with an angry face and the words my uterus written below it . ALT: a cartoon uterus with an angry face and the words my uterus written below it .

📣Participants needed for a study of how the menstrual cycle influences relationships and wellbeing.

We are recruiting both:
✅ People who have #PMDD (diagnosed or self-identified)
✅ People who do not have PMDD

If you’re interested, please click below!
durhamuniversity.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Halting predicted vertebrate declines requires tackling multiple drivers of biodiversity loss Global vertebrate populations decline faster in the presence of multiple threats compared to single threats.

🚨Paper alert🚨
Very happy to see our paper published in @science.org #ScienceAdv.

Very greatful to have worked with such a great team @duncanobrien.bsky.social #tomJohnson @robinfreeman.bsky.social #ValentinaMarconi #LouiseMcRae @expecocons.bsky.social

👇Check the main findings below!

Eusociality has independently evolved in multiple arthropod lineages

Eusociality has independently evolved in multiple arthropod lineages

Comparative analysis across 5,678 insect species shows that, when you control for phylogenetic bias, eusociality has not evolved at a faster rate in haplodiploid species. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Happy birthday to Charles Darwin,
patron saint of tired scientists, grumpy fieldworkers, and hating your own manuscript.

8 posters all describing influential women that have passed through Biological Sciences

To celebrate Women in STEM day on Wednesday 11 February we’ve printed some banners to highlight some of the incredible work that the women of Bio Sci at Bristol have achieved over the years!

Pop into the LSB for the remainder of Feb to check out who’s done what and when!

Replication studies: a win-win for early-career training and behavioral ecology Replicating previous research builds confidence that results are real and meaningful. But close replications are rare due to limitations in resources and d

How do we know our research results are REAL? We replicate them! Most folks agree but lament on how hard it is to publish these replications.

My dearest gentle reader, lament no more! Delighted to unveil: Replication Studies, a new section of Behavioral Ecology 1/

academic.oup.com/beheco/artic...

Have you ever wondered how the brain should represent the sensory world in order to generate behavior? Read our new preprint: work by Shuhong Huang shuhonghuang.bsky.social with our long-standing collaborator James Fitzgerald at Northwestern.

Delighted to see our paper featured on the cover of the Journal of Animal Ecology @animalecology.bsky.social @britishecologicalsociety.org

Thanks Pam Hurkens for the lovely image of a heavily pregnant meerkat being weighed at our field site.

Don't be put off by the ad saying "UK Students only" - a limited number of scholarships are available for international candidates. So please apply!

Long-term agricultural diversification increases financial profitability, biodiversity, and ecosystem services: a second-order meta-analysis - Nature Communications Feeding a growing population while protecting the environment is a major global challenge. This study suggests that agricultural diversification enhances long-term profitability, biodiversity, soil he...

Do agricultural diversification practices pay off in the long run? Our new paper synthesizes 100+ years of evidence showing that diversification practices become more profitable over time and delivers growing benefits for soils, biodiversity, and carbon.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Out in @natcomms.nature.com, a collaborative paper showing that, across 73 species (including common terns), warmer years are associated with earlier phenology, and that populations in which such an association was observed have often been stable or increasing: www.nature.com/articles/s41...