Ilias Foskolos

After 5 years of sample collection and analysis our paper examining the impacts of an industrial #DeepSea mining trial on seafloor #biodiversity is published! Read here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thur can't be said enough 🤣 it's a choice that they're brushing past you, and very rarely an accident

Do tusk anomalies impact the foraging ecology of narwhals ? To find out, we used stable isotope analyses of museum specimens 🐋🦷 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... photo: Natural History Museum Denmark

No, they really haven't. Calling spectral peaks vowels is as inane as saying that because my washing up gloves are also yellow, they have the same nutritional content as a banana. Zero evidence of vowel-like function. It's pure clickbait, and a new low in irresponsible claims from this group 🙄🐳🦑🧪

This is figure 5, which shows CIRBP overexpression extends lifespan and enhances DNA damage resistance in Drosophila.

The remarkably long lifespan of bowhead whales could be due to an increased ability to repair DNA mutations, according to research in Nature. go.nature.com/4hzvDN7 🌏 🧪

An elegant myotis bat. Photo credit: Juan Cruzado Cortés, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Bats use their echolocation abilities to find prey, but also to find each other and avoid obstacles. Iturralde-Pólit &co show that the warm, dry air that comes with climate change, alters these calls, potentially costing the bats more energy to make them

journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

Bats Catch Migratory Birds and Eat Them in Midair

Check out also the feature of our latest paper in @nytimes.com 🦇

#greaternoctulebats #bats #passerines #spain #zoology #ethology #biologging #bioacoustics #sciencejournal

Greater noctule bats prey on and consume passerines in flight Despite billions of passerines seasonally migrating during the night at high altitudes, only three bat species have been found to consistently tap into this rich prey resource. However, it remains unk...

EXTREMELY COOL BAT STUFF: A study out in Science today found that the greater noctule bat, Europe's largest, hunts and catches *migrating birds* while in flight. In at least one case, a bat climbed to more than 1200 feet, then chased a robin downward FAST until it caught it near the ground.

Check out our new paper in @science.org on how greater noctule bats 🦇 hunt passerines 🐦 on the wing #greaternoctulebats #bats #passerines #spain #zoology #ethology #biologging #bioacoustics #sciencejournal

Figure 1: highlighting various pathways through which mining can impact sharks, rays, and chimaeras including collector impact and plumes, and discharge plumes.

Figure 2: The diversity of sharks, rays, and chimaeras impacted by deep sea mining operations. Nearly 2/3 of these species are already at an elevated risk of extinction.

New paper led by @seaprinceaaron.bsky.social in @currentbiology.bsky.social looking at the threats deep sea mining poses for sharks, rays, and chimaeras. We found 30 species are threatened via various pathways including collector impact and plumes at depth and pelagic discharge plumes.

This list can really assist peers in avoiding predatory publishers:

www.predatoryjournals.org @predatoryjournals.org

I have been receiving plenty of generic emails to join editorial boards in MDPI and Frontiers. At exactly the same time, friends receive the same generic emails..

Rookie scientists make research teams more innovative Papers from research teams with a substantial number of beginners are highly disruptive and innovative, study shows.

Papers from research teams with a substantial number of beginners are highly disruptive and innovative

go.nature.com/4nrEvqg

Check out also the press-release of our latest paper in @consletters.bsky.social:

#hector'sdolphins #toothedwhales #newzealand #aotearoa #zoology #biologging #bioacoustics #conservation

Subsurface Behaviors of Hector's Dolphins Could Increase Their Risk of Bycatch Hector's dolphins, endemic to New Zealand, suffer from bycatch in fishing gear. Fishing restrictions in inshore areas have reduced bycatch, although dolphins have been recorded outside these areas. W....

Can Hector's dolphins 🐬 behave in ways that expose them in a higher bycatch risk?

@consletters.bsky.social @rconstantine.bsky.social
@aucklanduni.bsky.social @docgovtnz.bsky.social

#hector'sdolphins #toothedwhales #newzealand #aotearoa #zoology #biologging #bioacoustics #conservation

Photo showing the inside atrium of the new Life and Mind Building

Oxford Biology is growing 📢

We’re appointing 3 Associate Professors in:
🌱 Plant Sciences
🦉 Animal Behaviour
🔬 Molecular Cell Biology

3 fields. 3 opportunities. One new home for Oxford Biology.

Learn more 👉 bit.ly/41S2Tc7
Apply now 👉 bit.ly/488CNW3

📸 Southern right whale: Fredrik Christiansen, Aarhus University 📸 North Atlantic right whale: Center for Coastal Studies, taken under NOAA permit #24359 👉 Link to paper: https://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v768/meps14914

Our recent study in the #MarineEcologyProgressSeries
highlights how body size, condition, and human impacts shape the survival of right whales & why they are so vulnerable to prey limitation and disturbance 🐋

🔗 in thread

#Conservation #WhaleResearch #RightWhales #OceanHealth #MarineScience 🌐🌏🧪🌱

It’s the big fat Greek farming scandal – devised by the political elite and paid for by ordinary people | Alexander Clapp A massive EU subsidy scandal has pulled back the curtain to reveal how power operates in Greece, says journalist Alexander Clapp

“The scandal has also pulled back the curtain to reveal how power in Greece operates.”

It’s not often an accurate description of Greece appears in the international media. Thank you, @alexclapp.bsky.social.

‘Almost unimaginable’: these ants are different species but share a mother Ant queens of one species clone ants of another to create hybrid workers that do their bidding.

A common type of ant in Europe breaks a fundamental rule in biology: its queens can produce male offspring that are a whole different species

go.nature.com/4mOb5T9

Front cover of Journal of Experimental Biology, Volume 228, issue 16, published in August 2025. The cover image (by Kaloyana Koseva) shows a bat hanging from its feet. The Company of Biologists 100 logo is in the bottom left corner of the cover.

Issue 16 has closed & issue 17 is open

journals.biologists.com/jeb/issue/22...

The front cover by Kaloyana Koseva shows a bag hanging from its feet with forelimbs down. Laura Stidsholt reviews how bat-borne devices are revolutionising research into bat echolocation & behaviour

Η Αμοργός βάζει φρένο στο ψάρεμα για πέντε χρόνια Η πρωτοβουλία ανήκει στους αλιείς του νησιού, οι οποίοι επιθυμούν να τεθούν περιορισμοί για να ανακάμψουν οι πληθυσμοί των ψαριών – Κρίσιμη η περιφρούρηση.

Μετά απο μια δεκαετή προσπάθεια, οι ψαράδες της Αμοργού επιτέλους πέτυχαν αυτό που ζητούσαν: να τεθούν χρονικοί και χωρικοί περιορισμοί στην αλιεία στο νησί. Η απόφαση μετατρέπει την Αμοργό σε παράδειγμα για το Αιγαίο και τη Μεσόγειο- αρκεί να εφαρμοστεί σωστά.

A guy out in the desert scrub who looks like Napoleon Dynamite uses a jeans-wrapped pole with a hiking boot on the bottom to "step" on a rattlesnake.

Hahaha, I love this photo of a snake nerd researcher from the Phoenix Herpetological Society using a fake leg to step on rattlesnakes & see how likely they are to bite. He "stepped" on 175 of them, and was bitten by only SIX. Snakes desperately want to just get away! 🐍🧪

www.npr.org/2024/05/17/1...

Tenure-track Assistant Professor in Bioacoustic Physiology - Ledig stilling på Aarhus Universitet Ledig stilling ved Institut for Biologi - Zoofysiologi, Aarhus Universitet

Breaking News 🚨: Our #bioacoustics 🔉🐬🦇lab seeks a permanent new colleague in a tenure-track assistant professor 🥷position. Excited? Then join our vibrant group of 15 researchers, postdocs and PhD students at AU who work with #marinemammal #acoustics, #conservation #physiology and #effectsofnoise!

New paper out!
We found that in pipistrelle bats, social vocalizations carry a stronger phylogenetic signal than echolocation calls, suggesting the former evolve more slowly, while the latter remains flexible and shaped by the environment.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Tweet from 2023 saying: 'I resigned as an Associate Editor for a Frontiers journal because of the way their automated system took away much of my editorial autonomy. some details that might also explain odd reviewer/author experiences:' (1/7)

Originally posted on Twitter in 2023—reposting after a chat with a colleague about possibly publishing in an MDPI journal (whose review practices are similar to Frontiers). Not sure if either has since addressed the issues raised, but I feel process should be public knowledge.

A chart showing that cats kill around 2.6 billion birds annually in North America, compared to 624 million killed hitting windows, 214m by cars and 64m by collisions with industrial installations (e.g. wind turbines, factories, lighthouses, communication towers, etc). Graphic from the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center.

From the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center. Apart from the overwhelmingly largest cause of population declines - habitat loss and destruction - what are the other big killers of birds? A reason to consider keeping cats inside.🪶🌎

How a discovery in Yellowstone National Park led to the development of PCR - Richmond Scientific A discovery in Yellowstone National Park led to the development of PCR, the gold-standard COVID-19 tests used to fight the global pandemic.

Reminder: Nobel-prize winning PCR (1983), used in basically all genetic tech today, was only possible because of extremophile bacterium discovered in 1964 in Yellowstone funded by a small ~$80k NSF grant with no obvious application at the time. #science 🧪
www.richmondscientific.com/how-a-discov...

Global tracking of marine megafauna space use reveals how to achieve conservation targets The recent Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) sets ambitious goals but no clear pathway for how zero loss of important biodiversity areas and halting human-induced extinction of thre...

We can do great things when we are working together...
🦭🐋🦈🐻‍❄️🐟🐧🦢*🐢*

Global tracking of marine megafauna space use reveals how to achieve conservation targets | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Sensitivity of density estimates to off-axis beam pattern assumptions in deep-diving odontocetes Density estimation from passive acoustic monitoring requires knowledge of the sound production rates and signal characteristics of animal calls. This study expl

New output from the ONR/LMR-funded #ACCURATE project by @popigk.bsky.social in @asa-news.bsky.social

#passiveacoustics #densityestimation #beampattern #biosonar

@uniofstandrews.bsky.social @seamammalresearch.bsky.social
@au.dk #CREEM #JASA

doi.org/10.1121/10.0...

“I’ve studied McCarthyism’s impact on higher education for 50 years. What’s happening now is worse.” -Ellen Schrecker, historian

Academic freedom in the United States has found itself periodically under siege, but the current attacks from the federal government raise a new level of alarm. nyer.cm/u405qvQ