Nick Antonson

Very excited to be the recipient of the 2025 JEB Outstanding Paper Prize!

Our new paper shows that cowbirds don’t just outcompete hosts in begging competitions behaviorally, but they also outperform hosts in the how long the neck muscles they use to beg can maintain that contraction!

Thanks @jacanamama.bsky.social! It was a lot of fun!

Based on some quick math, this alone could fund the NSF Plant Genome Research Program for ~4 years; the NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology, which was totally axed in the NSF budget request, for ~9 years; and ~ half the total NSF GRFP budget

Rapid Response Bridge Funding Program In the face of recent abrupt shifts in federal funding for education research, including large-scale terminations of National Science Foundation (NSF) research grant awards, we have developed a rap...

The Spencer Foundation is offering rapid response bridge funding for those who lost NSF research grants.

www.spencer.org/grant_types/...

Woohoo! Congrats Sara!

Congratulations! Exciting to see it out!

Repeated behavioural evolution is associated with convergence of gene expression in cavity-nesting songbirds - Nature Ecology & Evolution The authors performed phylogenetically controlled behavioural assays and analysed brain transcriptomes across five avian families, identifying convergent patterns of gene expression associated with aggression and nesting behaviour in obligate cavity-nesting birds.

Taking a moment to celebrate our new paper out today in Nature Ecology Evolution, led by the amazing @jacanamama.bsky.social Sara Lipshutz. doi.org/10.1038/s415...

EXCLUSIVE: NSF starts vetting all grants to comply with Trump’s orders Grantee accounts remain frozen, while union accuses NSF of ignoring rules governing peer review

Exclusive: NSF this week began to search through billions of dollars of grants the agency has already awarded for anything touching on topics that President Donald Trump has criticized. And NSF has blocked grantees and trainees from accessing funds while the review is underway. scim.ag/3El0NZh

I genuinely did not know this! And if NSF's mandate to diversify the scientific workforce comes from Congress, it is fully unconstitutional to overturn that mandate by executive order without an act of Congress

National Science Foundation suspends salary payments, leaving researchers unable to pay their bills An NSF online payment system remained down after the federal funding freeze was lifted, leaving early-career scientists scrambling to pay bills

National Science Foundation suspends salary payments, leaving researchers unable to pay their bills www.statnews.com/2025/01/30/t...
Story by @ericboodman.bsky.social

NSF PRFB fellows: talk to your POs and transfer the remaining year’s balance of salary and research funds by 5pm today!! Dm me if you want to join the prfb slack where fellows are sharing info with each other #nsf #nsfprfb

NSF PRFB POSTDOCS:

Pull the remainder of this funding cycle’s stipend, all remaining research funds, and all remaining travel funds (if you have them). Do it before 5PM today. Per instructions from multiple NSF POs.

If you’re not already on the PRFB slack, DM me and I’ll send you an invite

Thanks @skwinnicki.bsky.social!

Good to be here and see so many friendly, familiar faces 😁

Extreme fatigue-resistance in a brood parasite parallels a war of attrition in begging competition with hosts Food-solicitation displays are critical to the survival of dependent young. These signals often evolve in extreme ways in response to familial conflict among siblings and between parents and offspring...

New preprint! We used in situ muscle stimulation to test whether the muscles cowbirds use to beg are more fatigue-resistant than hosts, allowing them to beg longer.

doi.org/10.1101/2024...

Finally made the switch over! 🦋
Check out my latest paper in response to a critique by Manuel Soler of our parasitic niche construction hypothesis. In this response, we tested the extent to which parasite-driven brood reduction occurs across host species.