Vladimir Pravosudov

Figure showing how the correlation between mass and recruitment in Wytham Great Tits depends on environmental conditions - in particular note switch from almost none to very strong with increasing population density

New research just out in J Evol Biol: led by @lbliard.bsky.social with @jsmartin.bsky.social @dzchilds.bsky.social @paniw.bsky.social & Arpat Ozgul using the very cool Covariance Reaction Norm approach to test environmental dependence of trade-offs in great tits
academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-...

Just a bit of snow during this and next week at our high elevation field site

New paper from the lab by Ai Ana Richmond - stronger associations with the locations used in serial reversal learning improves performance.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Ellen Ketterson smiling while holding a plate with cake frosted in cream and crimson.

A cake with cream and crimson frosting and a frosting photo of Ellen from the early ‘90s. ‘Happy Retirement Ellen’ is written on the cake.

Today the members of the Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior graduate program at Indiana University celebrated the upcoming retirement of Dr. Ellen Ketterson. Ellen was a bastion of civility and scientific excellence. The program would not be what it is without her presence over these past decades.

Just some snow coming to our high elevation field site next week, just as we were preparing to test our chickadees. Now we have to take a short break before 'diving' into all that snow.

Thrilled to announce a Postdoc opportunity in our group on the evolutionary genetics and ecology of colour. Wonderful system, great collaborators, and room to shape your own ideas.
Apply by 7 Jan: jobs.helsinki.fi/job/13477181...

🪹 In new research, Vatka et al. investigated how changing food abundance affects evolutionary potential of offsprings’ body size traits in two woodland passerines.

📖 Read the full paper here ➡️ buff.ly/bXGpbPC

Postdoctoral Scholar, Biology The University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) appreciates your interest in employment at our growing institution. We want your application process to go smoothly and quickly. Final applications must be submitt...

nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

POSITIONS default description

I am looking for a postdoc to work in our long-term system of food-caching mountain chickadees in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The expected start is April 2026. Please see details here: chickadeecognition.com/positions
If interested and qualified, please contact me directly (email on the website).

Fig. 1 from the article: Hypothesized bidirectional pathways connecting the gut microbiome and diet in wild birds.

Fig. 2 from the article: Proposed methodology of DNA extraction, PCR, and amplicon sequencing to characterize aspects of avian diet and gut microbiome from the same fecal sample. Researchers can also use the same DNA extract for microbial metagenomics, and they can perform an RNA extraction on the same fecal sample for transcriptomics analysis.

NEW PAPER: how bird diets and gut microbiomes shape each other: synthesizing how diet drives microbiome shifts, how microbes may steer diet choices, and outlining key questions and methods for studying diet–microbiome links.

➡️ vist.ly/4gjuw

#ornithology #birds 🪶

Figure 1 in Cuchot et al. (2025): "Locations of constant capture effort sites (CES). Colors represent the number of years of monitoring per site. Map lines delineate study areas and do not necessarily depict accepted national boundaries."

New publication: Phenological Plasticity and Its #Temperature-Related Drivers in Common #Songbirds Across Europe. #climatechange #phenology
doi.org/10.1111/gcb....

yes :)

Winter field work as usual

Modular genetics drives behavioral diversity in this iconic species.
Paper here: doi.org/10.1093/jher...
Corresponding author: scholar.google.com/c...
#JHered

Postdoctoral Scholar, Biology The University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) appreciates your interest in employment at our growing institution. We want your application process to go smoothly and quickly. Final applications must be submitt...

nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

The University of Miami seeks a Robert E. Maytag Chair of Ornithology, an Associate/Professor role for renowned avian researchers. Apply by Jan 10, 2026. More info: https://www.biology.as.miami.edu. #job

I am recruting a #postdoc for a project investigating the evolution of avian heat tolerance in @erc.europa.eu project #HotLife. Fieldwork over broad latitudinal gradients, common-garden experiments, and more. Read more and apply👇
shorturl.at/WA1Qa

Would appreciate a re-post!

@evoldir.bsky.social

POSITIONS default description

I am looking for a postdoc to work in our long-term system of food-caching mountain chickadees in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The expected start is April 2026. Please see details here: chickadeecognition.com/positions
If interested and qualified, please contact me directly (email on the website).

Examples of some recent papers from graduate students in my group - a full list of recent papers and preprints can be found here (https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=pTdxVdIAAAAJ) and profile of the group here: https://egioxford.web.ox.ac.uk/members

The annual Wytham Field Team Photo!

Celebrating a successful field season with great food & good company - May 2025

Front view of the Life & Mind Building, which opened in Oct 2025: The new home of Biology at Oxford

Interested in a PhD in ornithology? Funding available for projects at the interface of ecology, behaviour & evolution from Oct '26 working on long-term population studies of tits at Wytham, based in @biology.ox.ac.uk in the new Life & Mind Building in Oxford
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Oklahoma State Department of Biology is hiring an assistant professor in comparative biology (very broadly defined)! We have a great department, come join us. And please spread the word. jobs.okstate.edu/jobs/assista...

Got some snow

a 14 day old great tit nestling, ringed for individual identification

Figure from the paper showing that extreme climatic events interact with ambient climatic conditions and breeding timing within a season, in a developmental stage-specific manner, to influence nestling growth in great tits

New preprint! 🪶

We analysed 60 years of data on 83,000+ great tits to show how extreme climate impacts on nestling growth and survival are stage-specific and context-dependent 🐣 🌍🔥❄️

With @davididiaquez.bsky.social @iremsepil.bsky.social @sheldonbirds.bsky.social

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

YouTube video by Selection shapes diverse animal minds Sequences and animal intelligence

Selection Shapes Animal Minds: In our next highlighted talk recording, Johan Lind explores sequences and animal intelligence youtu.be/BnjO7-glLOY @royalsocietypublishing.org

A juvenile great tit solves a foraging puzzle by pushing a sliding door to the left while being observed by two other juvenile birds. Image credit: Sonja Wild.

@sonjawild.bsky.social @galarconnieto.bsky.social & @lucymaplin.bsky.social show that young #GreatTits, which have limited #ParentalCare, learn to solve a foraging #puzzle socially, but rather than parents, siblings & non-parental adults are preferred role models @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/46JZn6n

Out today in @plosbiology.org (1/5)

Siblings and non-parental adults provide alternative pathways to cultural inheritance in juvenile great tits 🐦🧩

Link to study:
10.0.5.91/journal.pbio...

Co-authors:
@lucymaplin.bsky.social
@galarconnieto.bsky.social

Social group membership does not facilitate spatial learning of fine-scale resource locations - Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology While many animals use social information to discover novel food sources, the importance of social information availability in the process of learning and remembering specific, fine-scale resource locations remains unclear. Benefits of using social information may vary with an individual’s ability to learn and remember resource locations and environmental conditions. We experimentally tested whether animals use social information from group mates to find and learn resource locations using wild, food-caching mountain chickadees (Poecile gambeli). We tested spatial learning and memory performance by tasking birds with learning the location of one rewarding feeder out of eight using two treatments: (1) birds in the same social group shared the same feeder and (2) social group members had to learn different feeders. We found no evidence that access to social information from close social associates facilitates spatial learning and memory as there were no differences in performance between treatments. Most chickadees used personal information to find their feeder, but there were low and similar rates of social information transmission for both treatments. Our results suggest that chickadees use social information from conspecifics regardless of group membership or familiarity but primarily rely on independent learning and personal information when foraging in a familiar area.

New paper from the lab by Angela Pitera (last chapter of her PhD dissertation!) showing that food-caching chickadees rely on their own spatial memory when learning a spatial task and not on social learning.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

My take on the amazing paper by Hanna Payne and Dmitriy Aronov on activation of hippocampal place codes by gaze in food-caching chickadees.
psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?d...