Josh Arbon

Meerkat pups in the Kalahari, South Africa

Rhesus macaques in Cayo Santiago

Dwarf mongoose staring at a camera, South Africa.

📢Two fully-funded #PhD opportunities to work with us:

Topic: Social monitoring & manipulation

UK-domiciled black-heritage scheme: tinyurl.com/aja54nr6

NERC DLTP: tinyurl.com/4jfy47pp

Cosupervisors: #PatrickKennedy @ljnbrent.bsky.social
@bristolbiosci.bsky.social
#bioacoustics #mammals #fieldwork

New paper on dolphin motor synchrony led by master's student Sam Hill-Cousins with a fantastic team of co-authors @danaipapageorgiou.bsky.social @emmachereskin.bsky.social @researchdolphin.bsky.social 🐬🐬🐬: Male dolphins use synchrony to both maintain and strengthen their social bonds
rdcu.be/eQ543

One of the most fun projects to be part of!
Check also the motor displays of these males here: doi.org/10.6084/m9.f...

Shades of blue and red in a slice through an immuno stained brain showing some deliciously lovely looking mushroom body lobes - ripe for investigation during a funded PhD - and the central complex. Image credit: Dr Max Farnworth

🚨RA/PhD position available in evolutionary neurobiology 🚨

Working on a deep dive into circuit changes during mushroom body expansion in Heliconius butterflies @camzoology.bsky.social

- employment benefits
- 4 years funding
- 1000% fun

Deadline: 14/1/2026

Details:
www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...

Complex dynamics of social learning in groups of wild Arabian babblers
#Bird #SocialCognition

doi.org/10.1093/behe...

Experimental evidence for delayed contingent cooperation among wild dwarf mongooses | PNAS Many animals participate in biological markets, with strong evidence existing for immediate cooperative trades. In particular, grooming is often ex...

#MongooseMonday is here again 🎉

Dwarf mongooses track what their groupmates are up to in the day using #vocal cues, altering their #grooming in the evening.

They reward helpful hounds (doi.org/10.1073/pnas...) & shun bullies (doi.org/10.7554/eLif...)

#bioacoustics #mammals #cooperation #conflict

Burden of a failed error culture in biologging Driven by technological advancement and low cost, biologging has rapidly transformed the study of animal behaviour and ecology, providing unprecedente…

For your consideration, our paper about how we can build a better error culture around biologging is now out in Animal Behavio(u)r. A collaborative effort between researchers the veterinarians at @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Congratulations to Dr @euantheyoung.bsky.social who defended his PhD yesterday on 'Family matters: The role of trade-offs in shaping human life-histories and health' research.rug.nl/en/publicati... @rug.nl supervised with @erikpostma.bsky.social @lummaalab.bsky.social 🎉

Evolutionary genetics meets ecological immunology: insights into the evolution of immune systems Immune genes show remarkably consistent evidence of selection, modification, and diversification across the tree of life. Parasites are a key force in…

Two weeks ago now @jennytung.bsky.social and I published a new review in Current Opinion in Genetics and Development, entitled “Evolutionary genetics meets ecological immunology: insights into the evolution of immune systems.” www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
A thread below...

Fully funded NERC GW4+ PhD Opportunity - *Understanding The Spread of Antimicrobial Resistance by Migratory Birds*

Supervised by me, @stubearhop.bsky.social (Exeter) & Patricia Brekke (ZSL). Application deadline 8th January. Please get in touch for more info

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Exciting PhD opportunity to develop tech and software to record and understand wild animal behaviour. Fully funded by EPSRC DLA. Based at @uniexecec.bsky.social; co-supervised by Alex Thornton (@cornishjackdaws.bsky.social), @kjhockings.bsky.social and collaborators. Apply: tinyurl.com/5fr73snt

We're hiring! 🥳 Come and join our team in Lancaster - we're looking for two senior postdocs to work on corporate sustainability and restoration ecology. 🌳 🪸 ♻️ (1 of 2)
@lec-reefs.bsky.social @pentlandcentre.bsky.social @sci-tech-lancaster.bsky.social @lancasteruni.bsky.social

Huge congrats Andoni!

The sensory ecology of caterpillars - Journal of Comparative Physiology A Caterpillars (larval Lepidoptera) are one of the most ecologically and evolutionarily significant taxa on Earth. As both feeders and food, they shape the dynamics of enumerate ecosystems on land. Key ...

Do you work (/want to work) with caterpillars? Or sensory systems? Or BOTH?! Well good golly do we have the paper for you! We explain the senses that caterpillars have, what they use them for, and how anthropogenic sensory pollution might be messing it all up 🐛 doi.org/10.1007/s003...

Super proud of @euantheyoung.bsky.social PhD work being featured in the NRC

1/13 New paper out! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Historical records across thousands of women showed that mothers with more children had shorter lifespans during a famine, fitting an evolutionary explanation for why we age
@hannahdugdale.bsky.social
@lummaalab.bsky.social
@erikpostma.bsky.social

A week before his defence @rug.nl, the publication of @euantheyoung.bsky.social's chapter on the lifespan cost of reproduction in @science.org Advances - with @hannahdugdale.bsky.social, @lummaalab.bsky.social and myself - couldn't have been better timed! 👍 🥳 🥂https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adz6422

3 year postdoc funded by @ukri.org NERC on between-group cooperation in the Shark Bay dolphins is now live - please share widely 🙏 www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...

BehaveAI is live!

Our biologically inspired video analysis tool sees motion as colour. Track animals or objects, classify their behaviour, and handle complex natural scenes with ease.

Semi-supervised annotation, no GPUs required, user-friendly, free & open source.

Pre-print tinyurl.com/BehaveAI

I have some brilliant news to share! I recently received a DFG-funded Emmy Noether 6-year grant to establish my own group in Germany. I will soon be looking for a PhD student and a research assistant to join the team and investigate how the balance of power is maintained in animal societies.

Two wild white-winged choughs in Canberra, Australia; the study species in the newly published paper.

Lead author Chun-Chieh Liao presenting the published work at the Behaviour 2025 conference in Kolkata.

Out 🌟TODAY🌟 in the #new volume of @asab.org #AnimalBehaviour, is latest #PhD chapter from the fantastic #Chun-ChiehLiao:
Functionally referential communication about danger in cooperatively breeding white-winged choughs
#fieldwork #experiments
With #RobMagrath #RobHeinsohn
doi.org/10.1016/j.an...
1/

What an opportunity!

I'm very excited to go back to Oxford, where I did my undergrad, to talk about the group's recent work on jackdaws and what it tells us about the evolution of sociality and cognition!

We are still interested in any found twite feathers for a study on the relationships and genetic diversity between the British groups - particularly now for birds of Scottish origin in the NE of England or, birds on the Avon.
DM me for me more info.
#birdringing

Dwarf mongoose drawing by wildlife artist Martin Aveling.

Dwarf mongoose pups emerging from the burrow.

Welcome to #MongooseMonday for all the info & pictures you didn't realise you needed!

Dwarf mongooses are Africa's smallest carnivore - upright, adults are the size of a 500 ml bottle; pups are tiny bundles of fun.

Thanks #MartinAveling for the drawing & @josharbon.bsky.social for the photo.

Now that we're properly moved in & set up in the new Life & Mind Building, we're pleased to restart our tradition of Friday afternoon seminar speakers, kicking off with Alex Thornton of @cornishjackdaws.bsky.social at 3.30pm on 31 Oct. Also live streamed: see below for details. Corvid-themed for 🎃

A view of a river at sunset. By combining many exposures I have multiple images for single birds flying through the scene, making the appearance of trails. One bird flies in an arc across the scene close to the camera and the sunlight can be seen shining through its tail feathers.

Homage to Xavier Bou: little swifts at the Olifants River high-water bridge, Kruger National Park. Unstacked from video taken with an Iphone 14. #birds #photography #SouthAfrica #iPhone

Global body adopts policy to protect Earth’s old, wise and large animals | Charles Darwin University The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has recognised Charles Darwin University-led research into the Earth’s oldest animals with the adoption of the ‘Longevity Conservation’ global...

the IUCN have passed the Longevity Conservation motion put forward to them by @kellerfish.bsky.social and @pili-scotland.bsky.social and based on the paper we wrote on the value of older individuals in animal societies.
www.cdu.edu.au/news/global-...

An integrative, peer‐reviewed and open‐source cooperative‐breeding database (Co‐BreeD) Co-BreeD is the first updatable and open-source database dedicated to cooperative breeding. It enables continuous, non-binary measurement of cooperative breeding, transforming how we study breeding s....

1/6 The Cooperative-Breeding Database (Co-BreeD) is alive! Co-BreeD covers key biological parameters relevant to cooperative breeding research in birds and mammals. Get your copy of this updateable & open-access database: besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
@animalecology.bsky.social

A white-fronted bee-eater (Merops bullockoides) decides whether to consume a warningly colored white-barred acraea butterfly (Telchinia encedon). Photo (c) Mike Rowe

📢🦋 Our paper ‘Global selection on insect antipredator coloration’ is out and featured on the cover of @science.org

We ran a huge experiment to find out how ecological context favours camouflage and warning colouration as antipredator strategies. 1/6

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