Stephen Montgomery

£99,987 and counting: graduates trapped by ballooning student loans As their debts rise, graduates reveal how loans are reshaping careers, finances and faith in the system

The student loan system is now totally insane - reinforces social inequalities and is a massive drag in spending power for a big proportion of adults, which seems pretty bad for the economy

www.theguardian.com/money/2026/f...

This is fantastic.

Applications close for this 4-year postdoc on Feb 9th (2 days!). The associated post for a technician should be online next week 👀

Ediacaran fossil surface on the coastline of Newfoundland, Canada

This #FossilFriday I am delighted to share a postdoctoral position that we @deeptimeecology.bsky.social @camzoology.bsky.social are advertising on early animal evolution in the #Ediacaran.

www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/postdoc...

‘If I think about what this means, I want to cry’: what happens when a city loses its university? When Essex University’s Southend campus opened, it was a message of hope for a ‘left behind’ UK seaside town. Its closure will be felt far beyond its 800 students, some of whom will not get their degr...

And so the dominoes in UK higher education begin to fall.

This closure will have a devastating impact on the city - on students, jobs, the wider economy (worth £100m a year), and social mobility for local youngsters.

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

I don’t know, the Robins are looking good for the playoffs 🥁

I’ve heard a few people sound like BBSRC rumour is confirmed but 🤷‍♂️

Yeah it really feels like now is not the time for this with all the other financial stress in the sector…

Anyone know how UKRI grant pauses will impact uni finances? I guess at some point their income takes a hit as a result, but would it be dissipated enough by existing overlapping grants?

New from Jessie Foley!

#Heliconius have elongated lives and excellent memory, but do they have excellent memory across their elongated lives? Find out now!*

Featuring learning and memory assays in 330 butterflies, and an absolute pig of an experiment to do.

*the title is a spoiler 🧪

Begs the question what animals are on your lickable list?

In 2 hours 53 minutes! ⏰

Excited for the upcoming TIBBE online talks &discussions with the amazing @stanley-heinze.bsky.social around
How can we increase our comparative dataset and make it more transferable between disciplines?
Next Wednesday, January 28, 3pm UTC, 4pm Paris 🧠🐜🪰🪳🦟🪲🐝 Join us www.crowdcast.io/c/comparativ...

New from Jessie Foley!

#Heliconius have elongated lives and excellent memory, but do they have excellent memory across their elongated lives? Find out now!*

Featuring learning and memory assays in 330 butterflies, and an absolute pig of an experiment to do.

*the title is a spoiler 🧪

This Wednesday!

Parallel Pathways for Visual and Olfactory Information in the Mushroom Bodies of the Swallowtail Butterfly Brain Papilio xuthus is a flower-foraging butterfly with sophisticated color vision. In the Papilio brain, the mushroom bodies (MBs) receive prominent visual input that is spatially segregated from olfacto...

Mushroom bodies! Butterflies!
What’s not to like?
New paper by Naomi Takahashi and Michiyo Kinoshita, involving an illustrious round of anatomists (…and me): Parallel Pathways for Visual and Olfactory Information in
the Mushroom Bodies of the Swallowtail Butterfly Brain
doi.org/10.1002/cne....

And the same gait…

Part II of @eahodge.bsky.social’s brilliant Masters thesis, fantastic work 👏

Excited that my 2nd MSc paper is out in @journal-evo.bsky.social 🦋🎉 doi.org/10.1093/evol...
We find Heliconius’ impressive visual memory is not due to increased visual-structure investment over that of their outgroup relatives, but instead consistent with specialisation of the central circuitry.

🤩 Join us for the next TIBBE seminar:
Comparative databasing
January 28, 3–4pm UTC

This event hosts an outstanding neuroscientist & biologist particularly interested in insect brains who will present his work, followed by an interactive discussion with the audience: www.crowdcast.io/c/comparativ...

Very excited to share that my first first-author pre-print is out today! Many thanks go out to all of our collaborators, especially those who helped with the fieldwork in Peru - it really wouldn't have been possible without you! 🦋

Evolution of Reproductive Plasticity in a Seasonal Tropical Environment https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.20.700078v1

Predatory aggression evolved through adaptations to noradrenergic circuits - Nature Noradrenergic circuits support and balance aggressive behavioural states in predatory nematodes, distinguish predatory from non-predatory nematode species and are associated with the evolution of comp...

Why do some worms graze on bacteria while others hunt and kill?
Our study, published today in Nature, reveals how predatory aggression evolved in nematodes.
Led by @gunizgozeeren.bsky.social and @leoboeger.bsky.social across the @jameslightfoot.bsky.social and @monikakscholz.bsky.social labs.

Wow, congrats @gunizgozeeren.bsky.social (and team)!! A long way from elephants but not surprised to see you do amazing stuff 👏

If you want to understand what is happening right now & what’s at stake, please listen to this conversation I had with historian Robert Kagan.

Europe has to wake up FAST.

Oooooh no…. The truth 😐

A delicious slice of nostalgia pie from @dickmerrill.bsky.social

Back in the carefree days of 2009…

The Serengeti Rules Exploring some of the most remote and spectacular places on Earth, a pioneering group of scientists make surprising discoveries that flip our understanding of nature on its head and offer new hope for...

Missed this: ecology documentary, but with the backing of a thunderous orchestra: www.theserengetirules.com. Film is free to watch on Amazon, based on the book by Sean Carroll.

predominantly ‘Jewish’ ­ human psy­ chol­ ogy with a new psy­ chol­ ogy that was ‘properly German.’ ”51 Lorenz joined the Nazi party in June of 1938. By 1940, he was appointed to the Kant Professorship of Psy­ chol­ ogy at the Albertus University of Königsberg in East Prus­ sia, which came along with the directorship of an Institute of Comparative Psy­ chol­ ogy. Adapting his domestication theme to the Nazi context, Lorenz wrote two articles in 1940 making explicit connections between Nazi racial hygiene and his own studies of animal be­ hav­ ior; the second of ­ these was published in the official Nazi journal for biology teachers.52 Lorenz quickly became part of the Nazi war machine. In Oc- tober 1941, just eight months ­ after assuming his Königsberg position, he was drafted into the German Army, first as a military psychologist in Poznan, a city in western Poland taken over by the Nazis ­ after their inva- sion of Poland in 1939. In Poznan, as a member of the Nazi Office of Race Policy, Lorenz administered ­ mental tests aimed at sorting “mixed Poles and Germans into German-­ like ­ people that could be rehabilitated and Poles who could not,” and who ­ were subsequently sent to concentration camps.53 When such psychological testing was discontinued, he worked as a physician and psychiatrist at the reserve hospital in Poznan.54 Along with ­ these practical activities, Lorenz continued to support Nazi ideology through intellectual ­ labors. In 1943, he published another article extol- ling the virtues of race purity, and warning of the disruptive effects of do- mestication on animals’ instincts.

I am reading "Killer Instinct: The popular science of human nature in 20th century America" by Nadine Weidman, and I am learning a lot. I was aware that Konrad Lorenz (father of field of ethology, winner of 1973 Nobel prize) was a Nazi, but didn't know he was so enthusiastic about it.

Social by nature: from animal minds to inclusive Science communities - ARU Inaugural lecture at ARU, Professor Claudia Wascher, explores what it means to be social in the animal kingdom and in the scientific community.

📣 Delighted to share that my inaugural lecture, Social by nature, from animal social minds to inclusive science cultures, is coming up.

📅 11 Feb 2026, 18:00 GMT | 💻 Online & Cambridge (www.aru.ac.uk/events/inaug...). A fitting way to mark the International Day of Women and Girls in Science.