Andrew Straw

Pace of ecology drives the tempo of visual perception across the animal kingdom - Nature Ecology & Evolution Using phylogenetic comparative methods across 237 species from disparate phyla, the authors show that species with fast-paced ecologies have higher temporal resolution of perception.

Pace of ecology drives the tempo of visual perception across the animal kingdom www.nature.com/articles/s41... - new paper with Clinton Haarlem, Cliodhna Hynes and colleagues

Different species see the world as fast as they need to...

Quantitative Approaches to Behavior and Virtual Reality - CAJAL […]

You have until March 3rd to apply for the Cajal summer school on Quantitative Approaches to Behavior and VR at Champalimaud! Come surf and track animals with us 🏄🪰🐟🚶
cajal-training.org/on-site/quan...

Team der #UniFreiburg um Prof. Dr. @andrewstraw.bsky.social hat untersucht, wie #Honigbienen navigieren. Die Forschenden fanden heraus, dass jedes Tier eine eigene bevorzugte Route hat und diese sehr präzise abfliegt – visuelle Orientierungspunkte wie Bäume helfen dabei. ➡️ ufr.link/bienennavigation

Using our bee-tracking drone, we discovered that honey bees 🐝 have highly precise and individual routes. Now published at @currentbiology.bsky.social : doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...

With some trepidation, I'm putting this out into the world:
gershmanlab.com/textbook.html
It's a textbook called Computational Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience, which I wrote for my class.

My hope is that this will be a living document, continuously improved as I get feedback.

Glad it’s worked out!

Let me know if I can help with the ex pat stuff! (Or anything else…j

I just saw this now -- congratulations on the move! Big news!

Assistant Professor without Tenure (WOT), Marine Invertebrate Organismal Biology University of Washington: Academic Personnel & Faculty: College of the Environment: Aquatic and Fishery Sciences Location Friday Harbor Labs, WA Open Date Dec 12, 2025 Description The School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences (SAFS) and Friday Harbor Labs (FHL) at the University of Washington (UW) invite applications for the Riddiford – Truman Endowed faculty Chair, a position in the Without Tenure (WOT) track at the Assistant rank with specialization in marine invertebrate organismal biology. The successful candidate is expected to develop a collaborative, extramurally-funded and nationally recognized research program based at FHL that leverages FHL’s unique marine research infrastructure and natural setting. We especially welcome candidates whose scholarship in natural systems advances fundamental knowledge and contributes to environmental stewardship. All University of Washington faculty engage in teaching, research, and service.

Looking for a faculty job at one of the world's great research stations?

We're looking for a marine invertebrate biologist at UW's Friday Harbor Labs.

apply.interfolio.com/178804

Thanks for the thread. I’m looking forward to reading this!

The diversity of lepidopteran spatial orientation strategies – neuronal mechanisms and emerging challenges in a changing world - Journal of Comparative Physiology A The Lepidoptera, butterflies and moths, display an astonishing diversity of spatial orientation strategies essential for survival, reproduction, and ecological success. These spatial orientation strat...

Nice review, congratulations and thanks to all authors! And nice complement to the following recent review (with many authors in common on both publications): link.springer.com/article/10.1...

A summary figure for a NeurIPS competition where AI agents compete with mice in a visual foraging task.

Mice learn these tasks and are robust to perturbations like fog. Now, we invite you all to make AI agents to beat mice.

We present our #NeurIPS competition. You can learn about it here: robustforaging.github.io (7/n)

Locating nests of endangered bumble bees: Lessons from field trials in northern Germany Tracking bumble bees to find their nests using coloured strips of paper stuck to their thorax proved to be the most suitable method, while radio transponders were too heavy. Tracking times of up to .....

We discuss various strategies for locating nests of the rare and endangered above-ground nesting bumblebee species Bombus muscorum. Although we did not find any nests, we were able to track bees marked with paper strips for up to 800 m.
@jki-research.bsky.social
@nabu.de

doi.org/10.1111/icad...

We'd bee happy about that!

The tracks are 3D. We have stereo cameras on one drone. But indeed more drones would be better and help with occlusion.

That's a cool idea!

Thanks and you're welcome! So far it's just a preprint and I already confirmed that our granting agency is (grudgingly) willing to pay open access frees.

Many contributed directly or indirectly! Authors: Rachael Stentiford, Michael JM Harrap, Victor V. Titov, Stephan Lochner. @ttvodoan.bsky.social was instrumental in creating fast lock with a @hfspo.bsky.social fellowship. @biologyunifreiburg.bsky.social @uni-freiburg.de. @brainworlds.bsky.social
9/9

Photograph of multicopter drone and bee hive.

This work is a technical demonstration that multicopter drones can track honey bees in 3D across landscapes with trees and other structure.

Huge thanks to the @volkswagenstiftung.de who believed in our original "high-risk" idea. Also to @dfg.de for later funding to improve tracking precision.

8/9

Heat map showing the proportion of flight aligned to the target "Inbound - Gap", at different angular thresholds when the trajectories are divided into 20 segments.

Relating to the waggle dance, @freelyflyingbees.bsky.social, @schuemaa.bsky.social, and others have shown this dance is somewhat imprecise. Our results suggest this dance imprecision is not constrained by limits in bees' spatial representation. (Maybe, like me, they are just bad dancers.)

7/9

Scatter plots of bee trajectories crossing planes at select locations along their route.

The precision with which the bees repeatedly fly the same route surprised us. At one location near a prominent tree, we measured for each bee a spread of just 50 centimeters around the median. Elsewhere, over a cornfield, the trajectories were more variable.

6/9

Random convergence of olfactory inputs in the Drosophila mushroom body - Nature In Drosophila, olfactory sensory neurons project to spatially invariant loci (glomeruli) and stereotyped circuitry is maintained in projections to a brain centre thought to mediate innate behaviours; ...

Could the individual variability arise from random wiring of (visual) inputs to the mushroom body www.nature.com/articles/nat... @thecaronlab.bsky.social ? Or from variability in visual neuron wiring @linneweberlab.bsky.social @bassemh.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...?

5/9

Outbound and inbound trajectories from two bees.

We discovered individual honey bees typically have their own preferred route and, in the vicinity of nearby landmarks, fly repeatedly very nearly the same trajectory.

@mnjeschke.bsky.social @martinegelhaaf.bsky.social recently found similar in bumble bees in lab-based tunnel experiments.

4/9

2025 Component Abuse Challenge: Overdriven LEDs Outshine The Sun Tagging wildlife is never straightforward in the best of times, but it becomes a great deal more complicated when you’re trying to track flying insects. Instead of trying to use a sensor package, […

The reflector, glued to the bee, would reflect light from "outshine the sun" LEDs hackaday.com/2025/11/06/2... back to our drone-mounted fast lock tracking system strawlab.org/publications....

3/9

Bee with reflective marker.

We selected bees that had learned to forage from our sugar-water feeder. Such bees were flying repeatedly back-and-forth every few minutes and, after catching them, we would glue a reflector to them and release them again. (And we were often able to remove the reflector again when done.)

2/9

Have you ever wondered what you would find if you could keep your eyes on a bee for more than a few meters? Us, too!

preprint (with videos!) + thread 🧵

Precise, individualized foraging flights in honey #bees 🐝 revealed by multicopter drone-based tracking

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

1/9

Job Alert! The Institute for Neuro- and Behavioural Biology at the Faculty of Biology @uni-muenster.de invites applications for a Full Professorship (W3) in “Systems Neuroscience” - Highly attractive research environment at the Multiscale Imaging Center. Apply by January 5th. See shorturl.at/VczFp

2025 Component Abuse Challenge: Overdriven LEDs Outshine the Sun Hackaday Article

2025 Component Abuse Challenge: Overdriven LEDs Outshine the Sun

The cognitive ecology of wild bumblebees

New #PhD ad alert!
Interested in wild #bee #cognition and #brains in different #bumblebees? Want to live in #Newcastle and the beautiful north-east of England?

Check out this project with me, @lenariab.bsky.social and Sarah Scott. Contact me for further information.

iapetus.ac.uk/studentships...

overdriving LEDs, for the bees This project is about maxing out the LEDs. Can we drive them harder than the datasheet allows? We need this to overpower daylight, to see bees that wear retroreflective markers, as if was at night.

Lab member and hacker extraordinaire Victor Titov has entered the Component Abuse Challenge @hackadayofficial.bsky.social with the LEDs on our bee tracking drone. hackaday.io/project/2043.... Check out the video! Thanks @volkswagenstiftung.de @dfg.de @biologyunifreiburg.bsky.social @uni-freiburg.de