Megan Thompson

New paper from PhD student @ellmartin.bsky.social provides compelling experimental evidence that urbanization drives local adaptation, life history divergence and eco-evo feedbacks on a diverse community. Congrats Ella! 🌎🌆 #urbanecology #urbanevolution #evoeco

Excited to kick off my project “To Feed or Not to Feed Wild Birds”, funded by @wildanimalinitv.bsky.social
We’re setting up nestboxes and feeders in 40 private gardens in Innsbruck to study how bird feeding affects nestling welfare.
Stay tuned to see if our backyard treats really help birds!

Legacy effects of religion, politics and war on urban evolutionary biology - Nature Cities Cities affect biological evolution, but traditionally researchers focus on the biophysical influence of urban environments. Instead, this Review explores how the social processes of religion, politics...

Thrilled to share our Perspective published in 𝘕𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘊𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴: 𝗟𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗰𝘆 𝗲𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗼𝗻, #𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 #𝘄𝗮𝗿 𝗼𝗻 #𝘂𝗿𝗯𝗮𝗻 𝗲𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝗯𝗶𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆.

It also elevates Eastern European perspectives - underrepresented in #urban #evolution narratives.

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Sharing on behalf of my colleague Marcel Eens:

Post-doc position on #UrbanBirds at University of Antwerp:
6-10 month position with intention of submitting fellowship application (extends postdoc by 3 years if successful).

Deadline Aug 28. www.uantwerpen.be/en/jobs/vaca...

👋

Interested in working on the evolution of genetic architecture 🧬 of complex traits using linked-read sequencing of thousands of common lizards 🦎 from a wild population and common garden experiment?

#evolution #genetics

Well, I have a PhD offer for you 👇
devillemereuil.legtux.org/erc-funded-p...

Condon Lighthouse
Maud Lewis
c. 1958

Yes sure! I’ll send you an email

Disability in ecology and evolution In this TrendsTalk series 'Disability in ecology and evolution' in Trends in Ecology and Evolution, we will be hearing from people about their experiences being disabled in ecology and evolution. We a...

Huge thank you @aeastephens.bsky.social‬ for initiating the TrendsTalk series 'Disability in ecology and evolution' in T.R.E.E. providing visibility for disabled researchers in #Ecology & #Evolution to make our field more #inclusive www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

Big thanks to my exemplary #UrbanTit collaborators. It has been such a pleasure!

@annecharmantier.bsky.social @denisreale.bsky.social @clairebranston.bsky.social @pcapi.bsky.social @dingemanselab.bsky.social @senarjc.bsky.social & others not on BlueSky. Also @spibirds.bsky.social 🙏

Figures showing predictions and model estimates for how urbanization affects variation of adult tarsus length, nestling tarsus length, and lay date in great tits and blue tits at different population levels.

We find that urbanization increases phenotypic variation within subpopulations by 11% on average (local spatial scales), and some evidence that urbanization also increases differentiation between subpopulations (larger landscape scales).

Visual representation of tested hypotheses showing how urbanization can affect phenotypic variation at different population levels.

Last paper from my PhD at #EcolLett: dx.doi.org/10.1111/ele....

Using long-term data from European tit populations, we test three hypotheses to determine how urbanization affects phenotypic variation at different population levels.
#UrbanTitCollab #DiverCity #SPIBirds

Laura and Dhanya working in the lab to extract DNA from samples.

Thanks to my fab co-authors and to @nikaudet.bsky.social for organizing the Genetics of Animal Cognition special issue: link.springer.com/collections/...

GWAS results showing significant SNPs associated with the number of errors made during the inhibitory control task.

Using #quantgen, #commongarden, and #GWAS approaches, we find that urban and forest great tits do not differ (phenotypically or genetically) in their cognitive abilities related to inhibitory control, but show that cognitive variation may have a genetic basis.

Figure showing cognitive task administered to wild great tits in the field.

We have a new paper out on the genetic vs. environmental drivers of cognition along an urban gradient: doi.org/10.1007/s100...

@lauragervais.bsky.social @dhanyabharath.bsky.social @annecharmantier.bsky.social @denisreale.bsky.social

#inhibitorycontrol #greattits #animalcognition

Looking for a PhD project on sexual selection? Join us at UZH!

Application deadline: 9 June 2025.

jobs.uzh.ch/job-vacancie...

Disentangling non-random assortment, indirect effects, and joint plasticity as causes of phenotypic (dis)similarity between social partners Abstract. Social partners frequently resemble each other. These correlations between the phenotypes of interacting individuals (e.g. social partners, group

Our paper on disentangling assortative mating and indirect genetic effects in empirical datasets has just been accepted in @jevbio.bsky.social ! It has been a long process (5 years in the making!) and I am very proud of the result 🥳
academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-...

Our project, led by Sanllorente, is out at Insect Conservation & Diversity:

"A systematic review and meta-analysis on urban arthropod diversity" (doi.org/10.1111/icad...)

We performed a meta-analysis of means & variances, and explored how methods matter when studying urbanisation. Check it out!

Testing space‐for‐time transferability of climate effects on occupancy and abundance Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

🦋 New paper out in @funecology.bsky.social! 🦋

Using the Orange-tip butterfly in the UK🦋, we test a key assumption of many species’ distribution models (SDMs): that climate effects on species’ distributions are equivalent over space🌍 versus time⏰

doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.70005

🧵👇

Multidimensional plasticity of phenology: assessing the effects of population density on plastic responses of breeding time to temperature Phenotypic plasticity is the key adaptive mechanism behind annual adjustment of breeding time in response to temperature. In nature, organisms are not only subjected to variation in temperature but e....

Our latest research, led by Vaishnavi Purushotham, on breeding time plasticity in great tits has just been published in Oikos! 🐦🌿 We explored how temperature and conspecific density interact to shape breeding timing and success. Check it out! 🔗 nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

This experiment was a huge undertaking and wouldn’t have been possible without help from co-authors, the Montpellier Zoo staff, and the CEFE tit team. 🙏

There is further support that evolution has driven smaller urban body size in Dutch great tit populations. See another recent common garden to F3 led by @babimt.bsky.social currently in press at Evolution Letters. (preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...)

Table 1 synthesizes an impressive 77 common garden experiments with urban organisms showing that urban divergences can be driven by both genetic and plastic change; a conclusion that aligns with our study’s results.

Figures comparing phenotypic measurements between urban and forest tits in both common garden and wild contexts

We find trait-specific evidence of urban evolution where genetic change likely drives urban divergence in body size and stress, while behavioural divergences are more strongly driven by plasticity.

Visual representation of common garden procedure.

Our common garden experiment with urban and forest great tits is out early view in Evolution! doi.org/10.1093/evol... @denisreale.bsky.social @annecharmantier.bsky.social