Erik Postma

A teal flyer for a PhD opportunity to investigate how warming may change antimicrobial resistance. The project will use experiments on Klebsiella bacteria to answer questions about how temperature affects their response to antibiotics, plasmid transfer, and fitness costs. The research involves microbiology lab work, bioinformatics, and mathematical modeling. The flyer includes contact details for Dr. Daniel Padfield and the logos of the sponsoring institutions.

I have an MRC-funded PhD project available (www.exeter.ac.uk/study/fundin...) on how warming will change the problem of AMR. Join a small and friendly group (padpadpadpad.netlify.app/about) in (sometimes) sunny Cornwall. 🧪🦠 #microsky

Please share the ad below with anyone who may be interested.

2 job adverts on a NERC project w myself + @darrenobbard.bsky.social on “What determines the virome: ecology and the environment, evolution, or species history?” early 2026 in
@uniexecec.bsky.social
- Postdoc: jobs.exeter.ac.uk/hrpr_webrecr...
- RA: jobs.exeter.ac.uk/hrpr_webrecr...
Pls share!

Fully funded PhD working on insectivorous bird declines with a broad range of stakeholders. Starting ASAP #ornithology #zoology #biodiversity #science #ecology
www.exeter.ac.uk/study/fundin...

Well that’s the “highlight” of my week for sure!
Thrilled to see our recent paper covered in Nature’s Research Highlight: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Also see @markspa.bsky.social’s neat explainer below.

Age- and sex-dependent associations between the number of older siblings and early-life survival in pre-industrial humans | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Siblings are an important part of an individual’s early-life environment and may therefore play an important role in shaping an individual’s survival. The quantification of sibling effects on survival is challenging, however, especially in long-lived ...

1. My first ever paper is out! With
@euantheyoung.bsky.social
@lummaalab.bsky.social
@erikpostma.bsky.social
@hannahdugdale.bsky.social
How do older siblings, and their sex and age, affect the survival of younger siblings? Find out by checking below.

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

𝗩𝗔𝗖𝗔𝗡𝗖𝗬
As FAIRification steward you'll scout the nature data landscape and help researchers making their data FAIR. Do you bring quantitative/technical as well as interpersonal skills? Then this vacancy of the LTER-Life digital twin project is for you!

nioo.knaw.nl/en/vacancies...

👌

#ExE is organised by @btschirren.bsky.social @ali--wilson.bsky.social @blongdon.bsky.social @hansonmark.bsky.social @erikpostma.bsky.social and others. Get in touch if you want to known more!

With #eseb2025 coming to a close, it is time to start making plans for 2026. Interested in the interface of evolution 🧬 and ecology 🌳? Come to our #ExE conference hosted by @uniexecec.bsky.social in beautiful #Cornwall. Leave your email address at tinyurl.com/EvolxEcol to join our mailing list!

A big round of 👏 to the speakers in @sevans.bsky.social and my #eseb2025 symposium on forecasting evolution 🧬📈📉, and sorry if you didn’t find a 🪑. The mismatch between the no. of submissions and the overwhelming interest in the topic serves as an inspiration to get better at predicting the future 🔮

Unfortunately, our invited speaker @colingarroway.bsky.social is stuck in Canada, but on the upside you will get to hear more about the work by Timothée Bonnet, who is taking over his slot, and from Lizy Mittell about her super relevant work on the invisible fraction! You won’t want to miss this!

If you are at #ESEB2025 and you are interested in predicting evolution 🧬📈 - retrospectively and into to the future - then you are in luck! Symposium 42 organised by @joelpick.bsky.social and Lizy Mittell is on today, and S24 by myself and @sevans.bsky.social tomorrow!

👋

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...

**Postdoc opportunities**👇👇 Find me at poster 302 today between 17:30-18:00 for a chat. 🦡🦠🔬🧬 #eseb2025

Interested in a PhD connecting sensory ecology and evolutionary genetics? Applications are now open for a project on the Speciation Genomics of Eye Size Variation in Heliconius Butterflies in our lab at LMU Munich: www.evol.bio.lmu.de/research/mer... Please repost!

First chicks today on Penryn Campus @uniexecec.bsky.social
#springhassprung #phenology #nestboxpopulation

Plots illustrating the results of an interrupted time series analysis of submission and acceptance rates, showing a decline in submission rates but little to no change in acceptance rates post-COVID-19 pandemic.

How did the #COVID-19 pandemic shape scientific productivity? Stephanie Meirmans, @maurineneiman.bsky.social, Shalene Singh-Shepherd @royalsocietypublishing.org and I crunched the submission and acceptance data for 25 journals in #Ecology&Evolution: doi.org/10.1098/rspb... @uniexecec.bsky.social

What do you think, can we forecast evolution❓

@sevans.bsky.social and I would love to hear your thoughts, so if you are going to #ESEB2025, submit a talk to our symposium (S24: Forecasting evolution in natural populations) and join @colingarroway.bsky.social and Patrik Nosil!

Deadline April 25.

The Release of Non‐Native Gamebirds Is Associated With Amplified Zoonotic Disease Risk Spillback is potentially an important mechanism by which non-natives contribute to zoonotic disease emergence. We capitalise on quasi-experimental releases of non-native pheasants (Phasianus colchicu...

Emile Michels' first PhD paper published today. Amplification of Borrelia in ticks at pheasant-release sites – an intriguing example how non-native species can increase zoonotic disease risk through spillback. @uniexecec.bsky.social
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Scatterplot illustrating the tight correlation between the date of the very first egg and the mean laydate for that year.

Although it is based on the behaviour of just a single bird, the date of the first egg of the season is a remarkably good predictor of the mean laydate for that year, explaining almost 70% of the variation.

A scatterplot illustrating the advancement in mean great tit lay date over time.

The mean laydate is still unknown for 2025, but this shows a similar - albeit a less steep - advancement of about 1/10th of a day per year, or a week since the start of the study in 1955. The big ❓ is how this compares to the advancement of phenology of the trees and the caterpillars.

A plot the date of the first great tit egg on Vlieland against year showing 2025 is the third-earliest year since 1955.

Last year I posted too early and had to retract my post 🫣, but now that all @niooknaw.bsky.social @animalecol-nioo.bsky.social nest boxes on #Vlieland have been checked, we know for sure that it is - yet again - a very early start of the breeding season! @uniexecec.bsky.social @sevans.bsky.social

As I’m sure we’ll here about, lots of ways people are tackling this considerable challenge: predicting in situ adaptation, forecasting fit of today’s populations to the environments of the future, etc.

What do you think, can we forecast evolution❓

@sevans.bsky.social and I would love to hear your thoughts, so if you are going to #ESEB2025, submit a talk to our symposium (S24: Forecasting evolution in natural populations) and join @colingarroway.bsky.social and Patrik Nosil!

Deadline April 25.

We invite you to @eseb2025.bsky.social in Barcelona 😁 With 51 symposia at a unique location and around 2000 delegates expected, this is shaping up to be the biggest ESEB meeting ever!

ESEB members are entitled to reduced registration fee - we look forward to seeing you there - don't miss out!

Delighted to see Mollie Rickwood's @uniexecec.bsky.social MSc thesis out @royalsocietypublishing.org, in which she decomposes a nesting date 📉 in 🐢 into its individual- and population-level drivers.

A brilliant collaboration with a great team, incl. Annette Broderick, @brendangodley.bsky.social

Fieldwork opportunity: We're looking to hire a field assistant for the www.phenoweb.org project starting 1 April. Please repost. #phenology #fieldwork #birdringing

1/11
New preprint out with @hannahdugdale.bsky.social, @lummaalab.bsky.social, and @erikpostma.bsky.social: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Why do we age? And can a “natural experiment” during the Great Finnish Famine with long-term data help provide some answers?

Now with an @evolletters.bsky.social blog post about the work from study lead Ryan Imrie evolutionletters.net/examining-pa... @uniexecec.bsky.social

Counting chicks before they hatch: extending the observed lifetime to better characterize evolutionary processes in the wild Abstract. Evolutionary theorists have emphasized for over half a century that population sampling must be conducted at the intergenerational boundary if th

Lifetime reproductive success (LRS) is a key metric in evolutionary biology and ecology. But what counts as a success? And whose successes do we count? @sevans.bsky.social doesn't shy away from the big questions in this new paper just out in @journal-evo.bsky.social: academic.oup.com/evolut/artic...