Simon Baeckens

Deadline for applying is 9 march. Don't miss out!

Creatures of habit: similar but more repeatable behaviours in insular compared with mainland lizards Island habitats often differ markedly from those on the mainland in many biotic and abiotic factors. Typically, they harbour fewer predator, competito…

Three field seasons

219 lizards 🦎

>1,000 hours of behavioural video scoring

Proud of Ioanna Gavriilidi for getting this major chapter of her PhD on insularity and lizard behaviur published.

Serious dedication!

🦎 Funded 4-year PhD position on Lizard Evolutionary Ecology in our lab at UCLouvain (Belgium)! Apply before 9 March! jobs.uclouvain.be/Personnelsci...

Humans are transforming the natural world at an unprecedented scale and rate. We, at #UCLouvain 🇧🇪, are organizing a symposium on how organisms, populations, and communities respond to these human-induced environmental changes. April 29–30, 2026! Join us: www.uclouvain.be/en/research-...

Crossed the 100-paper mark as an editor for #BiologyLetters (@royalsocietypublishing.org). Still impressed by the quality and range of science the journal publishes. 🦎

First PhD paper out for Eleesha Annear—and what a start!
Her work uncovers surprising variation in osteoderm size and shape across populations, sexes, and body regions in a cordylid lizard 🦎 academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/a...

We studied lizards from 12 Croatian islands and found substantial variation in their chemical signal profiles. Ecological factors didn’t explain it. Instead, divergence was best explained by non-adaptive processes 🦎🏝️ @oikosjournal.bsky.social nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Evolutionary consequences of extreme climate events Simon Baeckens and Colin Donihue review case studies of rapid evolutionary change in response to extreme climate events and sketch a framework for future studies in the rapidly changing climate of the...

#AGW
#ecosystems
#biodiversity

More frequent and intense, extreme events threaten the survival of animals and plants. But when stress thresholds aren't exceeded, they seem to accelerate #adaptation and short-term #evolution.

And long-term? Under which conditions?.

OA review & research program:

Currently, the most compelling evolutionary insights have come from long-term selection studies that were serendipitously interrupted by an extreme event. To advance our understanding of how extreme events drive evolution, proactive strategies are now essential.

Evolutionary consequences of extreme climate events Simon Baeckens and Colin Donihue review case studies of rapid evolutionary change in response to extreme climate events and sketch a framework for future studies in the rapidly changing climate of the...

Under #climate change, extreme weather events are liable to become more frequent and intense.

@simonbaeckens.bsky.social & Colin Donihue review the evidence for impacts on #evolution such events can have and how we can study them in the future.

www.cell.com/current-biol...

Evolutionary consequences of extreme climate events Simon Baeckens and Colin Donihue review case studies of rapid evolutionary change in response to extreme climate events and sketch a framework for future studies in the rapidly changing climate of the...

Extreme climate events can catalyze rapid evolutionary change! in our new Current Biology (@currentbiology.bsky.social) piece, Colin and I argue it’s time to study their evolutionary consequences systematically — beyond opportunistic observations. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Day one at UCLouvain, day one of the Animal Evolutionary Ecology Lab! Eager to get started!

Body mass evolution as a driver of morphological and ecological diversity in terrestrial mammals - BMC Ecology and Evolution Body mass plays a fundamental role in the macroevolutionary dynamics of morphological, ecological, and phylogenetic diversification. Given biomechanical principles, large body masses in terrestrial ve...

Thrilled to share our new paper out in BMC, part of my postdoc at @cornellvet.bsky.social! 🐘🐀
We found that larger mammals evolve more diverse morphologies, while smaller ones can explore many locomotor strategies without much change to their forelimbs.
bmcecolevol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

The talented Jindong Zhang analyzed 74,000+ papers, revealing how #biomimetic research relies on a narrow slice of biodiversity—missing out on nature’s untapped genius. In our paper, we call for broader, species-level, and comparative approaches!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A lizard in sight whets the appetite? 🦎 Read how conspecifics influence island and mainland lizards’ foraging decisions in @UAFunMorph's new paper by Ioanna Gavriilidi! Link to the full article: authors.elsevier.com/a/1lPDn1LenM...

On the flick of the tongue: male island and mainland lizards' responses to self and conspecific chemical stimuli We compared the chemosensory recognition abilities of mainland and island Italian wall lizards (Podarcis siculus). Both populations discriminated between self and conspecific scents, but island lizar...

Another PhD chapter published for Ioanna Gavriilidi @uafunmorph.bsky.social, now in @jzoology.bsky.social! She finds that island-dwelling lizards tend to rely less on chemosensory cues compared to their mainland counterparts. zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Excited to announce that I’ll be joining the Earth & Life Institute at UCLouvain (🇧🇪) as an Assistant Professor of Animal Evolutionary Ecology this September. Watch this space for upcoming opportunities for PhDs and postdocs!

Thinking about Elisabeth Vrba on this International Day of Women in Science. Sad to lose another one of the 'Three Musketeers' of evolutionary biology.