Rob Heathcote

What drives aggression? Linking Ecology, Evolution, and Genes

Interested in fighting, flies, and evolution? I've got a project at Durham investigating the ecology, evolution, and genetics of aggression in fruit flies (Drosophila): iapetus.ac.uk/studentships.... All questions welcome - just shoot me a message or email!

BehaveAI is live!

Our biologically inspired video analysis tool sees motion as colour. Track animals or objects, classify their behaviour, and handle complex natural scenes with ease.

Semi-supervised annotation, no GPUs required, user-friendly, free & open source.

Pre-print tinyurl.com/BehaveAI

MSc by Res opportunity - developing behavioural indicators to inform killer whale conservation with
@exeter.ac.uk @whaleresearch.bsky.social @seadocsociety.bsky.social

People from underrepresented groups in marine science encouraged to apply.

Deadline 19Dec

www.exeter.ac.uk/study/fundin...

A collage featuring some laboratory analyses, a schematic of the structure of DNA, a pocket watch in an elderly person's hand, and a family of wild meerkats.

🚨Fully-funded PhD opportunity in my group🚨

🧬How does parental ageing shape the next generation?🐾

Find out by studying meerkats!

🧪Epigenetic clocks
✨Bioinformatics
📊Long-term data
🌍Kalahari fieldwork
💡Big evolutionary questions

Get in touch or APPLY NOW
Please share!
www.uea.ac.uk/course/phd-d...

And so it begins!! 💥💥💪

And a new chapter begins! I'm thrilled to have started a PDRA role at @biology.ox.ac.uk with @rjpheathcote.bsky.social. Stay tuned for more fish content 🐟

I'm v excited to be recruiting a PhD student to work on badger behaviour and ecology! Starting date is March 2026; see the ad here, or message me for more details: www.gregalbery.me/s/March-2026...

And welcome to the other place!!

The sun did briefly shine in Cambridge today on my last day in @camzoology.bsky.social. It has been a monumental 5.5 years, both professionally and personally. Words can't express my gratitude towards both the Department and the @marinebehavecol.bsky.social group for making me feel so at home 🐠

A white-fronted bee-eater (Merops bullockoides) decides whether to consume a warningly colored white-barred acraea butterfly (Telchinia encedon). Photo (c) Mike Rowe

📢🦋 Our paper ‘Global selection on insect antipredator coloration’ is out and featured on the cover of @science.org

We ran a huge experiment to find out how ecological context favours camouflage and warning colouration as antipredator strategies. 1/6

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

We are hiring - PDRA position exploring how information access shapes social dynamics in killer whales. Collaboration with @samellisq.bsky.social @drwhale.bsky.social Prof Dan Franks (York) start 1st Nov (or ASAP) end 31st Oct 2028. Apps close on 19th Oct.

www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOT336/p...

We're looking for a new postdoc on our new BBSCR grant (Graham Taylor/Tim Guilford/Cait Newport). See link below!

my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

Oh wow yes a Pituophis I think! Assumedly an escaped pet.

Where was this Steve?? Hard to tell due to image downsampling by Bluesky but that looks like a North American gopher/pine/bull snake (Pituophis sp) from here!

Claudia holding an ARU branded glas of blubbly and a pin saying 'It's Prof actually' and smiling into the camera

Celebrating 10 years @aru-biology.bsky.social, now as Professor of Behavioural Biology! Endlessly grateful to the students and collaborators whose curiosity, mentorship, and teamwork made this journey so rewarding, whilst navigating and challenging academia's systemic hurdles #WomenInSTEM #ARUproud

Animal brains don’t think in a vacuum, they think in heatwaves & hypoxia, and around predators, parasites, and social groups. Our new review maps mechanisms, timescales, and gaps for understanding animal cognition in changing environments: authors.elsevier.com/a/1lau5Esvgs...

I ll be giving a workshop on our new swaRmverse package at #Behaviour2025, come to learn more about quantifying spatiotemporal patterns of animal groups, practical tips on analysis, and discussion on next new features 😁 💻

Package info👇
doi.org/10.1111/2041...

& 🙏 to @asab.org for the travel grant🥰

Electroreception in treehoppers: How extreme morphologies can increase electrical sensitivity | PNAS The link between form and function of an organism’s morphology is usually apparent or intuitive. However, some clades of organisms show remarkable ...

Why do treehoppers look so weird?! Our latest paper, out this week in @pnas.org, suggests a perhaps unexpected reason - static electricity ⚡ We show that treehoppers can detect the electrostatic cues of predators and that their crazy shapes may boost their electrosensitivity! doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Antagonistic effects of predator color morph abundance and saliency on prey anti-predator responses Predators can have different color morphs, but whether morph abundance or saliency is more influential in shaping antipredator behavior in prey remains unc

🔴New #trumpetfish content!🔴 This species is colour #polymorphic so we dove (pun intended) into how the relative abundance and saliency of each morph influences the #behaviour of their prey. Find out more via the link below! 🎺🐠
🔗 tinyurl.com/39vn5skp #behavioralecology

So very excited for the magnum opus of my #PhD to finally be out in @pnas.org. 🎉🎉 We demosntrate that mutualistic co-mimicking tropical butterflies not only converge in light microhabitat but, as a consequence, have also converged in visual system morphology! 1/n😀
www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Mapping the adaptive landscape of Batesian mimicry using 3D-printed stimuli - Nature Birds have an excellent ability to learn to discriminate harmless insects from those that they mimic on the basis of subtle differences in appearance.

Why do imperfect mimics (such as many hoverflies) exist? We created 3D printed replicas of flies, wasps and our own custom intermediates and then "asked" various predators what they thought of our 3D stimuli. Read all about it here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

NEW PAPER🎺
How does cognition determine an individual’s fitness? A systematic review of the links between cognition, behaviour and fitness in non-human animals

Lots of studies try to explain how cognition might evolve, by taking a behavioural ecology approach

Has this approach made any progress?🧵

How does predation shape evolution? We tested this with guppies, exposing them to real predators over 3 generations. Survivors evolved fast: bigger females with earlier broods, males with shorter tails and gonopodia. But...
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Deadline tomorrow!!!

Honoured to be joining the next cohort of @ukri.org BBSRC Fellows! Excited to kick off my project asking whether signalling promotes cooperative cleaner-client interactions (with the help of robotic fish 🐟🤖)!

Hugely grateful for all the support, advice, and encouragement that’s helped me get here!

Just in time for the opening of the sparkly new building: lifeandmind.web.ox.ac.uk

🐠💥2 year postdoc in fish sensory ecology!! 💥🐟
If you’re into animal colour, collective behaviour, predator-prey interactions, enjoy behavioural experiments and fieldwork, please apply! Based in Oxford with fieldwork in northwest Thailand (and elsewhere). Please repost! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNM294/p...

AI generated image showing flock of sheep, shoal of fish, flock of birds and swarm robots

1/3

www.swansea.ac.uk/postgraduate...

PhD studentship! Comparative Analysis and Modelling of Collective Behaviour in Natural and Artificial Systems.

**this scholarship for UK residents only, as defined by UKCISA regulations**

Details below! Please RT

(AI-generated image)

Baboons walk in line for friendship, not survival, new study finds Researchers at Swansea University have discovered that baboons walk in lines, not for safety or strategy, but simply to stay close to their friends.

New paper in @behavecol.bsky.social (link: academic.oup.com/beheco/advan...)
led by PhD student @marcofele.bsky.social using hard-won data from our amazing baboon team. Our @swanseauni.bsky.social press release:
www.swansea.ac.uk/press-office...
We introduce the idea of a "social spandrel".....

Motion After‐Effects Induced by Dynamic Illumination in Crab Vision While in humans, background motion can disrupt the detection of visual cues even after the moving background component has ceased, it remains unknown whether natural forms of background motion might ...

🚨Our new paper is out NOW in @ecol-evol.bsky.social 👀 Here we show that prior exposure to dynamic illumination can have a persisting effect on the visual perception of 🦀, reducing their ability to detect predators even after the dynamic illumination has ended.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...