Erin Wessling

We started the second day of the conference with a third keynote talk by Erin Wessling, who offered us insights and promising future avenues for the conservation of non-human animal cultures. A huge thank you to @northernlimitpt.bsky.social for this inspiring presentation!

how cute is this?! Can't believe I get to see these guys already next month... 😍

Last week to apply! Don't miss this chance ✨

Photo of a chimpanzee sitting in a tree, obscured by the yellow flowers around them. © MBCP

🤩 Fresh from the field! Our team is loving bani flower season 🏵️ – wide open views of our chimps on habituation days. We’re making big strides: some days we follow them from morning to night. So many new behaviors to discover and document!

Our team is up to amazing things! Come join us and help translate chimpanzee research into effective conservation action 🍃💪🐵

I have been actively involved in protest movements for 24 years. I have never seen anything approaching this scale. Minneapolis is not accepting what's happening here. ICE fucking murdered a woman for participating in this, and all that did is bring out more people, from more walks of life.

I came to Minneapolis to report on what's going on, and one of the main questions I showed up with is "just what is the scale of the resistance?" After all, we're all used to the news calling Portland a "war zone" or whatever when it's just some protests in one part of town.

Why would an entire subspecies have adaptations for a single behavior that only a very small subset of the contemporary taxon exhibits? This would require a pretty specific set of conditions in their history to make any sense

#ESHE2025
Rhianna Drummond-Clarke ‘First documentation and quantification of wild chimpanzee rock climbing’
Camera traps, Issa Valley TZ & Moyen Bafing, Guinea chimps

Rock vs tree climbing: more dynamic movements, biomech diff locomotor modes, reaching further- role of uneven substrates!
Amazing 😍

Excited to present next year among this wonderful group!

🌍✨ Still time to apply! The MBCP is looking for a Field Site Manager to join us in one of the most beautiful parks on the planet—work with an amazing team, semi-habituated chimps, and boost your project management chops for a career in #conservation or #research.

Info ➡️ bit.ly/MBCPmanager2025

two 4-year PhD positions in the Ape Behaviour & Ecology Group of the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Zurich, and the Wild Minds Lab of the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of St Andrews, to study wild chimpanzees and bonobos. The PhD candidates will work within the Creative Ape Project. The overall goal of the project is to enhance our understanding of the evolution of creativity, and to shed light on whether humans are a uniquely 'creative ape'. To do so we will apply a comparative approach, quantifying the creative capacities of wild non-human apes to investigate the underlying drivers that shape creative expression across species. The project explores four interconnected topics: i) Making mavericks, ii) Funny guys and arty-types, iii) Lone ape geniuses, and iv) Creative ape economies. We employ a comprehensive approach that leverages long-term datasets, new field data, detailed manual video-coding, bespoke automated deep-learning models, and advanced modelling, to extract rich information on the ways in which apes solve problems in their daily lives. Excellent collaborative, independent working and time management skills are essential. Previous field experience (incl. behavioural data collection) is required, and experience working in remote places under difficult living conditions is highly recommended. The project will require strong data management and data analysis skills, and 12-18 months of field work split into 2-3 periods. Please submit your application in a single PDF to kathelijne.koops@iea.uzh.ch and clh42@st-andrews.ac.uk – by 4th of August 2025. Feel free to get in touch if you have any inquiries about the positions. Applications should include: 1) cover letter stating your motivation and how your expertise fits the project (max. 1 page), 2) Curriculum Vitae, 3) copy of the highest degree obtained, 4) names and contact details of two referees, and 5) reprints of 1-2 selected publications

A tiny chimpfant looks at the camera with surprise

📣 Join the K/Creative Ape Team 🤓 2 PhDs on Creativity in Wild Chimpanzees & Bonobos; w myself & the v awesome @kathelijnekoops.bsky.social

@snf-fns.ch Uni Zurich @uniofstandrews.bsky.social @efp2026.bsky.social @ips-primatenews.bsky.social @primatesocietygb.bsky.social @primbehavecol.bsky.social 🐵🧪

🌍 Dream of adventure in the heart of Africa? Boost your career in conservation or research as a field researcher on wild bonobos in the DRC! Paid, full training, project management skills & epic experience await.

Apply ASAP & RT to share! 👉 bit.ly/bondiv2025 #conservationjobs #research

👀 Keep an eye here for new field opportunities! 👀 Several of my projects will be looking for new team members over the coming months, both in and out of the field!

This position is great for those who have some experience doing field work and will wish to develop management experience.

Who is afraid of modelling time as a continuous variable? Most models of ecological and eco-evolutionary processes involve creating trajectories of something, be it population densities, average trait values, or environmental states, over time. This requ...

Totally missed this last year's paper: A great introduction to continuous-time modelling (deterministic & stochastic)!

PIs in ecology/evolution/marine biology seeking PhD candidates for Fall 2026 can advertise via this form: https://forms.gle/2XTHBP6CZGEn3D1t9. A shared spreadsheet is also available. Thanks, Carly.

Fascinating, instructive preprint out on Conservation of Animal Cultures from the Erin Wessling team @northernlimitpt.bsky.social : Pathways from theory to practice: Applying animal cultures to conservation: osf.io/preprints/os...

Description of the Postdoc position

Description of the Postdoc position

Description of the Postdoc position

New Postdoc position!
🐵🐵🐵🐵
On the socioecology of cognition in primates, based in Paris @mnhn.fr @cnrs.fr, with field work
It has it all:
- the best science
- the best macaques
- the best beaches
- the best people
- the best office view #Eiffeltower

Join us!

Lucky to work so closely with this superstar 🤩

Towards a comprehensive view on evolutionary refugia in West African rainforests West African rainforests are amongst the world’s premier biodiversity hotspots. Over time, the size and distribution of these rainforests have changed significantly due to fluctuations in climate. How...

Really interesting food for thought on evolutionary refugia in West Africa. Would be wonderful if behavioral ecologists smore intensively consider the role of deeper time scales in our studies and what results like those here mean for subsequent inference! biogeography.pensoft.net/article/1395...

Come join us as a Field Site Manager in the incredible MoyenBafing National Park! Deadline March 28th. Dm with any questions!

Congratulations to @northernlimitpt.bsky.social and Michael Heide on receiving the Daimler and Benz scholarships for investigating

brain #organoids and

#adaptations to a challenging #ecosystem in savannah #chimpanzees

www.dpz.eu/en/public-en...

Google Colab

This looks potentially useful for #teaching: you can write & execute Python / R / Julia #code directly in a shareable document:

https://colab.research.google.com/

could also be useful for research collaborations, though I'm not sure about using it with non-public data

H/T @sje

🌿 Become a Field Site Manager for the Moyen Bafing Chimpanzee Project in Guinea! 🌿 We're seeking a dedicated individual to oversee operations and support research starting as early as April 2025. Be part of a team exploring chimpanzee behavioral ecology in the stunning PNMB!

Deadline is 28 Feb! Join us 😃

🌿 Join the @mbchimp.bsky.social ! 🐵 Seeking a part-time Data Assistant in Göttingen, Germany. Ideal candidates have experience in GIS and R, and will work with camera trap and spatial data. Dive into chimpanzee behavioral ecology in Guinea's PNMB. #Conservation #DataScience

Extinction of experience among ecologists Fieldwork-based research and education in ecology are under multiple threats and are progressively declining. We call for greater attention to this ongoing loss of direct field experience within the ecology community, as it could have widespread consequences for science and education, ultimately hindering efforts to address the ongoing biodiversity crisis.

Where are all the field studies?

This ⬇️ important but rather depressing paper describes how conducting, & crucially initiating, field studies is becoming harder & rarer.

A short 🧵 (and a call for more fieldwork)
www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

Wow that was fast! Well done, they look great 💪

Thank you!! 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

Interested in research on wild chimps? A fan of ecology and the crazy diversity exhibited by these apes? Still time to apply for a funded PhD with @lirsamuni.bsky.social and me (!!) at a world class research center in Germany! 🍃🐵