Corné de Groot

We show that producer and scrounger behaviour are subject to direct and indirect social effects, and that these covary within and among traits. Both direct and indirect effects were stable across years for producing and scrounging, and have the potential to reduce heritable variation

Among-trait covariance and cross-year repeatability for direct and indirect individual effects in producer–scrounger behaviour in wild house sparrows Abstract. Variation in traits expressed during social interactions can be attributed to direct individual effects (DIEs) of the focal individual’s identity

Happy to share that our work on direct & indirect social effects in producer-scrounger behaviours was recently published in JEB:
academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-...

@roriwijnhorst.bsky.social @dingemanselab.bsky.social @ali--wilson.bsky.social

I hope to see some of you in Bielefeld for this upcoming workshop on measuring and modeling plasticity. ECRs in and around Germany with a penchant for statistics should consider applying while spots remain available!

"Body size shapes average behaviour, social impact, and social responsiveness in agonistic interactions" doi.org/10.32942/X2H...

Illustration of how additive variation on the latent liability scale becomes partly non-additive on the dichotomous phenotypic scale.

📖Published📖

Check out MEE's new review article 👉 Full decomposition of phenotypic variance in dichotomous traits: New methods and key implications for behaviour, demography and evolutionary ecology 🌍 🧪

buff.ly/IMsl7eL

A wide range of abiotic and biotic variables leaves most variation in bird nest architecture unexplained | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Nests are the locations or containers for offspring, and mediate interactions between offspring and the environment. However, understanding how environmental factors shape the evolution of nest archit...

New paper today in Proc B @royalsociety.org. We explored nest architecture in 3,685 species of birds, modelling the multivariate nature of nests, i.e. how shape, location or attachment co-occur. Then we explored how the environment affected nest architecture evolution. Spoilers in the title! 🪺🐦🌍

📚 We just launched a guide on starting code clubs—born from #SORTEE (un)conference!

Real tips, real experiences, from the community to the community!

Read it, use it, adapt it, and most importantly, help us make it better!

Open science communities for the win! 💙💚

sortee.github.io/start-your-c...

SORTEE Webinar: The Risks and Rewards of Large Language Models in (Open) Scientific Research SORTEE Workshop & Webinar Series

Happy to announce the next edition of the @sortee.bsky.social Workshop & Webinar series on October 27 at 16:00UTC, ‘The Risks and Rewards of Large Language Models in (open) Scientific Research’ with @tanyadoesscience.bsky.social !! Sign up here:
events.humanitix.com/sortee-webin...

📢4-year fully funded #PhD on seasonal timing of egg overwintering insects 🦋🦗🪳
🔬Identify universal mechanisms underlying #insect egg developmental time under #ClimateChange
📌@niooknaw.bsky.social @animalecol-nioo.bsky.social

ℹ️ vacatures.knaw.nl/job-invite/2...
❗Application deadline: 7 December 2025

Does anyone know of a nice guide for students (bachelor and master's level) on how to lead group paper discussions that they could share with me? What would be especially great are examples of the types of questions they should ask the group.

Join Join Society for Open, Reliable, and Transparent Ecology and Evolutionary biology (SORTEE)

🌍 Join SORTEE – A worldwide Open Science community for ecology and evolution! 🌱🧬

🌐 Join trainings, code clubs & our annual online conference
🚀 Help shape the future of Open Science

Membership is inclusive and flexible.
👉 Learn more: www.sortee.org/join/

#OpenScience #Ecology #Evolution

Do you run or participate in a code club at your institution, or are you interested in starting one but don’t know where to begin? @cecibaldoni.bsky.social and I are leading an ‘unconference’ discussion at @sortee.bsky.social’s virtual conference on October 16 - come share some tips and ideas!

#ISBE2026 Call for Abstracts is now open! Submit your abstract by 15 December 2025 on www.isbe2026.com

@behavecol.bsky.social

Seasonal size change and aging in shrews

PhD Alert! 😍 Our lab is hiring a PhD student to study how shrews shrink in winter and grow in spring. Yes, you read that right!
tinyurl.com/shrinkingshr...
Join us at the @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social, study a super cool animal, and join the @imprs-qbee.bsky.social community!

DM me for questions!

New in #ProcB - From policy to practice: Progress towards #data- and #code-sharing in ecology and evolution @asanchez-tojar.bsky.social @eivimeycook.bsky.social tell us more in our blog royalsociety.org/blog/2025/09...

Register now for #SORTEE2025 conference!

We thank our sponsors (@asn-amnat.bsky.social, @cdnsciencepub.com, @datadryad.bsky.social, @peercommunityin.bsky.social, @royalsociety.org, @sse-evolution.bsky.social, @biologists.bsky.social) who are eligible for free registration.

Interested in simulating the kind of data that you might commonly find in evolutionary and ecological studies?

Then we have the R package for you - squidSim!!

Check our new preprint:
ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

Genetic and environmental sources of behavioral individuality: a test of the standard model Behavioral variation is typically assumed to arise from the combination and interaction of genetic and environmental variation. However, recent work with genetically identical individuals has found th...

New preprint out from the lab, including @rroyaute.bsky.social:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

In this we test what we refer to as the "standard model" of behavioral variation.

This was inspired by recent work identifying intra-genotypic variation as a major contributor to "individuality".
1/

🚨Introducing the @sortee.bsky.social Guidelines for Data and Code Quality Control in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology🚨 doi.org/10.32942/X24...

Increasingly E&E journals are recruiting data editors. We provide standardised guidelines for journals with data editors and those wanting to recruit them 🧵

Covariance reaction norms: A flexible method for estimating complex environmental effects on trait (co)variances Estimating quantitative genetic and phenotypic (co)variances is crucial for investigating evolutionary ecological phenomena such as developmental integration, life history trade-offs and niche spe...

My first solo author paper is now available in early view at Methods in Ecology and Evolution! I develop a covariance reaction norm (CRN) model for estimating continuous, multivariate, and nonlinear environmental effects on G and P matrices.

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

If you're attending the Ecology & Behaviour 2025 conference and want to learn about how researchers can reappropriate the publication system, come have a chat tomorrow!

Indirect genetic effects among neighbors promote cooperation and accelerate adaptation in a small-scale human society Social effects on fertility promote population growth and the evolution of flexible cooperation in a small-scale human society.

I'm very excited to share the central paper from my PhD out now in Science Advances. We investigated how social effects among neighbors shape the evolution of reproductive cooperation and the pace of adaptive population growth among the Indigenous Tsimane of Bolivia.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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

The Local Organizing Commitee welcomes behavioral ecologists from across the world and of all career stages to enjoy a five-day meeting rich in top-notch science and ample networking opportunities in Turin (Italy), 20-24 July 2026.

A crab spider with bright yellow/green prosoma and legs and a light brown opisthosoma sits on a leaf

PhD position open with Dr. Jutta Schneider and @mherberstein.bsky.social in Hamburg, on sub-social behavior in crab spiders 🕷️ It even includes field work in Australia! Application deadline is 15 July, more info at the link:
www.uni-hamburg.de/en/stellenan...

Big congrats to Dr. @cdegroot.bsky.social for a wonderful PhD defence @lmumuenchen.bsky.social. A big thanks to all collaborators and partner in crime @roriwijnhorst.bsky.social, and @rivers-disguise.bsky.social for producing wonderful artwork. Time to celebrate!

ECR Asks: Professor Tim Parker SORTEE blog

Introducing our new SORTEE blog series: ‘ECR Asks’, in which ECRs interview experienced SORTEE members

This month, @oakleigh-wilson.bsky.social spoke to Tim Parker about incentive structures in #openscience & how ECRs can make their own commitment to best practices

buff.ly/tZORNmK

Hi all, was out for a year but now back and very happy to findi all my sciency friends here at blue sky 😊

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-...