Samuele Ramellini

Developmental Stage‐Specific Responses to Extreme Climatic Events and Environmental Variability in Great Tit Nestlings Extreme climatic events (ECEs) impact great tit nestlings in a developmental stage-specific and context-dependent manner. Using 60 years of data on 83,000+ great tit nestlings from Wytham Woods, UK, ...

New paper out! Great tits face distinct challenges from extreme weather during development, based on 60 years data from >83k nestlings in Wytham Woods 🐣 Cold snaps & heavy rain can stunt growth, but earlier breeding may help buffer this! By @devisatarkar.bsky.social et al.
doi.org/10.1111/gcb.70794

Female wild #turkeys face tough trade-offs between reproducing and surviving. This #RSOS study tracked 942 GPS-marked hens from 2014–2023 across the southeastern United States to understand how breeding affects survival: royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article...

🚨ABSTRACT SUBMISSION REMINDER🚨

Submissions for the 2026 ASSAB conference are still open until the 13th of March.

Submit now to take part in a friendly, warm and welcoming conference for behavioural ecologists

We're thrilled to announce the Ctrl-Z Award, a US$2,500 prize for researchers “who discover substantial errors in their published work and take meaningful steps to correct the scientific record."
Covered by @nature.com today; read more here: centerforscientificintegrity.org/2026/03/10/a...

Storm-induced mass mortality results in both immediate and long-term consequences for a migratory songbird Nature Ecology & Evolution - Combining 27 years of citizen science data with whole-genome sequencing, the authors show that mass mortality of purple martins caused by a severe winter...

Spring is arriving, but there's still snow in the forecast! How do late #winter storms affect our migratory #birds? Out now in @natecoevo.nature.com, we ask that Q with 25+yrs of #CitizenScience data and ~400 museum specimens collected after the 2021 Great TX Freeze: rdcu.be/e7aUy
#EcoEvo #evolution

There is No Consensus on Biological Sex At this critical moment when misinformation about sex is being applied to policy globally, scientific clarification on the definition of biological sex is valuable. Here, we evaluate the primary appr...

New paper out in ecology letters! with @andylee.bsky.social @allydefduf.bsky.social

We synthesized the active debate on how scientists define sex, including limitations and assumptions. We believe this discussion will lead to more accurate science.

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

Join our director, Theresa Crimmins, this Wednesday as she discusses her book, Phenology! Theresa will be in conversation with Dr. Elise Gornish, Director of The Desert Laboratory on Tumamoc Hill.

Marsupials previously thought extinct for millennia discovered in New Guinea The chances of finding one mammal species thought to be lost was ‘almost zero’ and finding two is ‘unprecedented’, biologist Tim Flannery says

😲

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

How are Pacific NW mountain birds responding to climate change?

I got up at 4:00 am for a month to find out.

but first the backstory, or "how I spent seven years telling everyone this project wasn't possible"

new paper here:
esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Big effort, exciting results - our paper on the constraints of thermal limits in tropical insects is now out in @nature.com! 🦋🐝🪰🪲🦗
@ecoresearchzoo3.bsky.social
@biologie-uniwue.bsky.social
@uni-wuerzburg.de

📑📊We have just uploaded a new pre-print where we decompose spatial, temporal and spatial-temporal variation in natural selection on reproductive traits for great tits and blue tits.
With Yimen Araya-Ajoy, @ellafcole.bsky.social and @sheldonbirds.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Seasonal dynamics of urban bird communities: impact of habitat on breeding and wintering bird communities in a northern temperate region - Journal of Ornithology Urbanization transforms natural landscapes, significantly influencing bird communities by reducing species richness and fostering functional homogenization. Birds, a vital component of urban biodivers...

Now online in Journal of #Ornithology

Seasonal dynamics of urban bird communities: impact of habitat on breeding and wintering bird communities in a northern temperate region

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Fenner School scientists from the Difficult Bird Research Group have rescued the lost song of the regent honeyeater, offering new hope for the survival of the critically endangered bird: bit.ly/4l2D5Cc @teamswiftparrot.bsky.social

Congrats!!

Surely something I miss about Europe! Even though some invasive blackbirds are found here in Australia as well

Social and ecological factors associated with innovation in urban sulphur-crested cockatoos (Cacatua galerita) Cities are challenging places for wildlife, but some species, like sulfur-crested cockatoos, adapt by finding new ways to feed and solve problems. We studi

New paper alert! 🦜

We gave wild cockatoos puzzle boxes across Canberra’s urban gradient. The finding? Urban birds approach faster, but are not better solvers.

Our results suggest that urbanization shapes neophobia independently from cognitive performance. Read it here:

doi.org/10.1093/behe...

🔊 Nominee for Best ECR IBIS paper 2025

Cooperative and plural breeding by the precocial Vulturine Guineafowl

Brendah Nyaguthii et al

doi.org/10.1111/ibi....

Supported by Leica Camera (UK) | #ornithology 🪶

🔊 VOTE NOW

For your favourite Early Career Researcher paper published in IBIS in 2025

bou.org.uk/ibis/ibis...

Voting closes: 23 March

Supported by Leica Camera (UK) | #ornithology 🪶

🧵 ⬇️

Climate, ecological dynamics, and the seasonal distribution of birds in mountains Ecological dynamics related to energy use and competition drives the seasonal distribution of birds in mountains across the world.

Why is there such variation in the birds encountered as you go up or down a mountain? New paper in #ScienceAdvances examines how climate and ecological interactions drive bird distributions in mountains throughout the year:

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

1/10 ⬇️

Have you created your profile on the ESA Career Center yet? Use it to search for new positions, yes, but also use it to share your info with recruiters and get personalized messages about roles that fit your skills and experience. https://www.esacareercenter.org/

Challenges for wildlife seeking sleep in a disturbed world Summary: Animals must obtain a daily amount of sleep to perform well when awake, but doing so in the modern world is increasingly difficult owing to various forms of human-made disturbance.

Read about the challenges faced by wildlife trying to sleep in a disturbed world

"Challenges for wildlife seeking sleep in a disturbed world"

doi.org/10.1242/jeb....

How Many Deaths Are Too Many? Assessing the Impact of Additional Mortality on a Critically Endangered Bird Small, threatened populations can be vulnerable to changes in vital demographic rates such as mortality. Managers must intervene if mortality outpaces reproduction. We consider whether additional rel...

New research on orange-bellied parrots!

We simulated the consequences of rising mortality rates on the tiny population- an emerging risk in their migration range

We found even a few extra deaths/year negates 💰 conservation efforts

zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

This week’s @egioxford.bsky.social seminar at 3.30 on Friday from @ruthedunn.bsky.social on the key role of seabirds in driving energy & nutrient flows. Details below:

🚨JOB alert🚨

We have three (yes, THREE) 🌟lectureships🌟 advertised in the School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol.

Broad remit, including #AnimalBehaviour & #GlobalChangeBiology

⏱️Deadline: 8th March 2026
🙏Please circulate widely

😊Come join us!

Full #job details: tinyurl.com/y3us95rc

Are you an early career biologist seeking a position (Masters up to faculty)? I have talked to so many people who feel alone, like they don't have resources, or who are seeking community during this difficult time in the job market. I created a Discord community to help. discord.gg/nmktHJhUPH

Tomorrow FINE Spring 2026 will start. The 12th season of this free online seminar on social evolution.

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

Social partners shape phenotypes in house sparrows: direct & indirect social effects covary in producer-scrounger tactics, forming a multivariate syndrome that constrains trait variation:

academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-...

@cdegroot.bsky.social @roriwijnhorst.bsky.social
@dingemanselab.bsky.social

Ecological harshness has a weak influence on reproductive trade-offs in a great tit population Abstract. Lack’s seminal work on bird clutch sizes has spurred expansive research on reproductive trade-offs, especially focusing on offspring quantity–qua

New paper out in @jevbio.bsky.social
Using 58 years of data, we look at the effect of environmental variation on reproductive trade-offs in great tits.

With @jsmartin.bsky.social, @dzchilds.bsky.social, Ella Cole, @sheldonbirds.bsky.social, @paniw.bsky.social & Arpat Ozgul

doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

Degradation of fish food webs in the Anthropocene The decrease in body size driven by the selective species turnover is widely altering fish food web topology and function.

New paper out examining fish food web degradation in the Anthropocene. We show the structure of aquatic food webs are changing-- even when species richness doesn’t. These signals are strongly associated with decreases in body size within fish communities. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🌐🐠🐡🦈🐟

Hiring for 3 positions: Research Assistant, Field Research Coordinator, and Postdoc I am looking to hire 3 people into my lab this year. I am still doing the paperwork to get the jobs officially posted but I want to send the word out and screen potential applications right away. R…

I am hiring a research assistant (vampire bats), a Panama fieldwork coordinator (vampire bats), and also considering postdoc apps (social behavior, any species): socialbat.org/2026/02/19/h...