Stu West

Studying adaptation at the invisible scale | PNAS In order to understand adaptation by natural selection, it is necessary to observe organisms in their natural habitat. For this reason, the field o...

Thank you to Doug Emlen and Matthias Fischer for the wonderful images we used in this figure, illustrating the parallels of studying adaptation across scales of visibility: scarab beetles and giant viruses www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... @stuwest.bsky.social

Why and how to study adaptation in invisible things. A follow up from @asgriffin.bsky.social 's talk at the 2024 @isbe2026.bsky.social meeting
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

🚨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

A butterfly, the Asian swallowtail, feeding at a flower in Ikebukuro, Japan. Photo credit: Stuart West.

ASN Address: The Evolutionary and Ecological Consequences of Cooperation

Available now ahead of print!
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Origins of the kiss - DISI Exploring our world's diverse forms of mind—human, animal, machine—from diverse perspectives.

My interview with @manymindspod.bsky.social! Come for a deep dive into the evolution of kissing 💋, stay for the earth-shattering insights 🤯

"fish don't run" 🐠🏃

"monkeys tend to loll around quite a lot" 🙈

"chimps have moved on to grass-in-bumhole behaviour" 🍑🌱

disi.org/origins-of-t...

Brilliant!

Delighted to have been a part of this. It's a very exciting area in the field of social evolution and beyond!

How insects’ sex is determined is unlikely to be what makes them so social

Does haplodiploidy - a method of sex determination seen in bees and ants among other animals - promote eusociality?

New research from @rbonifacii.bsky.social and @stuwest.bsky.social enters evidence into this long debate that - despite popular belief - this is not the case 👇
bit.ly/4qEoEWm

We understand a great deal about how and why cooperation evolves, but what about its long-term consequences?

Great to see our new review on this out now in @asn-amnat.bsky.social!

Oh I’m excited to dig into this! I especially love that figure with the environment & behavioral variables mapped onto the phylogeny! In my grad work, I found that nutrient stress intensifies selection against a selfish mtDNA… can’t help but wonder if it was a molecular case of a similar phenomenon.

the evolutionary and ecological consequences of cooperation

the evolutionary and ecological consequences of cooperation

Huge thanks to @asn-amnat.bsky.social for inviting our review on the evolutionary and ecological consequences of cooperation. @annadewar.bsky.social @asgriffin.bsky.social @lauriebelch.bsky.social www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Eusociality has independently evolved in multiple arthropod lineages

Eusociality has independently evolved in multiple arthropod lineages

Comparative analysis across 5,678 insect species shows that, when you control for phylogenetic bias, eusociality has not evolved at a faster rate in haplodiploid species. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Three people, two women and a man, smile and converse outside a modern building. Text reads: Oxford Biology Mentorship Programme. To support strong senior independent research fellowship applications. Apply by 25 March.

Applications for our Fellowship Mentorship Programme are open!

The programme supports promising early career researchers to submit fellowship applications and move towards research independence. Find out more ⬇️
https://bit.ly/BioIRF

And a genius suggestion to add in to acknowledgements when/why using a society journal.

Time to publish responsibly: DAFNEE, a database of academia-friendly journals in ecology and evolutionary biology Abstract. The current economics of scientific publishing reveal a profound imbalance: academia pays prices far exceeding the actual costs of publication. R

A super handy database to help support academic society journals and other ethical publishing. academic.oup.com/jeb/article/...

What the replication of experiments does and doesn’t achieve - HBES – by Stuart West & Max Burton-Chellew Replication or repeating of experiments is a key part of the scientific methodology. It increases your trust in that result. It shows that the result was not just...

HBES newsletter on what experimental replication does and doesn't do www.hbes.com/what-the-rep...

Robots, fungal growth strategies, and proportional resource exchange between mycorrhizal fungi and plants www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.... @spun.earth @tobykiers.bsky.social

And this was years after Epstein had been prosecuted for soliciting underage sex.

Fellowships

Want to join us in Biology at Oxford? The next round of our fellowship mentoring scheme has just opened www.biology.ox.ac.uk/fellowships

YouTube video by jonfwilkins Important Harvard Scientists Attack Kin Selection

The Nowak-Epstein emails reminded us about the genius summary of that strange paper, which has better stood the test of time 😂 youtube.com/watch?v=oE6I...

😂

😂 I can't work out if that would be a good or bad number?

😯

Yes, was an early draft with most but not all final authors.

Gonna borrow this for my next response to rejection letter..

“127. einstein only got 100.

Bring me my bow of burning gold
Bring me my arrows of desire
Bring me my spear - oh clouds unfold
Bring me my chariot of fire”

Text: Society for the Study of Evolution Graduate Research Excellence Grants, Rosemary Grant Advanced Award, 2025 Recipients: Diego Beltran, Josh Felton, Brian Kirz, Stephen Kupchella, Hossein Madhani, Catherine Ogoma, Gabriel Priesing, Yanã Rizzieri, Juliana Rodriguez Fuentes, Wyatt Toure, Hannah Walton.

Congratulations to the recipients of the 2025 Rosemary Grant Advanced Awards!
www.evolutionsociety.org/news/display...

Strange discovery that an email about inclusive fitness was forwarded to Jeffrey Epstein, with the emailer quoting Jerusalem and comparing themself to Einstein. Are you one of the >100 evolutionary biologists now in the Epstein files? www.justice.gov/epstein/file...

Good to know that Martin Nowak was keeping Jeffrey Epstein abreast of developments in our field www.justice.gov/epstein/file...

Very happy to share that I just published a new paper from my thesis! 🎉

We analysed 546 species of ant to understand how extreme specialisation into reproductive and non-reproductive roles evolved. 

Key discoveries in thread🧵 👇

Full paper here: academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

In our new study we were the first to experimentally simulate the origin of sociality! By controlling how many wasp 🐝daughters could help their mom, we found that early helpers don't just add to colony success—they multiply it!