Costanza Zanghi

📮I've been matched with a Pre-Scientist pen pal!🧪✍️✨
This year, I’ll be exchanging handwritten letters with an 8th grader in the US, sharing what it’s like to work in science & answering their Qs about pursuing a career in STEM.
💌Check out LPS website to donate or volunteer:
prescientist.org

Applications for Winter 2025 conference attendance grants are trickling in, awarding up to £500 with a high success rate (if eligible).
Deadline isn't until 1st October, but don't forget to get referee statements in by then too!
All the info you need is here:
www.asab.org/conference-g...
@asab.org

Excited to share that we have just been awarded a NERC Pushing the Frontiers grant to work on between-group cooperation in the Shark Bay dolphins. We will soon advertise a 3 year post-doc to join the team - drop me an email if you might be interested! Pls share widely 🙏🏻

Hi #river #ecologists and #geomorphologists, is there an R or python package that can take in DEM or topo data to extract possible historic islands, side channels, and backwaters? Thanks!

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...

Opportunities — ASAB

📢ONE WEEK until deadline (31st July 2025) to apply for full-time Managing Editor role of @asab.org journal Animal Behaviour. Must have animal behaviour background with previous editorial experience desirable.

#job #publishing #editor

Full details: www.asab.org/opportunities

Please spread the word

How can we beat the
Farage-Badenoch-Starmer axis of cruelty
in the UK?

A strong @greenparty.org.uk with a *fearless* leader is part of the answer.

Join the party now and make it happen by voting for @zackpolanski.bsky.social

Less than 10 days left!
join.greenparty.org.uk #BackZack

Join us for ManyDogs 2!

"While our research has shown that many freshwater species readily bounce back from occasional periods of drought, we know that excessively hot, dry weather year after year can bring more profound long-term changes to both standing and running waters."

Read our drought comment: lnkd.in/eYJ6hs6C

Conformity and differentiation are two sides of the same coin Research on the effects of social interactions on individual behavioural variation has a long history [1]. Of primary interest is how individuals alter their behaviour to be similar to that of others ...

More on social conformity here:
Conformity and differentiation are two sides of the same coin
www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...
with @katelaskowski.bsky.social

New PhD student paper!

Social conformity in lateralisation in guppies
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
by Iestyn L. Penry-Williams, with Culum Brown
#openaccess at @ecol-evol.bsky.social

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...

Huge thanks to
@mollyaclark.bsky.social & Ella Waples for their help in those early fish-lab pandemic days,
‪@iplanass.bsky.social for python support‬‬,
Jo Attwell who introduced me to the Optical Flow() in Matlab, saving this project when it looked doomed!
And ofc ~800 🐟 who made it all possible!

Using this new tool gave us objective movement data we hope to, one day, align with real predators vision models 👀
8/9

It was great fun to apply optical flow analysis to this experiment. An interesting challenge for me to try this new approach, after years of tracking fish movement from above or manually scoring behaviours.
see here👇 royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.... & www.nature.com/articles/s42...
7/9

Why does it matter? Natural systems are changing rapidly under a concerto of multiple stressors. This type of experiment can help us tease apart complex and sometimes counterintuitive responses, bringing us closer to understanding real-life ecological dynamics between species & their environment
6/9

There was no ⚡ between 🌡️ & 🌫️: temp dominated the magnitude response, while turb dominated the duration/No. of events. But together? A cumulative antagonistic effect emerges:
Turbidity makes guppies harder to find…
…but if spotted in warm water, they’re more conspicuous = acute predation risk!
5/9

🌡️Higher temperature = higher mean magnitude = more conspicuous guppies.
They swam faster & were more active, so easier to spot when in view!
🌫️Turbidity reduced the frequency of detection, and the duration of the “interaction” (ie time 🐟 were visible).
4/9

We used optical flow analysis ↗️ to quantify how visible guppies were from one video frame to the next.
Our behav metrics:
🌈conspicuousness =mean magnitude of pixel displacement
📸how many times guppies were within view =detection events #
⏲️For how long they were on camera =encounter duration
3/9

With a fully factorial design, we filmed guppies from the perspective of a hypothetical 🐠ambush predator (a 📷)
The water in our treatments:
💧clear & ambient (control),
🌡️clear & warmer (warm),
🌫️turbid & ambient (turbid),
⚡turbid & warmer (interaction).

2/9

Enhanced conspicuousness of prey in warmer water mitigates the constraint of turbidity for predators Abstract. Changes in environmental conditions impact predator-prey interactions by altering behaviour through sensory and non-sensory (e.g. metabolic or co

✨Out Now✨ The outcome of my 1st ever #guppy experiment (from 2021!) w @ccioannou.bsky.social & @jtroscianko.bsky.social

We asked: How detectable are guppies to visual predators under different env. conditions?👇
academic.oup.com/beheco/artic...

#ISBE #fish #behaviour @bristolbiosci.bsky.social
🧵1/9

omg, this explains *so* much!

Interested in predator / prey / collective behaviour in fishes?

With or without anthropogenic change?

I am keen to help develop MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship applications - get in touch!

Please spread the word!

marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu/actions/post...
@erc.europa.eu @asab.org

Screenshot of the title and author list of a scientific paper published in Scientific Reports. The title reads: “Group personality, rather than acoustic noise, causes variation in group decision-making in guppy shoals.” Authors listed are Molly A. Clark, Ella Waples, Andrew N. Radford, Stephen D. Simpson, and Christos C. Ioannou.

Out now 🎉
The second paper from my Masters published in Scientific Reports!

We explored how acoustic noise affects collective behaviour in guppies 🐟

With fab co-authors: Ella Waples, @andyradford.bsky.social, Steve Simpson & @ccioannou.bsky.social

🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🧵1/6

🚨 Freshwater habitats are under threat, species are declining, and current efforts to fix this are failing.

But we have a solution to the freshwater biodiversity crisis. It's called the Freshwater Network. (1/2)

On the left, a diagram showing fish escape response from predator step-by-step. On the right, two example plots showing the trajectory of the fish with two lines (tracked head & tail separately)

Our latest #research with @ccioannou.bsky.social has been published in @commsbio.bsky.social !

Read here 👉 rdcu.be/d9J2u

We used real-time tracking and a robot-heron to investigate how state-behaviour #feedbacks influence anti-predator #escape responses in #fish 🐟.

Still 10 days left to apply for this 3-year Postdoc to study robber bees and their impacts on tropical bee communities 🐝 🇧🇷🇬🇧

Fab sci comm on a very cool field study 👇
#fishSci #socialBehaviour #fieldwork #bristol #pondLife #freshwater

Surely you mean *our* field assistant Ugo 😁
Great thread Molly, and so good this study is now out 💪