Charli Davies

An integrative, peer‐reviewed and open‐source cooperative‐breeding database (Co‐BreeD) Co-BreeD is the first updatable and open-source database dedicated to cooperative breeding. It enables continuous, non-binary measurement of cooperative breeding, transforming how we study breeding s....

1/6 The Cooperative-Breeding Database (Co-BreeD) is alive! Co-BreeD covers key biological parameters relevant to cooperative breeding research in birds and mammals. Get your copy of this updateable & open-access database: besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
@animalecology.bsky.social

A collage featuring some laboratory analyses, a schematic of the structure of DNA, a pocket watch in an elderly person's hand, and a family of wild meerkats.

🚨Fully-funded PhD opportunity in my group🚨

🧬How does parental ageing shape the next generation?🐾

Find out by studying meerkats!

🧪Epigenetic clocks
✨Bioinformatics
📊Long-term data
🌍Kalahari fieldwork
💡Big evolutionary questions

Get in touch or APPLY NOW
Please share!
www.uea.ac.uk/course/phd-d...

Genetic load, fitness and conservation in the Seychelles warbler.
A wonderful PhD opportunity - spanning important evolutionary and conservation-relevant concepts. Come work with us
lnkd.in/dtGaEJV2

a 14 day old great tit nestling, ringed for individual identification

Figure from the paper showing that extreme climatic events interact with ambient climatic conditions and breeding timing within a season, in a developmental stage-specific manner, to influence nestling growth in great tits

New preprint! 🪶

We analysed 60 years of data on 83,000+ great tits to show how extreme climate impacts on nestling growth and survival are stage-specific and context-dependent 🐣 🌍🔥❄️

With @davididiaquez.bsky.social @iremsepil.bsky.social @sheldonbirds.bsky.social

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Explore a bird database with 11,500 species Twenty-six years ago, a PhD student's unanswered question sparked a bird data revolution.

BIRDBASE, a new publicly available dataset, brings together "ecological and life history traits for 11,589 bird species across 254 families." #ornithology

📢🚨Please share! We’re hiring! 📢🚨Have a strong interests in wildlife ecology and gut microbiome bioinformatics? 3 year Senior Research Associate for NERC Pushing the Frontiers grant. Apply here: vacancies.uea.ac.uk/vacancies/18.... Informal enquiries welcome! drgldavidson.github.io/ACMEresearch

The 10th HNB Conference has finished! The atmosphere was fantastic, and we hope everyone enjoyed both the conference and the city of Olomouc. Congrats to the winners of the student competition: Beau Strijker (Best Poster) and Daisy Abraham (Best Talk)! We’re already looking forward to the next HNB!

Come & work with us - fully funded 4 year PhD on Social Ageing: Social environment effects on senescence, using an epigenetic clock www.rug.nl/about-ug/wor... @rug.nl @david-s-richardson.bsky.social @keesvanoers.bsky.social @seychelleswarbler.bsky.social photo: @charlisdavies.bsky.social

Congrats 🎉 Sarah Worsley "Gut microbiome communities demonstrate fine-scale spatial variation in a closed, island bird population" ISME Communications doi.org/10.1093/isme... @chuenlee.bsky.social @terryburke.bsky.social @david-s-richardson.bsky.social

With #eseb2025 coming to a close, it is time to start making plans for 2026. Interested in the interface of evolution 🧬 and ecology 🌳? Come to our #ExE conference hosted by @uniexecec.bsky.social in beautiful #Cornwall. Leave your email address at tinyurl.com/EvolxEcol to join our mailing list!

Great last plenary by @suviruuskanen.bsky.social about the microbiome of birds! What a fascinating microscopic world!

#ornithology #EOU2025

Stijn Kouwenberg doing great presenting his first PhD poster at #EOU2025 collaboration @cyanistesnord.bsky.social @keesvanoers.bsky.social Cool work on #microbiome #heritability #physiology coming up

TODAY!!!!!

Wow! First genetically confirmed Willow Tit x Marsh Tit hybrid, Norway: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
I wrote in my book that previous hybridisation evidence is quite poor, so genetics needed: www.bloomsbury.com/uk/marsh-tit...
To me, looks like a Willow Tit with a bill spot. Birder's nightmare!

Interested in host-associated microbiomes? Attending @eseb2025.bsky.social? Then come check out Symposium S07 on Monday August 18th and hear all about how microbiomes contribute to adaptation. Gut microbiomes, climate change, thermal physiology, behaviour, invasion biology, blood-feeding, and more!

Fig. 5 from the article: The different identified landscape mechanisms affecting bird communities and their illustrations.

Fig. 3 from the article: (a) Identified scale of effect in a subset of 13 studies using multiple landscape scales; point show the most relevant scale of significant relationship between a pair of landscape and biodiversity metric for ‘All' and ‘Forest species'. Dashed lines show average scale of effect. (b) Count of the non-significant and significant relationship for the different tested scales including all single-scale articles, for the alpha- and gamma-scale of biodiversity measurement.

NEW PAPER: review of 45 studies shows that forest bird γ-diversity rises with landscape heterogeneity, habitat amount boosts their related communities, but forest composition effects are weak and scale of effect remains unclear.

➡️ vist.ly/43g6g

#ornithology #birds #diversity #landscape 🪶🧪

Postdoctoral researcher: avian microbiomes and reproduction We are looking for a postdoctoral researcher to join our team working on avian reproductive microbiomes at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) in the group of Dr. Melissah Rowe. The postd...

3.5-year #Postdoc position on avian microbiomes and reproduction @animalecol-nioo.bsky.social @niooknaw.bsky.social on a fully-funded ERC project focused on understanding the significance of reproductive microbiomes for host biology and fitness. Reach out for more info!

nioo.knaw.nl/en/vacancies...

Deadline for applying the #postdoc on #ecoevo #ecophysiology #microbiota #thermal #avian #genetics in Finland is today 🙂

Metagenomic spaces: a framework to study the effect of microbiome variation on animal ecology and evolution Abstract. Microorganisms are essential for the normal functioning of most vertebrates. Hence, identifying and measuring the factors that shape host-associa

Microbes shape animal lives—but how do we measure their role in host evolution? We introduce a new framework to explore how microbial communities vary, evolve, and impact vertebrate hosts

Alberdi et al. @hologenomics.bsky.social @mgroussi.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

PhD student Maria Correia from my lab in @uniofjyvaskyla.bsky.social @jyuscience.bsky.social showing her fresh results on the effects of heat waves and cold snaps on thermal physiology @sebiology.bsky.social #sebconference

Super excited to join @sebiology.bsky.social conference #SEB2025 in Antwerpen. If you are interested in #developmental #plasticity #microbiome #temperature #thermal #physiology - come and see my talk on 8th July 17:00 session A14! Thank you already for the organizers, the program looks great!

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

Postnatal development in the cold render bird mitochondria more susceptible to heat stress | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Research on birds suggests that extreme weather events during development may have long-lasting consequences on form and function. The underlying cellular mechanisms mediating such phenotypic effects ...

New out @royalsocietypublishing.org PRSB: Birds developing in cold snap-like conditions downregulated mitochondrial heat tolerance. Alarmingly, this response was asymmetrical: growing up in a heatwave did not protect your mitos from overheating 😱 🐣🌡️@biologylu.bsky.social #OroborosI
shorturl.at/QN52A

Current reproductive effort shapes the response to infection in a passerine bird Our study fills a much-needed gap and connects the body temperature response to infection with the framework of reproductive investment and trade-offs between current reproduction and self-maintenanc...

New out @animalecology.bsky.social: Reproductive effort shapes response to infection in blue tits. High-effort birds avoid costs of infection by hypothermia and downregulated immune response. Normal-effort birds fight costs by fever and upregulated response @biologylu.bsky.social

shorturl.at/MX95Y

New preprint: Using pedigree data + genomics from 2,684 great tits in Wytham Woods, we explore spatial genetic structure and the role of dispersal, population turnover and immigration 🐦 With @sheldonbirds.bsky.social @nilomr.bsky.social @jon-slate.bsky.social

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Last week to apply! nioo.knaw.nl/en/vacancies...

Postdoctoral Researcher: Contribution of genetic background and gut microbiome on thermal physiology A post-doctoral Researcher position is available at the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Jyväskylä, Finland, in the group of Dr. Suvi Ruuskanen. The post-doctoral res...

3-year #Postdoc position on the role of #genetics and #microbiome on #thermal #physiology in @erc.europa.eu project in my group at @uniofjyvaskyla.bsky.social FIN! We establish #selection lines on quails, collab @btschirren.bsky.social DL 15.7., start Nov25-Jan26
ats.talentadore.com/apply/postdo...

There is still time to apply for this post. DL extended until 15 June. Read more and apply 👇 @biologylu.bsky.social @erc.europa.eu #HotLife

C-Wild Griesser Research in the C-Wild Griesser lab aims to discover why animals cooperate, why animals live in family groups, what makes animals clever, and what we can learn from animals about linguistics. We use field experiments, behavioural data, long-term data, and comparative data across species, and

Field volunteer needed for a climate change project on Siberian jays in Sweden from Aug-Oct 2025. Expenses covered. Apply with CV, motivation letter, and references: michael.griesser@uni-konstanz.de. More details: https://sites.google.com/view/c-wild-griesser/home

The fall and rise of the Seychelles Warbler This night explores the incredible story of the Seychelles warbler, a bird saved from extinction, and research on inbreeding, the microbiome, and ageing. J…

Some excellent facts and fun relating to this wonderful bird. An iconic example of how science and conservation can work hand in hand!
Delivered by those doing the work!
@chuenlee.bsky.social
@clairetsui.bsky.social
Alessandro Pinto

pintofscience.co.uk/event/the-fa...