Cristina Ottocento, PhD

The story on chemical communication in #poisonfrogs doesn't stop with the sexy fingers! "Histological and Gene Expression Analyses of the Arm and Finger Macroglands of Two Hyloxalus Frogs" is the new paper by the super talented Diana Abondano (Link in comments)! Out now in MolEcol. #cienciacriolla🇨🇴

Watson’s death is a fantastic reminder that you can be intelligent without being a good person.

BehaveAI is live!

Our biologically inspired video analysis tool sees motion as colour. Track animals or objects, classify their behaviour, and handle complex natural scenes with ease.

Semi-supervised annotation, no GPUs required, user-friendly, free & open source.

Pre-print tinyurl.com/BehaveAI

🚨🚨Job! 🚨🚨Permanent (75% time) job! We are a pretty awesome research group & seek a manager who deals with everything: personnel tasks, organizing retreats, preparing code for teaching / data structures for research... Fluency in German & English essential. stellenboerse.uni-mainz.de#/jgu/job/51527

Jane Goodall, world-renowned primatologist, dies aged 91 Jane Goodall Institute says ‘tireless advocate’ for natural world died in California during US speaking tour

“Above all, we must realise that each of us makes a difference with our life. Each of us impacts the world around us every single day. We have a choice to use the gift of our life to make the world a better place - or not to bother.”

www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

A white-fronted bee-eater (Merops bullockoides) decides whether to consume a warningly colored white-barred acraea butterfly (Telchinia encedon). Photo (c) Mike Rowe

📢🦋 Our paper ‘Global selection on insect antipredator coloration’ is out and featured on the cover of @science.org

We ran a huge experiment to find out how ecological context favours camouflage and warning colouration as antipredator strategies. 1/6

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

Vacancy — Postdoc Position in Decision Making in Birds Are you an expert in animal behavior? Do you have experience working with birds? The Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics (IBED) is looking for a motivated researcher to investigate the ro...

I have a job opening in my lab. If you are interested in bird behaviour and predator prey interactions please take a look! werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...

Wood tiger moth on leaf. Photo: Juhani Maamela.

Funded PhD position available 🎉 Come and work with me in Helsinki to uncover the pathways producing colourful tiger moth wings. Lots of options for genomics, CRISPR, fieldwork, behaviour experiments… Email with questions! jobs.helsinki.fi/job/Helsinki...

Green butterfly sat on a flower.

I'm looking for PhD students to join the lab starting August 2026. We study the evolution of insect chemical signals so if you're interested in evolutionary biology, chemical ecology, molecular biology, behavior, or genetics, this could be a good fit for you! More info here: tinyurl.com/mrxchwfm

Looking for a PhD? I am advertising two industry sponsored PhD projects. One on black soldier fly genetics with #betabugs and another on searching insect biodiversity for novel enzymes #Syngenta. Get in touch if you are interested!! bbsrcdtp.lifesci.cam.ac.uk/available-ic...

🚨 Postdoc opportunities! 🚨
We’re looking for postdocs in 🌿 biodiversity science, 🧬 genetic indicator assessment, and 📊 ecological statistics.

Join us in unraveling the drivers & consequences of global change on biodiversity — and be part of a supportive & collaborative environment!
DL 24 September

Please repost: 🚨We’re hiring!🚨 Come work with us on the PARSADA-ARDECO project at iEES-Paris. Ideally, you are interested in insect behaviour & ecology and have Master’s degree in Biology / Behavioural Ecology 🐛🦋 Apply by Sept 30th! jobs.inrae.fr/en/ot-27356 For more info, contact me

ecoevojobs.net 2025-26

The 2025-26 Eco-Evo job list is out. Good luck to those applying!

docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Diet for survival: testing the resource allocation hypothesis in an aposematic moth Emily Burdfield-Steel, Cristina Ottocento, Miriam Furlanetto, Bibiana Rojas, Ossi Nokelainen, Johanna Mappes This is a plain language summary of a Functional Ecology research article which can be f…

📰Published📰Diet for survival: testing the resource allocation hypothesis in an aposematic moth🦋

buff.ly/CbuRKZN

🧪🌍

We are looking for Erasmus interns to help with our bird projects at Lammi Biological Station:
www.helsinki.fi/en/research-...

Apply here and specify that you are interested in the great tit project:
www.lyyti.in/Application_...

Photo of the final slide of J Mappes's plenary at ESEB Text on the slide: Take-home Natural history matters Ecological reality is complex Fresh ideas matter Be ready to reject your favourite hypothesis Science moves forward when we keep both our curiosity and our humility

Final words of the last #ESEB2025 plenary by @jmappes.bsky.social:
"Science moves forward when we keep both our curiosity and our humility"

Excited to soon start my new role as Academy of Finland Research Fellow 🦋🐛I’ll later be advertising a PhD position on tiger moth colour and genomics, and will be speaking at #ESEB2025 this week if you want an idea of what’s going on!

Et si les odeurs naturelles des plantes pouvaient nous aider à protéger les cultures de façon durable ?

Pour en savoir plus, inscrivez vous au 1er #webinaire #ARDECO

🔍Infos : iees-paris.fr/evenements-s...

#biocontrôle #ProtectionDesCultures #insectesravageurs #pesticides #développementdurable

So happy to see this out in @funecology.bsky.social! We (@mothprof.bsky.social @crisottocento.bsky.social @jmappes.bsky.social et al.) studied whether the wing coloration of female wood tiger moths is an honest indicator of the quality of their chemical defences (1/3) @klivvvienna.bsky.social

Thrilled to share this! Mostly done at @helsinki.fi, Konnevesi Station and @uniofjyvaskyla.bsky.social 🇫🇮 with wonderful colleagues! In this study, we investigate whether the link between warning signals and chemical defences comes from how resources are allocated between these costly traits 🐦🦋

Bogong moths use a stellar compass for long-distance navigation at night - Nature Every spring, Bogong moths use the starry night sky as a compass to navigate up to 1,000 km towards their alpine migratory goal.

cool new paper in @nature.com about moth migration, showing they use the stars to navigate up to the mountains in the summer 🧪🌍🐙

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

✴️ NEW PAPER! ✴️ In the beautiful Caucasian mountains of 🇬🇪 lives a moth whose wing colour variation (🔴🟠🟡) has intrigued us for ages. Here (doi.org/10.1111/1744...), we studied whether such variation is associated with 🧬 structure or other traits such as size. (1/3)

This study shows some of the work done over the years in 🇬🇪 with some of my fav Finns (@jmappes.bsky.social O. Nokelainen, J.Valkonen), @crisottocento.bsky.social 🇮🇹, Tamar Chunashvili 🇬🇪 & Tõnis Tasane 🇪🇪. The genomics work was led by J. Galarza 🇲🇽 & @melbrien.bsky.social + @chrisjiggins.bsky.social 🇬🇧

Graphical abstract demonstrating trophically-transmitted parasite

🚨New paper alert!🚨

Tapeworms don’t just appear inside fish or birds. They travel there. Our latest paper tracks the first step of that journey: detecting parasites in first-intermediate hosts when they are rare + microscopic. We also developed primers/probes to detect parasites across taxa! (1/3)

AGRAWAL | A Rose by Any Other Name…? Professor Agrawal, the point is, how we see ourselves through our name — and how others see us through the same, can be complicated. Names reflect our confidence, biases, comfort and ideas about socie...

A rose by any other name ... Yours truly, -Anurag

www.cornellsun.com/article/2025...

📢 Meet the speakers: Johanna Mappes 📢

@JohannaMappes is an evolutionary ecologist from the University of Helsinki (@helsinkiuni), Finland.

Read more about her here: eseb2025.com/team/johanna-mappes

Biologically inspired warning patterns deter birds from wind turbines Wind power has been at the forefront of investment and innovation in renewable energy. However, bird fatalities from collisions with wind turbines present an ecological and social challenge to the gro...

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

New paper in pre print!

An illustration of a caiman fighting a red, yellow and black snake.

An illustration of a pineapple surrounded by different insects, including butterflies and beetles.

An illustration of a plant covered in different insects, such as beetles and caterpillars.

Pioneering entomologist & scientific illustrator Maria Sibylla Merian was born #OTD in 1647.

In 1699 Merian set off on the first-ever purely scientific expedition to the Dutch colony of Suriname, where she documented intricate plant-insect interactions with beautiful artwork and clarity.

(📸BHL)

Woow! Felicitaciones🤗🎉un abrazo💕

Animal transparency: How should we define form and function? James B. Barnett, Justin Yeager, Karin Kjernsmo This is a plain language summary of a Functional Ecology review article which can be found here Animals use colour for a huge variety of different fu…

📰Published📰

Animal transparency: How should we define form & function?
🧪🌎
fesummaries.wordpress.com/2025/01/31/a...