Andrew King

We've got ISSUES. Literally.

We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do?

arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563

A 🧵 1/n

journal PISS rate. Made my week.

Sleep: Primates bear a social cost Field studies of baboons, orangutans and chimpanzees suggest that social rank and group living can shorten and fragment sleep. The findings highlight the physiological costs of maintaining social bond...

And our work is one of three papers published in Current Biology showing importance of social dynamics on sleep. Commentary here: www.cell.com/current-biol...

The elegant analyses are by lead author @marcofele.bsky.social, and the hard-won data come from many years of effort by @c-christensen.bsky.social Anna Bracken @inesfuertbauer.bsky.social Justin O’ Riain, and supported on this paper by Miguel Lurgi and @marinapapa.bsky.social

Figure showing how dominance effects on baboons’ nighttime rest

This appears to be because more dominant baboons sleep closer to more group members, leading to more disturbances. In contrast, lower-ranking individuals have fewer close neighbours at night and, as a result, get better rest!

Cover image with sleeping baboon

Our paper is published today in Current Biology and is featured on the cover!

We report a neat, and somewhat counter-intuitive, finding: higher-ranking baboons get less and more interrupted night-time rest.

Are you a UK national/resident and identify as Black, Asian, or a minoritised ethnic community? You can apply for a PhD with me and colleagues at Swansea as part of our NERC CROCUS doctoral training programme... and we develop the topic together. Please get in touch if eligible and interested!

We should also thank the ASAB council for making these meetings happen each year! It’s incredible that #ASABWinter2025 is free of charge for participants 😍

Authors: @marcofele.bsky.social , @c-christensen.bsky.social l, A. M. Bracken, M. J. O’ Riain, M. Lurgi, @marinapapa.bsky.social, @inesfuertbauer.bsky.social auer.bsky.social @shoalgroup.bsky.social group.bsky.social

Heavy is the head that wears the crown: study finds dominant baboons miss out on restful nights Dominant baboons rule the troop by day, but at night, they may pay a hidden cost. A new study led by Swansea University has found that higher-ranking baboons get less and more fragmented rest at night...

And we get to use a phrase from Shakespeare's Henry IV in the title of the @swanseauni.bsky.social press release 🤓

www.swansea.ac.uk/press-office...

Our newest research in @currentbiology.bsky.social:

www.cell.com/current-biol...

We find dominant baboons have more interrupted and less rest at night.

Author list and story in comments below :-)

More evidence of the benefits of lottery elements in funding.

Hey @britishecologicalsociety.org and @asab.org we will all be in Edinburgh at the same time for our Winter conferences. Def have to have an evening meet-up!!!

Are you a UK national/resident and identify as Black, Asian, or a minoritised ethnic community? You can apply for a PhD with me and colleagues at Swansea as part of our NERC CROCUS doctoral training programme... and we develop the topic together. Please get in touch if eligible and interested!

A Systems Perspective: How Social–Ecological Networks Can Improve Our Understanding and Management of Biological Invasions Abstract. Reversing biodiversity loss and the sustainability crisis requires approaches that explicitly consider human–nature interdependencies. Social–eco

Whooop! New paper online!

"A Systems Perspective: How Social–Ecological Networks Can Improve Our Understanding and Management of Biological Invasions"

Phenomenal effort by Fiona Rickowski to pull this all together, wrangling a large co-author/bag-of-cats team into shape!

doi.org/10.1093/bios...

Excited to be in Cardiff for the #PSGB winter conference where I’ll be presenting a poster on one of my PhD chapters! 🦍🦧

Excited to introduce the Latent Layers Framework – now out in @behavecol.bsky.social – to help think through when and why network differences confound inference in (comparative) social network analysis! 🧵

tinyurl.com/3k3yahwy

Awesome PhD opportunity, deadline in one week! Please re-post.

PhD opportunity: MOVE
Details: blogs.reading.ac.uk/crocus-dla/c...
Deadline: 12/01/26
Supervisors: @shoalgroup.bsky.social, @inesfuertbauer.bsky.social, @wlallen.bsky.social, @nhcooper123.bsky.social, @marinapapa.bsky.social
Apply: blogs.reading.ac.uk/crocus-dla/p...

PhD studentship on antimicrobial resistance in wild baboons! Fully-funded by @swbiodtp.bsky.social Application deadline: Wed 3 Dec 2025. More details: bpb-eu-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.bristo.... Apply here: www.swbio.ac.uk/programme/ho...
@inesfuertbauer.bsky.social @xavh.bsky.social

Registration is open, and the programme is shaping up!

🤦

YouTube video by Valerii Chirkov First-Person Perspective of the Voluntary Payoff-Sharing (VP) Condition

Which processes underlie collective intelligence in naturalistic human groups?

In new work led by Valerii Chirkov, we show that payoff selectivity is key in transforming a group of individuals into an intelligent collective 🤝🧠

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY7n...

Preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Analysis of communication and collective behavior in animal groups

⭐PhD position available!⭐
Come join us @imprs-qbee.bsky.social to study communication and collective behavior in animal groups! We're looking for someone excited to use computational approaches to tackle biological questions, using our full-group tracking datasets
imprs-qbee.mpg.de/121465/analy...

MSc internship / Field Assistant position available in our group!
Impact of urbanisation on avian reproduction 🐦🏙️ 🌳
Deadline: 7 Nov 2025
All details 👉 www.uni-bielefeld.de/fakultaeten/...
Please share it around!

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/...

Abstract submissions now open too. Registration details won't be long! www.psgb.org/pages/14-mee...

Wahoo, Cécile!!! Can't wait for all the exciting science in the coming years👍

Primate Society of Great Britain (PSGB) Meeting
National Museum Cardiff, 27-28 November

www.psgb.org/pages/14-mee...
Registration and abstract submission coming soon! Please share!

@mckinneymonkey.bsky.social @inesfuertbauer.bsky.social @willallennz.bsky.social @primatesocietygb.bsky.social