Amanda Melin

Multispecies sensory networks and social foraging strategies: Implications for population decline in procellariiform seabirds | PNAS Multispecies sensory networks, where different species prioritize different sensory modalities and then use heterospecific information in a likely ...

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Join us for Fall 2026. In our group, you can run studies from human behavior and neuroimaging, to large-scale NHP ephys, and join them up with a robust computational foundation. Bonus: you can help build the reading list.

This bright orange life-form could point to new dino discoveries Colorful lichen living on dinosaur bones reflect infrared light that can be detected by drones, which might lead to finds in remote areas.

“In the badlands of western Canada, two species of lichen prefer making their homes on dinosaur bones instead of on the surrounding desert rock, and their distinct orange color can be detected by drones, possibly aiding future dino discoveries”

#scicomm

www.sciencenews.org/article/lich...
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🚨Two funded PhDs on the evolutionary ecology of antipredator colouration 🦋 with myself and Iliana Medina.

One in Swansea tinyurl.com/4thtbph6 deadline Jan 12th @crocus-dla.bsky.social

The other in Melbourne - deadline Jan 1st

Please share among potential students!

Please enjoy a small photo dump from the Dry Forest of the Área de Conservación Guanacaste, Costa Rica.

We are interested in what capuchin monkeys can teach us about the evolution of sensorimotor intelligence and sensitive discriminative touch. Here, Luna demonstrates an excellent example of skilled hand use!

Postdoc position in individual-level incentives, social
learning, and payoff-biased imitation shape group-level accuracy in complex prediction and decision-making tasks in Konstanz

files.newsletter2go.com/l3slzozn/s_i...

This flower smells like injured ants — and flies can’t resist it A type of Japanese dogsbane releases a scent identical to wounded ants’ distress signal, drawing in scavenging flies that unwittingly pollinate it.

“Experiments revealed that the plant’s odor is a near-perfect chemical match to the distress signals released by injured ants”

#scicomm
#sensoryecology
#mimetism
#mimicry
#chemicalcommunication

www.sciencenews.org/article/flow...
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The Scent Gland Microbiomes of Wild Tamarins Provide New Insight Into Microbial Contributions to Olfactory Communication Our study investigated the microbiomes of suprapubic and sternal scent glands in two wild tamarin species to explore their putative roles in odor production and communication. Using metagenomic seque...

dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3...

Led by PhD Candidate @silviacarboni.bsky.social, our new paper explores the contributions of surface microbes to the production of odours in the scent glands of wild tamarins. A great collaboration with Dr. Alice Poirier and @fieldprojects.org #sensoryecology

Single antivenom protects against 17 different snakebites Researchers immunized an alpaca and a llama with snake venoms, and combined some of the antibodies produced into a potent cocktail.

Single antivenom nanobody protects against 17 different snakebites @nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
@andreaslaustsen.bsky.social

Sensory expectations shape neural population dynamics in motor circuits Nature - Experiments with human volunteers and macaques show that expectations produced by probabilistic cueing of future sensory inputs shape motor circuit dynamics in order to increase the...

Thrilled that our paper is out today in Nature!
www.nature.com/articles/s4...

Excited to share our new paper on the #social #structure of Rwenzori #colobus multi-male, multi-female core units! We found 3 different patterns but close #male #relationships in all that were long lasting! Paper is behind a paywall but contact us if you want a pdf. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

“There’s nothing more Canadian than the hockey game being interrupted to celebrate the Blue Jays heading to the World Series”

#Canada
#BlueJays
#WorldSeries

🚨🚨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

Great week for Canadian Wildlife! This beauty Great Horned Owl is hanging outside my cabin ❤️

Quality, quantity, and the adaptive function of social relationships Affiliative social relationships have clear links to fitness in many species, yet exactly why that is the case remains elusive. We unify theory from socioecology and network science to set forth testa...

For what seems like forever, I've wanted to know what benefits we get from our friends - or in other words, why these relationships evolved.

tinyurl.com/55dnkeh7

The Adaptive Relationships Framework illustrating how broad socioecological pressures shape the social solutions animals use to meet these challenges, and how these lead to social strategies and emergent structures that help them gain access to those solutions.

Social relationships are powerful predictors of fitness across social animals. But *why*?

In our new @cp-trendsecolevo.bsky.social paper, we outline testable predictions for why relationship quality and quantity adaptively vary across socio-ecological contexts.

tinyurl.com/55dnkeh7

ICYMI Notre Dame Anthropology will be hiring a post-doc for 2026-2028. This is part of a university-wide initiative to support early career scholars. Deadline is Oct. 31...sorry for late notice.

apply.interfolio.com/171503

✨🔦Research Network Spotlight!🔦✨

@ctestard.bsky.social at Harvard University is the second recipient of a 2025-2026 Pilot & Feasibility award from our Research Network. Check out a description of Dr. Testard's project below.

@bartolomuccilab.bsky.social @jennytung.bsky.social @smacklab.bsky.social

Bobcat walked right across the road in front of me on my walk into campus this morning.

Oh, Canada! #urbanwildlife.

Brain scans reveal where taste and smell become flavor The findings show the insula fuses taste and certain smells into the sensation of flavor.

“Taste and smell are so intimately connected that a whiff of well-loved foods evokes their taste without any conscious effort.
Now, brain scans and machine learning have for the first time pinpointed the region responsible for this sensory overlap in humans”.

www.sciencenews.org/article/brai...
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Female capuchins sits on a branch, looking away from the camera. A young capuchin holds onto her back, looking at the camera. Photo: Nick Chapoy

🚨 New paper! 🚨

🐒 White-faced capuchins experience high rates of infanticide.

🐒 Infanticide is costly to female reproduction.

🐒 Do females exhibit the Bruce effect (termination of pregnancy) to reduce these costs?

🐒 Spoiler: Nope!

Read more ▶️ www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Survey alert! If you're a social behavioural ecologist, please fill in our survey aimed at gauging interest in, barriers and solutions to, comparative social behaviour research. Thanks! forms.gle/KZJDMtLCJhvY...

The ocular surface microbiome of rhesus macaques - Animal Microbiome Background The ocular surface microbiota (OSM) is important for eye health, and variations in OSM composition have been associated with multiple diseases in humans. Studies of OSM-disease dynamics in ...

In our new paper, led by Joelle Hass & with a wonderful collaborative team, we explore the ocular surface microbiome (OSM) of rhesus macaques. Read on to learn how similar their eye bacteria are to ours, and effects of age, sex & living condition.
animalmicrobiome.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Headshot of Mark. He is smiling at the camera and wearing glasses and a plaid button up shirt

Congrats to Mark Hauber on winning this year's Quest Award for an outstanding seminal contribution! Mark has studied it all but the biggest themes in his work center around understanding brood parasitism and coloration of bird eggs. Richly deserved @thecowbirdlab.bsky.social !

www.cowbirdlab.org

Headshot of Noah. He stands facing the camera, smiling and wearing a sharp turquoise button down.

Congrats to newly elected ABS Fellow: @smacklab.bsky.social ! Noah and his team examine how environmental and demographic changes influence physiology and health focusing mostly on primates and our best buds, dogs.

Read more here: smack-lab.com

Leading a lab, and all it entails A chemist offers actionable leadership advice to principal investigators

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

Our new paper, led by Nicolas Chapoy and Kathy Jack, shows capuchin alpha males have wider faces and bigger balls. Read on for discussion of trait variation with respect to pre- and post- mating competition! Was a large effort by a great team 😍😎🎉

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/epdf/10....

How “blue” and “green” appeared in a language that didn’t have words for them A new study suggests the way a language divides up color space can be influenced by contact with other languages. Tsimane’ people who learned Spanish as a second language began to classify blue and gr...

“People of a remote Amazonian society who learned Spanish as a second language began to interpret colors in a new way, an MIT study has found.”

#scicomm
#language
#colordiscrimination

news.mit.edu/2023/how-blu...
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Three ancient human relatives once shared the same valley. Did they meet—and compete? The world’s greatest concentration of ancestral human remains, in South Africa, poses a 2-million-year-old riddle of coexistence

A long-form piece in @science.org covers recent research at Kromdraai, Drimolen, and Swartkrans, South Africa—all adding to the record of Early Pleistocene hominins. The article's lede, “Did they meet” is a bit of a distraction: They certainly met somewhere!

www.science.org/content/arti...