Vivek Hari Sridhar

An illustration of the inferred living conditions of a population of Nucleospira calypta in its natural habitat. CREDIT: Chao Tan and Bing Huang

The brachiopod Nucleospira calypta lived on the sea floor around 436 million years ago in a checkerboard pattern determined by the length of its setae--bristle-like appendages likely used for feeding or defense. In PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

This week on the @science.org podcast: Why anteaters keep evolving w/ @david-grimm.bsky.social, and how giant whales get enough food to live w/ Ashley Blawas LISTEN HERE:

www.science.org/content/podc...

A NINNY, AN IDIOT AND AN ECONOMIC THEORIST Ariel Rubinstein

"...a model should be judged by criteria akin to those applied to stories, such as aesthetics, originality, and relevance. It does not require that a model have predictive power, nor that it be subjected to empirical testing. Essentially, crafting a compelling model is an art rather than a science."

🐒🕸️ New preprint! Confused about how to model animal social networks?

ASNA can be confusing—but also full of opportunity. We break down 5 common misunderstandings in animal social network analysis and share solutions from behavioural ecology, anthro, stats, & network science. Hope it helps!

A 🧵

Behavior drives morphological change during human evolution Dietary shifts and corresponding morphological changes can sometimes evolve in succession, not concurrently—an evolutionary process called behavioral drive. Detecting behavioral drive in the fossil re...

Really cool study looking at how behaviour precedes morphological change across taxa - and implications for human evolution 💀🧪 massive congrats to all the authors, including @vivek123.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

YouTube video by Ze Frank True Facts: Fish That Suck

How is it possible I missed seeing this when it first came out?

m.youtube.com/watch?v=yYSk...

Google AI model mines trillions of images to create maps of Earth ‘at any place and time’ Nature - The system will save time spent on processing satellite data, researchers say — but they hope the tech firm will share more about how it works.

Google has released an AI model that acts as a ‘virtual satellite’ to weave together trillions of disparate observations to track changes in land and shallow waters across Earth

go.nature.com/4oiyYmG

Really pleased to see Daisy Abraham’s first paper out. About something we know very little about: what happens when birds “divorce”. We had extensive discussion with one reviewer about whether this was the appropriate term to use. “Permanent breaking of pair bond” feels too much of a mouthful…

If you like to connect with modellers of various flavours, who like to think about complex multiscale things, consider this "SCALES" workshop here in Mainz! Sept 1-5. model.uni-mainz.de/scales-confe...

If there is an optimal behavior, why is there so much variation in the world? We found that, for white storks, context is everything. @anflack.bsky.social @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social

New paper! @cellpress.bsky.social doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2025.06.044
🧵1/5

Our #study finds that #male #dominance isn't the norm among #primates, and starts to unravel what shapes flexibility in intersexual power

paper (OA) https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2500405122

press release https://www.mpg.de/24986976/0630-evan-beyond-the-alpha-male-150495-x?c=2249

What do you see when you stare at this grid of line segments: a series of rectangles, or a series of circles?

The way you perceive this optical illusion may tie back to the visual environment that surrounds you, a recent preprint suggests. scim.ag/4kTxbmd

When Did Nature Burst Into Vivid Color? | Quanta Magazine Scientists reconstructed 500 million years of evolutionary history to reveal which came first: colorful signals or the color vision needed to see them.

Which came first: colorful signals or the color vision needed to see them? Scientists reconstructed 500 million years of evolutionary history to find out. @mollyherring.bsky.social reports: www.quantamagazine.org/when-did-nat...

📣📣📣 So pleased to see @vdbijl.bsky.social's stunning analysis of the inheritance and genetics of guppy color diversity out today @natecoevo.nature.com! Deep learning reveals the complex genetic architecture of male guppy colouration. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Natural nappers: monitoring the sleeping patterns of wild orangutans How being near to other orangutans affects the duration of sleep.

The greater the number of orangutans within 50 metres of an animal, the less time it spent sleeping at night or napping in the day

https://go.nature.com/3Gnly7Y

Just 1 week left to apply! 🙏 Pls share with anyone you think might be interested. If there are any Q's, get in touch!
👉 3x PhD position: hmc-lab.com/ERC_PhDs.html
👉 2yr Postdoc position: hmc-lab.com/ERC_Postdoc....

AI, peer review and the human activity of science When researchers cede their scientific judgement to machines, we lose something important.

New from me and @carlbergstrom.com in @nature.com on navigating LLMs in science, from the jumping off point of peer review.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Our newest issue is now live! On the cover a female killer whale grasps a floating stalk of bull kelp as observed by @drwhale.bsky.social and colleagues, utilizing these during tactile social interactions, potentially as a form of tool-assisted allogrooming. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Baby #fish can travel thousands of miles on ocean currents, but their journeys are still full of mystery. A new PNAS News Feature dives into the science of #PelagicLarvalDispersal and what it means for #MarineEcology. 🌊 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

#ClimateChange #GulfStream #Caribbean #Hawaii

The study of social animal migrations: a synthesis of the past and guidelines for future research | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Seasonal migration is a common behaviour seen in many species worldwide. There is evidence that social factors influence various migration decisions, but compared to the well-studied field of social f...

🚨 New paper alert! 🚨
Excited to share our new review in @royalsocietypublishing.org Proceedings B! 🎉

We synthesize research on social factors influencing animal migration and offer guidelines for future research. Check it out here: doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

#OpenAccess #Migration #MovementEcology

How media competition fuels the spread of misinformation Game-theoretic modeling shows that media competition over public opinion incentivizes news sources to spread more misinformation.

Fantastic Saturday morning cup of coffee read. The authors take on the fairly ambitious task of modeling news/audience dynamics in a competitive landscape--and wind up recovering *many* features of our current media landscape; with fasc. hints at intervention.

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

Bottom: representation of the Annelid Tree of Life showing the position of the species included in this study. Top: genome organization in marine annelids and clitellates, with emphasis on the massive genomic rearrangements between both lineages. Credit figure: Rosa Fernández. Credit data to Carlos Vargas-Chávez. Credit silhouettes to Gemma I. Martínez-Redondo.

🧬 The study led by Rosa Fernández, #IBE principal researcher🔬, and published in @natecoevo.nature.com , shows that marine worms shattered their genome and rebuilt it in a radically different form when they first emerged from the sea 200 million years ago.

Various cell types in tissues cooperate in networks that are disrupted in disease Gene expression reveals that different types of human cell can work as a unit. These cellular modules, found in several tissues, change during disease.

Gene expression reveals that different types of human cell can work as a unit. These cellular modules, found in several tissues, change during disease

https://go.nature.com/4kaOgad

3D-SOCS now out in @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social!!!

Fully raspi based synchronized camera system in the wild for 3D posture tracking 🤗 check out paper below!

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/8NM8BZ...

Our paper in @science.org 👉🏽 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

is accompanied by an especially thoughtful perspective by Carey Nadell and Chris Marx 👉🏽
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

When it rains, it pours--super happy to see this published today!

Ecology needs a causal overhaul Ecology has yet to embrace causal inference, yet most questions in ecology are causal. Despite the common use of terms that imply causation, such as “shapes”, “drives”, or “impacts”, many studies shy...

there has been a bunch of (many good) papers coming about about integrating Causal Inference and DAGS into research about behavior and ecology (i.e. doi.org/10.1111/brv....) but i thought it might be useful to show some example empirical papers that do so (see growing thread)...

A causal framework for the drivers of animal social network structure A major goal of behavioural ecology is to explain how phenotypic and ecological factors shape the networks of social relationships that animals form with one another. This inferential task is notoriou...

this paper about measuring dyadic paper in the context of causal inference which makes me weep with joy by @benkawam.bsky.social and is an example of what all should strive for doi.org/10.1101/2024...

YouTube video by Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior Have you ever seen a worm tower?

Move over, starling murmurations. There’s a slimier, squirmier collective behavior in town. It's a living, twisting tower of worms.

Everybody, meet the wormuration 🪱🪱

Latest paper by Daniela Perez, Serena Ding and team @uni-konstanz.de

Paper: doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...

youtube.com/shorts/F8QVc...

Two paper just out from the #clevercockieproject!

@julia-penndorf.bsky.social reveals how cockies play politics when deciding who to aggress: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....
&
@barbaraklump.bsky.social describes a new 'drinking innovation':
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...