dfoffreedom - Network

wondering if the habitat destruction and fragmentation caused by the new equipment and infrastructure required to transition to renewable...

wondering if the habitat destruction and fragmentation caused by the new equipment and infrastructure required to transition to renewable energy is not more problematic for species than increased temperatures - Reading on this?

Can finally share the correction to our article on dolphin social networks and how they respond to environmental change:...

Can finally share the correction to our article on dolphin social networks and how they respond to environmental change: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2024.2078

We found an issue with the calculation of one of the social network metrics and I urge everyone who uses "closeness" in igraph to check they mean for the weights to be interpreted as distances...

Really great points here: https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/42/2/msaf022/7986104"Many, and perhaps most, members of our academic...

Really great points here: https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/42/2/msaf022/7986104

"Many, and perhaps most, members of our academic community do not understand what it means to publish in society-based journals ... compared with for-profit journals from companies like Springer Nature, Frontiers, Wiley, and Elsevier."

Publishing in society journals benefits scientists as the fees pay for grants and conferences, publishing in for profit journals benefits publishers and their shareholders.

Nice write up of some of our work in Entomology Today:...

Nice write up of some of our work in Entomology Today: https://entomologytoday.org/2025/03/13/artificial-intelligence-rfid-marker-recognition-tracking-tags-cockroach-behavior/
Paper here: https://academic.oup.com/jinsectscience/article/25/1/5/7979032

It amazes me how susceptible we researchers are to journals' artificial indicators of prestige. It is entirely up to us what articles we...

It amazes me how susceptible we researchers are to journals' artificial indicators of prestige.
It is entirely up to us what articles we read and cite and where we submit our best work, and therefore entirely up to us which journals are considered the most prestigious.
Yet call something nAtUrE biNfIRe and you'd have a queue round the block to submit to it, and to pay for the privilege...

Amazing collaborative paper now out, looking at the startling variation among researchers in how they analyse the same dataset to answer the...

Amazing collaborative paper now out, looking at the startling variation among researchers in how they analyse the same dataset to answer the same questions, and how variable the results can be. Also, peer review ratings of the analyses did not correlate with how far from the mean they were, suggesting we aren't much good at evaluating the quality of statistics. Super fascinating work: https://bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12915-024-02101-x #openaccess

Social isolation due to WFH, predicted by Margaret Boden in 1977

Social isolation due to WFH, predicted by Margaret Boden in 1977

5 steps towards becoming a trans ally: https://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/five-steps-towards-being-a-trans-ally/ by Rowan Kuminski....

5 steps towards becoming a trans ally: https://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/five-steps-towards-being-a-trans-ally/ by Rowan Kuminski. Blog hosted by the British Ecological Society, but relevant more widely!

Just out in Evolution Letters, we show that the heritable variation in traits across species is much higher when we account for genetic...

Just out in Evolution Letters, we show that the heritable variation in traits across species is much higher when we account for genetic variation stemming from social interactions! This is especially true for behaviours and reproductive traits. We showed this using a meta-analysis across nearly 50 studies. Check it out here:
https://academic.oup.com/evlett/advance-article/doi/10.1093/evlett/qrae051/7816313

have been contact by someone interested in conducting a fellowship with me. Thought their answers to my questions about what they thought of...

have been contact by someone interested in conducting a fellowship with me. Thought their answers to my questions about what they thought of some recent papers and what they wanted to work on were weird (missing the point, strangely uniform) and suspected AI. GPTZero agreed. *sigh* I want to work with a human, not a bot.

Out now in Heredity & #OpenAccess, new paper on DNA methylation in social spiders: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41437-024-00724-y ...

Out now in Heredity & #OpenAccess, new paper on DNA methylation in social spiders: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41437-024-00724-y

We compared the methylation profiles of healthy social spider nests vs those same nests when they were dying of infection. We looked in the CpG and also the CHG & CHH contexts, the latter two are studied less.

We did not find strong evidence that DNA methylation might underpin plastic response to infection, but there might be genome-wide changes & something is going on on chromosome 13.

Are you interesting in conducting an independent fellowship (post-doc) at the intersection between genomics, immunology, and evolutionary...

Are you interesting in conducting an independent fellowship (post-doc) at the intersection between genomics, immunology, and evolutionary biology? We have an exciting opportunity for someone to join a collaboration between the University of Aberdeen (United Kingdom) and Aarhus University (Denmark). For more details see here: https://evoetholab.com/opportunities/

Fen raft spiders are doing better in the UK thanks to some big conservation efforts, I contributed some quotes to this article downplaying...

Fen raft spiders are doing better in the UK thanks to some big conservation efforts, I contributed some quotes to this article downplaying some of the nonsense that has been spouted about them "invading our homes".... https://inews.co.uk/news/environment/giant-spiders-size-rats-coming-uk-not-garden-3235907

Excited for #ECBB2024, just changing at Amsterdam so grabbing #waffles

Excited for #ECBB2024, just changing at Amsterdam so grabbing #waffles

Are you interested in the movement and behaviour of animals, and use tags (RFID, colour/letter/number, or somethig else) in your work?...

Are you interested in the movement and behaviour of animals, and use tags (RFID, colour/letter/number, or somethig else) in your work? Perhaps you study insects and wonder about these methods for your animals? Callum and I have this pre-print available on bioRxiv where we track cockroaches using machine learing to see if RFID tags and letter/number tags of object recognition influence their movement: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.01.600705v1 we find RFID tags don't but letter/number tags do

Currently got 5 pre-prints on bioRxiv/EcoEvoRxiv that are either with a journal or we're addressing reviewer comments; hopefully have...

Currently got 5 pre-prints on bioRxiv/EcoEvoRxiv that are either with a journal or we're addressing reviewer comments; hopefully have some of these out in journals soon!
Also, 3/5 I'm last author, interesting to see that switch happen over the last few years.

What are the Evolutionary Ethology Lab up to this summer?

What are the Evolutionary Ethology Lab up to this summer?

We found limited specific changes in response to being infected, but possibly some genome-wide increases, especially in the CHG context....

We found limited specific changes in response to being infected, but possibly some genome-wide increases, especially in the CHG context. There is also something interesting happening at chromosome 13 but we aren't sure what yet.

Social spiders, DNA methylation, and infection; new pre-print from my project with Jesper Bechsgaard and Trine Bilde at Aarhus now out:...

Social spiders, DNA methylation, and infection; new pre-print from my project with Jesper Bechsgaard and Trine Bilde at Aarhus now out: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.05.21.595160v1 we look at methylation in CpG, CHG, and CHH contexts of the social spider Stegodyphus dumicola in nests that are healthy and the same colonies when they are dying of infection.

Meta-analysis on how social interactions can influence evolution through indirect genetic effects now on bioRxiv:...

Meta-analysis on how social interactions can influence evolution through indirect genetic effects now on bioRxiv: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.05.17.594196v1 we're really pleased to have finally got this work out and hope you will enjoy reading it!