Laura Kelley

🤣 only temporarily, they do rebuild very quickly and they have a long breeding season!

A grey/brown male great bowerbird is looking towards the camera and in the background is a U shaped structure made of sticks, called a bower. Part of one of the walls is missing. In front of the bower is a pile of white, green and red objects called decorations that the male uses as part of his display.

Another stick in the wall: we removed part of male great bowerbird bower walls to test effect on courtship displays. Males didn’t just focus on rebuilding the wall, they stepped up effort across all aspects of their display, showing they flexibly invest in multiple signals tinyurl.com/4ujmkw95

ExE 2026

Interested in the interface of evolution 🧬 and ecology 🌳? Then you cannot miss #ExE2026! Hosted by @uniexecec.bsky.social in beautiful #Cornwall, this #conference has a stellar line-up of speakers and lots of pre-and post-conference workshops. Space is limited, so register now at evoxeco.uk!

Lectureships available with priorities in evolutionary biology, behavioural and sensory ecology, ecology and plants!

Hedgehog. Getty Images

Join us! We’re recruiting a PhD researcher to uncover how hedgehogs & other insectivores survive prey toxins. Dive into molecular evolution & protein biochemistry @shabmohammadi.bsky.social @livuni-ives.bsky.social @livuni-ismib.bsky.social @mpi-ce.bsky.social

🦔 www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

A u shaped structure made out of sticks called a bower, built under a small tree. In front of the bower is a pile of grey, white and green objects that make up the display court. The whole scene is in dappled sunlight and shade created by the tree above.

New bowerbird paper out, we asked whether male great bowerbirds care about the light environment around the bower where they display to females. Short answer: not really. What they do care about is having a display arena with strong visual contrast on the ground. 🐦 tinyurl.com/2v7rycdz

🚨 Postdoctoral Opportunity for Female Scientists🚨

The University of Vienna is awarding at least 20 fully funded 4 year postdoctoral positions to outstanding female scientists

Interested? Get in touch via direct message
careers.univie.ac.at/en/postdoc/e...

#MicroSky 🧪

#PostDoc @univie.ac.at

We're open for abstract submission, and look forward to welcoming you all to Bristol in March!
asab-spring-conference2026.github.io
@asab-meetings.bsky.social #ASABSpring2026

Thank you so much to everyone who came, it was lovely to catch up with old friends, meet new ones and hear about a lot of amazing sensory science!

And we're off! Innes Cuthill giving the public lecture on concealment in the animal kingdom #asabwinter2025

Ella holds a fluffy and sleepy looking toutouwai chick during banding and fits an orange band to its leg

PhD scholarship alert! Are you interested in cognitive evolution? Do you want to know how development influences cognitive traits? Do you love hanging out with birds in the forest? If the answer to these questions is yes, please apply to work with us! 1/2 🧪
www.wgtn.ac.nz/scholarships...

Turns out gulls don't like being shouted at (or stared at!) New paper led by excellent masters students @uniexecec.bsky.social with @neeltjeboogert.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Funded PhD - The impacts of light pollution on plasticity and evolution in spider visual systems at University of Bristol on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - Funded PhD - The impacts of light pollution on plasticity and evolution in spider visual systems at University of Bristol, listed on FindAPhD.com

Key info 🗝️
💶Fees and stipend included!
🌍Open to students worldwide!
👥 Fabulous co-supervisors @ecologyofvision.bsky.social and @mcgregorlab.bsky.social
📆Start Sept 2026
👩🏽‍💻Online info event 24th Nov
⏰Deadline December 15th

Spread the word! 🗣️
Have Qs? Contact me!

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Congratulations Lauren, brilliant news!

📣 @asab.org grants BOOSTED! 📣

We've increased most of our research-related grants by 50%, effective from the next deadline of 1st Feb 2026.

Check out what we offer here:
www.asab.org/grant-overview

🚨🔊 Fully funded PhD!! 🚨🔊

Are you interested in wildlife gut microbiomes? Love birds, fieldwork and bioinformatics? Want to join a collaborative and supportive team? Looking for training to become an independent scientist?

Please apply!

Informal enquiries welcome!

www.uea.ac.uk/course/phd-d...

Anthropogenic pollution is widespread in Great Bowerbird bowers in northern Australia - Microplastics and Nanoplastics While the occurrence of anthropogenic pollution in bowerbird bowers has been well-known and documented for many years, there are limited studies detailing the scale of this occurrence, and even fewer discussing why bowerbirds utilise synthetic objects as bower decorations, and the potential impacts of using these items. Here, we examine the presence of various types of pollution, such as plastics, glass, and metal, in Juwe/Jurerrk, or Great Bowerbird (Chlamydera nuchalis) bowers (n = 17) across rural and remote northern Australia. Using a novel 3D scan technology to capture complete imagery of bower sites, we documented anthropogenic items (n = 2911) in all bowers; hard plastics were the most commonly found item (64.8%, n = 1887), with many pieces still intact and recognisable (e.g., bottle caps, clothes pegs, and tile spacers). In line with the species’ decoration colour preferences, the majority of items were white (70.7%), grey (16.7%), or green (10.3%). While the presence of anthropogenic items may increase the number of available ‘desirable’ decorations and improve mating success, they could pose an entanglement risk, cause mortality, and leach micro/nano-plastics and associated pollutants into the wider bower sites. This detailed record of the prevalence of anthropogenic pollution in bowers, including sites located within a National Park, provides a much-needed baseline for future research, allowing bowerbirds to become sentinels for their terrestrial ecosystems. Graphical Abstract

Yes, birds incorporating human stuff in their architecture is fascinating! We've been investigating use of anthropogenic materials on bowers, and this interesting (& depressing) paper by @seabirdsentinel.bsky.social came out recently too shorturl.at/zPyvs

Bowers usually have greys/whites as a background on the display arenas, then the male also has green and red objects close to the bower as decorations that he uses in courtship displays. These toys weren't right on the bower so he likes them, but they're not his favourites!

I wonder if the nursery staff ever go round and reclaim their stuff!

A cleared area of ground is covered with brown twigs, in the middle there are two parallel walls made of twigs sticking up out of the ground

Found this bower too - probably an immature male(s) learning how to build and display, but will keep an eye to see if it neatens up and some decorations appear

A tree trunk with several pieces of red plastic, green leaves and stones nearby.

A tree trunk with a few green objects nearby.

Also managed to track down some immature male great bowerbirds today, they were displaying at trees to get some practice in (paper on this shorturl.at/jqOQt). Found these two sites due to the birds making a right racket!

One of the risks of bowerbirds sharing space with a university - sometimes scientific equipment (and samples) get pinched! Soy sauce containers also seem to be popular

This bower was located next to a nursery, something tells me the male bowerbird owner has been pinching from the kids 😆

Back in the land of bowers this week! Investigating how male courtship signals are affected by urbanisation #greatbowerbirds @uniexecec.bsky.social

Conference Attendance Grants — ASAB Conference Attendance Grants help PhD students and others with limited funds to attend ASAB conferences and workshops

For those that have registered for #ASABWinter2025, you should have received an email last week asking you to confirm your attendance. If you haven't, please check your spam folders!

And don't forget, only one week left until the conference grant deadline (Oct 1)

www.asab.org/conference-g...

Deadline for submitting an abstract to give a talk or poster is this Friday!

We are looking for a Postdoc (up to 5 years) who wants to study neural mechanisms of spatial memory in honeybees.

This includes tetrode recordings in behaving honeybees.

Application Deadline is 1st of October 2025.

More details:
www.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de/en/services/...

Conference Attendance Grants — ASAB Conference Attendance Grants help PhD students and others with limited funds to attend ASAB conferences and workshops

Whilst ASAB Winter is FREE to attend, ASAB offer conference grants to contribute towards travel and accommodation costs. Deadline 1st October shorturl.at/LmmkA

Any questions, just get in touch!

‪Come join us at the @asab.org Winter Conference 2025: how sensory info affects behaviour.

15th & 16th Dec, abstracts due end Aug. More info and registration asabwinter.github.io/2025

Co-hosted with @jtroscianko.bsky.social and Innes Cuthill