Corné de Groot

I am looking for a PhD student to join my new Socio-Eco-Evo group, hosted in Katie Peichel's Evolutionary Ecology Division @ University of Bern. We're offering a fully funded 4-year position, studying social plasticity and behavioral adaptation among stickleback in Greenland. Please share around!

📑📊We have just uploaded a new pre-print where we decompose spatial, temporal and spatial-temporal variation in natural selection on reproductive traits for great tits and blue tits.
With Yimen Araya-Ajoy, @ellafcole.bsky.social and @sheldonbirds.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

SORTEE Webinar: On what makes good sharable and reproducible R code, how to do it, and why it’s good for science For this month's SORTEE webinar, Dr. Dax Kellie from the Atlas of Living Australia will present on good, sharable, and reproducible R code in science

Coming up in March! Join @sortee.bsky.social for a webinar with @daxkellie.bsky.social on good, shareable, and reproducible R code - register here: events.humanitix.com/sortee-webin...

Figure showing how the correlation between mass and recruitment in Wytham Great Tits depends on environmental conditions - in particular note switch from almost none to very strong with increasing population density

New research just out in J Evol Biol: led by @lbliard.bsky.social with @jsmartin.bsky.social @dzchilds.bsky.social @paniw.bsky.social & Arpat Ozgul using the very cool Covariance Reaction Norm approach to test environmental dependence of trade-offs in great tits
academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-...

Among-trait covariance and cross-year repeatability for direct and indirect individual effects in producer–scrounger behaviour in wild house sparrows Abstract. Variation in traits expressed during social interactions can be attributed to direct individual effects (DIEs) of the focal individual’s identity

Social partners shape phenotypes in house sparrows: direct & indirect social effects covary in producer-scrounger tactics, forming a multivariate syndrome that constrains trait variation:

academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-...

@cdegroot.bsky.social @roriwijnhorst.bsky.social
@dingemanselab.bsky.social

We've just updated the @sortee.bsky.social guidelines for data and code review following great feedback at @peercommunityin.bsky.social.

ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

We now have an app: github.com/SORTEE/DCQC and a website: eivimeycook.github.io/DCQC/

We show that producer and scrounger behaviour are subject to direct and indirect social effects, and that these covary within and among traits. Both direct and indirect effects were stable across years for producing and scrounging, and have the potential to reduce heritable variation

Among-trait covariance and cross-year repeatability for direct and indirect individual effects in producer–scrounger behaviour in wild house sparrows Abstract. Variation in traits expressed during social interactions can be attributed to direct individual effects (DIEs) of the focal individual’s identity

Happy to share that our work on direct & indirect social effects in producer-scrounger behaviours was recently published in JEB:
academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-...

@roriwijnhorst.bsky.social @dingemanselab.bsky.social @ali--wilson.bsky.social

I hope to see some of you in Bielefeld for this upcoming workshop on measuring and modeling plasticity. ECRs in and around Germany with a penchant for statistics should consider applying while spots remain available!

"Body size shapes average behaviour, social impact, and social responsiveness in agonistic interactions" doi.org/10.32942/X2H...

Illustration of how additive variation on the latent liability scale becomes partly non-additive on the dichotomous phenotypic scale.

📖Published📖

Check out MEE's new review article 👉 Full decomposition of phenotypic variance in dichotomous traits: New methods and key implications for behaviour, demography and evolutionary ecology 🌍 🧪

buff.ly/IMsl7eL

A wide range of abiotic and biotic variables leaves most variation in bird nest architecture unexplained | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Nests are the locations or containers for offspring, and mediate interactions between offspring and the environment. However, understanding how environmental factors shape the evolution of nest archit...

New paper today in Proc B @royalsociety.org. We explored nest architecture in 3,685 species of birds, modelling the multivariate nature of nests, i.e. how shape, location or attachment co-occur. Then we explored how the environment affected nest architecture evolution. Spoilers in the title! 🪺🐦🌍

📚 We just launched a guide on starting code clubs—born from #SORTEE (un)conference!

Real tips, real experiences, from the community to the community!

Read it, use it, adapt it, and most importantly, help us make it better!

Open science communities for the win! 💙💚

sortee.github.io/start-your-c...

SORTEE Webinar: The Risks and Rewards of Large Language Models in (Open) Scientific Research SORTEE Workshop & Webinar Series

Happy to announce the next edition of the @sortee.bsky.social Workshop & Webinar series on October 27 at 16:00UTC, ‘The Risks and Rewards of Large Language Models in (open) Scientific Research’ with @tanyadoesscience.bsky.social !! Sign up here:
events.humanitix.com/sortee-webin...

📢4-year fully funded #PhD on seasonal timing of egg overwintering insects 🦋🦗🪳
🔬Identify universal mechanisms underlying #insect egg developmental time under #ClimateChange
📌@niooknaw.bsky.social @animalecol-nioo.bsky.social

ℹ️ vacatures.knaw.nl/job-invite/2...
❗Application deadline: 7 December 2025

Does anyone know of a nice guide for students (bachelor and master's level) on how to lead group paper discussions that they could share with me? What would be especially great are examples of the types of questions they should ask the group.

Join Join Society for Open, Reliable, and Transparent Ecology and Evolutionary biology (SORTEE)

🌍 Join SORTEE – A worldwide Open Science community for ecology and evolution! 🌱🧬

🌐 Join trainings, code clubs & our annual online conference
🚀 Help shape the future of Open Science

Membership is inclusive and flexible.
👉 Learn more: www.sortee.org/join/

#OpenScience #Ecology #Evolution

Do you run or participate in a code club at your institution, or are you interested in starting one but don’t know where to begin? @cecibaldoni.bsky.social and I are leading an ‘unconference’ discussion at @sortee.bsky.social’s virtual conference on October 16 - come share some tips and ideas!

#ISBE2026 Call for Abstracts is now open! Submit your abstract by 15 December 2025 on www.isbe2026.com

@behavecol.bsky.social

Seasonal size change and aging in shrews

PhD Alert! 😍 Our lab is hiring a PhD student to study how shrews shrink in winter and grow in spring. Yes, you read that right!
tinyurl.com/shrinkingshr...
Join us at the @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social, study a super cool animal, and join the @imprs-qbee.bsky.social community!

DM me for questions!

New in #ProcB - From policy to practice: Progress towards #data- and #code-sharing in ecology and evolution @asanchez-tojar.bsky.social @eivimeycook.bsky.social tell us more in our blog royalsociety.org/blog/2025/09...

Register now for #SORTEE2025 conference!

We thank our sponsors (@asn-amnat.bsky.social, @cdnsciencepub.com, @datadryad.bsky.social, @peercommunityin.bsky.social, @royalsociety.org, @sse-evolution.bsky.social, @biologists.bsky.social) who are eligible for free registration.

Interested in simulating the kind of data that you might commonly find in evolutionary and ecological studies?

Then we have the R package for you - squidSim!!

Check our new preprint:
ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

Genetic and environmental sources of behavioral individuality: a test of the standard model Behavioral variation is typically assumed to arise from the combination and interaction of genetic and environmental variation. However, recent work with genetically identical individuals has found th...

New preprint out from the lab, including @rroyaute.bsky.social:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

In this we test what we refer to as the "standard model" of behavioral variation.

This was inspired by recent work identifying intra-genotypic variation as a major contributor to "individuality".
1/

🚨Introducing the @sortee.bsky.social Guidelines for Data and Code Quality Control in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology🚨 doi.org/10.32942/X24...

Increasingly E&E journals are recruiting data editors. We provide standardised guidelines for journals with data editors and those wanting to recruit them 🧵

Covariance reaction norms: A flexible method for estimating complex environmental effects on trait (co)variances Estimating quantitative genetic and phenotypic (co)variances is crucial for investigating evolutionary ecological phenomena such as developmental integration, life history trade-offs and niche spe...

My first solo author paper is now available in early view at Methods in Ecology and Evolution! I develop a covariance reaction norm (CRN) model for estimating continuous, multivariate, and nonlinear environmental effects on G and P matrices.

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

If you're attending the Ecology & Behaviour 2025 conference and want to learn about how researchers can reappropriate the publication system, come have a chat tomorrow!

Indirect genetic effects among neighbors promote cooperation and accelerate adaptation in a small-scale human society Social effects on fertility promote population growth and the evolution of flexible cooperation in a small-scale human society.

I'm very excited to share the central paper from my PhD out now in Science Advances. We investigated how social effects among neighbors shape the evolution of reproductive cooperation and the pace of adaptive population growth among the Indigenous Tsimane of Bolivia.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Figure showing cognitive task administered to wild great tits in the field.

We have a new paper out on the genetic vs. environmental drivers of cognition along an urban gradient: doi.org/10.1007/s100...

@lauragervais.bsky.social @dhanyabharath.bsky.social @annecharmantier.bsky.social @denisreale.bsky.social

#inhibitorycontrol #greattits #animalcognition

The Local Organizing Commitee welcomes behavioral ecologists from across the world and of all career stages to enjoy a five-day meeting rich in top-notch science and ample networking opportunities in Turin (Italy), 20-24 July 2026.