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Does the acquisition of symbionts lead to higher or lower rates of diversification in insects? Trick question - its's both! nature.com/articles/s4155… Lee Henry Toby Kiers Charlie Cornwallis

🚨Our paper is now out in Royal Society Publishing #PhilTransB on the role of cognition in nesting. Thanks to co-authors Topi Lehtonen Heikki Helanterä #CwynSolvi Bob Wong for their contributions and collaboration! University of Oulu #SouthernMedicalUni Monash University royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs…

How has live birth evolved when there are thermal mismatches between mothers and their offspring? Our new paper Evolution Letters explores the role of behavioural plasticity in facilitating shifts in reproductive mode 🐍🦎 academic.oup.com/evlett/advance…

📢One week left to apply to this PhD position! 😊

Animation on how to state science clearly! With no Pope. youtube.com/watch?v=EGkWb5… @QueensOxBiology

How can we maximise the discoverability and impact of our papers? 🤔 In this preprint, we argue that choosing the right keywords is critical. We provide a practical guide to authors + recommendations to editors 📜 bioRxiv tinyurl.com/2vky49m7 🧵(1/15)

**Funded PhD for UK students of Black heritage** “Power games in the wild: the social evolution of dominance” tinyurl.com/2s4p4nmr Involves fieldwork on wasps in Africa. If you think you’d be a good fit, get in touch ([email protected]) Please share widely!

**PhD opportunity number two!** How does climate shape cooperation? Come and do your NERC GW4+ Doctoral Training Partnership PhD at University of Bristol Biological Sciences, together with University of Exeter and Natural History Museum "Social wasps across Africa: exploring how societies evolve at a continental scale" tinyurl.com/z3rjsdsy

Love animal social evolution? Keen on fieldwork? Ready to brave the odd sting in the name of science? Come and do your PhD on African #wasps! 🐝Join us at Bristol (National Geographic’s ‘coolest city in Europe’ 😎) University of Bristol Biological Sciences Science at the Natural History Museum @asab_tweets

New paper out in Trends in Ecology & Evolution! Lead by Patrice Pottier, we suggest comparative analysis & meta-analysis are statistically similar & combining their strengths will help improve comparative studies | sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

OUP blog on Scientific Writing as a research skill blog.oup.com/2024/02/scient… @QueensOxBiology

79% of 16101 cooperative bird groups sampled in nature were pairs or trios and these had higher per capita reproductive success than larger groups Why this matters and what it has to do with Michener's Paradox: ow.ly/OkUW50QG81F Philip Downing Biodiverse Anthropocenes

If your brain is aching to know what the relationships between group size, per capita reproductive success, and the distribution of group sizes in wild cooperatively birds are, look no further: ow.ly/OkUW50QG81F

New paper on group size in cooperative birds Journal of Evolutionary Biology (ow.ly/OkUW50QG81F). Here's an explainer:

Title, abstract and keywords: a practical guide to maximize the visibility and impact of academic papers | New in #ProcB this week > ow.ly/u3aF50SOfxb Patrice Pottier Dr. Samantha Burke Szymek Drobniak {he/him} szymekdr.bsky.social Philip Downing Erin Macartney Ayumi Mizuno 水野 歩 Pietro Pollo Lorenzo

We have always said higher neutral genetic diversity can lead to better performance, but how much evidence do we actually have in wild arthropod populations? Just dropped my first first-author paper 🥳🤟 Trine Bilde Philip Downing Philip Francis Thomsen doi.org/10.1093/jeb/vo…

Larger colony sizes favoured the evolution of more worker castes in ants nature.com/articles/s4155… Gijsbert Werner Laura Ross Juliet Turner Philip Downing

No consistent support from theory or bird data for the hypothesis that cooperation can be favoured to reduce variation in fitness (altruistic bet-hedging) pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn… Ashleigh Griffin Miguel dos Santos Philip Downing Charlie Cornwallis

🐦Is altruism more likely to evolve if it reduces the unpredictability of a relative’s ability to reproduce? This new study found little support for the theory but it is still good news for breeding at times of environmental change. ⬇️ bit.ly/4daZNT2