Edward Grey Institute

Just a reminder of tomorrow’s seminar at 3.30 in LT1 in @biology.ox.ac.uk

Always a pleasure to catch a little extra diversity to offset the hundreds of tits!

...surprisingly similar selection in the two species at matched spatial (and spatio-temporal) scale, suggesting common local environmental drivers
doi.org/10.64898/202...

How does natural selection vary in time & space? @jorgensoraker.bsky.social et al's new preprint (thread ⬇️) decomposes variation in selection on reproductive traits in Blue & Great Tits from 19,463 breeding attempts over 44 yrs. Selection dominated by temporal & spatio-temporal scale, but also...1/2

This week's EGI seminar will be given by Prof Hanna Kokko @kokkonut.bsky.social from Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz @unimainz.bsky.social on the role of time in avian trade-offs. All welcome in person in LT1 in LaMB @biology.ox.ac.uk 3.30pm on 6 March. Also live-streamed: details available ⬇️

Featuring our very own @andreaestandia.bsky.social - bound to be excellent!

Fascinating watching this Jay from my office window. Buries acorn - looks around for something to cover it with, and then looks for another object to go on top (perhaps to help relocate?), regurgitates next one ready, and flies off.

This week's EGI seminar will be give by @ruthedunn.bsky.social from @lancasteruni.bsky.social on Seabird-driven energy and nutrient flows, in person in @biology.ox.ac.uk on Friday 27 Feb at 3.30. All welcome! The seminar will also be live-streamed - joining details available below ⬇️

A very thought-provoking seminar from @thelabandfield.bsky.social this afternoon on the challenges - scientific, societal & personal of studying the increasing problem of macroplastic pollution and its ingestion by seabirds: thanks for coming over Alex!

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-...

Reminder of this afternoon's seminar! Join online (details on the poster) if you can't make it in person

Excellent to see Daisy presenting this work at a major network conference

Congratulations @eloisenewman.bsky.social - great to see

Super to see this continuing flow of new publications from @denisewawman.bsky.social DPhil thesis (and associated work!)

Annual ringing campaign to tag immigrants to Wytham Woods tit populations ahead of breeding season started today. Excellent teamwork with >110 tits measured, ringed & released this morning. Good numbers of first year great tits trapped and a few 'extra' species like this Great Spotted Woodpecker

Figure from preprint showing temporal chage in mass of great tits. In (A) plot is of average mass each year for adult birds during breeding season. In (B) the mass of nestlings in each year. The lower, purple line, are data for all nestlings; the green points and line for those nestlings which survived to be breeding adults. The increasing gap between the lines shows that selection on fledging mass has slowly become stronger over this period.

Young male Great Tit in the hand after processing to collect biometric data

Some new research from us, led by @davididiaquez.bsky.social. Using data from the past 47 years, we show that mass of adult great tits has declined by ~1 sd, which seems to result largely from an environmental effect on nestling growth linked to higher pop density

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

This week's EGI seminar will be given by Dr Alex Bond @thelabandfield.bsky.social of @nhm-london.bsky.social on his long-term work quantifying effects of plastic pollution on seabirds. Seminar in @biology.ox.ac.uk at 3.30 on Friday - all welcome & streamed live: details below ⬇️

Just a reminder of today's EGI seminar by Paul Acker at 3.30 today - all welcome! Will be streamed live

This #InternationalDayofWomenandGirlsinScience I would like to say a big THANK YOU to the amazing women and girls I currently have the pleasure of sharing my #ternscience journey with. Onwards and upwards we go! ❤️

This week's seminar will be given by Dr Paul Acker from NTNU, Norway on "Processes of life-history adaptation to spatio-seasonal environmental changes" - seminar at 3.30 on Friday in Life & Mind Building @biology.ox.ac.uk All welcome & will also be streamed - see details below

This week's EGI seminar in @biology.ox.ac.uk will be given by Dr Kirsty MacPhie from @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social on the contrasting insights to be drawn from studies of phenology in @phenoweb.bsky.social and @rumdeerresearch.bsky.social. Usual time and place - details below with streaming info ⬇️

New preprint! 🐥🦠🏝️

We study a great speciator, the silvereye, to test whether parasites follow island biogeography rules, and find that parasite diversity and isolation effects depend strongly on transmission strategy.

Led by PhD student Sarah Nichols.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

This week's EGI seminar will be given by Prof Jon Slate @jon-slate.bsky.social of @sheffielduni.bsky.social at 3.30 on Fri 30 Jan in LT1 in LaMB @biology.ox.ac.uk. OK, it's not quite birds, but our colleagues' work on @soaysheep.bsky.social has much in common with what we do. All welcome: details ⬇️

For those of us who involved in running long-term studies, our work's value can be increased by synthetic studies like this one, which included Wytham Great Tit data, and suggests that plasticity in timing in response to temperatures buffers against population change
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🚨🚨🚨 Field Assistant positions - four of them!! - working with the long-term Wytham project this coming spring. Details below. Previous year's field team - come and join us! Details below ⬇️

Host whole genome sequence data represent an untapped resource for characterising affiliated parasite diversity Parasites are ubiquitous and exert varied ecological and evolutionary pressures on their hosts. Yet, characterising parasite diversity and distributio…

New paper published! 🧬🐥🦠

Host WGS data can be repurposed to uncover endoparasite diversity at low cost, without destructive sampling, and outperform 18S metabarcoding. We test it in silvereyes.

This work was led by PhD student Sarah Nichols @biology.ox.ac.uk

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Life cycle complexity shapes parasite sharing amongst migratory and resident hosts Migratory animals are potentially important parasite dispersers. However, understanding the impact of host migration on parasite distributions is challenging because variation in parasite life histori...

New preprint!

We explore how bird migration shapes parasite dispersal 🐤 🦠

Led by PhD student Sarah Nichols.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Just a quick reminder of tomorrow's EGI seminar: please see joining etc details below

Delighted to begin this term's seminars with Malcolm Burgess @piedflynet.bsky.social from @rspb.bsky.social @uniexecec.bsky.social on Migration behaviour, demography & phenology of declining migratory birds. Seminar at 3.30 on 16 Jan in LT1 in the LaMB @biology.ox.ac.uk: all welcome - see details ⬇️

Looking forward to an excellent series of seminars for the forthcoming term - programme now full till late March & will share programme very soon when we have a few last details. All seminars will be at 3.30 on Fridays in the Life & Mind Building (and usually streamed live)