@revathe
Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow @ the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior | PhD @ JNCASR, India | sociality, learning, development, allomaternal care, culture | Asian elephants & great apes | she/her
🚨 ACE Seminar
We’re excited to host Dr. VPS Ritwika in our upcoming ACE Seminar!
🗓 Tuesday, Mar 17, 2026
🕖 7:00 PM JST (UTC+9)
💻 Online via Zoom
🔗 To receive the Zoom link, please send a blank email to ace-seminar+subscribe@googlegroups.com
The same technological pinpoint accuracy that was used to slaughter children in Gaza now being used to slaughter children in Iran.
Leipzig U and the MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) have an open faculty position (W2) in evolutionary population genetics! This position is tenured and comes with generous core funding. We are eager to welcome a new colleague! Deadline March 11.
www.uni-leipzig.de/en/newsdetai...
Anyone who is an expert in #gutmicrobiome research is interested in collaborating with us to study #free-rangingdogs in India? Please get in touch!
British PM Starmer says that U.K. bases will only be used for ’defensive’ operations and not ‘offensive’ ops. But how can that be so when they are being used by the aggressor?
Great discussion here with Milanovic, @adhaque.bsky.social @janinadill.bsky.social
www.middleeasteye.net/explainers/u...
“India’s silence on the blatantly illegal assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is not the foreign policy volte-face that it seems to be at first sight. It is the natural and predictable outcome of the path that Indian foreign policy has been on for the last decade.”
m.thewire.in/article/dipl...
Side-by-side image of Will Ferrell and Chad Smith sitting on a talk show set, both wearing backward blue baseball caps and black leather jackets, with nearly identical serious expressions. The background shows a nighttime city skyline from The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon set. Overlaid text on the left image reads “2001 Iraq War propaganda,” and on the right image reads “2025 Iran War propaganda,” framing the two similar images as a comparison meme.
The Davos speech was redundant for those of us in the 'Third World', a world that was built on non-aligned principles. Now it's evidently clear that the speech was also just words without real intent. Unfortunately, pointing out Western hypocrisies has also become redundant
Western hypocrisy remains strong even while the West crumbles under the weight of its own hypocrisy
The US and Israel have, in fact, begun an illegal war with Iran. The US lured Iran into talks and seemingly reached an agreement that Iran would end its uranium enrichment. As of 8:00 AM, Israel and the US launched a surprise attack on Iran with the intent of assassinating its leadership
Tired of AI hype posts? You might like my sober assessment of whether AI-generated summaries are suitable for studying and research. Spoiler alert, they are not.
The text is primarily aimed at students and researchers, but has much broader relevance. So share freely!: www.tue.nl/en/our-unive...
Median amount of time spent under review is 7.4–14.6% longer for female-authored articles than for male-authored articles and the differences remain significant after controlling for several factors - analysis of >36.5 million articles in >36,000 journals
doi.org/10.1371/jour...
“The diversity of life arose not through some catastrophic process far in the distant pass, but rather through the gradual action of the very same process is that we observe on ongoing today” Because of links restrictions on alt text, please see the link in the previous post for the full text of this article. This is an image of the final page, beginning with the section “a final puzzle”.
2. For me, the final section is the most provocative and interesting.
We address how it can be that our minds are capable of apprehending the very processes of evolution by which they came to be. It need not be so, but it is.
1. I’m quite happy with this popular piece that Lee Dugatkin and I wrote recently. For the next two weeks it’s free to read on the American Scientist website.
🚨 The application deadline has been extended to 27 Feb 2026.
Apply at this link: forms.gle/wbUG5WfTRSvh...
Many are appropriately outraged by Altman’s comments here implying that raising a human child is akin to “training” an AI model.
This is part of a broader pattern where AI industry leaders use language that collapses the boundary between human and machine.
🧵/
Who gets to tell the world’s most urgent environmental stories?
Mongabay’s Y. Eva Tan Conservation Reporting Fellowship is expanding in 2026. 🌍
✨ Deadline extended to Feb 14.
Paid, remote. 11 fellows. Six published stories.
Apply NOW: buff.ly/pTCVXXB
Learn more: buff.ly/ZZCG7M2.
Elefantenbabys knüpfen früh soziale Bindungen! 🐘💞
Revathe & Vidya zeigen, dass asiatische Elefantenkälber bereits früh differenzierte Beziehungen aufbauen: Sie interagieren eng mit Mutter und „Begleitkühen“, die allomaternale Fürsorge leisten, meiden jedoch meist andere Weibchen. #Sozialverhalten
🧪 ETHOLOGY: Baby elephants build social bonds early! 🐘💞
Revathe & Vidya show that Asian elephant calves form differentiated relationships early on: they interact closely with mothers and “escorts” who provide allomaternal care, while largely avoiding other females. Read: doi.org/10.1111/eth....
The 12th season of FINE starts the 24th of February with an exciting program.
To register for weekly reminders and the video link
email social.evolution.seminar@gmail.com
what makes something "vulnerable to AI" is not the capacity of machines but the credulity of management.
CES will give out at least seven travel awards of up to $4000 per person for researchers from low-and-middle income countries to attend the upcoming @ces2026.bsky.social CES 2026 Rabat conference. Applications must be submitted via this form by 20 February 2026, 9:00 AM AoE, to be considered.
But importantly, how do we disseminate these results? Well, you send them to Behavioral Ecology! We are building a new section of the journal devoted solely to publishing close replications! These will be short-format so another great training opportunity for ECRs. 4/
Incorporating replications into research training puts up useful guardrails for the trainee and focuses on developing good research skills and takes the focus away from novelty or a need to find a 'positive' result. Plus you work out all the kinks before you invest in a more intensive experiment 3/
Funding rates are consistently low since 2022, and for the first time below 10%. In my view, any proposal evaluated with >90-85% will be excellent and it will come down to details that the candidates do not control: If the reviewer had a good day, a good breakfast, etc. Pure and arbitrary luck.
Let's look at some numbers
2022: 7 044 applications submitted. 17.9 % success rate
2023: 8 039 applications submitted. 15.8 % success rate
2024: 10 360 applications submitted. 16.6 % success rate
2025: 17 058 applications submitted (record high). 9.7% success rate (preliminary numbers).
Annual Meeting of the Ethologische Gesellschaft 2026
Keynote: Rosemary Grant
In her keynote speech, Rosemary Grant discusses the role of #behavior in the #evolution of Darwin’s finches.
📍 Grünau | 📅 Feb 18–21, 2026
Four days of science and exchange—where ethology made history.
@ethoges.bsky.social