Julia Espinosa

Suzanne does great work and is an awesome person, this would be the dream #postdoc position 🥳🙌 🧪

Characterizing the heritability of cognitive and behavioural traits across development in domestic dogs Abstract. In humans, many behavioural and cognitive traits are moderately-to-highly heritable, with cognitive measures tending to increase in heritability

New dog paper out! 📢 #CanineScience

We used 2 timepoints of behavioral testing, a population pedigree, and genome-wide sequence data to estimate the heritability of various cognitive & behavioral traits in a population of assistance dogs. 🐕‍🦺🧬

royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article...

🚨 JOB ALERT 🚨

2-year postdoc in canine behaviour at Linköping University, Sweden.

#AcademicSky #ScienceJobs

liu.se/en/work-at-l...

Can Dogs Talk? Do speech buttons really allow dogs to talk to us? Scientists investigate.

Today at 9pm ET/PT is the US premiere of the @pbs.org NOVA documentary "Can Dogs Talk?". It covers the project @cclabucsd.bsky.social has been running with thousands of button trained dogs. It is a true honor to be on NOVA and we hope you will find it engaging: www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/vi...

Reminder: if anyone, particular ECRs, is interested in helping to refresh the Data Management booklet, please get in touch ASAP. Details of how to get involved in the thread below. @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social @britishecologicalsociety.org.

I am really angry about all of the scientists who cozied up to Epstein even after it was known who he was.

I am nearly as angry at how many people are justifying this as "they had to, it's how academia works"

NO IT FUCKING WELL ISN'T

Fantastic, let's hope for some warm weather! 🏃🌞 This 5km loop with the Olmsted Trail and Grand Staircase might be rather perfect, it has a beautiful view from Mount Royal at the top: maps.app.goo.gl/g8FLe6MP3rXi... And of course a shorter 3km option to enter the park at the Rue Peel steps 🙌

#CO3 is my conference home and I'm so excited that it's coming to Canada this year 🍁 Consider presenting your comparative work, there's still time to send in an abstract! If you're into running, I'm thinking we should organize a fun run up Mount Royal one morning 🙌😅

Have you ever wondered what you would find if you could keep your eyes on a bee for more than a few meters? Us, too!

preprint (with videos!) + thread 🧵

Precise, individualized foraging flights in honey #bees 🐝 revealed by multicopter drone-based tracking

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

1/9

New episode!! 🎙️🎉

A chat w/ @pbrakes.bsky.social about animal cultures and animal conservation.

Culture was once thought to be uniquely human. No longer. We now know culture is found throughout the natural world. How does this complicate conservation?

Listen: disi.org/the-value-of...

Research can feel like shouting into the void. I’m deeply grateful that Emma Buchtel, Xu Jingya, & Betul Turel built on our “wise reasoning” work to tackle cultural diversity. They presented a large-scale study proposal at the 2025
@psychscience.bsky.social Global Summit. #culturaldiversity

Hey comparative cognition researchers, see you in Montreal next year?! 🇨🇦🍁🦝🦫

So excited that our first major empirical @themanybirds.bsky.social paper is now out in @plosbiology.org!
Leading this big team science project, with our excellent core leadership team, is a labour of love for me, delighted to see our hard work over the past 4 years has reached this milestone!

Absolutely. There is zero tolerance for inaccurate reporting and spreading falsehoods about dogs.

Dumbbell graph showing the impact of early life adversity by individual breed on aggressive behaviour. Permutation testing and linear regression found that there were significant effects of early life adversity for some breeds, including American Eskimo Dog. You know which breed isn't impacted in our study? Pibbles. They're not even close to the most aggressive dog listed. So knock it off and let them be.

Dumbbell graph showing the impact of early life adversity by individual breed on fearful behaviour. Permutation testing and linear regression found that there were significant effects of early life adversity for some breeds, including American Eskimo Dog. You know which breed isn't impacted in our study? Pibbles. They're not even close to the most aggressive dog listed. So, knock it off and let them be.

Here are our graphs showing impact of adversity by breed. We found zero evidence that pit-bull types were more impacted by adversity than other breeds, and when it came to baseline aggressive and fearful behaviour? Look at that, solidly in the middle of the pack #CanineScience 🧪 #Boom #TheEnd 4/4

I really appreciate media coverage of our research, truly, it's huge for an #ECR like me on the job market. But don't get it twisted. The dogs don't deserve that #NotTodaySatan #DogIsLove #FactsNotFiction 3/n

a black and white dog is looking at the camera with the words `` what '' written on it . Alt: a black and white pitty looking dog is looking at the camera with the words `` what '' written on it.

Despite no good evidence, pit-bull types are frequently characterized as aggressive and dangerous. This false narrative contributes to breed-specific laws which cause relinquishments and euthanasia, and don't actually reduce serious dog bites in society 2/n #BreedSpecificLegislation #CanineScience

Trauma in a puppy's first six months linked to adult aggression, says new study As many dog owners can attest, their four-legged companions are delightful and loving. But for others, their animals have an aggressive side, such as biting and attacking strangers, which may ultimate...

You know what our recent paper on early life adversity and #dog #behaviour DOESN'T say? Anything about pit-bull type dogs. No mention by us at all, @sciencex.bsky.social. So... how did they earn a callout for aggression and fear in your piece? phys.org/news/2025-10... 1/idk, as many as it takes 🧪

Thank you! I like it not least because it's called a dumbbell graph 🏋️😅🙌

This is the first paper from my postdoc with @erinhecht.bsky.social and the Canine Brains Project, check out their ongoing research: sites.harvard.edu/caninebrains...
#CanineScience

Barbell plot summarizing the difference in average aggressive behaviour scores (X axis) for two groups of dogs within the same breed (Y axis). Group 1 (blue dots) are average scores for dogs without a history of early life adversity and Group 2 (red dots) are average scores for dogs of the same breed with a history of early life adversity in the first 6 months. Generally, breeds show a trend towards higher aggression scores for dogs with a history of adversity (i.e., the red dot is to the right of the blue dot), while a few breeds show the opposite trend. None of the instances where dogs with adversity scored lower than those without were significantly different. Dot size represents the number of dogs in the group, with Golden Retrievers and Labrador Retrievers being among the most numerous, while English Shepherds were fewer. Significant differences in aggression scores between dogs with and without adversity are noted by carets next to breed names, including Siberian Husky, American Leopard Hound, and American Eskimo Dog.

That's not all! Obvi, nurture doesn't tell the whole story of why dogs develop certain behaviour. We also found that the impact of trauma varied across dog breeds, suggesting that there is a genetic factor for risk or resilience to stress.
#NatureAndNurture #Genes&Environment #IndividualDifferences

Influence of early life adversity and breed on aggression and fear in dogs - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Influence of early life adversity and breed on aggression and fear in dogs

📣 New publication alert! In a large, diverse sample, #CompanionDogs with a history of trauma before 6 months were seen as more fearful and/or aggressive than trauma-free dogs or those with trauma later on in life
🧪 #CanineScience #DogBehaviour #EarlyLifeAdversity doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Brown’s Department of Cognitive & Psychological Sciences is hiring a tenure-track Assistant Professor, working in the area of AI and the Mind (start July 1, 2026). Apply by Nov 8, 2025 👉 apply.interfolio.com/173939

#AI #CognitiveScience #AcademicJobs #BrownUniversity

📣 Prospective Canadian grad students, check out NIna's lab and research szeyuhninawang.com 🧪

I wrote an R package that creates standardized R project structures that are compliant with @mekline.bsky.social's psych-DS...ish.

It also creates additional features for reproducibility and teaching like a readme, license, .gitignore and Quarto templates

+ can validate existing projects

Immediately going at the top of my reading list 🙌🤓

Winter ASAB 2025 December 15-16 Edinburgh How sensory information affects behaviour.

ICYMI : #ASABWinter2025 will take place from December 15-16, once again in lovely Edinburgh!

Registration is now open 🎉 Abstract submission deadline for posters and talks is August 29 🏃‍♀️🏃🏃‍♂️

More information here: asabwinter.github.io/2025/

LIVE SOON: Countering Trump's War On Science With Colette Delawalla and Dr. Jeremy Berg Starting Jul 30 at 12:00 PM EDT

🚨Starting soon at 12pm ET: @cdelawalla.bsky.social joins @simonwdc.bsky.social and @jeremymberg.bsky.social to dig into Countering Trump’s War on Science.

We can’t wait - going LIVE soon! Tune in here ➡️ open.substack.com/live-stream/...

With many postdoc grants like the NSF PRFB, Ford Fellowship, and Hanna H. Gray fellowships disappearing, I am currently looking for grants that could fund incoming postdoctoral scholars. Here is a thread of some of them 🧵

a brown and white corgi dog is standing on top of a lush green field . Alt: a red and white corgi dog with forward pricked ears and open mouth with loose tongue is doing a rapid weight change between their front paws on top of a lush green field. This behavior is also known colloquially as tippy-tappies and is generally considered an indicator of positive excitement and anticipation in the dog.

Also! Tippy tappy your way on over to the MD website to read about the study in more detail and check out our pre-registration of the method: manydogsproject.github.io/manydogs2.html