Stephen Montgomery

🕷️💤 New paper in time for 🎃! Do #spiders really sleep? In our new study on #Portia fimbriata we tested all behavioural criteria of #sleep and found evidence for regulated, two-stage sleep with recurring REM-like stages. Out in @pnas.org! @roesslerdaniela.bsky.social 📄 tinyurl.com/3fky8ze7 🧵1/9

Victory for Lula, who has already reduced Amazon deforestation by 70% since 2022, means there is now a chance of ending deforestation of the rainforest entirely I’m weeping with joy for Brazil, for the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon, and for life on Earth 🇧🇷🌳🌎 www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...

Transatlantic joy for democracy 🇷🇸 🇧🇷

Bolsonaro-friendly mayors appear to be sabotaging public transport on Election Day. Buses aren’t running in Lula-friendly areas, flights and ferries mysteriously canceled. Traffic lights have gone out and people’s power cut in Salvador, indigenous people’s travel restricted

Barbara Finlay, who died on 12 September, championed the idea that developmental constraints dictate how evolution sculpts brains, which she used to model the timing of hundreds of events and align them across mammalian species. By @callimcflurry.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/evolution/re...

Insects’ contributions to people: ecosystem services and functions provided by insects academic.oup.com/aesa/article...

Out of Darkness, Blind Cavefish Illuminate Brain Evolution www.fau.edu/newsdesk/art...

I am pleased to share this article written with Marc Feldman that reviews the history of scientific racism and biological race realism, through the lens of two recent books: Hochman’s The Race Illusion and Lorusso & Winther’s Remapping Race in a Global Context. academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...

We are thrilled to announce that the 32nd edition of the European Meeting for PhD students in Evolutionary Biology (EMPSEB) will be held in Slovenia! More details coming soon. Follow us to stay updated!

We're hiring a 3-year postdoc at the University of Bristol to improve our ability to predict vegetation responses to fire in a changing world 🌍🔥🌱. Details: mdekauwe.github.io/join_us Please share, thank you.

Great autobiographical review from Jocelyn Bell Burnell, although some of the things she has had to put up with will make your blood boil. Hero. www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

As a PhD student designing my first survey, I added what I thought was a throwaway question at the end. To my surprise, thousands of academics answered it! The paper is out today: doi.org/10.1093/pnas...

A weekend read for folks who want to get away from AI, Russian diesel, execution porn, and all that, and just read about some science. www.quantamagazine.org/how-does-lif...

NEW: Prime Minister Andy Burnham finally breaks a decade of UK govt silence…& reveals there was ‘clear’ Russian interference in the Brexit vote. 1/

This is so unforgivably disgusting. www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

Everyone should be considering an #HFSP Research Grant. If you are not, you are doing something wrong and missing out!

Interested in postgraduate study in Biological Sciences? Applications are now open for our MPhil by Advanced Study, with six pathways to choose from across the biological sciences. Explore the course and find the pathway for you: 🔗 www.mphil.bio.cam.ac.uk #Masters #BiologicalSciences

🦑 Meet Planctoteuthis sp.! 🦑 According to #SamplingGap Co-chief sci Dr. Perez: “Images have finally enabled the description of this tail, but no one knows what it is used for. It looks like a siphonophore from a distance, and one hypothesis is that it could be used for siphonophore mimicry.”

In other words, a 10 percent contraction in one of Britain’s most successful exports. If it were steel or fish or other infinitely less profitable sectors, people would be having a meltdown.

In 2021 @andyradford.bsky.social became the ASAB executive editor of the #AnimalBehaviourJournal, a joint venture with our sister society @animbehsociety.bsky.social With their exec editor & a great support team, Andy has worked hard to bring out an issue every month - a real undertaking! #MeetASAB

The video is a fantastic explainer!

How long does a butterfly live? 🦋 A few weeks for most, but pollen-eating Heliconius can live up to a year – and have much bigger brains. @ebablab.bsky.social from @camzoology.bsky.social is exploring how brains and behaviour can drive the evolution of new species 👉 bit.ly/4jFJJzG

Not quite sure how I ended up with an office with this view 🤯

Come be our colleague @mpinb.mpg.de ! jobs.b-ite.com/jobposting/4... Bonn has a great community of neuroscientists and it's been a great place to start a group! #neuroethology @neuroethology.org

🦋 Butterfly wing patterns create motion illusions that protect them from predators! Our new study (8 years in the making) is out in Nature today doi.org/10.1038/s415... @grahancock.bsky.social @esbriolat.bsky.social @scienceanna.bsky.social @lauraakelley.bsky.social @uniexecec.bsky.social

🚨New paper🚨 Garden #spiders are everywhere right now—big, beautiful ladies, still in the hub of their 🕸️ But they are not just waiting, at night they also 💤! We found behavioral signatures of sleep in the wild. Out in #AnimalBehaviour w/ @mherberstein.bsky.social tinyurl.com/uznvv58y 🧵1/5

Congrats to all the bat people for this delightfully batty paper, it really is batastic 🦇 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Are you a #NewPI in Ecology & Evolution? Would you like to meet with peers to chat about work, the future and life as a new PI? 🍪☕️ Then I have the form for you! 📋 Help us gauge interest in a new network/event by filling in this short survey: forms.cloud.microsoft/e/K4wUiuLuFn Please RT! 🙏

Hot off the preprint: visual adaptations in crater-lake #cichlids revealed by single-cell RNA-seq of the retina. Deep-water species have mainly green cones that however differ from both green and red cones of the shallow-water species. Quite unexpected in such young adaptive radiation!😍

Academia has seen inflation in the past 30 years but it is now entering Republic of Weimar territory, with value of knowledge moving from "paper to land". In all this, Open hardware is an act of armed resistance to Technofeudalism. giorgio.gilest.ro/the-weimar-o...

The School of Biological Sciences at @cam.ac.uk is seeking a new Director for our Microscopy Bioscience Platform, which brings researchers together through open access to advanced imaging expertise and technology. Please share! www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/directo...

1/6 An extraordinary @nature.com paper has just landed from the lab of @sergiuppasca.bsky.social. They found a way to create "xenocortical mice" which have ~92% of their cortex occupied by a cortical organoid derived from human stem cells.

We're hiring! Join us as a postdoc to study how the brain is optimised for sensory coding and memory Please spread the word! Apply at jobsite.sheffield.ac.uk/job/Research... Deadline: 5 October 2026 Learn more at: www.aclinlab.org

Are you a #NewPI in Ecology & Evolution? Would you like to meet with peers to chat about work, the future and life as a new PI? 🍪☕️ Then I have the form for you! 📋 Help us gauge interest in a new network/event by filling in this short survey: forms.cloud.microsoft/e/K4wUiuLuFn Please RT! 🙏

"MIT wants to rebuild education around the things AI can't replace. That means oral exams, semester portfolios, in-person project work, and a required social component in every subject. The report even floats the idea of rethinking grades entirely..." This is the way forward @tcddublin.bsky.social

Very excited to see this multi-faceted* study, led by Shane Wright and representing years of work on visual evolution and perception in Heliconius as part of our ERC Starting Grant, released into the world! 🦋*pun very much intended www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Come and join us! 🐝

Extremely topical PhD project on the effects of heatwaves on cognition, with @harrysiviter.bsky.social at @bristolbiosci.bsky.social, with @gaynorasmith.bsky.social and me as sidekicks 🐝🥵 gw4biomed.ac.uk/quantifying-...

Extremely topical PhD project on the effects of heatwaves on cognition, with @harrysiviter.bsky.social at @bristolbiosci.bsky.social, with @gaynorasmith.bsky.social and me as sidekicks 🐝🥵 gw4biomed.ac.uk/quantifying-...

Fish with electrical senses have unique brain cells specifically to process that information. The real trick they pull is separating the electricity they emit from the ones they sense. 🧪 Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10690-6​

Excited to share our new paper in Science Advances: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... A fascinating glimpse into how genomes begin to diverge and species begin to form. #Evolution #EvoDevo #Genomics #Epigenetics #Pangenomics #Heliconius

Includes a nice article covering of @borreroja.bsky.social and @dickmerrill.bsky.social’s work in #Heliconius!

We are hiring! Come join us in the Straw Lab at the @biologyunifreiburg.bsky.social . Seeking a scientist to work on the neural and computational mechanisms of visual navigation in honey bees. uni-freiburg.de/en/job/00005...

Amazing www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Please share: Only 10 days left to apply for a PhD position on comparative and population genomics in our lab 🦋

🚨 I AM HIRING a 3-year postdoc & 4-year PhD student 🚨 [PLEASE SHARE WIDELY] My Emmy Noether @dfg.de funded Neural Circuit & Systems Evolution lab (🌟) at the @unimainz.bsky.socialÍ wants to start existing. So..., what do we need? WELL... we need you! APPLY UNTIL 21 SEPTEMBER.

New episode out today! We were joined by Prof. Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social to learn about how evolution contributes to the generation of new behaviours and cognitive solutions🍃🧠, using neotropical butterflies🦋 as a fascinating case study🔬. Listen here: open.spotify.com/episode/4d7T...