Will Smith

Pretty Rock Doves 😍

I've published a short opinion on connectivity between British and continental Twitter (an abridged chapter of my 2017 MRes). www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Every future scientist kid wants to have a paper about dinosaurs. Here I go ✅ with this in @natrevbiodiv.nature.com with @tweetisaurus.bsky.social, @richardjbutler.bsky.social and T Matthews. We asked - how to study islands in the fossil record? Turns out - with great difficulty! @leverhulme.ac.uk

New 🐌 paper, just out. Chiral variation of Japanese Euhadra snails is due to dominant-acting changes in a myosin I gene. Both sinistral and dextral versions are ancient and not pathological, with embryos showing few transcriptional diffs #genomics #snail #chirality www.cell.com/current-biol... 🧬🖥️

And they’re off! 🪽 Four new pigeon lofts have been opened by The Vice-Chancellor at the John Krebs Field Station, increasing capacity by 200% and supporting a £1m BBSRC project exploring how birds navigate in a changing world.

Fossil taxa are sometimes considered island weirdos without any actual evidence that island effects were important in their evolution. So we wrote a paper on how we could do actual island biogeography in deep time. If you want a copy but can't access it, email me: www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Woohoo, it's now live! We show, using four lines of evidence, that butterfly wings can create illusory motion effects! @esbriolat.bsky.social, @scienceanna.bsky.social, @lauraakelley.bsky.social, @jtroscianko.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It's nice that this little note (first published in May) is an editor's highlight in Ibis. A fun mini-project (following on from a side-quest to find 'doves with white bums' among millions of grey-arsed ones, whilst on holiday on Fuerteventura....) @jezierskimt.bsky.social doi.org/10.1111/ibi....

Great to visit Loughborough's feral pigeons again this morning 🐦. Despite constant Peregrine and Sparrowhawk interventions making the flock v. jittery, we @jezierskimt.bsky.social collected data from 10 birds during a quick trip. I think feral pigeons are like snowflakes, every one is different !

Just published in Ibis. A 15.5 year study of avian pox in Dunnocks (Prunella modularis). Quick summary: Dull brown bird doesn't die of disease & haematophagous Hippoboscidae from healthy heterotrophs help hypothesis. (Can anyone think of a better word than heterotrophs?) More details below. 1/n

NEW on #theBOUblog from Michał Jezierski Wren evolution in the British Isles: How might island evolution generate patterns of avian diversity? bou.org.uk/blog-jezi... #ornithology 🪶

Excited to share my second published PhD chapter out now in Current Biology! @cellpress.bsky.social 🧵 below but tldr: birds are known to use the magnetic field to navigate. But is magnetism the whole story? We find that an amazing avian navigator doesn’t seem to rely on magnetic cues at all.

"if it looks like a wild boar, and it behaves like a wild boar, then it is a wild boar” The article is interesting, the paper even more so. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Rock Dove and feral pigeons, perhaps the most pressing issue in British bird conservation. follow @willjsmith.bsky.social to learn more, Rock Doves cooing in a sea cave is one of the best wildlife experiences you will have onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

What do you do with a day off, when you're on an island off an island off an island in Seychelles. Get permissions and use jaffa cakes to catch some Moorhens and measure their visual fields! And interesting they are too! New paper in Ecology and Evolution @britishecologicalsociety.org. Link below.

Pleased to share that my first, first-author publication was published yesterday in @pnas.org ! We (me + @jrossibarra.bsky.social) did a little bit of detective work to better understand the age and origin of a mutation that played a key role in maize domestication. doi.org/10.1073/pnas... (1/n)

Big new @adriftlab.bsky.social paper - we show for the first time that plastics affects seabirds at the POPULATION level. Plastic ingested as a chick reduces recruitment of birds to the breeding population. And the story is pretty grim. 🧵 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

🥳 New paper out in the Journal of Biogeography! I am excited to share the first PhD chapter from Zhichang Cheng, who I co-supervise with Fred de Boer. Habitat and Thermal Breadth Shape Climate-Driven Range Shifts in Arctic Birds onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #ornithology

😇🐕 Our work on “The Indian street dog crisis and multispecies coexistence in tropical urban futures” has made it to the cover & banner www.nature.com/articles/s44.... It is an ordinary Indian street, with people, dogs, food, traffic, homes, trees, and all the negotiations that make a city alive.

Any moth experts: is this a Spectacle, or a Dark Spectacle? Also I’m stuck on these other two… 🤔 (in Leicestershire) #TeamMoth

I was honoured to make a small contribution to this paper published today in Cell, detailing the first T2T genome assembly of the zebra finch, a crucial model species for neurobiology: tinyurl.com/tguttata

Crepuscular/nocturnal Dodos!??? 🦤🌝

Awesome new paper about wild/domestic interbreeding in DUCKS*, just out in @currentbiology.bsky.social 🦆🧬 #ornithology *not quite pigeons, but still very interesting 😅... doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...

Humans changed islands, not just holiday destinations, but home to 10% of humans, including us here 🇬🇧. What is the ecology of islands today, and how are island organisms adapting? Neatly summarised by @ferransayol.bsky.social, our new paper lead by Tom Matthews on the 'Anthropocene' on islands.

Really nice research on a familiar to system to all of us - pigeons in buildings.

Thanks @bou.org.uk for the opportunity to write a bit about our ongoing PIGEON SCIENCE 🕊️ including work funded by @btobirds.bsky.social @scottishbirding.bsky.social @britishbirds.bsky.social 🐦

Our new commentary rdcu.be/ftx6h in @natecoevo.nature.com written with folks from @inaturalist.bsky.social and @cornellbirds.bsky.social shows that use of AI to manipulate existing or create new wildlife images undermines the huge value of vast citizen science databases. 🌍🪰🪶 #Ornithology 🧵 1/10

Our new review paper is out - iOrnithology: a review of the use of web-sourced photographs and videos in ornithological research, published in Ibis @connorpanter.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Nice YouTube-summary of the 2025 study on bird nests by @jezierskimt.bsky.social, @willjsmith.bsky.social and their colleagues. www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzN6... Here is the link to the original paper: royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article... #ornithology

I'm proud to be an associate editor for this journal: please send us your fun bird science! 🤓🐣

How nice is it when you spot other species while doing fieldwork?

A cool chicken paper 🐓. Such work benefits from having healthy comparator populations of domesticated species' wild forms (in this case, Red Junglefowl). We wrote about this: doi.org/10.1093/orni.... It's part of why @jezierskimt.bsky.social and I visit Uist regularly, to study the wild pigeons.

Why pigeons deserve more respect.

New paper in @journal-evo.bsky.social and I'll be defending my thesis in a few hours! Relaxed selection diminishes social memory and expression of host defenses against cuckoos academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

It was very nice to be asked by @theconversation.com to write about this fascinating new research. Pigeons in Bronze Age Cyprus! Big congrats to the authors. Excited to see what more we can learn about the early stages of the human-pigeon relationship… doi.org/10.64628/AB....

Separately, whilst on St Kilda last month working on these endemic Wrens, a Redpoll which flew into our nets already had an ID ring. Turns out it was ringed in September 2025 as a first-year bird, on Sula in Norway. That's 1135km away from St Kilda! @jezierskimt.bsky.social @stkildawhs.bsky.social

Grateful to any visitors this season that are able to photograph any of @jezierskimt.bsky.social 's colour-ringed birds in the Village. If you're able to read a darvic ring, please report the alphanumeric code, time and location to NTS staff for contribution to Michal's research 🙏

St Kilda Wrens weigh ~14g (large birds >16g!). 7-11g is usual for mainland GB/continental Wrens. So this subspecies can weigh the same as some Great Tits or Blackcaps. GINORMOUS! Congrats @jezierskimt.bsky.social on the paper! #ornithology doi.org/10.1093/evol...

Our (Jenny Dunn, Carolina Chagas, @willjsmith.bsky.social) paper on the evolution of island Wrens is finally out @evojlinnsoc.bsky.social! We describe the evolution of island gigantism in the St Kilda and Shetland subspecies. academic.oup.com/evolinnean/a...

Uist's wild Rock Doves seem to be having a solid breeding season so far, with lots of nests (which is good, since they had quite a tough winter). Also nice to see @jezierskimt.bsky.social give a talk on his island Wren research.

NEW Friend or foul? Analysis of pigeon bones from Bronze Age Cyprus sheds light on their ancient relationship with humans for the first time, suggesting they were domesticated centuries earlier than previously attested. 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy... 🏺 #Archaeology

Do you know of an inland or coastal Common Gull colony? Any abundance or productivity data on this under-monitored gull would be incredibly valuable for the @smp-seabirds.bsky.social #seabirds #ornithology #ScottishBirds

How do cuckoo mothers choose their optimal individual host? 🪺🪶 Find out about Teresa Abaurrea’s work on our latest blog post! www.informedbirds.com/blog/2026/5/...

Back from two weeks of field work in the Outer Hebrides. Studying stickleback by trapping, wading, snorkeling, drones, and my first field experience of using @bento.bio lab. Normally we guess what the mitochondrial lineage of the crosses we're making but this year we got to know in the field!

Nice that this has come out as we are in Uist, working with wild Rock Doves. It's great to get to know individuals, following them through their lives out in the meadows, ruins, and caves. If you live on, or visit, the islands, please keep an eye out for ringed doves to help us to learn more 🕊️

🥳 New paper in Ornithological Applications! @amornith.bsky.social Research and conservation priorities for domesticated birds’ wild counterparts academic.oup.com/condor/advan... A wonderful collaboration with @willjsmith.bsky.social, Philip Lavrestsky and Eben Gering. #ornithology

Domestic birds play major roles in our lives - so it's weird that we often lack basic knowledge of their wild forms, e.g. Red Junglefowl 🐓 / Rock Doves 🕊️! Eben Gering, @jenteo.bsky.social 🪿, Philip Lavretsky 🦆, and I discuss research + conservation priorities #Ornithology. doi.org/10.1093/orni...