Euan Angus Young
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euantheyoung.bsky.social
Euan Angus Young
@euantheyoung.bsky.social
150 followers 220 following 32 posts
Excitable PhD student interested in how an evolutionary perspective can inform our understanding of human health and disease | University of Groningen | he/him
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euantheyoung.bsky.social
Euan Angus Young @euantheyoung.bsky.social · 17d
1/13 New paper out! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Historical records across thousands of women showed that mothers with more children had shorter lifespans during a famine, fitting an evolutionary explanation for why we age
@hannahdugdale.bsky.social
@lummaalab.bsky.social
@erikpostma.bsky.social
Reposted by Euan Angus Young
sashagusevposts.bsky.social
So there you have it, twin study estimates were greatly inflated, and molecular data sets the record straight. I walk through possible counter-arguments, but ultimately the uncomfortable truth is that genes contribute to traits much less than we always thought.
November 21, 2025 at 10:34 PM
Reposted by Euan Angus Young
erikpostma.bsky.social
A lot has happened since our first announcement of #ExE2026, an evolutionary ecology conference hosted by @uniexecec.bsky.social in #Cornwall from June 29 to July 3 2026.

Have a look at our new website to see our confirmed plenary speakers, the mid-conference excursions, and more.

👉 evoxeco.uk 👈
The logo of the Evolution x Ecology 2026 conference in Cornwall, UK.
November 21, 2025 at 4:50 PM
Reposted by Euan Angus Young
juliet-turner.bsky.social
POV: you are a young woman celebrating a recent academic success
November 17, 2025 at 7:20 PM
Reposted by Euan Angus Young
alexeimaklakov.bsky.social
1/6 In a new preprint we ask a question:

Why do males and females so often age and die at different rates?

We argue that sex-specific mutation accumulation may be the most parsimonious evolutionary explanation for sex-biased ageing:

ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...
Sex-specific mutation accumulation: A parsimonious explanation for sex differences in lifespan and ageing
ecoevorxiv.org
November 19, 2025 at 12:08 PM
Reposted by Euan Angus Young
johnholbein1.bsky.social
This is terrifying.

"[AI agents] can... infer a researcher's latent hypotheses and produce data that artificially confirms them."

...

"We can no longer trust that survey responses are coming from real people" [email protected]
November 18, 2025 at 9:03 PM
Reposted by Euan Angus Young
hansraj88.bsky.social
Join us for this interesting project on fitness consequences of early life experiences in humans 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 or elephants 🐘🐘🐘!!
lummaalab.bsky.social Lummaa Lab @lummaalab.bsky.social · 10d
We are looking for a Masters student for an exciting project!

Fitness consequences of cumulative silver-spoon 🥄🥄 effects in a long-lived mammal.

Study system could be humans 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 or elephants 🐘🐘 depending on your interest.

✉️ @hansraj88.bsky.social @axdela.bsky.social @nikos.ecoevo.social.ap.brid.gy
November 19, 2025 at 10:27 AM
Reposted by Euan Angus Young
btschirren.bsky.social
**PhD opportunity at @uniexecec.bsky.social** How does host microbiome dynamics affect wildlife disease?

Combine molecular techniques, statistical modelling, and field sampling to understand how microbiome dynamics in 🦡 affects their susceptibility to bTB. 🔬🦠🧪 Please repost! shorturl.at/q3OxV
Investigating the Role of Host Microbiome Dynamics as Drivers of Wildlife Disease Using a One Health Framework at University of Exeter on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - Investigating the Role of Host Microbiome Dynamics as Drivers of Wildlife Disease Using a One Health Framework at University of Exeter, listed on FindAPhD.com
shorturl.at
November 13, 2025 at 8:34 PM
Reposted by Euan Angus Young
hannahdugdale.bsky.social
Congratulations to Dr @euantheyoung.bsky.social who defended his PhD yesterday on 'Family matters: The role of trade-offs in shaping human life-histories and health' research.rug.nl/en/publicati... @rug.nl supervised with @erikpostma.bsky.social @lummaalab.bsky.social 🎉
November 18, 2025 at 8:58 AM
Reposted by Euan Angus Young
hansonmark.bsky.social
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Reposted by Euan Angus Young
cbank.bsky.social
We have an open PhD position (application deadline 9 January 2026) in "Theory of fitness landscapes" at @unibe.ch 🤓⛰️📊👩‍💻🎓: banklab.github.io/positions/

Please share widely!

#QueerInSTEM #DisabledInSTEM #BlackInSTEM #WomenInSTEM #CarersInSTEM #AcademicSky #HigherED
October 28, 2025 at 4:22 PM
Reposted by Euan Angus Young
ecoevorxiv.bsky.social
"Asynchrony of ageing among traits in a wild bird population"
doi.org/10.32942/X27...
The age-specific trajectories of 13 phenotypic traits in individuals the Seychelles warbler population of Cousin Island (dates differ per dataset, minimum date 1981, maximum date 2022) identified through Generalized Additive Models. The x-axis is age in years, and the y-axis is the trait value; all traits, except for annual reproductive success, survival and malaria, are z-transformed. The solid black line depicts the model-predicted curve and the grey shaded areas depict the standard error. Blue points are raw data points. RTL = relative telomere length. ARS = Annual Reproductive Success. For buffy coat (Fig 1h & i), F indicates female, M indicates male.
November 6, 2025 at 9:45 AM
euantheyoung.bsky.social
1/13 New paper out! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Historical records across thousands of women showed that mothers with more children had shorter lifespans during a famine, fitting an evolutionary explanation for why we age
@hannahdugdale.bsky.social
@lummaalab.bsky.social
@erikpostma.bsky.social
November 10, 2025 at 10:57 AM
Reposted by Euan Angus Young
eivimeycook.bsky.social
Back in Ingelheim for another Evolution of Ageing workshop (massive thanks to The Gutenberg Workshops in the Life Sciences for hosting). It’s set to be a great three days of talks and presentations!
September 29, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Reposted by Euan Angus Young
hannahdugdale.bsky.social
Come & work with us - fully funded 4 year PhD on Social Ageing: Social environment effects on senescence, using an epigenetic clock www.rug.nl/about-ug/wor... @rug.nl @david-s-richardson.bsky.social @keesvanoers.bsky.social @seychelleswarbler.bsky.social photo: @charlisdavies.bsky.social
September 19, 2025 at 7:44 AM
Reposted by Euan Angus Young
royalsocietypublishing.org
New in #ProcB - From policy to practice: Progress towards #data- and #code-sharing in ecology and evolution @asanchez-tojar.bsky.social @eivimeycook.bsky.social tell us more in our blog royalsociety.org/blog/2025/09...
September 17, 2025 at 11:01 AM
euantheyoung.bsky.social
Well that’s the “highlight” of my week for sure!
Thrilled to see our recent paper covered in Nature’s Research Highlight: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Also see @markspa.bsky.social’s neat explainer below.
September 5, 2025 at 9:46 AM
Reposted by Euan Angus Young
markspa.bsky.social
1. My first ever paper is out! With
@euantheyoung.bsky.social
@lummaalab.bsky.social
@erikpostma.bsky.social
@hannahdugdale.bsky.social
How do older siblings, and their sex and age, affect the survival of younger siblings? Find out by checking below.

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....
Age- and sex-dependent associations between the number of older siblings and early-life survival in pre-industrial humans | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Siblings are an important part of an individual’s early-life environment and may therefore play an important role in shaping an individual’s survival. The quantification of sibling effects on survival is challenging, however, especially in long-lived ...
royalsocietypublishing.org
September 3, 2025 at 1:47 PM
Reposted by Euan Angus Young
erikpostma.bsky.social
With #eseb2025 coming to a close, it is time to start making plans for 2026. Interested in the interface of evolution 🧬 and ecology 🌳? Come to our #ExE conference hosted by @uniexecec.bsky.social in beautiful #Cornwall. Leave your email address at tinyurl.com/EvolxEcol to join our mailing list!
August 22, 2025 at 1:32 PM
Reposted by Euan Angus Young
btschirren.bsky.social
**Postdoc opportunities**👇👇 Find me at poster 302 today between 17:30-18:00 for a chat. 🦡🦠🔬🧬 #eseb2025
August 21, 2025 at 7:38 AM
Reposted by Euan Angus Young
erikpostma.bsky.social
What do you think, can we forecast evolution❓

@sevans.bsky.social and I would love to hear your thoughts, so if you are going to #ESEB2025, submit a talk to our symposium (S24: Forecasting evolution in natural populations) and join @colingarroway.bsky.social and Patrik Nosil!

Deadline April 25.
April 11, 2025 at 4:16 PM
Reposted by Euan Angus Young
pdevillemereuil.bsky.social
👋

Interested in working on the evolution of genetic architecture 🧬 of complex traits using linked-read sequencing of thousands of common lizards 🦎 from a wild population and common garden experiment?

#evolution #genetics

Well, I have a PhD offer for you 👇
devillemereuil.legtux.org/erc-funded-p...
ERC-funded PhD position available – Pierre de Villemereuil
devillemereuil.legtux.org
April 8, 2025 at 3:54 PM
Reposted by Euan Angus Young
eivimeycook.bsky.social
Reminder - the deadline for abstracts is in less than a month's time!

#openscience
eivimeycook.bsky.social Ed Ivimey-Cook @eivimeycook.bsky.social · Feb 28
🚨 ESEB 2025, here we come! 🚨

Abstract submissions are now open for our symposium -
"Enhancing Diversity & Transparency in Ecology & Evolution: Reliable Practices for Research & Organizations" 🌍✨

Featuring invited speakers:
🔹 Dr. Malgorzata (Losia) Lagisz
🔹 Dr. Joel Pick

#ESEB2025 #SORTEE
March 28, 2025 at 3:09 PM
Reposted by Euan Angus Young
spaam-community.bsky.social
The SPAAM has organized a virtual speed-networking event between PIs and young researchers (MSc/PhD/Postdocs)!
When? Wednesday April 9th 11.00AM-01.00PM CET. Registration deadline: April 2nd. Grab your slot! For more information and registration, check:
Speed networking between PIs and young researchers - April 2025 edition
Interest and registration form for PI speed networking for April 9th, 11:00 AM - 01.00 PM CET The following PIs are open to meeting with interested junior researchers (prospective masters, PhDs,…
docs.google.com
March 28, 2025 at 1:24 PM
Reposted by Euan Angus Young
hannahdugdale.bsky.social
Congratulations Dr. Chik on defending your PhD thesis yesterday on "The evolutionary and ecological drivers of senescence in two wild passerine systems" 👏🎉 doi.org/10.33612/dis...
March 11, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Reposted by Euan Angus Young
sortee.bsky.social
Do you have a project in ecology and evolution that exemplifies open science? If so nominate the project for a SORTEE Commendation Award:

More details about the SORTEE Commendation Award:
SORTEE awards
Awards of Society for Open, Reliable, and Transparent Ecology and Evolutionary biology (SORTEE)
buff.ly
February 21, 2025 at 11:28 AM