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Catherine Sheard

@sheardcat.bsky.social

1.8K followers 750 following 1.4K posts

Fellow @ University of Aberdeen. Professionally: macroevolution, especially birds & languages. Personally: drinks too much coffee, plays too much D&D. she/her

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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · Jun 25

New pinned intro time:

Hi! I'm Catherine, a PI (fellow/lecturer) at the University of Aberdeen. My lab works on trait macroevolution, particularly the causes/consequences of behavioural innovations. I'm a senior editor at GEB, co-chair of BES Macro, and have zero chill about the northern lights.

the aurora in Norway, photographed by Catherine Sheard -- the sky is full of bright green waves, above a snowy mountain

the aurora in Aberdeen, photographed by Catherine Sheard -- the sky is purple and pink over a beach

Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 2h

I have questions.

Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 2h

say what now

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 2h

Hegseth: "I'm also proud that today we're signing a letter of acceptance to build a Qatari Emeri air force facility at the Mountain Home Airbase in Idaho."

Reposted by Catherine Sheard

Prof Anna Watts @profannawatts.bsky.social · 22h

Lol the Nobels can't even acknowledge women's contribution to discovery. But sure let's acknowledge The Machines.

Headline from an article in Nature this week that states "Prizes must recognize machine contributions to discovery. The future of science will be written by humans and machines together. Awards should reflect that reality."

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Reposted by Catherine Sheard

Dustin Reichard @juncowren.bsky.social · 22h

So excited to finally share our work on how birds responded to the 2024 Great American Eclipse! Thanks to @rosvall-lab.bsky.social for inviting me on this journey! I never expected any of my research to show up in @science.org, let alone on the cover. Surreal. I hope you enjoy it!

Science Magazine @science.org · 22h

As the Moon eclipsed the Sun on 8 April 2024, birds took note.

Leveraging nature’s own experiment, scientists and the public joined forces to show how different species responded to sudden midafternoon darkness followed by a new “dawn.” Learn more this week in Science: https://scim.ag/48WbhLL

As the Moon eclipsed the Sun on 8 April 2024, birds like these rock pigeons (Columba livia) took note.

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Reposted by Catherine Sheard

c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 1d

The global whaling industry experienced a boom c. 1840-1950 as technology allowed whalers to hunt the Southern Ocean around Antarctica.

Under standard models, we would have expected krill populations to have *exploded*.

Instead, they DROPPED exponentially.

Let's talk about the KRILL PARADOX.

Change in distribution and abundance of southern right whales. (A) Shows historical and contemporary wintering distributions (Figure 1 from Carroll et al., 2018), and (B) shows decline in abundance and subsequent recovery (solid line is the mean, dashed line shows upper and lower 95% CI). Modified Figure 1 from Jackson et al. (2008). Contemporary sightings are divided into regions where large aggregations are seen during winter: Argentina (ARG), Brazil (BZL), South Africa (SAF), southwest Australia (SWA), south central Australia (SCA), and New Zealand sub-Antarctic (NZSA) and regions where sightings are typically of small numbers of individuals per year. The large aggregations are IWC management units and correspond to historical whaling grounds, although another 5 whaling grounds show little sign of recovery. Summer feeding areas are poorly described and so not shown.

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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 1d

This is a manuscript with 140 authors in an area I'm not super familiar with. Wiley no longer prompts authors to suggest reviewers, and the online interface is trash. Argh.

Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 1d

Holy cannoli it gets worse -- Wiley's AI for suggesting reviewers just suggested AN AUTHOR OF THE MANUSCRIPT.

Yes, Hal, I agree that this guy's research is highly relevant to this research. I know this because *it is his research*.

Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 4d

Well. I just learned that Wiley's new REX system allows you to invite people to review their own papers. How did I learn that? I bet you can guess...

(and before you @ me, I'm handling like 10 papers at the moment, and most with author lists >20)

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Reposted by Catherine Sheard

👻madeline boOoOoOodent👻 @oldenoughtosay.com · 1d

I'm gonna be honest, I'd rather not be living through it, but: if anybody is gonna be able to take on USA hegemony and have a right chance at it, the Vatican is an unexpected but worthy contender

Solomon @solomonmissouri.bsky.social · 1d

www.thedailybeast.com/pope-leo-ram...

Pope Leo Ramps Up His Trump Feud With Order to American Bishops

The Chicago-born pontiff has sharpened his criticism of the Trump administration and reportedly decided to take action.

www.thedailybeast.com

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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 1d

Also, I enjoyed this paper on the differences between felids and canids in their use of routeways. There's so much about fundamental animal movement that we simply do not know!

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

PNAS

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

www.pnas.org

Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 1d

Can we predict general patterns of parasitism? Basically, no.

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Meta-analysis finds large variation but no general patterns in the relationship between climate and parasitism in terrestrial animals | PNAS

Climate can vary spatially and temporally and is becoming increasingly unpredictable due to climate change. It can have a large impact on host–para...

www.pnas.org

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Reposted by Catherine Sheard

Claudia Wascher @wascherclaudia.bsky.social · 1d

Job alert: want to be my boss? 😁 The School of Life Sciences @ARU is looking for a new Head of School. It’s a great place to work with brilliant colleagues, students, and partners. Please share widely! #AcademicJobs #Leadership #LifeSciences #HigherEducation jobs.aru.ac.uk/vacancy/head...

Head of School of Life Sciences - ARU

jobs.aru.ac.uk

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Reposted by Catherine Sheard

bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 2d

Tip rate estimates can predict future diversification, but are unreliable and context dependent https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.06.680809v1

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Reposted by Catherine Sheard

Bryan White, MS Bio, MPH 🧬 @crvscience.com · 5d

Homie got 229 pairs of chromosomes

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/202...

This tiny butterfly has the most chromosomes of any animal on Earth

Scientists have confirmed that the Atlas blue butterfly carries the most chromosomes of any animal, with 229 pairs. Unlike duplication, its chromosomes split apart, reshaping its genome in surprising ...

www.sciencedaily.com

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Reposted by Catherine Sheard

Dr Mark E Hauber @thecowbirdlab.bsky.social · 2d

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Sexual selection drives sex difference in adult life expectancy across mammals and birds

Sexual size dimorphism and mating system contribute to male and female life-span differences across wild and zoo populations.

www.science.org

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Reposted by Catherine Sheard

Alex Tomlinson @alextomlinson.com · 3d

Flat illustration of a Wood Pigeon, Magpie, and Robin in a parade-line stride holding autumn leaves up high with their beaks! (UK birds as I am there right now on vacation!)

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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 3d

"Right now, if one of my students came to me and said, 'Hey, as part of my Ph.D. I want to enter the world's birds into a dataset,' I'm like, 'No, you're not doing that. You'll never finish your Ph.D.' "

Too true omg 😂

Anyway, this is a very exciting dataset!

phys.org/news/2025-09...

BIRDBASE dataset tracks ecological traits for 11,589 species of birds

Çağan Şekercioğlu was an ambitious, but perhaps naive graduate student when, 26 years ago, he embarked on a simple data-compilation project that would soon evolve into a massive career-defining achiev...

phys.org

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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 3d

I do enjoy hearing how Nobel winners find out they won, because it's frequently extremely endearing.

www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

Nobel committee unable to reach prize winner who is ‘living his best life’ hiking off grid

Fred Ramsdell was among those honoured with a 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine but might not know because he is somewhere in Idaho and uncontactable

www.theguardian.com

Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 4d

I totally get it -- it's a truly, stupidly awful system.

Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 4d

FOR SURE.

(It's on the list of things GEB is trying to get Wiley to change, fwiw.)

Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 4d

Ah, gotcha. I haven't bothered in years trying to get a GEB EA to invite people in the way/order/quantity that I wanted -- I always just invited them myself. 😅

Again, moot point, but in the new system I use the notes section for my list. (In defense of REX, I genuinely like the notes section.)

Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 4d

I suppose a moot point since you've resigned from GEB, but fwiw -- most of my invitations are marked as "declined" (probably the same proportion as actively declined in the old version?), and I can invite as many reviewers as I want (and in whatever order I want). 🤷‍♀️

Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 4d

At the moment authors can only suggest reviewers via the cover letter (and please do!).

AFAIK, there is indeed no way for reviewers to suggest alternates when declining (besides emailing the handling editor, I guess)

Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 4d

It is SO BAD. We're trying so hard at GEB to fix things, but holy cannoli y'all.

(This is the thing I was ranting about earlier today.)

Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 4d

The new Wiley journal review system is an absolute nightmare. Editorial assistants have been replaced by a clunky, AI-enabled website that makes it harder to find and invite reviewers. Associate editor workloads have increased. I'm not convinced the invitations to reviewers are even going through.

Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 4d

For realz. Why the hell does REX think that papers where a revision has been requested belongs in the same category as "papers where 1, but not 2, reviewers have agreed". Why. WHY.

Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 4d

Also, REX tells you when *one* reviewer has submitted their review, but not when *all* reviewers have submitted their reviews. I hate it.

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