Valentin Kiss
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valentinkiss.bsky.social
Valentin Kiss
@valentinkiss.bsky.social
180 followers 450 following 17 posts
PhD student at University of Antwerp
Disease ecology - Urban ecology - Ornithology

Currently tracking superspreaders in the belgian urban jungle 🦠🐦🏙️
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Valentin Kiss
imares-group.bsky.social
🚨 New Research Alert!
Urban air pollution harms wildlife too. A study in Journal of Hazardous Materials shows yellow-legged gull chicks in Barcelona act as sentinels for air quality. 🐦🌆

🔗 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2025.140518
#OneHealth

@icmcsic.bsky.social 
@jnavarro.bsky.social
November 24, 2025 at 4:58 PM
Reposted by Valentin Kiss
danielbolnick.bsky.social
Half the southern elephant seals on South Georgia Island, one of the major populations, were wiped out by bird flu in the past two years:
www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/b...
Bird Flu Wiped Out Nearly Half of the Females in the World’s Largest Elephant Seal Population, Drone Images Suggest
Scientists recorded a 47 percent drop in breeding females in South Georgia’s three largest elephant seal colonies after bird flu hit. Scaled to the whole island, that’s a potential loss of more than 5...
www.smithsonianmag.com
November 24, 2025 at 12:26 PM
Reposted by Valentin Kiss
geordieparasit.bsky.social
🎓 Funded #PhD studentships in pathogen biology and parasitology

*Cell and Molecular Biology*; *Host-pathogen interactions*

Part of the EastBio Doctoral Landscape Award

Based in the Edinburgh area of Scotland

PhD 1:
bit.ly/Host-pathoge...

PhD 2:
bit.ly/Parasite-sca...

@uoe-eid.bsky.social
EastBio: A host-directed approach to identify novel therapeutic targets of infectious reproductive diseases at Moredun Research Institute on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - EastBio: A host-directed approach to identify novel therapeutic targets of infectious reproductive diseases at Moredun Research Institute, listed on FindAPhD.com
www.findaphd.com
November 21, 2025 at 4:07 PM
Reposted by Valentin Kiss
yhgrad.bsky.social
Now out in @natcomms.nature.com Kudos to @tylim.bsky.social and @jameshay.bsky.social for a huge effort and thanks to all the collaborators for their hard work. See the final version here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
November 20, 2025 at 9:58 PM
valentinkiss.bsky.social
This week I had the opportunity to present some results from my #PhD project at the #NVG conference. I shared our work on #Chlamydia psittaci prevalence in feral #pigeons within a #OneHealth framework, highlighting why fine-scale reporting is essential when monitoring #disease dynamics in cities. 🏙️
November 21, 2025 at 7:37 PM
Reposted by Valentin Kiss
avianbiology.bsky.social
NEW PAPER: how does urban noise, lights, and stress disrupt birds’ sleep? This review shows that our knowledge about this is fragmeneted and calls for direct tests linking disturbed sleep to bird behavior, fitness, and survival.

➡️ vist.ly/4e7dj

#ornithology #birds #urbanecology 🪶
Fig. 1 from the article: A representation of the state of research on the impacts of sleep disturbance on birds. The size of the arrows represents the relative abundance of studies between the connected concepts. Blue arrows indicate that data are available, with thicker arrows indicating a greater amount of data. The grey dotted line represents a relative lack of empirical data.
November 13, 2025 at 12:27 PM
valentinkiss.bsky.social
A different type of office 🐦🦠🏙️

#PhD #pigeons #fieldwork #urbanecology #sampling #diseases
November 12, 2025 at 2:19 PM
Reposted by Valentin Kiss
biobiiana.bsky.social
What makes PhD students happy? Good supervision www.nature.com/articles/d41...
What makes PhD students happy? Good supervision
Supervisors who invest in positive mentoring relationships with their PhD candidates also reap the benefits for their own research.
www.nature.com
October 23, 2025 at 9:33 AM
Reposted by Valentin Kiss
markjfbrown.bsky.social
Delighted to see Hannah’s penultimate PhD paper come out today www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Strong evidence against the ‘warmer, sicker world’ hypothesis. Parasites 🪱🦠 and their hosts are just very variable! Another great collaboration with @juliakoricheva.bsky.social @rhulbiology.bsky.social
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
September 30, 2025 at 7:12 PM
Reposted by Valentin Kiss
leverhulme.ac.uk
Comparing the feral city pigeon with its wild form, Early Career Fellow @willjsmith.bsky.social endeavors to reveal whether feral species are experiencing reverse-domestication or proceeding down a new evolutionary trajectory.
media.leverhulme.ac.uk/feature/wsmith @uniofnottingham.bsky.social
Left: A wild rock dove perched in a ruined building, Right: A feral pigeon captured in hand.
September 11, 2025 at 10:10 AM
valentinkiss.bsky.social
Perceptions of #pigeons are not trivial. How we see them (either as companions or gross rats with wings) shapes the behaviour and #management policies that structure pigeon populations and the #pathogens they carry.
Mumbai: Pigeon feeding ban sparks debate in India - BBC News
Feeding pigeons is common in Indian cities but is now controversial due to rising numbers and health risks.
www.bbc.com
September 2, 2025 at 10:29 AM
valentinkiss.bsky.social
Cities aren’t uniform. Neither is disease. 🦠🏙️
Psittacosis in #urban feral #pigeons shows fine-scale heterogeneity, even a few kilometres can make a big difference. City averages risk hiding the true #hotspots without dense spatial sampling

#DiseaseEcology #UrbanEcology #EOU25
August 23, 2025 at 5:28 PM
valentinkiss.bsky.social
One of my undergrad papers on coot eggs was referred to in a talk on blue tit eggs changing shape over time at #EOU2025, during the #BOU
Woodland Birds pre-congress meeting

Cool to see it resurface
doi:10.24193/subbbiol.2021.1.04
August 21, 2025 at 6:46 PM
valentinkiss.bsky.social
Big day for psychedelic assisted therapy and research in the European Parliament! 🇪🇺

Today, was launched:
🔹 PAREA’s MEP Action Group on Psychedelics in Healthcare (relaunch)
🔹 The European Citizens #PsychedeliCare Initiative

#PsychedelicScience #MentalHealth #HealthcareInnovation #EUPolicy
February 6, 2025 at 7:07 PM
Reposted by Valentin Kiss
brockhurstlab.bsky.social
🚨 Job alert 🚨 — are you interested in understanding how mobile genetic elements and defence systems shape bacterial genome evolution? 🧬 🧪 🧫 🦠 2x 5-year research positions available in experimental evolution @mermanchester.bsky.social Join us! #microsky
www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...
Research Associate in Experimental Evolution:Manchester
www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk
February 6, 2025 at 9:15 AM
Reposted by Valentin Kiss
nature.com
Taking omega-3 and vitamin D supplements over a three-year period slowed biological ageing by three to four months, particularly when combined with exercise.

https://go.nature.com/4hjjGdO
Omega-3 supplements slow biological ageing
The anti-ageing effect was even greater when combined with vitamin D and exercise.
go.nature.com
February 3, 2025 at 5:38 PM
Reposted by Valentin Kiss
bristolbiosci.bsky.social
Job alert!

We seek to appoint a new Lecturer in Evolutionary Biology in the School of Biological Sciences, find out more at the link below!

www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...
Job alert! Lectuter in Evolutionary Biology out now
January 31, 2025 at 3:50 PM
Reposted by Valentin Kiss
joannaxwu.bsky.social
The first paper of your PhD is always so exciting! 🤩 An all-#Galbatross effort, "A focus on females can improve science and conservation!" See press release (www.audubon.org/news/researc...) and the study here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...! #FemaleBirds #FemaleBirdDay
In Research, Ignoring Female Birds Harms Scientific Understanding
A new study shows that ecological research often ignores or excludes data on female birds and behavior, resulting in erroneous assumptions on conservation.
www.audubon.org
January 30, 2025 at 11:14 PM
Reposted by Valentin Kiss
jennycdunn.bsky.social
New paper! Out now in #Parasitology, open access:

doi.org/10.1017/S003...

Paper led by former MBio student Ellie Lebeau - congratulations Ellie!

#ornithology #wildlifemalaria
The prevalence and immune response to coinfection by avian haemosporidians in wild Eurasian blackbirds Turdus merula | Parasitology | Cambridge Core
The prevalence and immune response to coinfection by avian haemosporidians in wild Eurasian blackbirds Turdus merula
doi.org
January 24, 2025 at 12:55 PM
valentinkiss.bsky.social
One of the standouts: calling for sharing fine-scale spatial data on infection patterns, as this fine-scale data is crucial for uncovering disease dynamics!
ecoinvasions.bsky.social Anthony Ricciardi @ecoinvasions.bsky.social · Jan 24
Quote: "Ecological and evolutionary principles help to explain why both pandemics and wildlife die-offs are becoming more common; [and] why land-use change and biodiversity loss are often followed by an increase in zoonotic and vector-borne diseases."
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
Pathogens and planetary change - Nature Reviews Biodiversity
This Review explores the relationship between emerging infectious diseases and biodiversity loss, and how both are connected to global environmental changes in the Anthropocene.
www.nature.com
January 24, 2025 at 3:02 PM
Reposted by Valentin Kiss
nature.com
All of statistics and much of science depends on probability — an astonishing achievement, considering no one’s really sure what it is. 🧪

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Why probability probably doesn’t exist (but it is useful to act like it does)
All of statistics and much of science depends on probability — an astonishing achievement, considering no one’s really sure what it is.
www.nature.com
December 19, 2024 at 9:50 PM