Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Matthias Allritz

Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · 3d

The following universities are delaying implementing a pay rise:

Dundee
Kent
Brunel
Coventry
Swansea

The following have yet to make a decision on the matter:

Aberdeen
Bangor
Bournemouth
Bradford
Buckingham
Cumbria
Lincoln
Plymouth Marjon

#UKHE

ednews.bsky.social @ednews.bsky.social · 3d

Five UK universities tell staff they can't afford pay rises | THE

Five UK universities tell staff they can’t afford pay rises

Negotiations over whether to honour 1.4 per cent increase ongoing at several other institutions amid financial crunch

www.timeshighereducation.com

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Ari Strandburg-Peshkin @arispeshkin.bsky.social · 6d

⭐PhD position available!⭐
Come join us @imprs-qbee.bsky.social to study communication and collective behavior in animal groups! We're looking for someone excited to use computational approaches to tackle biological questions, using our full-group tracking datasets
imprs-qbee.mpg.de/121465/analy...

Analysis of communication and collective behavior in animal groups

imprs-qbee.mpg.de

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Animal History Group @animalhistories.bsky.social · 14d

Announcing the new Animal History Group seminar series for the 2025-26 academic year! - All seminars held online at 8pm UK time. 🎉 The details are here: animalhistorygroup.org/seminar-seri...
And here is a list for your calendar! 🧵💚

Seminar Series

Term One Our Seminar Series is back for 2025/2026. Seminars will be held at 8pm (GMT). Please sign up using the links below. Joining information will be sent shortly before the event. 15 October 20…

animalhistorygroup.org

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Ben Williamson @benpatrickwill.bsky.social · 12d

OpenAI's VP for education recently said the company wanted to become "core infrastructure" for schools and universities. Any infrastructure, though, always depends on habituating users to its technical affordances - so I've been trying to track how it's doing that 🧵 www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/t...

Welcome to Campus. Here’s Your ChatGPT.

www.nytimes.com

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SFB 1528 - Cognition of Interaction @sfb1528.bsky.social · 13d

Job Alert!

Come and join our team at our field site CRP Simenti in Senegal. Julia Fischer @julxf.bsky.social (@primatenzentrum.bsky.social) is recruiting a #Research_Manager. Work with the wonderful lovely Guinea baboons and manage our long-term data collection.

👉 www.dpz.eu/karriere/ste...

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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 15d

Heartening to see so many students sign our open letter openletter.earth/open-letter-...

Open Letter: Stop the Uncritical Adoption of AI Technologies in Academia

openletter.earth

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Elizabeth Hobson @elizabethhobson.bsky.social · 15d

**PhD POSITIONS** I am recruiting 1-2 PhD students to work on sociality and cognition in Monk Parakeets, starting Fall 2026. Full ad is here: hobsonresearch.com/index.php/20... (please help spread the word!)

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Berna Devezer @devezer.bsky.social · 16d

Following the news of ChatGPT Edu at Oxford, I woke up to the news of free access to Google AI Pro for our students. Funny how there's never any faculty input sought about the challenges of teaching (and education) when this is being actively promoted top down.

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Edward Legg @edlegg.bsky.social · 16d

PostDoc job requirements are getting truly ridiculous.

What's the rejection letter for this one going to look like? ... "sorry we had to reject your application because both your parents were human"

Screen shot of tweet saying: I am looking for a multispecies archaeologist to join my group

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Behavioral Ecology and Endocrinology Lab @behavecol-lab.bsky.social · 19d

Please share!🙏
🚨 PhD Oportunity in Avian Behavioural Ecology in Spain
The BirdBond Project (MNCN & IREC) studies how pair bonds form, change & affect reproduction/survival in the spotless starling 🐦

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Ivo Jacobs @ivojacobs.bsky.social · 21d

Tiny dinosaur in the form of a long-tailed tit early in the blueish morning
#photography #birds

A long-tailed tit perched on a leafy branch, seen from the side in blue morning light

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Matthias Michel @matthiasmichel.bsky.social · 21d

The MIT Consciousness Club will have a Zoom option for those who would like to join online. First session Friday, Sept 19, 12pm-1:30pm. For more, see: sites.google.com/view/mit-con.... You can register to the email list here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F....

MIT Consciousness Club Mailing List

docs.google.com

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Marios Richards @mariosrichards.bsky.social · 27d

I was reminded recently of a guy who got a paper into Nature - Nature! - claiming he'd found an entirely new basis for the 'evolution of cooperation' ...

... by running a simulation of interacting agents on a network.

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RSPB Science @rspbscience.bsky.social · Aug 20

New job alert: Would you like to help analyse our Big Garden Birdwatch dataset? 🪶🧪

Our monitoring science team are hiring for a new 2yr position to develop the ecological analysis and visualisation of BGBW data

Interested? Full details here: app.vacancy-filler.co.uk/salescrm/Car...

Senior Conservation Scientist - Ecological Analyst (Fixed-Term) | RSPB

Big Garden Birdwatch Data ScientistWe have an exciting opportunity for an enthusiastic and skilled team-member to join the Monitoring Science team at the RSPB Centre for Conservation Science. We are s...

app.vacancy-filler.co.uk

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Louise Mackie @louisemackie.bsky.social · Aug 26

Thank you #behaviour2025 for hosting my talk on overimitation in dogs, the topic of ManyDogs 2! 🐶
@manydogsproject.bsky.social

We are collecting data now in dog labs across the world! Email [email protected] / check out our website below to join!

manydogsproject.github.io/manydogs2.html

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Chris Krupenye @chriskrupenye.bsky.social · Aug 20

When an animals' groupmates go out of sight, do they also go out of mind?

In a new paper in Proc B @royalsocietypublishing.org, Luz Carvajal and I show that a bonobo (Kanzi) can keep mental tabs on the whereabouts of multiple hidden social partners

royalsocietypublishing.org/eprint/4GI7G...

Mental representation of the locations and identities of multiple hidden agents or objects by a bonobo | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Humans are adept at navigating the social world in part because we flexibly map the locations and identities of agents around us. While field studies suggest primates can track individual conspecifics...

royalsocietypublishing.org

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Claudio Tennie @ctennie.bsky.social · Aug 21

Trying to put out old projects this summer. Here is one:

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

With many thanks to Annette Killian, who has sadly passed away - and with many thanks to Alenka Hribar who tirelessly ran this study.

An investigation of social learning of tool-use in bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) using a ball-up / ball-down task

Whether and how dolphins can engage in spontaneous, untrained social learning to solve novel tool problems via action- or result- (or other) social learning remains debated. In the present study we te...

www.biorxiv.org

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Marie Padberg @mariepadberg.bsky.social · Aug 19

Thrilled to share our latest open-access study published in Scientific Reports! We examined how social versus asocial learning influences children’s ability to override previously learned strategies across three cultural settings—BaYaka, Bandongo, and Germany: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Social learning leads to inflexible strategy use in children across three societies - Scientific Reports

Scientific Reports - Social learning leads to inflexible strategy use in children across three societies

www.nature.com

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Marie Hirel @mariehirel.bsky.social · Aug 18

🚨 My 2nd PhD chapter is now out in Animal Behavior and Cognition

We explore social evaluation of skills in Tonkean macaques in cooperative contexts with a promising experimental design 🧮👀🐒
@skeupp.bsky.social @julxf.bsky.social

Check it out here: www.animalbehaviorandcognition.org/article.php?...

Choose Your Partner: Social Evaluation of Skillfulness at Cooperative Co-Action Tasks in Tonkean Macaques (Macaca tonkeana) — Animal Behavior and Cognition

www.animalbehaviorandcognition.org

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Kai Caspar @nomascus.bsky.social · Aug 18

Broad in scope but strikingly concise, highly accessible, and nuanced - go get this book if you have even the slightest interest in birds and/or vertebrate brain evolution. I will use it a lot. Congrats @evoneuro.bsky.social!
#neuroskyence 🧪

Picture of a copy of "Bird Brains and Behavior" by Striedter & Iwaniuk: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262552738/bird-brains-and-behavior/

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Matthias Allritz @realprimatthias.bsky.social · Aug 12

Great read on LLMs and their (lack of) introspection:

arstechnica.com/ai/2025/08/w...

Why it’s a mistake to ask chatbots about their mistakes

The tendency to ask AI bots to explain themselves reveals widespread misconceptions about how they work.

arstechnica.com

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Christos C. Ioannou @ccioannou.bsky.social · Aug 6

Applications for Winter 2025 conference attendance grants are trickling in, awarding up to £500 with a high success rate (if eligible).
Deadline isn't until 1st October, but don't forget to get referee statements in by then too!
All the info you need is here:
www.asab.org/conference-g...
@asab.org

ASAB Winter 2025 @asab-meetings.bsky.social · Aug 5

ICYMI : #ASABWinter2025 will take place from December 15-16, once again in lovely Edinburgh!

Registration is now open 🎉 Abstract submission deadline for posters and talks is August 29 🏃‍♀️🏃🏃‍♂️

More information here: asabwinter.github.io/2025/

Winter ASAB 2025 December 15-16 Edinburgh How sensory information affects behaviour.

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ManyDogs Project @manydogsproject.bsky.social · Jul 22

🚨 Calling all dog behavior & cognition researchers - ManyDogs Project is launching ManyDogs 2!

🔍🐕‍🦺We're studying overimitation: Do dogs copy irrelevant actions just b/c their favorite human does them?

Email [email protected] to collaborate globally and contribute to reproducible science!

A white and gray dog touches a yellow dot hanging on the wall with his nose. Text says ManyDogs 2 - Join the Team!

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Matthias Allritz @realprimatthias.bsky.social · Jul 20

Congrats, Richard!

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Claudio Tennie @ctennie.bsky.social · Jul 20

Aaaaand AI generated animal cognition videos are now here, too.

Animals R Us…. @trumph8ters.bsky.social · Jul 20

When someone asks what parenting be like… 😂🤣
🐵 🥰

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