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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

New preprint from @devisatarkar.bsky.social et al: How does the correlation between body mass as a nestling and and adult change with the environment? Using the covariance reaction norm approach, we find lots of variation. See Devi's thread below ⬇️ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.org

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

New paper in @animalecology.bsky.social led by @davididiaquez.bsky.social published today. We document a reduction of ~5% in body mass of adult great tits at Wytham (>1 sd!) over ~45 years and show best explained by natal environment carry-over besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

The potential for non-linear effects of higher temperatures is concerning; we need support for long-term studies (like the Wytham tits - which just collected 80th year of data) to understand the consequences of rare events 4/4.

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Remember the summer heatwaves in the UK in 2026? The late May heatwave was exceptional: an event +4.3 sd above mean - likely to occur only once every few decades under normal conditions. It was also unusual in being early and coinciding with tit breeding season. What consequences did it have? 🧵1/n

Temperature fluctuations in Wytham Woods between 15 May and June 15 for 2023-2026. Orange and green lines represent mean hourly temperatures from 218 temperature loggers in 2026 (orange) and 2023-2025 (green). The grey line and ribbon represent the mean daily temperature ± mean daily temperature range from the Central England Temperature dataset (CET; 1772-2025)

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George Rabin @ghtrabin.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Delighted that my master's project @biology.ox.ac.uk about social trade-offs in a wild population of birds is now published in Animal Behaviour @asab.org doi.org/10.1016/j.an... 🧵

doi.org

Redirecting

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Eloise Newman @eloisenewman.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

Sad that #ExE2026 is over - it was fantastic to visit Falmouth! Thank you so much to all the organisers. From the @egioxford.bsky.social we had a range of talks from @rona-learmonth.bsky.social @davididiaquez.bsky.social @celestineadelmant.bsky.social and Lucy Morley

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Catch these presentations on new research on life history evolution, climate change, plasticty and scaling of trophic synchrony at #ExE2026 as follows:

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Strong EGI team at #ExE2026 this wk: @devisatarkar.bsky.social on climate extremes @davididiaquez.bsky.social on mass change @celestineadelmant.bsky.social on phenology drivers, Hannah on number-quality trade-off @rona-learmonth.bsky.social on plasticity & carry-over effects & Lucy on spatial scales

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Irene Martinez-Baquero @imbaquero.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

First paper, first post 🥳 Many congrats to Liliana Silva and everyone involved! Every behavioural ecologist who’s stared at hours of video footage should check this out 👀 Very proud that the Wytham Tits are part of this!! 🐥🐣 @egioxford.bsky.social

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Happy to share some Great Tit data from Wytham to test this model!

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

One question about the 2026 Wytham Tit field season is whether the exceptional late May 2026 heatwave will have any effects on growth or survival of nestlings that were in the nest at the time: some thermologger data collected & analysed by @davididiaquez.bsky.social shows how unusual this was

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Scarcely into June, and already more or less completed this year's tit field season in Wytham, marked with the now traditional group photo. Great teamwork once again led by @mcmahok.bsky.social with excellent support from @ellafcole.bsky.social & Sam Croft. Will update with some data summaries soon!

The 2026 Wytham Tit project field team posing in a Sweet Chestnut Tree. Picture shows 12 fieldworkers sititng in various places on branches and one standing on the ground, surrounded by lush summer vegetation

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Here's some hard quantitative data on how many km travelled, steps taken, metres climbed and hours spent in the woods fron one of the Wytham tit season team in this, our 80th year of data collection. What a work out!

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Here is a lovely thing: a long interview with Chris Perrins by EGI DPhil student @jorgensoraker.bsky.social reflecting on his 70 years at the forefront of avian ecology here at Oxford

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

Wishing you both all the very best for the future!

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Abby Williams @abbyevewilliams.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

Excited to share the first chapter of my PhD thesis as a preprint! We investigated the genomic consequences of secondary contact between passerines on a remote oceanic island, finding evidence of three-way hybridisation and spooky “ghost introgression” 🏝️🪶🧬 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.org

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Jude Lane @heyjooode.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Our new research shows that HPAI increased Northern Gannet mortality by a factor of ~6 and ~4 at two of the world’s largest colonies. We predict this impact will take almost two decades to recover from. #biologicalconservation #seabirds #hpai Full paper: doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2026.111887

Adult gannet (left) with colour ring on it's leg left inscribed with a unique code, and it's fully grown chick (right)

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

On the occasion of his 100th Birthday - many happy returns Sir David! - we remember fondly the time Sir David Attenborough came to do some filming of Great Tits in Wytham Woods (and with clip of the resultant film here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGjL...) wythamtits.com/the-day-sir-...

Sir David Attenborough in the Bluebells of Wytham Woods

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BTO | British Trust for Ornithology @btobirds.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

There's a mini jobs bonanza just now at BTO! 🐦 Apply to become our next Scottish Raptor Monitoring Coordinator, Biological Data Manager or Research Support Officer via www.bto.org/jobs Birds Science People; it is a powerful combination – will you be part of it?

Photo of a Buzzard by Edmund Fellowes / BTO and text advertising three jobs at BTO.

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

Some new work from us, led by @davididiaquez.bsky.social (see thread ⬇️). We ask what happens if instead of measuring on calendar dates, we measure bird responses to climate defined by the temperature at which annual events happen. It turns out they keep stable T˚! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

science.org

Phenological plasticity enables thermal homeostasis in a wild bird population

Changes in phenology buffer against climate change by ensuring breeding at temperatures that maximize reproductive success.

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

From new preprint by @devisatarkar.bsky.social et al (ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...) - widespread variation in method used to achieve heating/cooling, reported effect sizes, and how these are measured

ecoevorxiv.org

Methodological challenges in avian nestbox temperature manipulation experiments: a review with recommendations

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Many studies have set out to manipulate nest temperature in birds, particularly in cavity-breeding species in nestboxes. A new review by @devisatarkar.bsky.social et al. discusses methodological challenges with these and recommends some more standardised reporting and protocols.

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Phenoweb project @phenoweb.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

Spring is gaining momentum across Scotland. 🌱 Cumulative budburst across the transect has now passed 40%, driven by a surge of activity at our northern sites in recent days. While the North is waking up, the South continues to lead the way in terms of first leaf emergence. #Phenology #Spring2026

Plot showing the cumulative percentage of trees in first budburst and first leaf across the Phenoweb Transect since 1 April 2026. Orange line shows southern sites, while the blue line shows northern sites. The black line represents the transect-wide trend.

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Celestine Adelmant @celestineadelmant.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

Yesterday, I organised my first workshop with @egioxford.bsky.social ! ✍🏻🖥️ Huge thank you to Dr Alexandra Cones (LMU Munich) for a fantastic introduction to multivariate models in STAN. A really useful, fun session and a great jumping off point for exploring STAN's uses in ecological research!

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

First sight of a new generation... The first Great Tit eggs have hatched in Wytham Woods this morning.

A quick photo of a Great Tit nest in Wytham Woods, taken during standard nest-monitoring protocol. A female Great Tit lying to one side on the nest, with three eggs and two just hatched nestlings visible in a nest constructed of moss and animal hair

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

Very pleased to welcome Dr Alexandra Cones (LMU Munich) for an EGI seminar in @biology.ox.ac.uk at 4pm this Friday 17 April. Alexandra will speak on "Embracing Complexity: Untangling sources of phenotypic variation across scales using birds" - also live-streamed: joining details below: ⬇️

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Denise Wawman @denisewawman.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

NEW PAPER: We obtained a COXI sequence from a specimen of the parasitic louse/flat fly Pseudolynchia garzettae (Diptera: Hippoboscidae) collected in the UK & provide a full morphological description of the specimen to aid future researchers in case of future taxonomic issues.

rdcu.be

A Molecular Phylogeny of the Nightjar Louse Fly Pseudolynchia garzettae (Rondani, 1979) (Diptera: Hippoboscidae) with a Diagnostic Morphological Description of a Sequenced Specimen

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

New preprint (part of a programme to understand resilience of the tritrophic tree-insect-bird system to varying climate). We (led by @siennarattigan.bsky.social - her MBiol project) show how temperature in development can carry-over to affect timing at later stages www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Figure 1: Winter moth life cycle. Adult winter moths emerge in Novem-
ber/December and shortly after mating brachypterous females crawl up
trees to lay eggs. Eggs hatch in early spring, and larvae feed on young
foliage until late May when they descend to the ground on silken threads
to burrow into the soil and pupate. Pupation lasts until winter, when
adults emerge and the life cycle begins again. Solid black arrows indi-
cate the duration of each development stage and blue dashed arrows
indicate the temporal variability of each stage.

Figure 3: The effect of temperature treatment on pupal development
time. Each coloured point represents the number of days between the
start of the experiment (used as a proxy for pupation date) and the
emergence date of an individual adult moth. Horizontal bars indicate
treatment means and the dashed vertical line separates the experi-
mental treatments from the ambient.

Figure 5: The effect of temperature treatment on egg development
time. Each coloured point represents the number of days between the
first egg-laying event and half-hatch date of each subclutch. Horizontal
bars indicate treatment means and the dashed vertical line separates
the experimental treatments from the ambient.

Figure 6: The effect of maternal emergence date on offspring’s egg
development time. Points represent subclutches so those aligned in the
x-axis are from the same mother. Lines show the model prediction with
a 95% confidence interval represented by the shaded ribbon. Both are
coloured by egg temperature treatment.

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Yes - the effects of responses to changing averages (typically breeding earlier) are complex when they interact with changes in variability (either directly because of date effects or because increased variability is an additional effect of climate change). The latter has been understudied…

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

more generally, the potential for phenological mismatch between different trophic levels, or between different elements of an interacting ecosystem (e.g. plants and specialised pollinators) is a major concern around climate change. 2/2

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

In this specific system, we see that, overall, the tits are maintaining synchrony with the caterpillar peak: both tits and caterpillars seem to respond to similar cues in the environment (see fig- from a 2008 paper, but still holds - we have some work coming out in a few weeks). However 1/2

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

The earliest ever egg-laying in the 80 year long study of Great Tits in Wytham Woods happened this spring. Our first egg was laid on 23 March this year which beats the previous earliest record by 3 days. We've seen a shift of ~16 days in annual average egg laying date since the 1960s

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Steve Portugal @sjportugal.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

New pigeon lofts at work are nearly finished! Looking resplendent. Could possibly Airbnb them out to people.

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PiedFly.Net @piedflynet.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

First Pied flycatcher at East Dartmoor today continuing the trend for earlier arrival. Another present at Dunsford Woods today. Also have the earliest ever first tit egg recorded (data starts in 1955) by two days - a Coal tit egg laid yesterday. Discovered with @drroskennerley.bsky.social

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Maria Filippou @mariafilippou.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

Really excited to have presented work from my Master’s on the fitness benefits of polyandry at the #ASABSpring2026 Conference in Bristol - and proud to have won best student speaker! ✨ It was a great few days meeting other researchers and listening to all the exciting work happening in the field! 🦋

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

The first egg laid in the first year of the study (1947) was on 27 April, so the difference is 35 days... Though 1947 was a late spring (& this one early...)

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

🚨🚨 Breaking news from Wytham Woods: The 80th year of data collection of the long-term tit study officially started today with this nest with 3 Blue Tit eggs (pic: @mcmahok.bsky.social). First egg inferred 23 March which is our earliest EVER nest - beating the previous record of 26 March by 3 days!🚨🚨

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

This week's EGI seminar (last this term 😢) will be given by Dr Jennifer Morinay from @sheffielduni.bsky.social on the factors affecting helping decisions in the Long-tailed Tit - the UK's only cooperatively breeding bird. Seminar in @biology.ox.ac.uk LT1 on Fri 27 Mar at 3.30. All welcome details ⬇️

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Such a good EGI seminar from Innes Cuthill today on the ‘survivability onion’ - wide-ranging talk on defensive camouflage in birds, insects and more. One of those seminars that appeals across the department

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

In a return to his former stamping ground, this week's EGI seminar will be given by Prof Innes Cuthill from @bristolbiosci.bsky.social on how to understand defensive coloration - see if you can spot him in this old photo! Seminar in @biology.ox.ac.uk at 3.30 on Friday - joining instructions below ⬇️

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

Yesterday's seminar added to our YouTube page - worth a watch if you missed

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

Fascinating seminar from @pauldufour80.bsky.social today on the role of vagrancy and other rare events in avian ecology and evolution

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

This work is part of @devisatarkar.bsky.social ongoing DPhil research, and a fun collaboration with @davididiaquez.bsky.social @iremsepil.bsky.social @sheldonbirds.bsky.social - and with thanks to the hundreds of people who collected all the @wythamwoods.bsky.social tit data over the years!

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

In this temperate population, "hot" extremes are still moderate and can even be beneficial when food is abundant. However, as climate variability intensifies, understanding the impacts of extreme weather is key for predicting population resilience to climate change.

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

Extreme cold & rain also reduce the probability of nestlings recruiting as breeders in following years, while heatwaves make them more likely to do so. However, once their laying date is accounted for, these effects diminish. Breeding timing is the overarching driver of survival in Wytham tits!

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

Extreme heat and heavy rain together can be far worse than either alone, predicted to reduce fledging mass by up to 27%. Late-season broods are especially vulnerable: under frequent hot extremes, their fledglings can be up to ~35% lighter than early broods despite similar absolute temperatures ☀️🐥⛈️

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Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

Cold snaps in the week post-hatching reduce mass, whereas heavy rain is detrimental at later stages. Surprisingly, warm spells seem to benefit growth! We think this may be because heatwaves in Wytham don't reach critical temperatures that can cause heat stress, and instead boost prey availability 🐛

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