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Erin Macartney

@erinmacartney.bsky.social
173 followers 168 following 36 posts

Evolutionary biologist interested in sexual selection and the evolution of life-history strategies. Humboldt Research Fellow at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, and post-doc at the University of Sydney. erinmacartney.com

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Reposted by Erin Macartney
c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
What in the name of Beetlejuice ARE these things? They're zebra morphs of 'squat lobsters', likely in genus Allogalathea. They're not true lobsters & are more closely related to hermit crabs. Now which one is white with black stripes & which is black with white stripes? (📷: hoopderscotch)
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Erin Macartney @erinmacartney.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Honestly not opposed to the Greens proposal of government owned supermarkets. Perhaps they should also delve into other industries to help lower the outrageous cost of living?!
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Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar @asanchez-tojar.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
New preprint led by Kyle Morrison 🧵 The first item bank for evidence synthesis reporting guidelines, pulling together 2249 reporting items from 59 guidelines across medicine, psychology & environmental science 🔗 doi.org/10.31222/osf... 📊 github.com/KyleMorrison... ®️ doi.org/10.17605/OSF...
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Carmen da Silva @saltydasilva.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
I am thrilled and honoured to have won the @ausevosoc.bsky.social Best Paper Award. This means I will be giving a plenary lecture at the societies conference in December. ausevo.com/programme/ da Silva et al (2026) Nature Communications was the awarded publication. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
ausevo.com
AES 2026
Program
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Erin Macartney @erinmacartney.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Baby’s first graduation! After my liver and kidneys failed, he was thrust into this world two months early where we both got to enjoy length stays in the ICU. Literally could not be more grateful for the public health system and AMAZING healthcare workers that I now owe both our lives to 🙌🏻💕.
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Australasian Evolution Society - AES @ausevosoc.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
✨Last Chance for Super Early Rego!✨ We’ve extended our super early bird rego until the 17th of July! Use code SUPEREARLY2026 to join us December for 🧬𝗘𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗚𝗼𝗻𝗴🧬 Only 1 week left so register at this link: aes.corsizio.com/portal/aes
aes.corsizio.com
Australasian Evolution Society — Conferences List
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Erin Macartney @erinmacartney.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Look! I made a mouse seminal fluid protein in Ecoli and it made HEAPS! Now to use it in an experiment 🧫 🐁
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Erin Macartney @erinmacartney.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Check out our new paper where we use the Geometric Framework for Nutrition to show dietary effects on the seminal vesicle fluid proteome and its relationship to foetal development in mice (with one protein in particular appearing to be a promising candidate for future research) 👀
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Erin Macartney @erinmacartney.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
A very upsetting piece about the state of science in NZ
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Erin Macartney @erinmacartney.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
🚨New paper out now 👀 where we use nutritional geometry to examine the effects of diet on the mouse seminal fluid proteome and its relationship to foetal development 🐭 royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...
royalsocietypublishing.org
Paternal dietary macronutrients affect the seminal vesicle fluid proteome and fetal development: a geometric framework for nutrition study in mice
Abstract. Seminal plasma can have wide-ranging effects on reproductive fitness—from affecting sperm fertilization capacity and female reproductive physiolo
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Reposted by Erin Macartney
Edward R. Ivimey-Cook @eivimeycook.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
Just updated *READMEBuilder*. Some key mentions: 1. It now produces a nice ASCII map of the directory structure which is added to the README. 2. Allows for data- and code-specific licenses to be specified. 3. Allows you to edit previously made READMEs from READMEBuilder. 4. Various bug fixes!
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Australasian Evolution Society - AES @ausevosoc.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
🏆 ECR Best Paper Awards applications now open! ✨ Submit your best/favourite paper and provide a short statement of contribution and impact 🗓️ Closes 10th August 📢 Winners announced 7th Sept latest Apply here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... See you in the 'Gong! 🌊
docs.google.com
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Erin Macartney @erinmacartney.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
Has US spelling over British spelling become the default in the Oxford English Dictionary?? I just had proofs come back from the Royal Society with all my 's' changed to 'z' etc... and when I asked them, they said it's because they use the OED spelling
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Bahar Patlar @baharpatlar.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
Sperm carry unexpected genetic messages | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
Sperm carry unexpected genetic messages
Maturing mouse sperm get loaded with full-length messenger RNAs that are transferred to fertilized egg, suggesting a new route for paternal influence
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Erin Macartney @erinmacartney.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
Super early bird 🐦 rego now open!
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Shikhara Bhat @shikharabhat.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
Really excited to share that one part of my PhD research is now publicly accessible on preprint servers! Here is a thread explaining our (@kokkonut.bsky.social and I) work on ageing and stochastic damage/failure accumulation, available as a preprint at www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
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Marc J. Lajeunesse @lajeunesselab.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
Planning a meta-analysis for the summer, or helping a student navigate a project❓ Don’t start without a plan, here are 12 tasks to help boost feasibility and topic knowledge! 🧪 #phd youtu.be/iU0DK-8kwoI?...
youtu.be
start your meta-analysis with these 12 tasks to boost feasibility and project engagement
YouTube video by LajeunesseLab
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Dan Quintana @dsquintana.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
A meta-analysis is not a ‘easy’ publication. Search strategy development, screening, more screening, data extraction, requesting additional data, risk of bias assessments, the actual synthesis, write up—it all takes time. Many people heavily underestimate the resources required to complete one
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Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar @asanchez-tojar.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
🚨 Perhaps the most alarming finding: effect size estimates varied dramatically depending on where they came from. Estimates from correlations & mean comparisons told a very different story to those derived from inferential statistics (t, F, χ²), raising serious concerns. 🔗 doi.org/10.1002/ece3...
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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
A new version (1.6-0) of the metadat package (wviechtb.github.io/metadat/) has been released on CRAN (cran.r-project.org/package=meta...). The package provides over 100 meta-analytic datasets, which are useful for teaching and testing purposes. #RStats #MetaAnalysis
wviechtb.github.io
Meta-Analysis Datasets
A collection of meta-analysis datasets for teaching purposes, illustrating/testing meta-analytic methods, and validating published analyses.
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Erin Macartney @erinmacartney.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
Just got my first ethics application approved as CI 🥳! Now to start leading my first vertebrate project 🐭 watch this space for some cool seminal fluid and intergenerational effects research 👀
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Jordan @jordanpfot.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
Might be the greatest opening paragraph of anything ever.
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Science X / Phys.org @sciencex.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
Penguins in zoo environments live longer but show signs of accelerated aging, offering insights into how abundant resources and reduced physical activity impact longevity and health. doi.org/hbtmqk
medicalxpress.com
Well-fed penguins live longer but age faster—much like modern humans
In public discourse, the increasing lifespan in Western countries is often linked to longer life in good health. However, studying human aging in modern societies is complex because outcomes are shaped by numerous social, behavioral, and environmental factors, including medical advances, food security, poverty, alcohol use, and civil violence.
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samuel mehr @mehr.nz · 19/03/2026
out now in Science: @loganjames.bsky.social collected pairs of sounds in 16 species where we *know* which sound is more attractive (to that species) he played them to ppl on themusiclab.org, asking, in each pair, which was nicer. humans agreed w other animals doi.org/10.1126/science.aea1202
cOMPaRatiVe cOGNitiONHumans share acousticpreferences with other animalsLogan S. James1,2,3,4* Sarah C. Woolley 1,2, Jon T. Sakata1,2,Courtney B. Hilton5,6, Michael J. Ryan3,4, Samuel A. Mehr5,7,8Many animals produce courtship sounds, and receivers prefersome sounds over others. Shared ancestry and convergentevolution may generate similarities in preference across speciesand underlie Darwin’s conjecture that some animals “havenearly the same taste for the beautiful as we have.” In this study,we show that humans share acoustic preferences with a rangeof animals, that the strength of human preferences correlateswith that in other animals, and that humans respond fasterwhen in agreement with animals. Furthermore, we foundgreatest agreement in preference for adorned, ancestral, andlower-frequency sounds. humans’ music listening experiencewas associated with preferences. These results are consistentwith theories arguing that biases in processing sculpt acousticpreferences, and they confirm Darwin’s century-old hunchabout the conservation of aesthetics in nature
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Dax Kellie @daxkellie.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
If you missed my talk today about how to make your R code more reproducible and why it's good for science, the recording is already online! Apologies for the internet issues, I hope you can forgive me, they do go away after a few minutes 😅 #rstats 🧪🌏 @sortee.bsky.social youtu.be/2_Aum45rYlU
youtu.be
Webinar: Dax Kellie on reproducible R code
YouTube video by SORTEE
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Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
Arrested Development "one banana" meme. Text: It's one article, Michael. What could it cost? $10,000?
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Ben Stone @benstemon.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
Why are we still spending tens of thousands of $$$ on APC for non-society journals like Nature? Wouldn’t that money be better spent at society journals at least? We are doing ourselves a disservice by continuing to participate in this madness. You don’t need a paper in these journals to succeed.
2 - Gold Open Access - same publishing process as above. The difference is that when an article is accepted for publication, the author/s or funder/s pay an Article Processing Charge (APC). The final version of the published article is then free to read for everyone. The APC to publish Gold Open Access in Nature is
£9390.00/$12850.00/€10850.00.
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Australasian Evolution Society - AES @ausevosoc.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
✨ SAVE THE DATE ✨ This year's AES Conference will be held jointly with our friends at the Society of Australian Systematic Biologists 🧬 📍 University of Wollongong 📆 2-4 December Mark it in your calendars ✏️ more information to come soon!
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Daniel Lakens @lakens.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
If you currently do not have a reproducible workflow where you can share data and code where possible, I expect you will soon not be able to publish in good journals. Beyond being best practice, journals will use this to identify papers written by AI. Plan a new project accordingly.
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Australasian Evolution Society - AES @ausevosoc.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
🐝 POSTDOC OPPORTUNITY 🐜 @sydney.edu.au has an available position for an Aola Richards Postdoctoral Fellow in Entomology 🕷️ ⌚ Full-time, fixed 2 year term 🪰 Independent research programme 💵 AUD$113k + 17% superannuation Info and how to apply in the link below 👇 www.sydney.edu.au/science/scho...
sydney.edu.au
The Aola Richards Sydney Insect Hub
The Aola Richards Sydney Insect Hub supports early- and mid-career researchers to advance insect ecology, evolution, genomics, and applied entomology, delivering impact in biodiversity, biosecurity, a...
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Scientific American @sciam.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
A massive bloom of rimu berries fueled a mating surge among the world’s heaviest (and strangest) parrots
scientificamerican.com
A new Love Island? Berry bloom leads to baby boom for New Zealand’s goofiest parrot
A massive bloom of rimu berries fueled a mating surge among the world’s heaviest (and strangest) parrots
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Australasian Evolution Society - AES @ausevosoc.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
🌠 Meet Our Exec Committee for 2026 🌠 @erinmacartney.bsky.social is an post-doctoral research associate at the University of Sydney, where she is particularly interested in how the environment impacts post-copulatory traits including male-male and male-female reproductive interactions ✍️
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Erin Macartney @erinmacartney.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
New paper out with @tahliafulton.bsky.social and Alistair Senior! A complementary meta-analysis of Ivimey-Cook, Sultanova & Maklakov (2025) where we find that lifespan extending treatments dont square the survival curve. Longer life ≠ compressed mortality. royalsocietypublishing.org/rsbl/article...
royalsocietypublishing.org
No evidence for squaring the survival curve: lifespan-extending treatments increase variation in age- at-death
Abstract. Geroscience has the goal of extending lifespan through geroprotective interventions. These interventions are typically imparted on groups of indi
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Erin Macartney @erinmacartney.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
Sneak peak at our new paper where we ask if lifespan extending mimetics of dietary restriction benefit all equally (ie square the survival curve) 📈 @tahliafulton.bsky.social
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Andy Radford @andyradford.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
🚨JOB alert🚨 We have three (yes, THREE) 🌟lectureships🌟 advertised in the School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol. Broad remit, including #AnimalBehaviour & #GlobalChangeBiology ⏱️Deadline: 8th March 2026 🙏Please circulate widely 😊Come join us! Full #job details: tinyurl.com/y3us95rc
bristol.ac.uk
Details | Working at Bristol | University of Bristol
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Erin Macartney @erinmacartney.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
Absolute insanity
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Erin Macartney @erinmacartney.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
My Ecoli colonies busy making seminal fluid proteins for me 😍
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Dan Baldassarre @evornithology.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
🚨 Attention! DO NOT confuse the archaic hominin species Denisovans with the darts player Denis Ovens!
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Erin Macartney @erinmacartney.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
Hello! Does anyone know of any 'seed' type grants/awards within Australia (or potentially abroad if they fund research internationally) that contribute toward research only costs (not salary)??
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Ben Williamson @benpatrickwill.bsky.social · 19/12/2025
Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵 Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...
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Erin Macartney @erinmacartney.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
What a terrible year for me to give my first and last shot at a DECRA 😭. I knew it was going to be low, but still
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ARC Tracker @arc-tracker.bsky.social · 23/11/2025
ARC says they’ll announce DECRA and LIEF outcomes tomorrow (Tuesday 25th Nov). In recent times these announcements have been around 11am Canberra time. With 2 schemes on the same day, I assume they’ll announce one of them later in the day (probably DECRA first).
Screenshot of tweet from the ARC saying they’ll announce DECRA and LIEF outcomes on Tuesday 25th Nov.
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
Anyone looking for a Australia-based postdoc? Like animal behaviour / coding / birds? My fantastic collaborator, Iliana Medina, is advertising a position researching bird nests: unimelb.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com/en-GB/UoM_Ex...
unimelb.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com
Research Fellow in Behaviour and Ecology
Role type: Full Time; Fixed Term for 2 years Faculty: Faculty of Science Department/ School: School of Biosciences Salary: Level A: $87,266 - $118,416 (PhD Entry Level - $110,319) plus 17% super Colla...
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Alice Godden @alicegodden.bsky.social · 16/11/2025
🚨 New preprint alert! Our latest work from @immler.bsky.social lab 🐟🧬 Sex-specific responses of small RNAs and transposable elements to thermal stress in zebrafish germ cells #TESky #TE #piRNA #miRNA #zebrafish #DanioDigest 🔗 Read here www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... A thread 🧵...
biorxiv.org
Sex-specific responses of small RNAs and transposable elements to thermal stress in zebrafish germ cells
Environmental fluctuations influence heritable phenotypes through complex molecular mechanisms. In zebrafish (Danio rerio), the interplay between temperature variation, transposable element (TE) activ...
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Stewie Stewart @stewiestewart.bsky.social · 24/10/2025
First successful detection of oestrogen, progesterone and testosterone in multiple human hard tissues, and their use as potential biomarkers of pregnancy
sciencedirect.com
First successful detection of oestrogen, progesterone and testosterone in multiple human hard tissues, and their use as potential biomarkers of pregnancy
The sex steroid hormones oestrogen, progesterone, and testosterone have never been detected in modern or archaeological human skeletal tissues using e…
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Hanna Kokko @kokkonut.bsky.social · 16/10/2025
What is sexual selection all about... definitionally and mathematically? A super talented PI, Jussi Lehtonen, is looking for a postdoc to work it all out! Deadline end of this month. ats.talentadore.com/apply/postdo...
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Nature Portfolio @natureportfolio.nature.com · 12/10/2025
The findings of a study in Nature shed light on germline selection dynamics and highlight a broader increased disease risk for children born to fathers of advanced age than previously appreciated. go.nature.com/4h5BglX 🧬 🧪
This is figure 1, which shows mutational burden and signature analysis in sperm and matched blood.
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Erin Macartney @erinmacartney.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
Very excited to have joined the Editorial Board of @evoecology.bsky.social as an Associate Editor! Send your sexual selection papers this way 🤓
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Erin Macartney @erinmacartney.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
I think all science should include a Lovecraftian summary
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Elina Mäntylä @elinamantyla.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
Ivimey-Cook @eivimeycook.bsky.social et al. From policy to practice: progress towards data- and code-sharing in ecology and evolution royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.... #OpenScience #OpenData
royalsocietypublishing.org
From policy to practice: progress towards data- and code-sharing in ecology and evolution | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Data and code are essential for ensuring the credibility of scientific results and facilitating reproducibility, areas in which journal sharing policies play a crucial role. However, in ecology and ev...
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