iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Christina Nord

T Revathe @revathe.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

We therefore considered only independently initiated explorations when quantifying individual learning. Infants differed from one another in their social/individual learning propensities (accounting for confounds), but social learning was 5-6 times more frequent than individual learning. 5/11

Individual variation in learning propensities and within-individual relationships between propensities of different forms of learning are shown. Graphs on the first row show posterior distributions of the estimated average (A) social, (B) socially initiated and (C) individually initiated learning propensities for 21 immatures over their 8.5-year developmental period. The dashed black vertical line represents the population average, and the yellow diamond represents the posterior mean of the estimate for each immature. Values to the left of the dashed line represent lower, and those to the right higher, than population average propensities. The bottom row shows the scatterplots of individuals’ posterior mean for (D) social and individually initiated, (E) social and socially initiated, and (F) socially and individually initiated learning propensities for the 21 immatures. Circle size represents the total observation duration for each immature between birth and 8.5 years of age (N = 2-360 hours). Correlation r and posterior probabilities for the hypothesis ‘r > 0’ are shown.

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T Revathe @revathe.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

After peering, infants engaged in exploration behavior. Peering triggered subsequent explorations for 2.5 hours! The key takeaway here is that engaging in social learning has a knock-on effect; not all exploration events are truly indicative of individual learning. 4/11

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T Revathe @revathe.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Using the data collected over 20 years on 21 infants between birth & independence, we find that social learning does the heavy lifting in diet profile development. How, you ask? 3/11

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Reposted by Christina Nord

T Revathe @revathe.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Using ~7000 records of behavioral indicators of social (peering) & individual (exploration) learning, we find that heightened social & individual learning propensities led to the development of the broadest diet profile at independence. But which is more important: social/individual learning? 2/11

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Alex Pritchard (he/him) @pritcharda.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Check out our new article in @royalsociety.org's Open Science! @nbri-ucdavis.bsky.social We enabled space selection for a large group of rhesus macaques. Instead of one large enclosure, we provided two connected with a corridor to enable self-selection of smaller groups. doi.org/10.1098/rsos...

doi.org

Enabling a group split in captivity through proactive enclosure design and reactive social management

Abstract. Fissioning from one group into two or more is a solution to spatial and social tension. Captive settings, however, usually do not facilitate fiss

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Jay Gallagher @jay-gallagher.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

🐟🚨 New paper! 🚨🐟 Where do behavioral differences come from? Early life environment clearly matters... ...or not? Early environment affected behavior, but NOT how different individuals became from each other. Those differences were seeded before birth through factors OTHER than genetic variation 🤯

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Born This Way: Individuality Is Seeded Before Birth and Robust to Ecological Stress

We reared and recorded behaviours of clonal Amazon mollies in standardized environments, with and without predation stress, from birth through week four of life, to understand how the developmental e...

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Paige Madison @fossilhistory.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

The Laetoli Footprints were found #OnThisDay in 1978. The incredible discovery happened because team members were hurling elephant dung at each other. Australopithecines probably left these trace fossils behind 3.6 million years ago. 🏺🧪

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Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Last year, I publicly complained multiple times (see e.g. elevanth.org/blog/2025/07...) that the open access movement had been captured by publishers, and we are now worse off than before open access. Well people got mad at me for saying it. But I think things are still getting worse.

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Andrew Gelman et al. @statmodeling.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Yale med school prof tells his postdocs: Work extra hours at my command or you’re no better than “the guy who charges me by the hour to cut my lawn.” statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/09/02/y...

statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu

Yale med school prof tells his postdocs: Work extra hours at my command or you’re no better than “the guy who charges me by the hour to cut my lawn.” | Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and So...

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Templeton World Charity Foundation @templetonworld.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Congratulations to Dr @katelaskowski.bsky.social for receiving the 2026 Ctrl-Z award by the Center for Scientific Integrity. The award celebrates scientists who discover errors in their work and take the necessary steps to correct the record. 👉 Learn more about the prize: bit.ly/4hSKk0b

Image of Kate Laskowski, a young woman with medium auburn hair looking at the camera. Text reads: "Kate Laskowski, Ph.D is recognized with 2026 Ctrl-Z Award. Organised by the Center for Scientific Integrity, it celebrates scientists’ courage in retracting their own work"

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Elizabeth Nolan Brown @enbrown.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

My 4-year/old just learned about the concept of infinity and is now throwing a tantrum over it. “It’s weird! I don’t like it. I just want numbers to stop!”

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Dieter Lukas @dieterlukas.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy · 06/08/2026

In spotted hyenas, "social inheritance of privilege is a powerful driver of reproductive inequality" paper: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.… press release […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

A figure from the scientific paper showing that the more offspring individual hyenas have, the more grand-offspring they have. This correlation though is a lot steeper in females than in males, meaning that over generations successful female lineages spread much faster than successful male lineages.

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Kate Laskowski @katelaskowski.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Social sensitivity hypotheses! @tylerbonnell.bsky.social shows that dyadic interactions are most predictive of future grooming and these effects might be even stronger under *high* food conditions!

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Chaz Firestone @chazfirestone.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

You press ‘send’ on a high-stakes email but hesitate when lifting your finger. You make a chess move but linger on the piece before letting go. Familiar? In @pnas.org, Hanbei Zhou @ruizhegoh.bsky.social @ianbphillips.bsky.social & I show that response *duration* tracks confidence! shorturl.at/A9NVe

Two images, one of a finger pressed a key, another of a hand on a chess piece

Screenshot of first page of paper, "Response duration tracks confidence"

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Bullying and harassment are serious workplace problems, and excellence in research and a supportive environment are not mutually exclusive. We must prioritize a supportive research culture as an essential ingredient in research excellence.

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Within-participants designs need 2-8x fewer participants than between-participants designs for the same level of precision. Ch 9 of Experimentology argues for making within your default. 🧵 experimentology.io

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Reposted by Christina Nord

APA Journals @apajournals.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Pigeons seem to defy a century-old psychology law about how rewards and consequences help us learn, according to research in APA's Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition. Read the article, highlighted in Springer Nature's Scientific American: bit.ly/4eGXJqe

bit.ly

APA PsycNet

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Cornish Jackdaw Project @cornishjackdaws.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

A recent paper by Sheina Lew-Levy & @dorsaamir.bsky.social highlights the vital role of children in human cultural evolution. @katiemcauliffe.bsky.social and I argue that the same is true in other species. Youngsters are a powerful cultural force! tinyurl.com/2v75zevc @uniexecec.bsky.social

tinyurl.com

The role of juveniles in animal culture | Behavioral and Brain Sciences | Cambridge Core

The role of juveniles in animal culture - Volume 49

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Alex Pritchard (he/him) @pritcharda.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Our new article is out this week on social hair plucking, published as open access in JAAWS! doi.org/10.1080/1088...

The figure is from the open access paper and shows animals that produce social hair plucking (dark blue), received (orange), and produced as well as received (light blue). Differences in size correspond to more giving and/or reception of social hair plucking. Note the variance across groups in prevalence of hair plucking!

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Rob Calver @robcalver.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

I am giving away a free copy of the #BayesianWorkflow book by @statmodeling.bsky.social, @avehtari.bsky.social, @rmcelreath.bsky.social et al!! Please like, repost, and follow to enter. I will randomly draw the winner next Weds July 8. 😀 routledge.com/9780367490140 #RStats #DataScience #Bayesian

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Jessica Hullman @jessicahullman.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Fascinating talk on the history of peer review from Melinda Baldwin at @icssi.org, with some parallels to current crises. Also I hadn't realized peer review was such an American thing.

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Angry Staff Officer @pptsapper.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Happy “liberal arts professor helps save the Union” day to all who celebrate

Charge of the 20th Maine at Little Round Top

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Deon T. Benton @deontbenton.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

🚨 Officially out at Child Development! A few years ago in Science, Ashley Thomas (ashleyjthomas.bsky.social) and colleagues argued that saliva could be a cue infants use to infer the strength of social relationships. academic.oup.com/chidev/advan...

academic.oup.com

An associative learning account of how saliva becomes a cue for comfort

Abstract. A recent study by Thomas et al. (2022) showed that 8.5- to 10-month-olds use saliva sharing as an indicator of relationship closeness: infants ex

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Neuroskeptic @neuroskeptic.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

"Additional behavioral data can lead to the same improvement in the precision of inferences more cheaply and easily than collecting additional data from subjects in a neuroimaging study." www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Christina Nord @ina820.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

“Contrasting with the hypothesis that urbanization selects for behavioral flexibility, our findings instead imply that vervet monkeys already had sufficient behavioral flexibility and cognitive capacities to successfully exploit the urban habitat.”

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Dr Lia Betti @liabetti.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Very, very happy that our paper is finally out! We look at how tight a fit primates experience at birth, and found really cool results. It has been a long journey from collecting the first data seven years ago! A brief thread (1/8) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

Comparative primate analysis shows that humans are not unique in having a tight cephalopelvic fit at birth - Nature Ecology & Evolution

Analysing cephalopelvic proportions among 29 extant primate species, the authors show that a tight cephalopelvic fit is not unique to humans, with comparable or tighter fits occurring in several non-h...

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Denis REALE 🇨🇦 @denisreale.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Should the term 'personality trait' be really used in animal personality studies? With Sasha Dall and @dingemanselab.bsky.social we don't think so. We explain why in this commentary published in Animal Behaviour. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Dr. Lucky Tran @luckytran.com · 02/06/2026

Incredible! Scientists receive a rare standing ovation after announcing that a new treatment can double the survival time for pancreatic cancer, the deadliest cancer which was once considered “undruggable.” When we fund and support science, we can achieve anything! (Video: Dr. Wish Dhillon)

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Mina Kimes @minakimes.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Do you know how insane it is that every new generation of parents has to listen to Down By the Bay 1000+ times, and it doesn’t bother us? In fact we seek it out for nourishment? And invent new verses?

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Reposted by Christina Nord

EPFL Brain Mind Institute @epfl-brainmind.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Two new @epfl-brainmind.bsky.social group reviews: The lab of Alexander Mathis @trackingskills.bsky.social: The behavior biopsy: Interpreting animal behavior as embodied, situated, and hierarchical doi.org/10.1016/j.co...

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Martin Haesemeyer @haesemeyerlab.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

New preprint from the lab, led by Bradley Cutler. With the @james-gagnon.bsky.social lab we use zebrafish to show that fever is not a reduction in the perception of warmth. Immune signals instead increase the valence of warming stimuli while cooling turns aversive. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Conceptual model of how PGE2 signaling alters temperature encoding in medullary circuits to change the valence of heating and cooling stimuli.

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Reposted by Christina Nord

steven t. piantadosi @spiantado.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

TIL it wasn't just Clever Hans

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Alex Pritchard (he/him) @pritcharda.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Happy to have worked with Rosemary Blersch for her new article in a special issue of Animal Behaviour on multilayer networks for animal sociality. What is the interplay between social behavior and dominance rank change? Do these associations change with greater levels of social complexity?

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Nicholdav @nicholdav.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Neuroscientists: "How natural should laboratory behavior be?" Pigeons: "fuck you, the world is a Skinner box"

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

“The researchers found a possible 9.2% increase in pregnancy-associated deaths in states with abortion bans, equivalent to an estimated 68 excess deaths by the end of 2023”

publichealth.jhu.edu

Study: Higher Maternal Death Rate in States With Abortion Bans | Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Findings point to potential 9% rise in pregnancy-associated and pregnancy-related mortality

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Ecology of Animal Societies @livingingroups.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Is bigger always better? For social animals, group size is a dilemma: big groups face more internal competition, yet hold an edge over smaller neighbors. 33 years of data on 12 wild capuchin groups reveals how these forces shape behavior. Out today in *Nat Eco & Evo*: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

The normative fraud that Errington describes is something I've seen my whole career. A biologist once told me, if p is very small, it can't be a false positive. Teams condition on null being false, see anything that makes p small as truth-seeking. These traditions spread bc they get you published.

still from quoted video with caption "It's a norm in the field." Where "it" in context means data fraud.

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Tay (Antonio J. Osuna Mascaró) @biotay.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

1/2 Adult play Although phylogeny predicts which primates play as adults (if play exists in one species, it is more likely to exist in close ones), it is whether or not the society is tolerant (and not despotic) that best predicts this behavior (paper) royalsocietypublishing.org/rsbl/article...

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Dr Lia Betti @liabetti.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

Happy May Day everyone! A great time to celebrate not just spring, but also gains in workers' rights. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interna...

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Reposted by Christina Nord

PLOS Biology @plosbiology.org · 01/05/2026

What is the role of social learning in adopting novel food? Study of urban #cockatoos by @julia-penndorf.bsky.social @clevercockierp.bsky.social &co shows that they rapidly adopt novel food via #SocialLearning, with juveniles showing conformist preferences @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4uq6NVq

A sulphur-crested cockatoo foraging on a novel food item (coloured shelled almond). Image credit: Julia Penndorf

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Dan Quintana @dsquintana.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Really happy this paper is finally out. This began as an R script I wrote for a paper in 2016, and the Ben (first author) took this idea and improved it, iteration after iteration, into an R package.

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Dan Quintana @dsquintana.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

Selecting an effect size for power analysis is hard. Many researchers fall back on Cohen's thresholds, but they have no empirical basis and vary wildly by field. Our new paper offers a better option: field-specific effect size distributions built from meta-analytic data doi.org/10.3758/s134...

Abstract
Effect sizes are useful for understanding the magnitude of study results and for planning new studies via power analysis.
However, despite their wide usage, effect sizes are often misinterpreted. This is mostly due to an over-reliance on general
effect size benchmarks that were not intended for broad application across diverse research fields. Inaccurate effect size
interpretations can lead to incorrect conclusions about the magnitude of study results and incorrect sample size estimates,
thereby increasing the likelihood of false-positive results. This article introduces the ESDist R package, which is designed
to calculate empirically derived effect-size benchmarks or a range of reliably detectable empirical effect sizes for a specific
research question or field of interest by computing effect size distributions (ESDs). This package can be used on data that
can be easily extracted from pre-existing meta-analyses to help researchers more accurately plan new studies or to better
understand how an individual study might relate to other studies in their field. ESDist includes a set of features that make it
easy to use in a priori power analysis. Moreover, the package includes a feature for estimating effect size benchmarks that
account for publication bias and are weighted by effect sizes' variances, which addresses existing limitations of using ESDs
for study planning or interpretation.

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

“we analysed data for 1436 mammal species, confirming that group-living and pair-living species exhibit longer lifespans than solitary species…findings suggest that while group-living may reduce predation risk, pathogen transmission costs in larger groups may constrain longevity benefits”

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Social Organisation Predicts Lifespan in Mammals

Using Bayesian phylogenetic analyses of 1436 mammal species, we show that pair-living and group-living species have longer maximum lifespans than solitary species after accounting for body mass and p...

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Joe Barnby @joebarnby.com · 28/04/2026

We found that adolescents typically learn via "social contagion" (becoming more like their partner after observation) rather than "self-insertion" (assuming others will act like them, as in our previous adult samples). Being excluded within the cyberball pre-task alters this learning process...

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Reposted by Christina Nord

Royal Society Publishing @royalsocietypublishing.org · 20/04/2026

This #PhilTransB theme issue, organised by @ellileadbeater.bsky.social and @cornishjackdaws.bsky.social, explores how and why animal minds have evolved to be so different from one another: royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3...

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Reposted by Christina Nord

ASAB @asab.org · 21/04/2026

🐼Lemurs! 🖊️Social learning! 🫂Tolerance! 🌐Diffusion analysis! Our #EditorsChoice for the #AnimalBehaviourJournal: “Social tolerance mediates social learning in wild red-fronted lemurs, Eulemur rufifrons, and ring-tailed lemurs, Lemur catta” Read here: doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2026.123517

Screenshot of article

Animal Behaviour
Volume 234, April 2026, 123517

Social tolerance mediates social learning in wild red-fronted lemurs, Eulemur rufifrons, and ring-tailed lemurs, Lemur catta

Sandro Sehner, Fanomezana Ratsoavina, Claudia Fichtel

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