iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Another successful Durham field course in the books! #belize #🇧🇿

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Excellent mini-field season with Jordy—who will be joining the lab in September—and Yesenia here in Mexico! Hasta pronto! #teamrubyspot

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

Feast your eyes on this magnificent figure from Margaret Nice’s (1943) Studies in the Life History of the Song Sparrow

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

Looking for a PhD opportunity? I'm hoping to recruit someone to my group at Durham University to work on a project combining fieldwork and labwork to study speciation in rubyspot damselflies: iapetus.ac.uk/studentships... Get in touch if you want to chat!

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

Super proud of Dr. Dan Nesbit @dannesbit.bsky.social, who passed his viva today (with no corrections!). Thanks to @josephtobias.bsky.social and Sally Street for examining! 🥳

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 20/09/2025

Another @durham-university.bsky.social Belize field course in the books! Already looking forward to 2026…

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 21/12/2024

I am having the hardest time identifying this species, do your thing #birdsky (I’m in Karoo NP South Africa) #birds

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

Also, I'm looking keen to hear from applicants who are interested in studying the effect of species interactions on range dynamics

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

First, a project combining fieldwork and labwork to study speciation in rubyspot damselflies: iapetus2.ac.uk/studentships...

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

📣 I'm recruiting PhD students for several projects: jonathanpdrury.com/opportunitie... #PleaseRepost

Durham cathedral in crepuscular winter light

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 07/11/2024

Great to be hosting @ignacioq.bsky.social for Durham’s seminar today!

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 22/09/2024

Just wrapped up a successful @DurBiol field course at Las Cuevas Research Station with @RebeccaASenior @_animaltropical and 20 amazing students. Already excited to head back next year!

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 21/09/2024

Just wrapped up the Durham University Biosciences field course at Las Cuevas Research Station in Belize. An absolute dream!

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 14/08/2024

Very round vulturine Guinea fowl from Mpala Kenya in 2019 #borb

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 29/07/2024

How do predators shape a trait that mediates competitive and reproductive interactions? Come find out tomorrow at 12:15 #Evol2024 #rubyspots

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 28/07/2024

Great talk on sympathetic shifts in competitor recognition in chickadees by @HaleyLKenyon, with a cameo by rubyspots #Evol2024

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 10/07/2024

And that’s a wrap on #rubyspots2024 Twelfth and final replicates of this massive experiment are complete. That’s 15 months of observations. Going to go stare at a wall for two weeks, but catch you at #evol2024

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 09/07/2024

We’ve now passed 600 individuals marked. Here is blue-purple-orange-blue, one of the last ones to enter the experiment #sorrybuddy #rubyspots2024

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 26/06/2024

Y’all, meet the oldest #rubyspot I have ever known. He is Hetaerina titia male purple-yellow-orange-purple, and he is 100 days old. #rubyspots2024

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 29/02/2024

So great to have @Sal_Keith visit us for a seminar in Durham—here’s hoping lots more macrobehaviour is in all of our futures! Thanks to @Christophe_Patt for making it happen!

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 05/02/2024

Made it onto the cover! www.cell.com/current-biol...

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 26/01/2024

Our amazing, brilliant students have organised an eco-friendly dress exchange for their upcoming ball!

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 13/01/2024

tl;dr the longstanding notion that ecology influences trait evolution is evident across a huge radiation and is true across latitudes

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 13/01/2024

Even within these models, in some cases (low tropic levels) we found that ecological opportunity matters more in the temperate region

Three panels of Fig. 4 of the manuscript, showing how the slope parameters and rates of evolution at the present estimated from two-regime diversity dependent models vary across latitude. For low trophic levels, the per lineage impact of other species is higher in lineages not restricted to the tropics

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 13/01/2024

We also extended tools to test for differential impacts of ecological opportunity in tropical vs. temperate regions. As with our previous paper, we found fairly low support for models that included latitude.

Photo of a lilac breasted roller (by J Drury)

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 13/01/2024

So, in this new paper, we updated models to be fit quickly to large datasets (among other new bells and whistles) and fit them to continental level assemblages of birds. We found abundant evidence that ecological opportunity matters: EB/DD models were best in ~2/3 of cases.

A panel of Fig. 2 from the manuscript, depicting pie charts of model support for 9 continental assemblages on a map of the world

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 13/01/2024

There are several reasons for this, but one possibility is that all species in previous studies were treated equally--even if they lived on different continents!

Photo of a great horned owl (by J Drury)

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 13/01/2024

Prior to our study, support for 'early burst' and 'diversity dependent' models (two different ways of modeling how trait evolution responds to ecological opportunity) was scarce.

Photo of a vulterine guineafowl (by J Drury)

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 13/01/2024

But, of course, birds don't just compete with family members, so, in this current paper, we expanded our scope, looking at continental-scale assemblages to see how changing 'ecological opportunity' influences trait evolution

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 13/01/2024

Wayy back in 2015, as I was working on building on phylogenetic models of trait evolution to identify the influence of species interactions, I sat in a cafe in Paris & sketched an outline of a question I wanted to ask with these models: how do interactions vary across the globe?

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 13/01/2024

📣 New paper, now online in early view in @CurrentBiology : cell.com/current-biol.... Gather round for a story 8.5 years(!) in the making 🧵

Photo of a little bee eater (by J Drury)

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 12/01/2024

tl;dr the longstanding notion that ecology influences trait evolution is evident across a huge radiation and is true across latitudes

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 12/01/2024

Even within these models, in some cases (low tropic levels) we found that ecological opportunity matters more in the temperate region

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 12/01/2024

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 12/01/2024

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 12/01/2024

There are several reasons for this, but one possibility is that all species in previous studies were treated equally--even if they lived on different continents!

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 12/01/2024

Prior to our study, support for 'early burst' and 'diversity dependent' models (two different ways of modeling how trait evolution responds to ecological opportunity) was scarce.

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 12/01/2024

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 12/01/2024

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 12/01/2024

📢 New paper, now online in early view in @CurrentBiology: www.cell.com/current-biology/fullte…. Gather round for a story 8.5 years(!) in the making 🧵

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 07/01/2024

We also find several other cool relationships, especially as it relates to phylogeny & ecology. Figs 1 & 2 in the paper show the results of those relationships. We are hoping this work stimulates more investigation of interspecific aggression among species! 📷 (c) Brad Imhoff

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Jonathan Drury @jonathanpdrury.bsky.social · 07/01/2024

3. We find that species that have increasing familiarity tend to fight less than expected after controlling for abundance (our DEE variable). - So species that "know" each other fight less than you would expect given how often you see them at the same location.

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