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michael chimento

@mchimento.bsky.social
1.4K followers 433 following 129 posts

postdoc at Uni Zurich studying social learning, social networks and animal culture in birds 🐦 and agent-based models 🤖 michaelchimento.github.io soundcloud.com/tek_cashay

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Reposted by michael chimento
Cornish Jackdaw Project @cornishjackdaws.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
New paper led by @lucahahn.bsky.social! Jackdaw partners coordinate & accept short-term costs to stay together. Relationships promote access to food & info. @uniexecec.bsky.social @shoalgroup.bsky.social @guillmcivor.bsky.social @royalsocietypublishing.org @swbiodtp.bsky.social tinyurl.com/rrv483hb
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Zoë Goldsborough @zoegoldsborough.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Why care about weird animal behaviors? Just out as an advanced publication, my contribution to the next Frans de Waal special issue in Behaviour @degruyterbrill.bsky.social. Unusual behaviors are a recurring theme in my career, and I much enjoyed writing this perspective! doi.org/10.1163/1568...
doi.org
The science of the unusual: how rare observations reveal the diversity of animal behaviour
Abstract Behavioural biology often focuses on identifying general patterns, yet unusual or rare behaviours at both the population and individual level can provide insight into animal behaviour. Here, ...
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michael chimento @mchimento.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
first good news i've seen in a minute. now do universities pls
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Ralf Kurvers @ralfkurvers.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Proud of the whole team, esp of @alexschakowski.bsky.social for putting together this review: Toward a psychology of real-life decision-making. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... @mpib-berlin.bsky.social @scioi.bsky.social @arc-mpib.bsky.social
sciencedirect.com
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The Dissenter @thedissenteryt.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
New episode (1289), with Dr. Wataru Toyokawa (@watarutoyokawa.bsky.social). We talk about social learning, collective decision-making, and the wisdom/madness of crowds. #CognitiveScience #Science YouTube: youtu.be/e6IhPGl0BBw Podcast: bit.ly/3RDehXr
youtu.be
#1289 Wataru Toyokawa: Social Learning, Collective Decision-Making, and the Wisdom/Madness of Crowds
YouTube video by The Dissenter
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michael chimento @mchimento.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
The model disambiguates acquisition and production. linking the two popular modelling frameworks together highlights a number of consequences/considerations for social learning researchers, such as more precise definitions of where learning biases operate royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...
royalsocietypublishing.org
Cultural diffusion dynamics depend on behavioural production rules
Abstract. Culture is an outcome of both the acquisition of knowledge about behaviour through social transmission, and its subsequent production by individu
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michael chimento @mchimento.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
more p5 sketches i should have put online ages ago: this is an interactive viz of the nbda+ewa model with @bjjbarrett.bsky.social Anne Kandler and @lucymaplin.bsky.social. michaelchimento.github.io/p5_githubpag...
michaelchimento.github.io
EWA-NBDA
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Gustavo Alarcón-Nieto @galarconnieto.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Oilbird movement strategies and differences in flight effort. Happy to share the first publication on the oilbird project: link.springer.com/article/10.1... @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social @kamransafi.bsky.social @animaltracking.bsky.social
link.springer.com
Oilbirds performing non-seasonal intra-tropical migrations reduce flight effort compared to individuals that frequently return to the colony roost - Movement Ecology
Individual behavioural variation is a driver of population dynamics and key for the adaptation and persistence of species. In colonial species, individuals share the same ecological niche and aggregat...
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michael chimento @mchimento.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
also, explicit movement highlights how unintuitive some rules are. for example, frequency-dependent rules all favor transmission equally when a dyad becomes isolated as a side-effect of the math, bc # neighbors becomes 1. an interesting rule, but not really what's intended
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michael chimento @mchimento.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
this was the inspiration for doi.org/10.1098/rstb... with @damienfarine.bsky.social. the take-home is that explicitly accounting for movement removes a lot of the between-rule variation in transmission dynamics. the time it takes individuals to move into contact dominates the dynamics.
doi.org
The contribution of movement to social network structure and spreading dynamics under simple and complex transmission
Abstract. The structure of social networks fundamentally influences spreading dynamics. In general, the more contact between individuals, the more opportun
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michael chimento @mchimento.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
nearly 5 years later, i've finally gotten around to cleaning up the p5.js version of this sim and putting an interactive version online for scicomm reasons. increase trails for a trippier educational experience. michaelchimento.github.io/p5_githubpag...
michaelchimento.github.io
Cultural diffusion simulator
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Alex South @amsouth.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
It's great to see The Biology of Music - Interdisciplinary Insights edited by @andrearavignani.bsky.social out in the wild! I have a co-authored chapter in there on #animalmusicking, with @emilydoolittle.bsky.social and Pralle Kriengwatana. academic.oup.com/book/63102.
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michael chimento @mchimento.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
nice idea! could I please be added?
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michael chimento @mchimento.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
@grok, how does this auger for me?
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Reposted by michael chimento
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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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
This is a ridiculous paper in the category of "computational bestiary" but Fig. 1 is wonderful: fcampelo.github.io/EC-Bestiary/
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Oleg Sobchuk 🇺🇦 @sobchuk.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
📣 I'm hiring! Two positions (PhD student & Postdoc) in my ERC project Macroevolution of European Literature. Let's study the cultural evolution of literature using massive data 📚📈 📍Frankfurt | Apply by August 15 Details: www.aesthetics.mpg.de/en/career/jo... Please repost to help spread the word!
Job announcement of two positions at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt: postdoc (Macroevolution of European Literature) and PhD student (Computational Literary Studies). Successful candidates will be affiliated with the research group Cultural Evolution of the Arts.
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michael chimento @mchimento.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
holy shit, congrats!
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Brendan Barrett @bjjbarrett.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
excited about this one: using longitudinal movement data and dyadic models, we show that orangutan moms adjust their ranging patterns so their kids can play with age-mates independent of kinship, at personal costs. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Mothers with similarly aged offspring share more space, and their offspring play more.
Posterior effect sizes from social relations models (SRMs) of (a, b) infant-infant play scans (n = 996
infant-dyad-years across 79 mother dyads) and (c) mother-mother home-range overlap (Bhattacharyya coefficient; n
= 282 mother-dyad years across 71 mother dyads). Panel (a) shows the hurdle component (probability of play
occurrence), sign-flipped so positive values indicate higher probability of play occurrence; panel (b) shows the count
component (play frequency). Points and thick and thin lines show posterior medians with 66% and 89% credible
intervals, respectively. (d) Counterfactual home-range overlap for each dyad when offspring are the same age versus
6 years apart. Points show posterior medians across all mother-mother dyads (one horizontal bar per dyad);
background densities show population-level predictions. (e) Offspring age-difference effect on home-range overlap
versus intersection area. (f) Posterior difference between the two effects (BC overlap minus intersection area).
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michael chimento @mchimento.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
thanks for sending this along--i'll take a look and revise how i frame it in the docs, then. i had seen it used in another recent publication for comparison with RL models and thought it'd be nice to implement it for nbda as well.
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michael chimento @mchimento.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
if you're currently using STbayes for a project, i encourage you to reinstall! if not for any reason except that models fit faster
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michael chimento @mchimento.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
I've also added support for time-varying and trial-varying networks with edge-weights as posterior distributions. Before, you could only do this when edge-weights were point-estimates.
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michael chimento @mchimento.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
LFO-CV prevents future observations from contributing info to predictions about the past, and is more appropriate for comparing models of diffusion data than LOOCV. There's a vignette for STbayes (linked above), and I encourage ppl to also read cran.r-project.org/web/packages... for more info
cran.r-project.org
Approximate leave-future-out cross-validation for Bayesian time series models
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michael chimento @mchimento.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
enough changes have accumulated that I've decided to make a new release of STbayes 🥳 Bunch of improvements, and I've dumped quite a few hours into implementing a relatively painless leave-future-out cross validation (LFO-CV) procedure for model comparison (michaelchimento.github.io/STbayes/news...)
michaelchimento.github.io
Changelog
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michael chimento @mchimento.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
the kaputchin monks sounds like a way more punk order
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michael chimento @mchimento.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
Looking forward to giving an online workshop this coming Thursday on using STbayes to model social transmission. I'll be walking through simulating data, fitting, interpreting and comparing models. Big up to the ESLR for organizing this series!
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Ben Sheldon @sheldonbirds.bsky.social · 24/05/2026
Both @nilomr.bsky.social & @andreaestandia.bsky.social have a superb eye for design of data visualisation coupled with cutting-edge bioinformatic, ML & Bayesian statistical analysis - have a look at their new company website sedum.studio
sedum.studio
Sedum Studio | Data Science, Visualization & ML Consulting
Data science, machine learning, and interactive visualization studio. Oxford-based researchers turn complex data into compelling insight. Remote & worldwide.
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michael chimento @mchimento.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
it's a nice idea to have a section specifically for independent articles so that reviewers can easily find and evaluate that info, i wish more applications had it! without clear criteria, it's left to the reviewers' discretion, patience, and probably preconceptions to evaluate independence
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michael chimento @mchimento.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
my favorite bit of criticism from grant reviews this year, "applicant weakness: development impacted by PhD supervisor". is there someone who hasn't been? what's the alternative meant to be? "applicant mercifully unmolested by previous supervisory attempts"
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Charley Wu @thecharleywu.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
At #CES2026 @mchimento.bsky.social presenting exciting new methods for modeling the visual field of birds to study cultural diffusion in naturalistic settings
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Rob Salguero-Gómez @robsalgo.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
Hiring 3 postdocs in ecological resilience @biology.ox.ac.uk for my @erc.europa.eu CoG ResIntegrate project. Deadline May 29th. Details below. Pls share @salgoteam.bsky.social @evoldir.bsky.social @britishecologicalsociety.org @ecologicalsociety.bsky.social @ecolsocaus.bsky.social
jobs.ac.uk
Postdoctoral Research Associate in Ecology at University of Oxford
An academic position as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Ecology is being advertised on jobs.ac.uk. Click now to find more details and explore additional academic job opportunities.
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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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michael chimento @mchimento.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
only when i post anything personally meaningful or authentic
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michael chimento @mchimento.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
i heard brits say bruvluv instead of bromance
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Wataru Toyokawa @watarutoyokawa.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
Phil Trans Roy Soc B theme issue ‘The evolution of collective intelligence’ is out! royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3...
royalsocietypublishing.org
Volume 381 Issue 1948 | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B | The Royal Society
Influential themed journal issues across the life sciences.
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michael chimento @mchimento.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
this could be partially addressed by solving of the perennial absurdities of academia: the blatant double dipping by publishers. they get paid to publish content, and again by institutions to access that content. if this model were broken, it would free up funds for other costs, indirect & otherwise
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michael chimento @mchimento.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
just learned about this a few days ago, and have watched the signature count shoot from 600k to over 900k in no time. At 1m signatures, the petition is brought to Brussels. Also v proud to see Ireland over-represented in the breakdown 🇮🇪
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michael chimento @mchimento.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
for my followers who hold EU citizenship (and a conscience) to consider signing. "Democratic" isn't really the first adjective that comes to mind when I think of the EU, but this is one of the few democratic levers that we can pull to effect change. eci.ec.europa.eu/055/public/#...
eci.ec.europa.eu
European Citizens' Initiative
Give your support !
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michael chimento @mchimento.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
Very good one
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Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
Whenever someone says "there are no civilians in [country]," they are making an argument for genocide.
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Alex Chan @alexhhchan.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
New preprint alert!! Accepted to CVPR 2026, we present the CHIRP dataset, a task-diverse computer vision dataset on Siberian jays. arxiv.org/abs/2603.25524 @cbehav.bsky.social
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🍁 Alex Smith 🍁 @alexsmithants.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
🧪 Under CoPilot settings -> Privacy -> Disable Allow #GitHub to collect and use my Inputs, Outputs, and associated context to train and improve AI models Disable.
screen grab from GitHub reading, "Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model training
Allow GitHub to collect and use my Inputs, Outputs, and associated context to train and improve AI models. Read more in the Privacy Statement."
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michael chimento @mchimento.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
Absolutely massive
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Danai Papageorgiou @danaipapageorgiou.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
Workshop on Animal Social Evolution! July 13th-15th, Heraklion (Greece) We are inviting early-career researchers from Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean to a hands-on, three-day workshop dedicated to methods and tools in social behaviour and evolution marinapapa.github.io/TRASEworksho...
marinapapa.github.io
TRASE Workshop 2026
July 13th-15th, Heraklion (Greece)
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Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
The same technological pinpoint accuracy that was used to slaughter children in Gaza now being used to slaughter children in Iran.
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Culture Conference @cultconf.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
What a pre-conference workshop on Bayesian statistical methods—a powerful toolkit for our community! 📊 Many thanks to Daniel Redhead and Ramona Roller for guiding us through STRAND and to Michael Chimento for the introduction to STbayes. And thank you to all participants for their energy! 🙌
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Five iPads @tomorrowarchive.com · 22/02/2026
due to a frustration at a lack of what could be described as a "bodybuilding forum for information science professionals" i decided to make a discord. then everyone clowned on me and told me to make an oldschool bbs. so i did. presenting scope and content: scopeandcontent.com/forum/ join + share!
scopeandcontent.com
Scope and Content - Index page
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michael chimento @mchimento.bsky.social · 22/02/2026
great can't wait to tao lin my r package on your boards
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michael chimento @mchimento.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... i always used Damien's asnipe library for the GMMs, described here. the GMM could be rewritten and customized for your use case in stan or otherwise
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Animal social network inference and permutations for ecologists in R using asnipe
The sampling of animals for the purpose of measuring associations and interactions between individuals has led to the development of several statistical methods to deal with biases inherent in the...
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