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Rona Learmonth

@rona-learmonth.bsky.social
115 followers 148 following 8 posts

DPhil student at the University of Oxford. Studying local adaptation and phenology in the winter moth 🦋🌿

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Reposted by Rona Learmonth
Devi Satarkar @devisatarkar.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Heavier great tit nestlings 🐥 usually end up as heavier adults 🐦. Is this always a strong correlation? Our new preprint shows that the strength of this 'silver-spoon' association shifts continuously with environmental context, and is stronger in harsh conditions! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
14-day old great tit (Parus major) nestling in hand. Bird handled under appropriate BTO licence. Adult great tit (Parus major) in hand. Bird handled under appropriate BTO licence.
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Rona Learmonth @rona-learmonth.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
New preprint! 🐛 doi.org/10.64898/202... We experimentally reared winter moths to show how plasticity to temperature affects phenology not just directly, but through carry-over effects across life stages With Lea Beaupere, @ellafcole.bsky.social @andreaestandia.bsky.social @sheldonbirds.bsky.social
Schematic of cross-temperature rearing experiment. For a single female’s clutch, eggs are split into sub-clutches in hot, warm, mean, cool and ambient treatments (labelled and illustrated by box colour) for hatching and rearing to pupation. The timing of individual pupation is recorded, and each pupa reassigned across the temperature treatments. This reassignment is shown for the cool treatment only. After adult emergence, individuals were mated within matching early- and late-life treatment combinations, and their clutches re-split between mean and hot treatments only. Again, the reassignment is shown for the cool treatment only. Ambient treatments shown here below the dashed line were not used in full analyses as their temperature regimes are more variable and so not comparable to experimental temperatures. Sample sizes for each life stage are therefore given only for the four experimental treatments included in full analyses.Late-instar winter moth caterpillar on oak leaf
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Reposted by Rona Learmonth
David López-Idiáquez @davididiaquez.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Our pre-print analysing the 1 std decline in mass in Wytham great tits has just been published in @animalecology.bsky.social check it out: besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @biology.ox.ac.uk
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Early‐life environment drives long‐term decrease in adult body mass in a wild bird population
Using more than 90,000 body mass measures of adult and nestling great tits Parus major, we show that the 1 SD decline in adult mass between 1978 and 2024 is a consequence of changes in the environmen....
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Reposted by Rona Learmonth
David López-Idiáquez @davididiaquez.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
New preprint out in @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social with @devisatarkar.bsky.social and @sheldonbirds.bsky.social in which we analyse the effects of this summer's unprecedented and severe #heatwave on tit reproduction and mass. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
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Rona Learmonth @rona-learmonth.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Excited to share this joint first-author paper with @andreaestandia.bsky.social, now out in @royalsocietypublishing.org! We combined translocations, common garden experiments and genomic analyses to test for local adaptation to individual tree phenology in winter moths 🌳🐛 doi.org/10.1098/rspb...
royalsocietypublishing.org
No evidence of fine-scale local adaptation of winter moths to variable tree phenology | Proceedings B | The Royal Society
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Reposted by Rona Learmonth
David López-Idiáquez @davididiaquez.bsky.social · 31/05/2026
This week has been one of the warmest on record in Oxford. This heatwave has also been recorded by the thermologgers we have in @wythamwoods.bsky.social. The period between 23rd and 28th May has been ~8°C (+2.6 SDs) warmer in 2026 than the same period between 2023 and 2025.
Temperature anomalies in May in Wytham Woods between 2023 and 2026. Each line represents the temperature departure from the 4-year mean each hour. In orange, we can see 2026 temperatures which between the 23rd and 28th of May were 8.11º C higher on average than the mean of the 2023-2025 period (representing a difference of 2.6 standard deviations). Data comes from 8 thermologgers. Thick lines represent the average of these 8 loggers and thin lines temperature from each individual logger.
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Reposted by Rona Learmonth
Jørgen Søraker @jorgensoraker.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
New paper out in Biological Reviews📝🚨 When trying to explain why female birds engage in extra-pair copulations/paternity, we mostly focus on the benefits. But what about the costs? Should we not consider the downsides of the behavior we try to understand? 🧵 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
The costs of extra‐pair behaviours in birds
Extra-pair behaviours – reproductive behaviours, including those related to copulation and paternity of offspring, amongst animals outside of a social pair bond – have long intrigued behavioural ecol...
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Reposted by Rona Learmonth
Devi Satarkar @devisatarkar.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Planning a nestbox temperature manipulation experiment in birds? We’ve just published a preprint that may be useful! 🪺🪶 We review 46 studies and also share our own blue tit pilot experiment from Wytham Woods, highlighting some very real practical challenges doi.org/10.32942/X25387
a blue tit peeking into a wooden nestbox
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Sienna Rattigan @siennarattigan.bsky.social · 04/04/2026
1/🧵My first preprint!🐛🌡️ We examine how environmental effects experienced during one life-history stage persist and modulate environmental responses in later life-history stages. With Lea Beaupere, @sheldonbirds.bsky.social, @rona-learmonth.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
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Ben Sheldon @sheldonbirds.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
Great talk by @rona-learmonth.bsky.social at #BES2025 on the absence of small scale local adaptation by winter moths to oak tree bud burst. Read more in this preprint www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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Rona Learmonth @rona-learmonth.bsky.social · 16/10/2025
New preprint! 🌳🐛 We combined experimental and genomic methods to study local adaptation of winter moths to variation in oak budburst timing in Wytham Woods, UK. With @andreaestandia.bsky.social, Lea Beaupere, Ella Cole, and @sheldonbirds.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Integrative analysis of fine-scale local adaptation of winter moths to variable oak phenology
For herbivorous insects whose fitness depends on tight phenological synchrony with host plants, spatial variation in plant phenology can impose strong selective pressures and promote local adaptation ...
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Reposted by Rona Learmonth
Andrea Estandía @andreaestandia.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
Last week of winter moth trapping along the Phenoweb transect between Edinburgh and Inverness. We aim to study the spatial scale of local adaptation to oak phenology 🦋🌳🧬 with @rona-learmonth.bsky.social, @allyphillimore.bsky.social, @nilomr.bsky.social (and @sheldonbirds.bsky.social back in Oxford)
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