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Catherine Sheard

@sheardcat.bsky.social
2K followers 831 following 2K posts

Lecturer & Interdisciplinary Fellow @ University of Aberdeen. Professionally: macroevolution, especially birds & languages. Personally: drinks too much coffee, plays too much D&D. she/her

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Reposted by Catherine Sheard
Butlerian Jihadist of House Dornick @shimminykricket.blacksky.app · 08/10/2026
Harvard just dropped a study AI productivity in software engineering and it found the average increase in productivity from using Claude code is.....zero and for exactly the reasons you'd think fion.ac/jellyfish.pdf
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Gabriele Uhl @uhl-lab.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Postdoc Alert! New Postdoc Position for 3 years (max 3 more)- offers the freedom to develop your own research projects in close interaction with my group. Research on invertebrates preferred. Apply by October 31. Please RP. zoologie.uni-greifswald.de/en/organizat... 🧪
zoologie.uni-greifswald.de
Open Postdoc position (3 + max 3 years)
Universität Greifswald
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Markus Eichhorn @markuseichhorn.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
The reason I have not replied to your e-mail is that I'm now wading through so many excessively long LLM messages trying to work out whether there was ever a human involved and what point they were trying to make.
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Dr Alexandra Marley @bulletproofling.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
👀 2 funded linguistics/anthropology/environmental science PhD positions going at UQ. Get in on it folks! study.uq.edu.au/study-option...
study.uq.edu.au
Amplifying Indigenous Ecological Knowledge in Western science with language
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Jhan C. Salazar, PhD @jhancsalazar.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Happy to share that the last chapter of my dissertation is finally out in Evolution! 🦎⛰️ I'll share a longer thread soon about what we did and found. Huge thanks to all my coauthors: @jblosos.bsky.social, @juvelas.bsky.social, Steven Poe and Adam Algar doi.org/10.1093/evol...
doi.org
Repeated evolution of high-elevation occupation in tropical lizards
Abstract. Since Darwin and Humboldt, researchers have sought to understand how species adapt to elevation. Although tropical reptiles are typically most di
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Jean-François Cudennec @limpetnerd.eurosky.social · 07/10/2026
I thought had an agile mind before seeing this
A map of Europe, but there’s something off
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Michael Baym @baym.lol · 04/10/2026
If someone’s going to AI-email me I’d rather see the prompt than the output. Because that’s where they decided to end and let the machine finish the job
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Kevin Healy @healyke.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Congrats to @amyduclaux.bsky.social on publishing her first paper. She shows that sexual dichromatism in birds is more pronounced in species with fast life history strategies, lower latitudes and with mating systems associated with higher sex ratio skews. 🌐 academic.oup.com/biolinnean/a...
academic.oup.com
Higher levels of sexual dichromatism are associated with faster life history strategies and lower latitudes in passerine birds
Abstract. Sexual dichromatism has been widely investigated in passerine birds, with studies looking at its relationship with life history traits and latitu
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EcoEvoRxiv @ecoevorxiv.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Weak and species-specific morphological change in Atlantic Forest birds across two decades of warming doi.org/10.32942/X28...
Modelling sampling turnover more than halves the estimated wing-length decline. (A) Within-species-centred wing length over time across 8,478 records from 72 species. The dashed line represents the baseline model (−1.8 mm/decade); the solid line and band represent the fully adjusted model (−0.7 mm/decade, 95% CrI spanning zero). Inset displays wing records per year. (B) Effects of each capture year on wing length from the baseline (open circles) and fully adjusted (filled circles) models with year as a factor, centred on the record-weighted mean year, with 95% confidence intervals (glmmTMB REML, pooled over 50 phylogenetic trees); the fitted linear trends of panel A are repeated. Unlike raw annual means, these intervals account for the clustering of records within species, contributors and municipalities. Linear trends and their bands are posterior means and 95% credible intervals pooled over 20 phylogenetic trees.
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Bob Wong @bbmwong.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Monash University is offering a fully-funded PhD scholarship to an outstanding student in animal behaviour/evolutionary ecology. Choose from eight project areas. For information about what project I'm offering, please DM me or see application form: forms.gle/ia9t4KPD3FKT.... Deadline: 15 Nov.
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Feena van @feenavan2099.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
"Before Stonehenge was raised, before Egypts first pyramid broke ground,before the Nazca people drew their famous lines across the Peruvian desert,someone in what is now southern Arizona shaped a 272-foot fish into the earth On April 23,2026,"a border-wall contractor drove heavy equipment across it"
gadgetreview.com
Trump's Border Wall Construction Destroys 6,500-Year-Old Arizona Geoglyph – Older Than Stonehenge
Arizona's 6,500-year-old Las Playas Intaglio, the oldest dated geoglyph in the Americas, was irreparably damaged by border wall construction in April 2026.
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lauren benet @laurenbenet.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Something I learned just this week: "only 4% of the world’s women and girls live in the U.S., but the U.S. confines ONE-QUARTER of the world’s incarcerated women and girls." www.prisonpolicy.org/global/women...
a chart from Prison Policy comparing states' incarceration rates of women to the other countries' rates.
it shows about 20 states who incarcerate women at a higher rate than even the most incarceration-friendly countries (el salvador, dem. rep. of congo, thailand). three states - south dakota, montana and idaho - incarcerate women at a higher rate than the country of El Salvador.
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Robert Sansom @fossilrob.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
PhD opportunity: 🦠🪱☠️🪣🔬🏞️ Do you want to test hypotheses of how fossils form, figure out if lab experiments reflect the real world? Come and join our lab! www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
findaphd.com
[School of Natural Sciences PhD Scholarships] Bridging the taphonomic gap between the lab and the real world: Experimental Insights into Fossilization and Preservation at The University of Manchester ...
PhD Project - [School of Natural Sciences PhD Scholarships] Bridging the taphonomic gap between the lab and the real world: Experimental Insights into Fossilization and Preservation at The University ...
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British Ornithologists’ Union (BOU) @bou.org.uk · 01/10/2026
📢 APPLICATIONS ARE NOW OPEN... ...for the 2027 BOU Summer Placement Scheme Financially supporting undergraduate students to carry out summer #ornithology research placements Application deadline: 29 January 2027 Guidelines & application form: bou.org.uk/funding/s... 🪶
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Holy cannoli, really?! TIL. Thanks!
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Journal of Systematic Palaeontology @journalsystpal.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
A bird’s eye view of the fossil record: perspectives on avian systematics by Benito & Steell. Read here: buff.ly/fJattSx This is the latest article in our collection of agenda-setting reviews in the systematics of major fossil groups - with many more articles coming soon! #FossilFriday
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Dan Baldassarre @evornithology.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Just a quick reminder that the Vietnamese Crested Argus exists. Critically endangered and restricted to humid forests of Laos and Vietnam, it is widely considered to have a huge-ass tail. 📷 Robin Arnold, eBird
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Hello my name is Catherine, and if you aren't careful, I will info-dump etymologies at you.
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I'm now in a small rabbit hole about Romani. For example, "chav" (which only dates to the late 90s, according to the OED!) is likely a borrowing from Romani, as is "shiv" (which the OED spells "chiv", go figure, and dates from 1670s), and "pal" (dating from the 1770s).
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
TIL Yiddish is a national language of Sweden. (Along with Sámi, Finnish, Meänkieli, and Romani.)
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Alexa Fredston @afredston.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
good morning. I strongly suspect that we don't really know (or agree) what geographic ranges are, and therefore, our estimates of how species' ranges are shifting in the Anthropocene are uninterpretable. I wrote something about this: doi.org/10.1111/2041... and I'll share the main findings...
doi.org
Measuring the edges of species' geographic ranges
The fundamental unit of spatial ecology is a species range: the geographical area that it occupies. Species ranges are delineated by range edges (also known as boundaries or limits). Why range edg...
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Nico Mongiardino Koch @nmkphylo.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I am looking for graduate students to join my lab in Fall 2027. If your interests lie within the realms of phylogenetics, macroevolution, and/or invertebrate biodiversity please reach out to me!!
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Congratulations!!!!!
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Michael Hickerson @hickerlab.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
How much of the tree of life did you eat? Phylodiet scores a meal by phylogenetic diversity: type what you ate and it builds the dated tree of the organisms in it, from ~3,300 edible eukaryotes, back 2 billion years. Last night's dinner, below. 🧵 mjhickerson.github.io/phylodiet/app/phylodiet.html
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Society for the Study of Evolution @sse-evolution.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
💬 In the latest Evolution Exchange, SSE President Dr. Gina Baucom talks with Dr. Stacy Krueger-Hadfield and Dr. Daniel Ortiz-Barrientos about doing a PhD or postdoc abroad. www.evolutionsociety.org/news/display... @dortizba.bsky.social @gbaucom.bsky.social
Headshots of Dr. Krueger-Hadfield and Dr. Ortiz-Barrientos. Text: What Nobody Tells You About Doing Your PhD Abroad with Dr. Stacy A. Krueger-Hadfield and Dr. Daniel Ortiz-Barrientos. The Evolution Exchange, a monthly conversation series from the Society for the Study of Evolution.
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Also, for the love of god, UKHE, if a demographic category is so rare as to make that person uniquely identifiable, please don't report sensitive information about that category???
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I probably shouldn't screenshot this one, but I'm currently reading a document that claims (hopefully erroneously) that they classified all people with American or Canadian nationality as "white". 😱
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
What I plan to accomplish in any given day and what ends up getting thrown at me that day can often end up so wildly different 😅. Once I became a PI, I viscerally understood why previous supervisors were so rigid about their calendar management.
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
This post brought to you by a senior colleague asking me, in essence, Why Are You Like This, and me being unable to provide a decent response 😂
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Three years into this job, and I'm still so discombobulated by the vast diversity of tasks I'm expected to complete in a day.
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Ethan Linck @elinck.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I'm hiring a postdoc to help build tools for inferring complex speciation histories with genomic data. strong computational skills are a must, but this is a training opportunity. 60K$+ salary, 2 years, details flexible. please reach out! (and repost) ad here: jobs.montana.edu/postings/53150
jobs.montana.edu
Postdoctoral Researcher
The Department of Ecology at Montana State University is seeking a Postdoctoral Research Scholar as part of NSF-funded research on speciation under alternating cycles of gene flow and isolation (fundi...
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 30/09/2026
One of the most harrowing things about academia, when you're a grad student, is how vulnerable you are to how you're perceived by more senior researchers. Your career advancement depends on confidential letters of reference & private discussions amongst faculty. You have no information or control.
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Jolyon Troscianko @jtroscianko.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
🦋 Butterfly wing patterns create motion illusions that protect them from predators! Our new study (8 years in the making) is out in Nature today doi.org/10.1038/s415... @grahancock.bsky.social @esbriolat.bsky.social @scienceanna.bsky.social @lauraakelley.bsky.social @uniexecec.bsky.social
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Steve Brusatte @stevebrusatte.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
🚨Postdoc job alert: Come work with my paleontology & evolution group in Edinburgh! Researcher in Cognitive Evolution Over Deep Time. You'll study how brains & neurons have evolved over time, and predict neuron count in extinct species! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DTC355/p...
jobs.ac.uk
Postdoctoral Research Associate in Cognitive Evolution over Deep Time at The University of Edinburgh
Apply for the Postdoctoral Research Associate in Cognitive Evolution over Deep Time role on jobs.ac.uk, the top job board for academic positions in higher education. View details and apply now.
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I do love their occasional glimpses behind the scenes 😂
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Oooh, thank you!
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Relatedly, if you, like me, somehow missed the Magnus Archives back when it was actually a thing -- they're excellent. I'm not normally into horror, but they have very high production quality and the story moves at an appropriate pace for my brain.
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
The Magnus Archives skepticism about macroecology (episode 121, for the curious) is such a jump-scare my god 😂😂😂
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Department of Biology, Lund University @biologylu.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Climate change is reshaping butterfly ranges worldwide. A global study found that 80% of 1,758 species in its dataset had expanded their ranges. @larspett.bsky.social and colleagues combined 6,182 reports from 105 countries. doi.org/10.1038/s415... #Biodiversity #ClimateChange #Ecology
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I also want to shout-out the BOU for making this conference hybrid -- it's greatly expands the audience for these talks, and there have typically been ~40 of us online at any given time!
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I've been hopping in and out of the Zoom version of today's BOU conference, and the talk this afternoon about this project was excellent. Across 25 years, population change in the birds of North Carolina can be predicted by their traits & environmental niches. ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...
ecoevorxiv.org
Species Traits Predict Local Population Change Above and Beyond Regional Trend
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I absolutely love this paper -- Menezes & Podos in Evolution demonstrate that loudness is linked to body size and gap width, but apparently not to habitat or mating system, across 123 Brazilian & US species. academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...
academic.oup.com
Evolutionary drivers of vocal amplitude in birds
Birds can surpass all other terrestrial vertebrates in vocal amplitude, yet why some birds sing louder than others remains unclear. Using calibrated field
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I caught your talk via Zoom -- really great presentation and fascinating research!
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Levayer Lab @levayerr.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Here it is...by delegating decision to non transparent AI models we generate an incentive for grant applicants to use AI writing to tweak system and the vicious/absurd feedback loop is set (which all started by an overload of grant application driven by AI writing). www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
U.K. funder uses ‘AI triage’ to reject grant proposals—leaving researchers dismayed
The AI-based assessment, which wasn’t explicitly described in the funding call, has raised privacy and fairness concerns
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nick @unionnick.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
On the *same day* the Cornell Seven drugged and raped Jane Doe, Cornell banned four students (including the President of Cornell JVP) from campus for three years for nonviolent, pro-Palestine protests. The same Cornell officials let the rapists off with apology essays.
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Professor John R. Hutchinson @johnrhutchinson.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
New paper! Brandon Kilbourne conducted a huge data collection effort for the limb muscle architecture (masses, fascicle lengths, pennation angles; thereby PCSAs) of mustelid mammals. We found conspicuous relationships with morphology and locomotor mode. link.springer.com/article/10.1...
link.springer.com
Muscle architecture in mustelid mammals: anatomical proxies for muscle function and their relation to locomotor habit - BMC Ecology and Evolution
Background Though skeletal adaptations for locomotion in mammals are well documented, possible limb adaptations in terms of muscle architecture have received far less study. Examining mustelid mammals...
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Brian J. Enquist @bjenquist.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Please pass along: I’m recruiting PhD students to join our Macroecology Lab. We study physical ecology, macroecology, and biodiversity — spanning scaling, trait-based ecology, theory, comparative biology & ecoinformatics. Several avenues for funding. Please reach out if interested 🧪🌐🌾
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c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
The obvious conclusion (to me): if you have proprietary research & you upload it into the Plagiarism Nexus, it's not YOUR proprietary research anymore. Behave accordingly.
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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Hey. Hey, UKRI. HEY UKRI. When some of us are Big Mad that you use genAI to review our grants? This is why.
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Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I've talked to a few journal editors who are concerned about similar problems re: anonymous reviewers. If a peer reviewer wants a little help & feeds your unpublished submission into an AI system, they've just shared your proprietary work & broken confidentiality. A nightmare to think about
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