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Cedric van den Berg

@vancedberg.bsky.social
350 followers 143 following 21 posts

Visual Ecologist. Defensive colouration, Behavioural ecology, Evolution, Comparative phylogenetics.

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Reposted by Cedric van den Berg
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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Sercan Sayin @sercansayin.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Swarm models are abstract, but life is full of color! Locust warning coloration modulates how individuals track others, especially in cluttered environments. Visual modeling, VR, remote sensing. With @jjfosterlab.bsky.social, @theswordlab.bsky.social, @icouzin.bsky.social ssrn.com/abstract=739...
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Hanna Kokko @kokkonut.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Come and work with us (the Kokkonuts) as a postdoc! Our research within (theory-evo-eco) is broad; let's say it's implicitly defined by the journal club papers we read. Which is why the application process includes a JC-related task, I hope it'll be a fun one for you! www.evoldir.net/brian/evoldi...
evoldir.net
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Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
How did cognition evolve? 🧠 On the sandy bottom of Lake Tanganyika, scientists asked wild fish how they make decisions, revealing how two closely related species diverge in surprising ways. Paper ▶️ www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Story ▶️ www.ab.mpg.de/1452608/news...
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Bob Wong @bbmwong.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Are you an ecologist/evolutionary biologist looking for an ongoing academic position? Monash University’s School of Biological Sciences is hiring! Come join us in Melbourne, Australia! Details here: careers.pageuppeople.com/513/cw/en/jo...
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Cris Niell @crisniell.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Very happy to share our new review on visual computation in the cephalopod brain, with @vangeliqueallen.bsky.social, out now! We discuss exciting recent advances in understanding how the radically different brain of cephalopods processes the visual scene. 🐙🔬👀 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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Dr George RA Hancock 🦋🦎 @grahancock.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Let’s kick off @isbe2026.bsky.social! If anyone wants to chat camouflage, genetic algorithms or motion confusion drop me a message!
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Sam England @samjakeengland.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Having my photograph on the cover of Current Biology is definitely a bucket list item ticked off ✅🙏 all thanks to @atal-pande.bsky.social @multipleye-lab.bsky.social and their super cool study that I was lucky enough to make a small contribution to
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Laura Kelley @lauraakelley.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
Sexier in the city? Urban male great bowerbirds decorate bowers with human-made objects, creating brighter and more varied displays than rural males. Males strongly prefer human-made objects over natural ones, possibly boosting their appeal to females! shorturl.at/lcNY2 @royalsocietypublishing.org
The ground is covered in leaf litter. On the ground are two parallel walls made of sticks that form a corridor. At each entrance there are objects scattered around including grey plastic, green pieces of glass, grey stones, white snail shells and red items.
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Sam England @samjakeengland.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Out today in @royalsocietypublishing.org - we show that crab spiders (the ones you usually see ambushing pollinators on flowers 🕷️🌸) get worse at hunting if their eyes are covered!🫣 Sounds obvious? It's actually quite surprising, here's why... 👀 (1/8) royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article...
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Cedric van den Berg @vancedberg.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
#colsci
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Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
🚨Job claxon🚨 4-year #Postdoc available in our lab in @camzoology.bsky.social developing molecular and anatomical approaches to mapping evolutionary changes in the brain, using #Heliconiini butterflies. Come join us, we are nice. 🧪 www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...
An immunostaining section through a Heliconius brain. Staining and imaging by Dr Max Farnworth.
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Cedric van den Berg @vancedberg.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
charisma: An R package to perform reproducible colour characterization of digital images for biological studies. Fresh in Methods in Ecology and Evolution: besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/AGQZAA... #colsci
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Dr George RA Hancock 🦋🦎 @grahancock.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
Well this is a big one the largest paper from my PhD is finally out! We show how direct lighting influences optimal camouflage! With shadows promoting the evolution of darker, striped patterns and countershading!! journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...
journals.plos.org
Shining a light on camouflage evolution: Using genetic algorithms to determine the effects of geometry and lighting on optimal camouflage
Visual camouflage evolution in animals depends on both light’s interaction with its surroundings and the limits of what the natural observers of the camouflage can see. Changes in lighting – such as t...
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Lucille Chapuis @sharkslikejazz.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
GREAT PhD opportunity at La Trobe University in Melbourne: domestic Australian student only. Deep-red vision and infrared sensing in jewel beetles. Field and lab studies, inc. electorphys, microscopy, behavioural assays. Team led by Dr Amanda Franklin. PM me for more info!
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Katrin Franke @katrinfranke.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
New paper out in @cp-neuron.bsky.social 🎉 What determines contextual modulation in V1? Why does the visual surround sometimes facilitate and sometimes suppress a neuron's response to its preferred stimulus?
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Senator Bernie Sanders @sanders.senate.gov · 03/03/2026
Surprise! The Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post is against my 5% billionaire wealth tax. I wonder why? If enacted, Bezos would owe $12 billion in taxes, and an average family of 4 would receive a $12,000 direct payment. Poor Jeff would be left with just $224 billion to survive.
Bernie Sander’s 2028 litmus test would strangle America’s golden goose
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Visual Insect Neuroethology Group @insect-vision.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
New paper out on the decision strategies of bumblebees. When using visual cues to make flower choices, they switch strategy with sensory context, learning as much as necessary, but as little as possible. Based on their training time, we propose a mechanism for this switch. tinyurl.com/2r9d4jrs 🌸🐝🧠
tinyurl.com
Bees flexibly adjust decision strategies to information content in a foraging task
Bumblebees flexibly adjust their learning strategies to the sensory challenge, balancing costs and benefits of multicue learning.
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Kevin Mitchell @wiringthebrain.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
Pace of ecology drives the tempo of visual perception across the animal kingdom www.nature.com/articles/s41... - new paper with Clinton Haarlem, Cliodhna Hynes and colleagues Different species see the world as fast as they need to...
nature.com
Pace of ecology drives the tempo of visual perception across the animal kingdom - Nature Ecology & Evolution
Using phylogenetic comparative methods across 237 species from disparate phyla, the authors show that species with fast-paced ecologies have higher temporal resolution of perception.
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George Kafetzis @gkafetzis.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
Out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social! A dive into the deep history of vertebrate vision, together with @mikebok.bsky.social, @neurofishh.bsky.social and @denilsson.bsky.social Photo credit : Vasilis Karkalas
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Vengamanaidu Modepalli @venky-vnm.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
Postdoc Opening! 🚨 Thrilled to (belatedly!) share that I’ve received @hfspo.bsky.social grant in collaboration with @KatherinaPetrou "Plant-like solar tracking in a photosymbiotic animal." We are hiring a Postdoc to join the team @bristolbiosci.bsky.social! Apply👇 www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQO766/r...
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Laura Kelley @lauraakelley.bsky.social · 13/02/2026
Another stick in the wall: we removed part of male great bowerbird bower walls to test effect on courtship displays. Males didn’t just focus on rebuilding the wall, they stepped up effort across all aspects of their display, showing they flexibly invest in multiple signals tinyurl.com/4ujmkw95
A grey/brown male great bowerbird is looking towards the camera and in the background is a U shaped structure made of sticks, called a bower. Part of one of the walls is missing. In front of the bower is a pile of white, green and red objects called decorations that the male uses as part of his display.
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Theo Sanderson @theo.io · 08/02/2026
I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself! bluesky-map.theo.io I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail
bluesky-map.theo.io
Bluesky Map
Interactive map of 3.4 million Bluesky users, visualised by their follower pattern.
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Laura Kelley @lauraakelley.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
New bowerbird paper out, we asked whether male great bowerbirds care about the light environment around the bower where they display to females. Short answer: not really. What they do care about is having a display arena with strong visual contrast on the ground. 🐦 tinyurl.com/2v7rycdz
A u shaped structure made out of sticks called a bower, built under a small tree. In front of the bower is a pile of grey, white and green objects that make up the display court. The whole scene is in dappled sunlight and shade created by the tree above.
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Elliot Murphy @elliot-murphy.bsky.social · 25/12/2025
New analysis of the major qualitative differences between natural and artificial intelligence (via LLMs). LLMs and humans form judgments differently across seven epistemological stages 🧵 osf.io/preprints/ps...
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Rochelle Meah @rochellemeah.bsky.social · 17/12/2025
Multiple anthropogenic stressors can negatively impact species but can a single stressor also have multiple, concurrent impacts? Here we show that light pollution creates several simultaneous impacts to the nocturnal movement ecology of a moth and a spider: tinyurl.com/5eku5bff (1/5)
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Marla Feller @mfeller.bsky.social · 17/12/2025
Creative and important study for understanding visual processing.
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MultiplEye Lab @multipleye-lab.bsky.social · 13/12/2025
Join us for your PhD! Apply by 15th Dec ⏰ to come to @bristolbiosci.bsky.social and study spider eyes, development and visual ecology under light pollution! Open to all nationalities, funded incl. stipend, set in a beautiful city, and with amazing collaborators ✨ www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
findaphd.com
Funded PhD - The impacts of light pollution on plasticity and evolution in spider visual systems at University of Bristol on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - Funded PhD - The impacts of light pollution on plasticity and evolution in spider visual systems at University of Bristol, listed on FindAPhD.com
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ASSAB @animbehav.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
A new PhD opportunity in Melbourne!
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Johanna Mappes @jmappes.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
Thrilled to announce a Postdoc opportunity in our group on the evolutionary genetics and ecology of colour. Wonderful system, great collaborators, and room to shape your own ideas. Apply by 7 Jan: jobs.helsinki.fi/job/13477181...
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Cedric van den Berg @vancedberg.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
#colsci @micatoolbox.bsky.social
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Behavioral Ecology @behavecol.bsky.social · 03/12/2025
Larger frogs are better mimics but are more risk-averse in a nontoxic poison frog #Aposematism #WarningSignals #Ampibian doi.org/10.1093/behe...
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ISBE2026 @isbe2026.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
Make sure you don’t miss our key dates for abstract submission and registration!
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Pietro Pollo @pietropollo.bsky.social · 30/11/2025
I forgot to share that our paper came out a few months ago! We synthesise decades of research showing that conspicuous traits consistently predict attractiveness, condition, and fitness across animals. Check it out if you’re into sexual selection and signalling! doi.org/10.1111/ele....
doi.org
Synthesis of Nature's Extravaganza: An Augmented Meta‐Meta‐Analysis on (Putative) Sexual Signals
Conspicuous traits like bright colours and elaborate displays are widely thought to evolve through sexual selection, but evidence has been scattered. This meta-meta-analysis of 41 studies across 375 ...
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Benito Wainwright @benitoexplains.bsky.social · 29/11/2025
Very happy to see our opinion article out in @cp-trendsecolevo.bsky.social today. 🥳 We ask whether sexual signals can influence the evolutionary trajectory of naturally selected adaptations, such as protective colouration, for better or for worse 🧐 1/n doi.org/10.1016/j.tr...
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Bibiana Rojas @biobiiana.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
New paper out in @behavecol.bsky.social! Multiple studies show that sexually selected traits such as colours can reflect the presence of pathogens/parasites, but, can defensive coloration do the same? L. Schlippe Justicia, @carodittrich.bsky.social, O. Nokelainen & I tackled that question (1/3)
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Vivek Nityananda @viveknityananda.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
I've been pretty agnostic about mantis colour vision given the evidence so far. This new paper makes a convincing case they have the processing to do so. Mantises (probably) see in colour folks!
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Sam England @samjakeengland.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
Do you work (/want to work) with caterpillars? Or sensory systems? Or BOTH?! Well good golly do we have the paper for you! We explain the senses that caterpillars have, what they use them for, and how anthropogenic sensory pollution might be messing it all up 🐛 doi.org/10.1007/s003...
doi.org
The sensory ecology of caterpillars - Journal of Comparative Physiology A
Caterpillars (larval Lepidoptera) are one of the most ecologically and evolutionarily significant taxa on Earth. As both feeders and food, they shape the dynamics of enumerate ecosystems on land. Key ...
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Jolyon Troscianko @jtroscianko.bsky.social · 06/11/2025
BehaveAI is live! Our biologically inspired video analysis tool sees motion as colour. Track animals or objects, classify their behaviour, and handle complex natural scenes with ease. Semi-supervised annotation, no GPUs required, user-friendly, free & open source. Pre-print tinyurl.com/BehaveAI
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Tom Baden @neurofishh.bsky.social · 04/11/2025
Now out in Cell! Congratulations to all involved, especially @chiarafornetto.bsky.social For a breakdown, see the bluetorial from when we posted the preprint: bsky.app/profile/neur... Funding: @erc.europa.eu @wellcometrust.bsky.social @ukri.org @leverhulme.ac.uk @thelisterinstitute.bsky.social
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Cedric van den Berg @vancedberg.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
#colsci
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Vivek Nityananda @viveknityananda.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
New #PhD ad alert! Interested in wild #bee #cognition and #brains in different #bumblebees? Want to live in #Newcastle and the beautiful north-east of England? Check out this project with me, @lenariab.bsky.social and Sarah Scott. Contact me for further information. iapetus.ac.uk/studentships...
iapetus.ac.uk
The cognitive ecology of wild bumblebees
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Royal Society Publishing @royalsocietypublishing.org · 26/10/2025
Humans perceive but animals don’t: pitfalls in using plasticine models for assessing biotic interactions buff.ly/7hcLYXx | #ProcB #Ecology
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Department of Biology, Lund University @biologylu.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
Exiting career-boosting opportunity for a a skilled and highly motivated postdoctoral researcher: We're hiring a Post-doctoral fellow in Evolutionary Biology! Please apply no later than 31 October! lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/...
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Piali Sengupta @senguptalab.bsky.social · 16/10/2025
Despite the mess, we are grateful to be funded, have exciting science happening, and have an opening for a postdoc! If you are interested in sensory biology and esp in cilia, thermosensation, or interoception, and would like to join an interactive & supportive group - please email. Please RT 🙏
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Hanna Kokko @kokkonut.bsky.social · 17/10/2025
🚨🚨Job! 🚨🚨Permanent (75% time) job! We are a pretty awesome research group & seek a manager who deals with everything: personnel tasks, organizing retreats, preparing code for teaching / data structures for research... Fluency in German & English essential. stellenboerse.uni-mainz.de#/jgu/job/51527
stellenboerse.uni-mainz.de
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Wilson Ornithological Society @wilsonornithsoc.bsky.social · 09/10/2025
BIRDBASE, a new publicly available dataset, brings together "ecological and life history traits for 11,589 bird species across 254 families." #ornithology
popsci.com
Explore a bird database with 11,500 species
Twenty-six years ago, a PhD student's unanswered question sparked a bird data revolution.
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Cedric van den Berg @vancedberg.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
😍 hardcore #colsci !
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Melanie Brien @melbrien.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
Funded PhD position available 🎉 Come and work with me in Helsinki to uncover the pathways producing colourful tiger moth wings. Lots of options for genomics, CRISPR, fieldwork, behaviour experiments… Email with questions! jobs.helsinki.fi/job/Helsinki...
Wood tiger moth on leaf. Photo: Juhani Maamela.
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Laura Kelley @lauraakelley.bsky.social · 26/08/2025
Deadline for submitting an abstract to give a talk or poster is this Friday!
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