Sercan Sayin
Postdoc @ Excellence Cluster “The Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour”
VR, locust behavior and neurobiology
- Reposted by Sercan SayinThe first paper from the lab is now out in Science Advances: Multimodal social context modulates larval behavior in Drosophila www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... We find that fly larvae keep their distance to conspecifics in the absence of food, enjoy reading! @cbehav.bsky.social @uni-konstanz.de
- Reposted by Sercan SayinNew blog post!!🚨 Michael Chimento gives an overview of the new R package STbayes, designed for creating, fitting and understanding Bayesian models of social transmission 🌍 🧪 Read the blog here 👇
- Reposted by Sercan SayinThrilled to start 2026 with our latest preprint, in which we dive into a dedicated forward-walking circuit in the fly brain: doi.org/10.64898/202.... This effort was spearheaded by the fantastic @chrisjdallmann.bsky.social with help from a bunch of talented people in the lab.
- How does the brain control locomotion? In our new preprint, we uncover a brain circuit in Drosophila that controls forward walking independently of turning. This dedicated locomotor circuit enables flexible motor control and might reflect a shared principle across species. doi.org/10.64898/202...
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- Reposted by Sercan Sayin*First preprint from our lab* !!!!! How does the brain learn to anchor its internal sense of direction to the outside world? 🧭 led by Mark Plitt @markplitt.bsky.social & Dan Turner-Evans, w/ Vivek Jayaraman: “Octopamine instructs head direction plasticity” www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Thread ⬇️
- Reposted by Sercan Sayin1/6: New publication from the lab: “Plastic landmark anchoring in zebrafish compass neurons” by Ryosuke Tanaka (@ryosuketanaka.bsky.social) and Ruben is available here: rdcu.be/eX1L4
- Reposted by Sercan Sayinwww.cell.com/cell/fulltex... We had a lot of fun working on this project (led by Itzel Ishida, not on bluesky). Some interesting highlights from the paper -
- Reposted by Sercan SayinOur paper is published today in Current Biology and is featured on the cover! We report a neat, and somewhat counter-intuitive, finding: higher-ranking baboons get less and more interrupted night-time rest.
- Reposted by Sercan Sayin1/n: A new collaborative preprint from the lab to start the year: "A multi-ring shifter network computes head direction in zebrafish" together with Siyuan Mei, Martin Stemmler and Andreas Herz from the LMU, Munich.
- Reposted by Sercan SayinVideo abstract for our preprint, “Connectome simulations identify a central pattern generator circuit for fly walking”, bit.ly/4pubCuN Animated by T Sloan @quorumetrix.bsky.social, narrated by @sarahpugly.bsky.social, music by J McNamara, collab w @bingbrunton.bsky.social. youtu.be/twAZlL6olS4
- Reposted by Sercan SayinI'm no purist when it comes to participating in things we all know are bad. I try to reduce my harm but I'm an honest hypocrite. I won't judge you for still using Spotify, just try this rad alternative. I'm listening to music from Dar es Salaam. Where will you listen to? radio.garden/listen/furah...
- Reposted by Sercan Sayin(1/n) We are excited to share our new paper in Nature Communications, by Hagar Lavian (@hlavian.bsky.social) and team, revealing how the zebrafish brain integrates visual navigation signals! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Sercan SayinJob Alert! The Institute for Neuro- and Behavioural Biology at the Faculty of Biology @uni-muenster.de invites applications for a Full Professorship (W3) in “Systems Neuroscience” - Highly attractive research environment at the Multiscale Imaging Center. Apply by January 5th. See shorturl.at/VczFp
- Reposted by Sercan SayinFirst neurons didn’t appear overnight. We trace their roots to ancient secretory cells - showing how lifestyle & behavior shaped the evolution of first synapses.🧠🌊 #Evolution #Neuroscience Our latest in @natrevneuro.nature.com Link: rdcu.be/eMX3E @jeffcolgren.bsky.social @msarscentre.bsky.social
- Reposted by Sercan SayinFinally, someone has solved a real problem with AI! No more having to take a paper in the format for a journal that rejected you, and reformat it for a new journal. Well done!! formatmypaper.com
- Reposted by Sercan SayinWhich processes underlie collective intelligence in naturalistic human groups? In new work led by Valerii Chirkov, we show that payoff selectivity is key in transforming a group of individuals into an intelligent collective 🤝🧠 www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY7n... Preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...
- Reposted by Sercan SayinNew study from #UniKonstanz @cbehav.bsky.social and @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social shows: animal swarms don’t need to follow fixed rules; their coordination emerges from brain dynamics. Flexible “ring attractor” networks create complexity from simplicity: t1p.de/4c6cd @icouzin.bsky.social
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- Reposted by Sercan SayinFlyBase, a Drosophila database, will lose a third of its team in early October because the Harvard grant that covered the employees’ salaries was canceled. Scientists warn that losing FlyBase could devastate fly research. By @claudia-lopez.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/community/ha...
- Reposted by Sercan SayinIn humans, bigger teams often mean less effort per person — the #Ringelmann effect. Weaver #ants 🐜 flip the script: #teamwork makes them superefficient! Video + paper out now in Current Biology! @cellpress.bsky.social tinyurl.com/44yrvp6m tinyurl.com/3jnnevfn
- Reposted by Sercan SayinCheck out the newest episode of our podcast "In the Swarm"! Have you ever wondered how tiny insects navigate the world? In this episode, @anna-stoeckl.bsky.social explains how the tiny but mighty insect brain controls behaviour of stunning complexity. www.exc.uni-konstanz.de/collective-b...
- Reposted by Sercan SayinRegistration for the ASAB conference is now open - come join us!
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- Reposted by Sercan SayinNew paper out 🥳 The physiological costs of leadership in collective movements. - Trying to lead the group can be stressful, so it might not always be worth it!#openaccess at @currentbiology.bsky.social @cbehav.bsky.social @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social
- Led by @hanjabrrr.bsky.social, @damienfarine.bsky.social, and I, we combined ECG and GPS tracking from a whole group of vulturine guineafowl to show that collective movements, and especially attempting to lead under disagreement greatly increased Heart Rates. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Crazy two weeks: From the field research with mormon crickets at arid Utah/Colorado to lush Tuscany, discussing desert locusts collectives #grc #neuroethology. In either case, cannibalistic insects are cool 😎
- Behold the world’s first off the grid Mormon cricket virtual reality system! @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social @uni-konstanz.de @sercansayin.bsky.social @1imurphy.bsky.social @vishwanathvarma @pvnkmrksk.bsky.social @icouzin.bsky.social
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- Reposted by Sercan SayinExcited to share my PhD paper is out! We studied how motion vision is processed beyond the optic lobes to help flies walk straight. It has been a wonderful collaboration with @michaelreiser.bsky.social, @dddavi.bsky.social and many others not in bluesky! Paper + digest here: bsky.app/profile/cham...
- 🪰How does a fruit fly walk or fly in a perfectly straight line — even at high speed? It’s not just sharp vision. A sophisticated neural computation is at work. 🧠New study led by @champalimaudf.bsky.social Eugenia Chiappe. 📖 www.fchampalimaud.org/news/researc... Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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- Reposted by Sercan Sayin🌍 We are launching a new #ManyLabs!!! Join the Heat & Cognition project! We're studying how extreme heat affects human thinking, social behavior & well-being — globally. Contribute & co-author: 🔗 Info: heatandmind.wordpress.com 📋 Sign up: www.soscisurvey.de/HeatandCogni... #EnvironmentalPsychology
- Reposted by Sercan SayinHello World! After almost a month of starting a research group - finally the announcement :) We are the 'Active Sensing Collectives' group (tinyurl.com/yckehxys) at the CASCB in the University of Konstanz. We're still growing, see PhD position ad below. @cbehav.bsky.social @uni-konstanz.de z.de
- Reposted by Sercan SayinThe first paper from the lab is out on biorxiv - enjoy reading! Social context and interactions influence our behavioral decisions - the same is true for the little fly larva!
- Reposted by Sercan SayinOur next Collective Behaviour Seminar #CollBehavSeminar is by @sercansayin.bsky.social from @uni-konstanz.de on 18th March 2025, @2pm UK time. Talks are 15 minutes long, with 15 minutes of questions. Subscribe to lnkd.in/eCWT2dvF to keep up to date and for information on our seminars.
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- A locust swarm descended upon collective behavior! Excited to share my postdoc work with @icouzin.bsky.social
- Virtual reality rewrites the rules of the swarm. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... We find that classical models of collective behavior fail to account for collective motion. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
- This has been a truly team-effort: Many thanks to @einatcouzin.bsky.social, Inga Petelski, @yguenzel.bsky.social, Mohammad Salashour, @lately-chewie.bsky.social, @jgraving.bsky.social, Liang Li, Oliver Deussen, @theswordlab.bsky.social, @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social, @uni-konstanz.de
- Here is a great summary of work @science.org, with some steamy soundtrack! Locust swarms call for a rewrite of the swarming rules. Take a look at our field, lab (2000 locusts tracked at the same time), VR, and modeling study of locusts:
