Lucy Aplin
Certified bird brain, researching cognitive and social ecology of parrots and parids. Currently holding down a dual position at the Australian National University and the University of Zurich
- Reposted by Lucy AplinOur new review of beluga sociality and culture just dropped at Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology! Some of our key conclusions summarized 🧵 doi.org/10.1007/s002... @marine-valeria.bsky.social @dmennill.bsky.social @raincoast.org
- Reposted by Lucy AplinCats and foxes are indisputable major causes of extinction and decline of Australian native mammals academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...
- Reposted by Lucy AplinWe are hiring! We have an open position for a new lab coordinator in #primate #cognition and #behavior in the Cognitive Evolution Group at University of Michigan - Ann Arbor. Find out more at: sites.lsa.umich.edu/cognitive-ev...
- Reposted by Lucy AplinWe are hiring at the Wytham Woods for the upcoming field season. 4 roles available. Please share with anyone who might be interested. #UKbirds #birdringing
- Enjoying some possum ASMR this evening with@damienfarine.bsky.social. You can see her young moving in the pouch.
- A trio of tawny frogmouths. This pair (here with this year‘s fledgie) have slept in our (their) garden as long as we’ve been here, and I love them to bits ❤️
- Reposted by Lucy AplinWe are hiring – postdoc position exploring how kinship shapes social ageing in killer whales. Collaboration with @samellisq.bsky.social @drwhale.bsky.social and Prof Rufus Johnstone (Cambridge) starts 1st April 2026 and ends 31st March 2029. Apps close 2nd Feb. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPZ788/p...
- An insightful and engaging conversation with @pbrakes.bsky.social on how and why to conserve animal cultures
- To survive and flourish, many animal species rely on ecological knowledge. But this knowledge is not always spread across the group—it's often held by certain "keystone individuals." Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, w/ @pbrakes.bsky.social! Listen: disi.org/the-value-of...
- Reposted by Lucy AplinHappy 2026 ASSABers! We hope you had a stunning holiday break and a very happy New Year. A reminder that our conference is a little over 5 months away!
- Reposted by Lucy AplinCounting down our most popular papers of the year.. in at no. 6 is a #BiologyLetters study showing sulphur-crested #cockatoos in Sydney learned to operate public drinking fountains, using their beaks and feet to turn taps and access water: doi.org/10.1098/rsbl...
- What a lovely start to the year! Paddled from ANU campus to an island on the lake, had a BBQ in glorious weather, found a dusky woodswallow colony and a washed up ironbark offcut, which @damienfarine.bsky.social has made into a cheeseboard (🧀 for scale).
- Reposted by Lucy AplinDo you love quantifying animal behavior as much as we do? We have just the tool for you! Presenting #OCTRON - a pipeline that helps you create rich annotation data and enables training of custom segmentation models. Have a look, particularly if you work with non-model / invertebrate organisms!
- A big step forward in how we model NBDA, with a great step-by-step user guide. Check it out!
- 🎉🍾 very excited to see this out before 2025 ends doi.org/10.1111/2041... with Will Hoppitt in @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social. This paper is an overview of our new R package STbayes, a user-friendly toolkit for performing Bayesian NBDA analyses. @cbehav.bsky.social @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social
- Reposted by Lucy AplinCongratulations to Hanna Kokko for receiving this year’s ASAB medal! Hanna has done extraordinary work and we are so pleased to honour her at #ASABWinter2025
- We couldn't have asked for a better end-of-year lab BBQ / stroll at a local nature reserve. Spotted platypus, emu, bandicoots, roos, wallabies, YTBC (black cockies), wedge-tailed eagles, and of course hundreds of sulphur-crested cockies feasting on the wattles. Glorious!
- Reposted by Lucy AplinSorry to hear that Martin Parr has died. When he was documenting Oxford University he came out to Wytham Woods to photograph our team doing fieldwork - featuring @mcmahok.bsky.social & @lucymaplin.bsky.social as well as Fraser Bell & Ella Cole. The generally serious demeanour was at his request!
- Reposted by Lucy AplinMeet Chrissie Painting the new ASSAB president! @cpaintingnz.bsky.social is a Senior Lecturer and behavioural ecologist at the University of Waikato. Her research seeks patterns in animal behaviour and morphology, with a particular focus on insect and arachnid mating systems. 🪰🕷️🪳
- Reposted by Lucy AplinWhere to start, with a statement like this? "Tim Ayres said the cuts were aimed at refocusing … CSIRO towards research priorities, such as critical minerals, iron & steel production in Australia." From some rando down the bus stop, one would brush it off. But this is from our Science Minister 🤯
- Reposted by Lucy AplinOnly 2 days left to get your abstracts in!
- Calling all parrot enthusiasts!
- Reposted by Lucy AplinJust 1 week to apply! 4 year @erc.europa.eu funded PhD position working in an interdisciplinary team to study #culturalEvolution as a process of reuse, recombination, and creative re-engineering of past solutions. Details 👉 hmc-lab.com/ERCPhDCultur... 🙏Please share!
- Fully-funded 4-year #PhD in Cultural Evolution! Join my @erc.europa.eu project exploring how compression & compositionality drive cultural innovation: hmc-lab.com/ERCPhDCultur... Apply by Nov 12! Maybe of interest to folks from #COSMOS2025 or @eslr.bsky.social? Please feel free to share! 🙏
- Our common garden pigeons: crested pigeons, & (personal fav of @damienfarine.bsky.social) the common bronze-wing. Every evening the bronze-wings waddle down the garden path to commute to our bird bath. Check out that underwing!
- enjoying a soak...
- Reposted by Lucy Aplin📢 The Call for Abstracts for Culture Conference 2026 is officially OPEN! 📢 🗓️ Deadline: 8 Dec 2025 We welcome submissions from all career stages and relevant disciplines. 🔎Details & submission info: culture-conference.com/abstract-sub... Keynote speakers & workshop details coming soon!
- I would have loved to do this!
- I am looking for a postdoc to work in our long-term system of food-caching mountain chickadees in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The expected start is April 2026. Please see details here: chickadeecognition.com/positions If interested and qualified, please contact me directly (email on the website).
- Reposted by Lucy AplinA special type of fishing takes place in southern Brazil: dolphins drive the prey into the net. The fishermen work so closely together that even their heart rates synchronise. Discovered by a research team led by #UniKonstanz @cbehav.bsky.social biologist @hanjabrrr.bsky.social: t1p.de/d56g3
- Reposted by Lucy AplinPOSTDOC JOB AD: I'm hiring a Bayesian ecologist to build a (IMO, extremely fun) model of humpback whale spatiotemporal dynamics in California 2-year position starting fall 2026. in-person in Santa Cruz; collab w with Mevin Hooten's lab at UT Austin. ask me Qs or apply: recruit.ucsc.edu/JPF02003
- Reposted by Lucy Aplin🚨 Cultural Evolution PhD Alert!
- Fully-funded 4-year #PhD in Cultural Evolution! Join my @erc.europa.eu project exploring how compression & compositionality drive cultural innovation: hmc-lab.com/ERCPhDCultur... Apply by Nov 12! Maybe of interest to folks from #COSMOS2025 or @eslr.bsky.social? Please feel free to share! 🙏
- Reposted by Lucy AplinInterested in a PhD in ornithology? Funding available for projects at the interface of ecology, behaviour & evolution from Oct '26 working on long-term population studies of tits at Wytham, based in @biology.ox.ac.uk in the new Life & Mind Building in Oxford www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
- Reposted by Lucy AplinPeak cockatoo breeding season! Look out for those pairs lucky enough to secure rare real estate; they should be feeding chicks now.
- Reposted by Lucy Aplin'The Australian Academy of Science has savaged the Strategic Examination of Research and Development (Serd) for overlooking a long-term funding decline which has left basic research at “breaking point”.' Worth remembering that when Australian HE sector sneezes, UK HE sector.... 1/2
- Reposted by Lucy AplinToday IUCN has officially declared the Slender-billed Curlew extinct, marking the first known global extinction of a formerly widespread migratory bird species whose range included mainland Europe, North Africa, and West Asia. Read more here ⬇️ www.unep-aewa.org/fr/node/6632
- Reposted by Lucy AplinOur study demonstrates alternative pathways to direct cultural inheritance from parents in species with multiple offspring and limited periods of parental care that can lead behavioral similarities within family units. (4/5) www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4u1...
- Reposted by Lucy AplinPresenting juvenile songbirds with sliding door foraging puzzles, we found that while the first learners of a sibling cohort did so from non-parental adults and partially from parents, subsequent siblings almost exclusively learned from their already knowledgeable sibling. (3/5)
- Reposted by Lucy AplinOut today in @plosbiology.org (1/5) Siblings and non-parental adults provide alternative pathways to cultural inheritance in juvenile great tits 🐦🧩 Link to study: 10.0.5.91/journal.pbio... Co-authors: @lucymaplin.bsky.social @galarconnieto.bsky.social
- Reposted by Lucy Aplin@sonjawild.bsky.social @galarconnieto.bsky.social & @lucymaplin.bsky.social show that young #GreatTits, which have limited #ParentalCare, learn to solve a foraging #puzzle socially, but rather than parents, siblings & non-parental adults are preferred role models @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/46JZn6n
- Reposted by Lucy Aplin🦅PhD position 🦅 in my new group at @fbm-unil.bsky.social in Switzerland, studying how the social and resource landscapes shape the learning process for soaring flight. Deadline: Oct 30. Pls repost! career5.successfactors.eu/career?caree...
- Reposted by Lucy AplinObituary: Jane Goodall (1934-2025) Pioneer primatologist who inspired generations of scientists go.nature.com/48aWjRU
- Reposted by Lucy AplinTRAVEL AWARDS - Apply for a travel award to support your trip, accommodation and registration! Application guidelines on www.isbe2026.com
- Reposted by Lucy Aplin#ISBE2026 Call for Abstracts is now open! Submit your abstract by 15 December 2025 on www.isbe2026.com @behavecol.bsky.social
- Reposted by Lucy AplinWe're looking for a new postdoc on our new BBSCR grant (Graham Taylor/Tim Guilford/Cait Newport). See link below! my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...
- Reposted by Lucy AplinWe are hiring - PDRA position exploring how information access shapes social dynamics in killer whales. Collaboration with @samellisq.bsky.social @drwhale.bsky.social Prof Dan Franks (York) start 1st Nov (or ASAP) end 31st Oct 2028. Apps close on 19th Oct. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOT336/p...
- Reposted by Lucy Aplin**PhD POSITIONS** I am recruiting 1-2 PhD students to work on sociality and cognition in Monk Parakeets, starting Fall 2026. Full ad is here: hobsonresearch.com/index.php/20... (please help spread the word!)
- Reposted by Lucy AplinA reminder: the environmental costs of fireworks ain't trivial www.publish.csiro.au/PC/PC22040
- Reposted by Lucy AplinCome & work with us - fully funded 4 year PhD on Social Ageing: Social environment effects on senescence, using an epigenetic clock www.rug.nl/about-ug/wor... @rug.nl @david-s-richardson.bsky.social @keesvanoers.bsky.social @seychelleswarbler.bsky.social photo: @charlisdavies.bsky.social
- Reposted by Lucy AplinCaught mid fluff! Little corellas are a smaller species of cockatoo (Cacatua sanguinea) that often join sulphur-crested cockatoo flocks, especially in urban areas.
- Reposted by Lucy AplinAttending my first international conference, Behaviour 2025, was an amazing experience😊 I got to meet so many people interested in the same field and received a lot of valuable feedback. Excited to turn this work into a publication! #vetmeduni #Behaviour2025 #kea #poster
- Reposted by Lucy AplinThe count down starts for #CESRabat! Follow @ces2026.bsky.social and join us May 11-13 next year for an exciting meeting in Rabat, Morocco. Massive thanks to the #CESRabat organising committee: Sarah Alami (co-chair) Mathieu Charbonneau (co-chair) Zachary Garfield Edmond Seabright
- Reposted by Lucy AplinUpdate: the deadline for the Biological Basis of Behavior has been extended to Sept 18th! ✨ aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05054 Please reach out to Linda Wilbrecht if you have any questions about the position.
- These job ads have now been posted! 🎉 Social/Personality: aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05020 Biological Basis of Behavior: aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05054 Please spread the word!
- Reposted by Lucy AplinThat's the spot...! A trio of allopreening cockies engaging in some social bonding at our field-site, captured by @elliearose.bsky.social. If you'd like to learn more about when and why cockies allopreen, check out a recent paper by @julia-penndorf.bsky.social: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Reposted by Lucy AplinThe secret to shrew brain shrinkage? 🤔 Not cell loss, but water loss! Our new paper shows that brain cells shrink by losing water, a wild feat of brain plasticity 🤯 Check the paper! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social @labdavalos.bsky.social @batichica.bsky.social
- Reposted by Lucy AplinMeet the 28 new Fellows being admitted to the Academy today at Science at the Shine Dome! 🎉 Elected by their peers for exceptional contributions, they’re shaping science through inspiring stories & groundbreaking research. Join us as we delve into their inspiring stories... vimeo.com/showcase/118...
- Reposted by Lucy AplinProfessor Susanne von Caemmerer FRS and Professor Graham Douglas Farquhar FRS are jointly awarded the Royal Medal (Biological) 2025 for refining the ways we monitor and model photosynthesis in leaves from molecular to global scales. #RSMedals royalsociety.org/medals-and-prizes/r…
- Reposted by Lucy Aplin📢We’re recruiting! 🌳Assistant Professor in Ecology, Evolution & Conservation A permanent teaching-focused position in our vibrant, welcoming and intellectually stimulating academic community. Deadline: 7 September. Apply here: bit.ly/3HKtNeZ
- Reposted by Lucy AplinLab member Lara Blumenstiel is currently wrapping up the last stage of training before moving on to cognitive testing. Sydney's clever cockies are playing her custom puzzle-box like pros!
- Reposted by Lucy AplinLast week we learned the Great Barrier Reef has suffered some of the worst bleaching in history This week, Ningaloo, another 🇦🇺 icon is experiencing catastrophic coral loss These are national treasures. We must take strong action on climate to save them. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08...
- Reposted by Lucy AplinIt’s #NationalScienceWeek! 🐦 Our HANZAB encyclopaedia is now online & free – covering every bird ever recorded in Aus, NZ & Antarctica. Updated with the latest taxonomy & threat statuses, it’s a game-changer for bird lovers & researchers alike 🔗 hanzab.birdlife.org.au #BirdLifeAustralia #Birds
- Reposted by Lucy AplinWe are pleased to announce our newly elected committee members of the Cultural Evolution Society: Minhua Yan @minhuayan.bsky.social Helena Miton @helenamiton.bsky.social Wataru Toyokawa @watarutoyokawa.bsky.social & Mason Youngblood @masonyoungblood.bsky.social Welcome and congratulations!!
- Reposted by Lucy AplinChannel-billed Cuckoos are big fig-eating parasitic cuckoos of Aust, Indonesia and PNG. Migrate S Sept-April where they lay their eggs mainly in the nests of Crows, Magpies and especially Currawongs. Seriously hated by other birds who harass them constantly! #WildOz #birds #AustralianWildlife
- Reposted by Lucy AplinAn extremely clever cockie, or one regretting their life choices? Spotted at our Canberra field-site by @lisafontana.bsky.social, it's first time we've seen a sulphur-crested cockatoo successfully fledge 3 chicks! The usual is 2 eggs laid, resulting in 0-1 chicks.
