Brendan Barrett
dad / evolutionary (behavioral) ecologist
group leader at MPI-AB and STRI research associate
social learning, cultural evolution, extragenetic inheritance, dispersal.
field & stats & math.
cyclist & runner / doom metal aficionado.
he/him.
- Reposted by Brendan Barretton that note, see: bsky.app/profile/oliv...
- reminder of cryptogyny, the hiding of women's contributions to science, technology, engineering, and medicine: "although three men received the Nobel Prize for penicillin, women participated significantly in the team effort that brought the drug to medical usefulness." www.jstor.org/stable/jj.55...
- Last preprint of the year from our group led by Meredith Carlson of UC Davis, showing white-faced capuchins exhibit material selectivity of hammerstone mass according to material properties www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
- We looked at four commonly processed resources-- two nuts, hermit crabs, and a freshwater snail
- In terms of mean dimensions and comparing the posterior popuation distributions from which raw materials and tool were drawn we see differences across most linear dimensions on Jicaron
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View full threadstay tuned in 2026 for some comparative multi-species work and unnecessary matrix algebra where we quantify and fit cognitive models of material selectivity. also more primate archaeology.
- now out, post peer review, led by @ehowaspi.bsky.social: empirically informed ABM suggesting that in orangutans dietary"know-what" requires social learning to develop
- Our New Paper is out in Nature Human Behaviour: 🚨 Culture is critical in driving orangutan diet development past individual potentials! 🦧 www.nature.com/articles/s41.... See 🧵
- in collaboration with @ctennie.bsky.social and others @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social [i think the 3 of us are the only ones on bluesky...]
- Reposted by Brendan Barrett🥳64 more days until the start of #Animove at #LaSelva Organization of Tropical Studies in #CostaRica. 22 participants, 6 tutors,2077 plant species,125 mammal species,470 bird species,48 amphibian species,87 reptile species,45 fresh water fish species and 10000 insects, arachnids and other.🐒🦇🦜🐊🦂
- Reposted by Brendan BarrettNew paper! We propose a framework to empirically study animal social relationships by modelling social network (SN) data as time-series—that is, without the need to aggregate them over time. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- For your consideration, our paper about how we can build a better error culture around biologging is now out in Animal Behavio(u)r. A collaborative effort between researchers the veterinarians at @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- this was a collaborative effort arising out of multiple conversations and experiences so authorship is in alphabetical order--- don't give me too much credit
- Postdoc position in individual-level incentives, social learning, and payoff-biased imitation shape group-level accuracy in complex prediction and decision-making tasks in Konstanz files.newsletter2go.com/l3slzozn/s_i...
- Reposted by Brendan Barrettthe IUCN have passed the Longevity Conservation motion put forward to them by @kellerfish.bsky.social and @pili-scotland.bsky.social and based on the paper we wrote on the value of older individuals in animal societies. www.cdu.edu.au/news/global-...
- Reposted by Brendan BarrettWas asked about collinearity again, so here's Vahove's 2019 post on why it isn't a problem that needs a solution. Design the model(s) to answer a formal question and free your mind janhove.github.io/posts/2019-0...
- Do any stats nerds have a good reference/examples for how to write about Gaussian Processes models and communicate them to readers? I am estimating spatial autocorrelation of things measured in grids and need some inspiration to guide my writing.
- Reposted by Brendan BarrettI really strongly feel that some fields of research would profit if researchers stopped collecting online data for some time and instead maybe just read a bit outside of their field.
- Reposted by Brendan BarrettWant to know more about monkeys kidnapping other monkeys?🐒 I had an amazing chat together with @bjjbarrett.bsky.social on @sidedoorpod.bsky.social about the Coiban capuchins and their wild antics. Science really is stranger than fiction! Listen 👂 here: www.si.edu/sidedoor/mon...
- Reposted by Brendan BarrettI am happy to announce that our project on risk and social learning is now in press at Psychological Review. Several new additions and revisions thanks to detailed feedback from colleagues and anonymous reviewers. osf.io/preprints/so... @psmaldino.bsky.social @babeheim.bsky.social
- My first PhD project is out there. Thank you to my advisor @psmaldino.bsky.social and to mentor, co-author and friend @babeheim.bsky.social for encouraging and helping build this exciting and insightful collaboration. Onwards!
- Reposted by Brendan BarrettOn Wed, Dec 10 I will be offering my comprehensive introduction to regression modeling at a steep discount in an effort to raise funds for World Central Kitchen and United Farm Workers. Details about the course and registration process can be found on my website, betanalpha.github.io/courses/.
- Reposted by Brendan BarrettSeen in the hallways of Aarhus University. <<Chef’s kiss>>
- I will be using my annual conference carbon flight credit to go to this conference (unless anyone else would like to bike to Morocco from Spain with me...)
- 👉 Full guidelines and requirements are available on the conference website. 🔗 Submit here: airess.fgses-um6p.ma/ces2026 We look forward to your contributions to CES2026!
- Reposted by Brendan Barrett🧠 Want to integrate cultural evolution into your course using award winning materials created by the field's experts, and get paid $2000 to do it? 💵 🚨 The Cultural Evolution Society is seeking applications for the ACE Teaching Innovation Awards. 🔖 Apply here: vuw.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...
- New paper from my group led by Odd Jacobson, former PhD student & current postdoc @livingingroups.bsky.social : How do animal groups simultaneously balance between- and within-group competition in dynamic environments and does this impact movement and space use? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- Using 33 years of movement data (partially georeferenced from historical written records) on 12 neighboring groups, focal follow data, and remotely sensing/climate records we extended the social relations model to examine within-group and between group-dyad predictors of competition over space use
- We show that bigger groups compensate for reduced per-capita foraging efficiency by expanding into less-exploited areas over longer timescales instead of increasing daily travel, but seasonality matters
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- Reposted by Brendan Barrett📣 Interested in cultural evolution and artificial life? Call for abstracts for our upcoming workshop at @alife2025.bsky.social. Accepted abstracts will be presented as flash talks, and are not archival. Deadline is the September 12, w/ rolling acceptance. Details: sites.google.com/view/planetx... 🧪
- its a `beepr` kind of day
- Reposted by Brendan Barrett🐒🕸️ New preprint! Confused about how to model animal social networks? ASNA can be confusing—but also full of opportunity. We break down 5 common misunderstandings in animal social network analysis and share solutions from behavioural ecology, anthro, stats, & network science. Hope it helps! A 🧵
- Reposted by Brendan Barrett
- Congrats to Dr. @zoegoldsborough.bsky.social on successfully defending her dissertation @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social and @imprs-qbee.bsky.social
- Hot new summer guilty pleasure read 🏖️
- Reposted by Brendan BarrettIn an effort to make old papers more reproducible, I’ve put the code on GitHub for: Kempe, Lycett & Mesoudi (2014) From cultural traditions to cumulative culture: parameterising the differences between human and nonhuman culture. Journal of Theoretical Biology 359, 29-36 github.com/amesoudi/kem...
- Reposted by Brendan BarrettI've wanted to write this article for years. About my and other's struggles to even survive sometime in #academia. Thank you to the amazing editors at @plosbiology.org that gave me the forum to write this piece. #science
- there has been a bunch of (many good) papers coming about about integrating Causal Inference and DAGS into research about behavior and ecology (i.e. doi.org/10.1111/brv....) but i thought it might be useful to show some example empirical papers that do so (see growing thread)...
- this is a undercited "banger", especially the SI where DAGs abound by academic.oup.com/beheco/artic...
- my own work about human wildlife conflict and household survey data, ket of which was highlighting that people often can't answer the questions they ask with the survey data the collect because of confounding doi.org/10.1016/j.bi...
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View full threadAlso this by @dominikdeffner.bsky.social @dingdingpeng.the100.ci & @rmcelreath.bsky.social journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
- Reposted by Brendan BarrettDid you know that our field guide to cross-cultural research on childhood learning is completely FREE? books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp...
- Reposted by Brendan BarrettMy paper with @schmidmax.bsky.social and @charlesmullon.bsky.social is out in @journal-evo.bsky.social 🌟 doi.org/10.1093/evol... 🌟 We show how the effect of longevity on local adaptation, rather than being unidirectional, depends on the life cycle and how frequent selection is relative to dispersal
- Reposted by Brendan BarrettPSA: Don’t trust anyone who tells you that you can identify age or period or cohort effects simply by applying the right statistical model to the right type of data. This is fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of the age-period-cohort problem!>
- Reposted by Brendan BarrettDo you use Earth Observation #data for #wildlife #ecology? Take this survey to share how you use remotesensing, climate and weather data. Part of SOS (www.dfg-sos.de), a project of @dlr-de.bsky.social, @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social, @uni-wuerzburg.de survey.lamapoll.de/EarthObserva...
- Reposted by Brendan BarrettCapuchins surprising us again, this time rather unpleasantly... featuring @zoegoldsborough.bsky.social and @bjjbarrett.bsky.social! www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...
- Reposted by Brendan BarrettWhat a disturbing series of inter-species kidnappings says about boredom, innovation, and the role of randomness in culture: www.npr.org/2025/05/19/n...
- Reposted by Brendan BarrettMonkeys kidnap the babies of other monkeys, and then wear them around for days on end... it's a grim tale I've written for the @nytimes.com! www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/s...
- Reposted by Brendan Barrett🧪🏺 Capuchins kidnapping howler infants: fascinated by many aspects of this- rapidity of 'fashion' spread, individual variation but also sex bias, and relevance in helping us imagine multiplicity of inter-species hominin interactions, inc. #Neanderthals & early H. sapiens www.cell.com/current-biol...
- Reposted by Brendan BarrettObservations from a seminar series in Biology shows that "Female speakers had smaller audiences, especially among professors, even with comparable productivity metrics." ecoevorxiv.org/repository/view/7175/ recommended @PeerCommunityIn Ecology […] [Original post on fediscience.org]
- Our new paper out, part of @zoegoldsborough.bsky.social dissertation and a surprising discovery
- Humans have many unusual traditions. But did you know animals’ strange behaviors can become culture too? Out now in Current Biology (doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...) we show the rise and spread of a surprising tradition: interspecies infant abduction. Interactive timeline (www.ab.mpg.de/671374) 🧵 (1/12)
- Here is a supplemental video: youtu.be/s3Y3JWVvB9Q and interactive website documenting the time series of abductions: www.ab.mpg.de/671374/Capuc...
- Reposted by Brendan BarrettHumans have many unusual traditions. But did you know animals’ strange behaviors can become culture too? Out now in Current Biology (doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...) we show the rise and spread of a surprising tradition: interspecies infant abduction. Interactive timeline (www.ab.mpg.de/671374) 🧵 (1/12)
- Reposted by Brendan BarrettCross-species teamwork from @livingingroups.bsky.social reveals unexpected similarities in three social mammals 🤔 By lead author @pminasandra.bsky.social with Emily Grout, Katrina Brock, Meg Crofoot, Vlad Demartsev, Amlan Nayak, Eli Strauss, Ari Strandburg-Peshkin🧵1/2 www.ab.mpg.de/679000/news_...
- Reposted by Brendan BarrettI'm guessing this is probably very well worth the read! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
