Will Allen
Associate Professor in Evolutionary and Sensory Ecology - Swansea University, Wales www.easelab.uk
co-Director @crocus-dla.bsky.social
Senior Editor @ecol-evol.bsky.social
- Urban camouflage.
- Celebrating a campaigning win today - after months of emails, calls, protests and meetings, Swansea Council backed down and decided to not to cover this beautiful historic bridleway in tarmac. Congrats to everyone who got involved - a victory for people power 🎉.
- Having a final sweep of followers who've moved here from the other place with SkyFollowerBridge before deactivating my account.
- The serenity of rolling over crunchy snow on my commute this morning was shattered when I opened my office door and saw water damage everywhere. All my books, artwork, photos ... feeling pretty devastated right now.
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- Thanks Vivek
- Matt Sparks presenting his PhD research on fly visual ecology in urban environments #ASABWinter2025
- Currently recruiting PhD students to follow up on this result - please come to have a chat if interested #ASABWinter2025
- Compared to warning colouration, camouflage is more affected by the sensory enviro 👀 🦋 #ASABWinter2025
- Application portal for 59 Crocus PhD project is now open - deadline 12th Jan. Two studentships also available to BAME candidates.
- The Crocus DLA will soon be open for applications to our Autumn 2026 intake for #PhD research across the environmental sciences with the University of Reading and Swansea University. www.findaphd.com/phds/program...
- More evidence of the benefits of lottery elements in funding.
- First publication! 🥳 Very excited that my Master’s research project from @royalholloway.bsky.social is out in @ecol-evol.bsky.social this week. Big thank you to @sjportugal.bsky.social for all the support from start to finish. Please don’t come for me Britney…
- New paper out today in Ecology and Evolution! Link below. Congrats PhD student @smthmpsn.bsky.social, on your first paper. All about how wild birds learn to avoid a novel aposematic warning signal. And a nice nod to Britney Spears in the paper title.
- Congrats Sam!
- 🚨Two funded PhDs on the evolutionary ecology of antipredator colouration 🦋 with myself and Iliana Medina. One in Swansea tinyurl.com/4thtbph6 deadline Jan 12th @crocus-dla.bsky.social The other in Melbourne - deadline Jan 1st Please share among potential students!
- Postdoc Caitlin Hawley sharing results from our work on Primate natal colouration at #PSGBCardiff2025
- 📢🦋 Our paper ‘Global selection on insect antipredator coloration’ is out and featured on the cover of @science.org We ran a huge experiment to find out how ecological context favours camouflage and warning colouration as antipredator strategies. 1/6 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
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- Thanks Vivek, it happened. See you in Edinburgh?
- This has got to be the #colsci paper to end all #colsci papers! Huge congratulations to @wlallen.bsky.social and Iliana Medina for this monumental effort. 🤯 Chefs kiss 🤌🏽
- 📢🦋 Our paper ‘Global selection on insect antipredator coloration’ is out and featured on the cover of @science.org We ran a huge experiment to find out how ecological context favours camouflage and warning colouration as antipredator strategies. 1/6 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
- Haha, thanks Benito - there is certainly plenty more colsci to come.
- Several other variables were important too, including whether the predator community had lots of insectivore specialists, the colours of other butterflies and moths in the prey community, and how gloomy the forest was. Please take a look at the paper for details! 5/6
- We conclude that whether animals evolve camouflage or warning colouration as their antipredator strategy depends on multiple mechanisms. This helps explain the evolution and global distribution of camouflaged and warningly coloured animals. 6/6
- In 21 different forests we exposed over 15,000 camouflaged and warning coloured artificial ‘moths’ to avian predation 🐦⬛. How do differences in predator and prey communities and light environment between locations affect predation on each colour strategy? 3/6
- We found predator competition had the largest effect, and it was bad news for prey with warning colouration – they were more likely to be sampled but slow to be learnt when hungry predators were competing for resources. 4/6
- Iliana Medina and I assembled a team of 50+ amazing collaborators inc. @jmappes.bsky.social @hannahmrowland.bsky.social hmrowland.bsky.social @facasaro.bsky.social saro.bsky.social @jtroscianko.bsky.social + many not on Bsky to run a field predation experiment across six continents. 2/6
- Matt Sparks, my PhD student, and Roger Santer wrote a very interesting article for The Conversation on fly vision, and why understanding it better can help prevent human disease. theconversation.com/how-a-fly-se...
- Depressing stich-up by the right-wing press. Rayner is an inspiration to everyone trying to get on in life after a difficult childhood, and for helping others to do the same. I hope she is back in Government soon.
- The genomics of discrete polymorphisms maintained by disruptive selection: Trends in Ecology & Evolution www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...
- New paper @biolinvasions.bsky.social led by Sarah-Sophie Weil. Can macroevolution inform contemporary invasion potential? We outline the assumptions of this approach, assess support, then test if dispersal ability can proxy for naturalisation success in several tetrapod groups. rdcu.be/eD9Tt
- Sunrise at Refugio Juclar in Andorra. Hiking retreat after ESEB.
- Haiku from today's bike ride: fast car overtakes oh no sleeping policeman exhaust scrapes down road
- Hot cats, cool linoleum floor.
- Can macroevolutionary indices be used to inform contemporary extinction risk? We explore this question in an Ecology Letters review out today. Led by Sarah-Sophie Weil and Laure Gallien, it should be a useful resource for anyone using these approaches. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
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- I'll send you an email.
- Our latest publication on using visual ecology approaches to improve insect pest control - here how modelling pest acuity can identify the best sized patterns for visual traps. Out in J. Insect Science: academic.oup.com/jinsectscien...
- Led by recent postdoc Natalie Roberts (now at Lund), with undergraduate researcher Madelyn Jones and my wonderful colleagues Farooq Shah and Tariq Butt (none on BSky yet!). Grateful for funding from BBSRC.
- Hawaiian caterpillar patrols spiderwebs camouflaged in insect prey’s body parts www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
- Clownfish diversification from anemone hosts influencing colour pattern, morphology and community assembly. Very nice study.
- www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Some cool color pattern analyses :)
- Current PhD student Matthew Sparks is working on this - urban fly visual ecology. Will share findings with you and Viz soon...
- subscriptions >>> shop.viz.co.uk/viz345bs
- @nature.com has just published online our new paper!🎉🐸🌡️Lead by @patricepottier.bsky.social and supervised by myself and @itchyshin.bsky.social: in this massive research effort we overcome several common convictions related to the topics we studied. www.nature.com/articles/s41... Here are take-homes.
- Congrats on a great study - coincidentally I gave a lecture on this exact topic yesterday. Will have to rewrite it for next year now!
- Swansea Council is currently felling hundreds of mature trees with zero public consultation.
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View full threadWhile motorists were consulted extensively for the shelved scheme, the first public notice of this scheme was two weeks after the work began!
- Would be interested to hear your thoughts @ianwalker.bsky.social @torstenbell.bsky.social
- This ‘improvement’ is happening because a forward-looking scheme to open up a large part of Swansea to safe car-free travel was shelved after pandering to the motorist lobby.
- The money is ‘use it or lose it’, so what we get is nature destruction.
- This is to widen a lovely car-free path I use on my daily commute through Clyne woods.
- A leaf-mimicking moth uses nanostructures to create 3D leaf shape appearance: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...
- I thought I knew all the footpaths near me but I found this sunken beaut on my morning run.
- All (female) velvet ants are badass, but why do some species have conspicuous spots on their metasoma? New paper led by Vinicius Marques Lopez out today looks into this: doi.org/10.1002/ece3...
- New article by Roger Santer and myself 'Insect visual perception and pest control: opportunities and challenges' available to read in Current Opinion in Insect Science: doi.org/10.1016/j.co...
- Looking for advice on mentoring people towards (funded) PhD training after a long break from research (e.g. to raise a family). Are there any targeted training programmes or funding opportunities in the UK?
- Quite a few opportunities out there for post-PhD fellowships (e.g. Daphne Jackson Trust) but I'm drawing a blank for researchers who had their break pre-PhD.
- Fully-funded PhD: Comparative analysis of collective behaviour in natural and artificial systems. Supervised by Andrew King and myself at Swansea University, @rjpheathcote.bsky.social (Oxford) and Marina Papadopoulou (Tuscia). Come fly in the swaRmverse! www.swansea.ac.uk/postgraduate...
- 🐵📢 I am recruiting a postdoctoral researcher to work for 6-months on our NSF-BBSRC project investigating the form and function of primate natal coats. Why are some🐒 babies🍊?! www.swansea.ac.uk/jobs-at-swan... Please pass on to potential applicants and get in touch if considering applying.
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- Yes, applications closed on the 8th, sorry.
- Ultrablack structural colour in the velvet ant Traumatomutilla bifurca - nicely demonstrated by friends Vinicius Marques Lopez, Rhainer Guillermo-Ferreira and colleagues. doi.org/10.3762/bjna...
