International Society for Neuroethology

🕷️💤 New paper in time for 🎃! Do #spiders really sleep? In our new study on #Portia fimbriata we tested all behavioural criteria of #sleep and found evidence for regulated, two-stage sleep with recurring REM-like stages. Out in @pnas.org! @roesslerdaniela.bsky.social 📄 tinyurl.com/3fky8ze7 🧵1/9

The marsh frog, Pelophylax ridibundus uses a magnetic compass for migration. A new study conducted electroretinograms 👁 during magentic field manipulations. 🐸🧭🧲. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

A new study measures the mechanics undelying sound production in the songbird Zonotrichia leucophrys. 🐦 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Mark your calendars for the Neuroethology: Behavior, Evolution and Neurobiology GRC which will take place at the Jordan Hotel at Sunday River (Maine, USA) on August 8-13, 2027. www.grc.org/neuroetholog...

Simultaneous awake replay of multiple spatial representations www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

How does sensory-induced arousal affect spatial navigation? A new study @currentbiology.bsky.social discovered that an alerting sound recruit head-direction cells in the thalamus which enhances the fidelity of head-direction coding. 🐀🧭 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

For anyone interested in seeing my talk today at Society for Avian Paleontology and Evolution, I've made a link here. I review some of the ways we can potentially infer the sensory abilities of extinct bird species. #ornithology #paleontology #neuroethology youtu.be/KYwfgPr6S1s?...

“This social, chonky creature 'sees' magnetic fields with its near-blind eyes to navigate its hand-dug, kilometers-long subterranean tunnels; the longest built by any mammal, save ourselves.” #scicomm #sensoryecology #neuroskyence #magnetosensation www.sciencealert.com/mole-rats-ge... 🧪 🦊 🧲

Job alert for theoreticians! 2yr NERC-funded postdoc to model coevolution of learning & social structure. With Bram Kuijper, @cornishjackdaws.bsky.social @andyradford.bsky.social @ljnbrent.bsky.social Based @uniexecec.bsky.social in beautiful Cornwall Deadline Dec 14. Apply: tinyurl.com/3ym39cuv

One week left to submit an abstract to our Subcortical Sensory Circuits Meeting taking place in Trieste in February 2027! www.subcortical2027.com

I’m looking for two PhD students with competitively awarded scholarships: 1) Cognitive maps for causal inference warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fa... 2) Brain mechanisms of working memory removal and repetitive negative thinking midlandsmhndtp.ac.uk/project/2027...

Fly neuro PIs (old-hand or soon-to-be)! Registration for the Crete Workshop on Neural Circuits & Behavior of Drosophila is now open: sites.google.com/view/crete-f... Deadline: Nov 30th.

I have the best colleagues and the most wonderful students, all surrounded by gorgeous mountains ☺️ 🗻. Come join our great community! employment.utah.edu/salt-lake-ci...

We're hiring a bird or mammal biologist (TT faculty position). Experience with collections is a huge plus. I'm not on the search committee, but happy to answer any questions. Come join us in Los Angeles! careers.pageuppeople.com/873/nr/en-us...

Science meets art!🧪🖌 It is #birdtober and this is a great chance to advertise the exhibition of @co-la.bsky.social at the "Wattenmeer Besucherzentrum" in Wilhelmshaven. You will get a new view on both: birds and art ❤️🐦🦉🦜🎨 Make sure to visit & share ↘️ www.wattenmeer-besucherzentrum.de/sonderausste...

@neuroethology.org for those who teach neuroethology classes. Which book do you use or which reviews that are related to your research give a good overview of the topic?

Neural coordination of wing and leg movements during a terrestrial threat display: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...

Duke Biology has two faculty positions we're searching for: 1) Assistant Professor in Cellular and Molecular Systems 2) Assistant Professor of the Practice with a focus on Ecology. See here the following link for more details and how to apply: biology.duke.edu/about-us/jobs

The Tschida Lab is hoping to recruit a new PhD student this cycle. We're particularly keen to find candidates with an interest in systems neuroscience + social behavior. Please RT, and please send any interested students my way!

#JNeurosci: How do birds decipher information from their songs? Ahmadi et al. found that neurons in the primary auditory forebrain of birds synchronously respond to salient sounds from birdsong to comprehend messages from this form of communication. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2108-25.2026

I'm very honored that our research was covered by the New York Times! @alexaroblesgil.bsky.social wrote a beautiful piece that captures the science & mystery of cephalopod camouflage: www.nytimes.com/2026/10/12/s... I want to emphasize that this project is the result of an incredible team effort...

Our paper’s out! 🐟👀 How does the four-eyed fish Anableps see in air and water at once? It expanded its air-facing ventral retina and redeployed existing opsins there. Congrats Louise Perez @perezlouise.bsky.social & Lina Shi! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I wrote a review of clonal raider ant biology and why the species is such a good model system to study various fundamental aspects of social insect biology in the lab. Here is the online early version: www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

@currentbiology.bsky.social with another banger. Go to ~1:50 in the video

Check out this new amazing paper from the Yartsev lab in which they analyze neuronal population dynamics of the 🦇 motor cortex during flight! They identify that the dynamics are high-dimensional, in contrast to experiments performed in restrained conditions. Have a look! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Highlighting a couple of lovely behavior-focused preprints from some of the newer rodent neuro labs at Janelia: mice hunting crickets in the @emilyjanedennis.bsky.social lab (tinyurl.com/5fenwwh8) and exploring structured, complex environments in the @jvoigts.bsky.social lab (tinyurl.com/4ewsvvhw)

How do 🐁deal with complex landscapes? Turns out they learn a lot very quickly. We think they do this by learning a set of repeated sparse paths, which form a type of compressed world model. Joint work with the Hermundstad lab, led by Tzuhsuan Ma and Alison Comrie: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

How does a brain remember a particular orientation or goal? In this new fascinating paper from the Nagel lab, authors show the role of disinhibition in the head-direction circuit and the interaction of sensory input and ongoing behavior. Read it here 🪰🧭 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excited to share my lab’s latest preprint led by postdoc @yukihaba.bsky.social and grad student Ryan Schwark. We surprisingly find that spontaneous behavior in isolation predicts a naked mole-rat’s identity, its colony membership, and even rank within its colony. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Our new paper just out: Gallo, V., Bridges, A.D., Woodgate, J.L., Chittka, L. (2026) Honeybee comb geometry emerges from local redistribution of angular space by worker construction activity. npj Entomol. 1, 5. doi.org/10.1038/s444... rdcu.be/Wcv9wskwEqCa

Our lab's latest paper on the neurobiology of collective behavior is now published www.nature.com/articles/s41... This is the work of a great team in the lab - led by Jo-Hsien Yu, with Geoff Meyerhof, Jimjohn Milan, and Julia Napoli @nature.com @danionella.bsky.social

BREAKING NEWS The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel “for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.”

In vivo electrophysiology in head-fixed and freely moving mole-rats

New findings in the Pacific Hagfish, a jawless vertrebrate, show that adult retinogenesis 👁️🐟 is a deeply conserved trait within the vertebrate lineage. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Eusocial insects show age-related division of labour. Interior workers become foragers later in their life. The evolutionary neurobiology of age-related division of labour is studied in the 🧠 of a ‘living social fossil’ 🐜whose behavior is age-independent. royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Geckos are among the few non-avian reptiles that emit acoustic signals. Under noise, they increase call duration beyond their respiratory constraints. They do so by emitting bi-notes that are interrupted by "mini-breaths". royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article... @royalsocietypublishing.org

Usually, the orientation behaviour of migratory butterfly/moth species are tested when tethered in flight simulators at ground level. In this new study, monarch butterflies are tethered on a balloon to test their orientation behaviour at a height of 30 m. 🦋 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Mosquitoes escape with a higher success rate than fruit flies when attacked by dragonflies. Could they be using their sense of hearing to initiate escape maneuvers? We explore this question in our new (and improved) preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We used virtual mates and genetic algorithms to ask swordtail fish to design their ideal mate. Males all liked larger females but females did not share a clear preference for male appearance. Led by @kathrynbullough.bsky.social @grahancock.bsky.social in @royalsocietypublishing.org shorturl.at/rCeR2

When a fish sees the world move, it immediately swims with it. This is the optomotor response: a visual reflex found across animals that helps us maintain our position and orientation as our surroundings appear to drift. 🐟👀

Conditioning experiments often test choice behavior at a single point in time. @karlakaun.bsky.social lab designed an open-field assay to continuously track the behavior of conditioned 🪰 and showed how collective behavior dynamics modulate decision-making. journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

Mountain chickadees rely on spatial memory to forage in unpredictable environments and on song to defend their territories. Watch #ProcB author Sofia Haley talk about research that suggests overall song output may be an indicator of cognitive ability: cassyni.com/events/Mw4c4... #ecology

My institute is hiring a group leader in Neuroethology! Bonn is a wonderful place to do neuroscience. Check it out! jobs.b-ite.com/jobposting/4...

Acoustic exposure induces short-term plasticity of reproductive behaviors such as call production in frogs 🐸. Here, scientists tested long-term effects of exposures to biotic and abiotic natural sounds. journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/... @jexpbiol.bsky.social

With X-ray tomography, scientists describe a new leaf-cutter bee species preserved in Baltic amber. They also document the first fossil bee-mite association. Beautiful insights into the prehistoric evolution of bees. 🐝 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I'm excited to share our new preprint: Generation of a transgenic cephalopod tinyurl.com/pc86jxz8 Cephalopods (cuttlefish, octopus & squid) are crazy critters that dynamically camouflage to their surroundings by changing the color, pattern, & texture of their skin, which they control w their brain.

Our Neuroevolution textbook is finally in print! Free online edition: neuroevolutionbook.com Pre-order: a.co/d/06DpkH9h I am incredibly grateful to my co-authors Sebastian Risi, Yujin Tang, and Risto Miikkulainen for making this happen. Thread:

New year, new conference! Registration for the next Annual Meeting of the Ethological Society is officially open! 🤩 Save the date, sign up, and join us in beautiful Konstanz 24–27 February, 2027 @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social www.ab.mpg.de/etho-2027

GABA is the most abundant inhibitory neurotransmitter. This review summarizes molecular and pharmacological properties of insect GABA receptors by comparing the american cockroach and the fruit fly. 🪳🪰 www.mdpi.com/2813-2564/5/...

After a long journey it's finally out! My work on navigation strategy-dependent hippocampal representations during plnning with Richard Morris is out on @natcomms.nature.com ! rdcu.be/iS72dYSzBxya