Richard Mann

Check out this talk from @dorabiro.bsky.social covering lots of our recent work together!!:)

Branigan et al. (2026-08 preprint, bioRxiv) 「クラウン有胎盤類の急速な放散のモデル化」 Modelling a rapid radiation of crown-group placentals doi.org/10.64898/202...

Our paper out today shows that the presence of dissent can be an indicator of collective wisdom in groups, whereas consensus decisions may indicate groupthink rather than genuine agreement. doi.org/10.1098/rsif...

📣New Lecture with @chriskrupenye.bsky.social Learn how studies of great apes are reshaping our understanding of social cognition and animal intelligence. 📅 Saturday, 11 July 🕓 16:00 GMT | 12:00 EDT | 09:00 PDT 📍 Online (Zoom) 🔗https://shorturl.at/FmkNy

Our new paper is out today! How is social information used in sequential decision-making? We did a virtual evacuation experiment with participants chosing between two options, standing in a line. We found that they followed the majority of previous decisions, rather than most recent ones.

We have funding for SWARM-E, a long-term group at @zif-bielefeld.bsky.social! I'll be leading with co-leads @marinapapa.bsky.social @joefresna.bsky.social to better understand collective behaviour across biological and artificial systems. First workshop 2027... www.shoalgroup.org/swarm More soon!

Very fun to chat with BBC World Service about Bluetooth and how it's powering our bird tracking projects. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w... @scienceanu.bsky.social @biologyanu.bsky.social

Really pleased to see this paper out! We show that collective intelligence emerges in wild birds, using radar traces from flocks of migratory hirundines. Many wild social animals might benefit from similar processes, but we could also see Allee effects as migratory populations decline.

The WISDOM OF CROWDS emerges in flocks of thousands of migrating songbirds! Excited to share our work published by @aaas.org in Science Advances! doi.org/10.1126/scia...

How does climate threat fuel polarization? 🧵 In our new paper, we introduce the ARCADE model. Using a 1,967-person experiment, we found that authoritarians suppress climate anger toward leaders and displace it onto outgroups, driving policy obstruction. Read: doi.org/10.1016/j.cr...

We are (somewhat astonishingly) hiring 5 full-time permanent lecturers in the School of Mathematics at Leeds across all specialisms. Note the explicit focus on interdisciplinary research. Closing date for applications: June 30 jobs.leeds.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx...

I will be talking about The Tree of Life at the Linnean Society on 25th June. If you are interested you can find out a little more and sign up for a ticket at the link below. Hope to see some of you there! members.linnean.org/events/69f21...

IQ-TREE 3: Phylogenomic Inference Software using Complex Evolutionary Models academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...

Excited to publish my first article for @newscientist.com for over ten years. It’s on the subject of - you’ll never guess - huge numbers. www.newscientist.com/article/2521...

A new publication from the TWCF-funded “Rationality and Reason Beyond the Individual Project” found evidence that chimpanzees may be able to reason about mutually exclusive future possibilities. Read more below. 👇

Opportunity: A fully funded PhD position for statisticians passionate about epidemiology. University of Leeds, start in September 2026. phd.leeds.ac.uk/project/2470...

Final version of record here: elifesciences.org/articles/107... Enjoy tracking

Can chimpanzees prepare for mutually exclusive possibilities individually or collectively? Check out our new paper in Phil Trans @royalsociety.org, led by @drelizabethwarren.bsky.social, and funded by @templetonworld.bsky.social! And stay tuned for the next paper, clarifying the mechanism!

New paper alert! 📢 Out now, fully #openaccess, in a special issue of Phil Trans on the evolution of collective intelligence (1/4) royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...

In a new book, mathematician Richard Elwes shares how mathematical boundaries have been broken time and time again, thanks to the creative explorers of the biggest numbers known. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/huge-numbers-book-math-googology

A special moment when something which has been buzzing around your brain and computer for ages finally achieves a physical form!

Intelligent agents can still take irrational actions and, sometimes, groups of animals are better at making good decisions than their constituent individuals. Read the latest article from the TWCF-funded project, “Rationality and Reason beyond the Individual“ project below.

Does being in a collective buffer against individual forgetting, when it comes to navigation? New paper by Joe Morford: we find that collectives of homing pigeons remember their routes better than individuals @dorabiro.bsky.social @richardpmann.bsky.social Thanks to @templetonworld.bsky.social !

Collective wisdom emerges in pigeons through forgetting randomly-different information over time doi.org/10.1038/s415...

I’m looking for a post doc (up to five years) interested in phylogenetics and earth systems - please spread the word!

Call for fully funded PhD positions at our Lab. All positions are open worldwide. Students develop their own project within any area of complex systems (for our PhD track). Please share with potential applicants and, if relevant to you, visit the link or DM for info. sys.imtlucca.it/program-over...

From Knowable Magazine: The curious life of a clever slime mold | Knowable Magazine knowablemagazine.org/content/arti...

This #FossilFriday I am delighted to share a postdoctoral position that we @deeptimeecology.bsky.social @camzoology.bsky.social are advertising on early animal evolution in the #Ediacaran. www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/postdoc...

I’ve written something for The Conversation on a fascinating recent paper by @grahbudd.bsky.social and @richardpmann.bsky.social on problems with molecular clocks. academic.oup.com/sysbio/artic... theconversation.com/a-speeding-c...

I'm teaching Statistical Rethinking again starting Jan 2026. This time with live lectures, divided into Beginner and Experienced sections. Will be a lot more work for me, but I hope much better for students. I will record lectures & all will be found at this link: github.com/rmcelreath/s...

I'm really enjoying this memoir on the history of numerical methods in phylogenetics by F. James Rohlf: academic.oup.com/sysbio/advan...

Call is out for Champalimaud International Neuroscience Doctoral Programme 2026! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

PhD position available in evolutionary genomics/bioinformatics (hoehnalab.github.io/job_adverts/...). Topic: analyzing gene expression evolution across several firefly species and linking expression changes to genomic architecture. The position is jointly supervised with @anaevolcatalan.bsky.social

My book 'The Tree of Life' is published in the USA and Canada today. Available as book, on kindle and as audio. I would be really grateful for reposts. www.amazon.com/Tree-Life-So... www.amazon.ca/Tree-Life-So...

Want to do a PhD linking palaeontology, ecological modelling and polar ecosystems? Look no further than this NERC GW4+ DLTP funded project with @rowanwhittlebas.bsky.social at @bas.ac.uk & @bristolpalaeo.bsky.social and others (inc me). www.bristol.ac.uk/media-librar...

Interested 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...

Infinite games of Beggar-My-Neighbour: now out in The American Mathematical Monthly. Congratulations again to Brayden Casella who discovered the infinite game and knocked one off the Wikipedia lost of unsolved maths problems. doi.org/10.1080/0002...

📢 OUT NOW: Global Tipping Points Report 2025 📢 Professor Viktoria Spaiser contributes to a new report providing a temperature check on the status of dangerous Earth system #TippingPoints and opportunities in #PositiveTippingPoints across sectors. #GTPR2025 #COP30

The second Global Tipping Points Report has been launched today. Please see our press release here: www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article... Find the full report here: global-tipping-points.org @gsiexeter.bsky.social #TippingPoints #COP30

I'm super excited to announce that ISBA @isba-bayesian.bsky.social has voted to start a new section on Bayesian Social Sciences! It will be a great way to further collaborations with many disciplines in the Social Sciences and Humanities. bss-isba.github.io

Our co-produced #PolicyBrief following our event "Accelerating #SocialChange in Response to the #Climate and #EcologicalCrisis", is out now, see here: cdp.leeds.ac.uk/wp-content/u...

People do care! Exposure to moral appeals (moral implications of fossil fuels etc.) can reduce people's carbon footprints, while also increasing climate-related civic and political action, though it may backfire among individuals with strong egoistic values. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Just a standard reminder that statistics is a stand-alone discipline because it’s really hard and it is very easy to get catastrophically wrong. (This example is p-curves, beloved of the reproducibility/scientific fraud warriors, absolutely indefensible in practice)