Mikkel Roald-Arbøl

Hi Bluesky! I guess it's #introduction time! 🎓 I'm Mikkel, I'm a PhD student at University of Sussex dabbling at the intersections between computational ethology, #neuroethology and behavioural ecology.

*A community benchmark enables high-resolution, cross-lab quantification of mouse social behavior* Introducing HiDRA: 82 supervised classifier heads for 33 dyadic and solitary behaviors. Works out-of-the-box on new data and outperforms video foundation models. neuroethology.github.io/hidra-site/

I'm thrilled to announce the opening of the Kaplan lab at the University of Virginia @uvabio.bsky.social ! We are a neuroscience lab aiming to define circuits underlying naturalistic behaviors in infants and adults. We're actively recruiting students and postdocs. Learn more at kaplan-lab.org.

We do an awful lot of looooong video recordings in our lab and have long wanted an easy way to clip, compress and combine videos for our workflows. So here's #croppy! 🦀 I hope others will find it useful too - I'd love to hear if you do! And would appreciate if you give it a star on Github! 🌟

We do an awful lot of looooong video recordings in our lab and have long wanted an easy way to clip, compress and combine videos for our workflows. So here's #croppy! 🦀 I hope others will find it useful too - I'd love to hear if you do! And would appreciate if you give it a star on Github! 🌟

🌟 NEW OCTRON RELEASE! 🌟 Want to track your animals using the command line? You can now train models and predict videos with single prompts in a terminal! Ideal for batch jobs, headless servers, and remote machines. Big shout-out to @roald-arboel.com for helping with this release!

Off to the caves! We’re finally back in the field: filming sleepy cave spiders! 🕷️🕸️ Let’s see what we find! #fieldwork #animalsleep #caves @roald-arboel.com @nadjageiger.bsky.social @roesslerdaniela.bsky.social @unibonn.bsky.social

🔥 Our latest work is state of the art 3D pose estimation, with video analysis from a single camera! 🎥 Just train with 3D data, and then only 1 camera is needed! 🖤 Presented this week at #CVPR2026 by lead author Ti Wang! Please repost🩵🙏🏼 xiu-cs.github.io/FMPose3D/ arxiv.org/abs/2602.05755

New paper alert!🕷️✨ Tiny spider. Shiny abdomen. Suspiciously wiggly bum. In our new study, we asked what abdomen bobbing in this jumping spider is really all about: Cute? Yes. Meaningful? Let’s find out...! [1/8] @unibonn.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00265-026-03745-1

🚨 TWERK ALERT 🚨 New publication from @sleeblab.bsky.social ! This was a very fun project to write up, co-lead by @nadjageiger.bsky.social and Chiara Hirschkorn. If you are interested why these spiders might bob their abdomen: link.springer.com/article/10.1... (Short thread following soon)

We tracked mice in space! This video shows our estimate of their self-induced centripetal force during circling in 3D 👩‍🚀 Preprint thread below 👇

New preprint: Whole-body 3D kinematics of freely behaving 𝐷𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑎 New tech from @blobology.bsky.social & others at @hhmijanelia.bsky.social, which @ispizua.bsky.social and @elliottabe.bsky.social used to gain insight into 3D structure of locomotion & courtship www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

The hardest part of science is posing the right question, not answering it.

Have you ever wondered why mice do what they do when they are free to do whatever they want? Check out our latest (and this slightly delayed thread about our recent paper, led by Caleb Weinreb and friends...) www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

➡️ New Classics in Biological Theory article out! ⬅️ Revisiting Rosenblueth, Wiener, and Bigelow’s “Behavior, Purpose and Teleology” (1943) by Auguste Nahas (@augustenahas.bsky.social) Open access, also to Rosenblueth et al. (1943) (supplementary material) on: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

BIG UPDATES! OCTRON now supports the new SAM3 models (alongside SAM2)! We’ve also added a global switch for Detection vs. Segmentation: Use the same annotations to train either lightweight detection or full segmentation models. Plus, we’ve added support for the new YOLO26 models. ⤵️ 1/12

Out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social! A dive into the deep history of vertebrate vision, together with @mikebok.bsky.social, @neurofishh.bsky.social and @denilsson.bsky.social Photo credit : Vasilis Karkalas

Our BehaveAI paper has just come out! Easy & effective tracking & behavioural classification, even with tiny (2px), fast moving, camouflaged objects. Paper: doi.org/10.1371/jour... Download: github.com/troscianko/B... @uniexecec.bsky.social @kevinjgaston.bsky.social @jimamclgalloway.bsky.social

The @asab.org animal behavior ethics guidelines now reference our work on humane husbandry and ethical study design for insects and decapods! See the full guidelines: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

This workshop was one of the highlights of my PhD! Highly recommend applying! Amazing science and amazing people allround - and all (reasonable) expenses paid!

We are responding to this call for evidence: ec.europa.eu/info/law/bet... Do you have concrete examples of the added value of #Rstats in the public or private sectors? Include the most important factors (risk, lock-in, security, innovation...) to assess the added value. Thanks!

Does anyone here use or have used EthoVision XT and/or ANY-Maze, and could possibly share some sample data with me? I'm making functions for importing movement data into R, and these are tools that I have yet to cover, but I need some data to help me on! #animalbehaviour #neuroskyence

⚠️ New paper alert and what a way to end 2025! 🎉 Happy to share our story “Sleep-dependent infraslow rhythms are evolutionarily conserved across reptiles and mammals.” published today in Nature Neuroscience. Sleeping dragons 🦎 and functional ultrasound! Read the full paper here: rdcu.be/eWJHb 1/8

Machine learning should not be a replacement for human judgment but rather help us embrace the various assumptions and interpretations that shape behavioral research, write Nedah Nemati and Matthew Whiteway. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/behavioral-n...

Do 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!

About to do a major documentation revamp for an R package. Does anyone know whether it's possible to use Quarto `.qmd` files for vignettes and articles? #rstats

New preprint: Neural manifolds that orchestrate walking and stopping Here we develop a new theory for neural generation of walking and how it can stop- Next we test the theory using Neuropixels probes in the lumber spinal cord of freely moving rats. See more: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

✨ Super stoked to announce that I will soon be joining the #SLEEB-Lab with @roesslerdaniela.bsky.social at @unibonn.bsky.social! Really excited for what’s to come!🕷️💤

Breaking News: Jane Goodall, one of the world’s most revered conservationists, died at 91. Her discoveries in the 1960s about how chimpanzees behaved in the wild broke new ground and represented what was called “one of the Western world’s great scientific achievements.” nyti.ms/42kpGxt

I’m super excited to finally put my recent work with @behrenstimb.bsky.social on bioRxiv, where we develop a new mechanistic theory of how PFC structures adaptive behaviour using attractor dynamics in space and time! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

And we are live! Excited to announce the 2025 Multi-Agent Behavior Challenge on cross-lab supervised action recognition in mice 🐁🐀🖱️ Running on Kaggle until December 15th, with a $50,000 prize pool going to the top five submissions! www.kaggle.com/competitions...

👁️The retina — strikingly conserved across vertebrates, but an oddity among bilaterians! So how did it evolve? With @mikebok.bsky.social, @neurofishh.bsky.social and @denilsson.bsky.social, we argue that retinal complexity may 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑦𝑒 𝑖𝑡𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑓. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/n

Biology Department xkcd.com/3140/

🚨 PhD alert! IMPRS brain & behavior in Bonn just opened their calls for applications. Great PhD funding opportunities. Check it out! PS- I just joined their faculty, meaning you could do a rotation in my lab or even a PhD with me on spider sleep 🙃 Apply! 🚨

This should have been big news! Ten funding agencies from eight European countries have pledged to support a public infrastructure that is poised to replace academic journals: FWF 🇦🇹 RCN 🇳🇴 Forte 🇸🇪 ARIS 🇸🇮 SRC 🇸🇪 FCT 🇵🇹 CSIC 🇪🇸 DFG 🇩🇪 Formas 🇸🇪 ANR 🇫🇷 Only two of them issued press releases in […]

New paper: Drones & Computer Vision for Collective Animal Behavior 🐾 We show how edge AI + smart mission design turn drone footage into real-time behavior insights—with less disturbance. 🎥 Video Abstract: youtu.be/0DErP4Z5C7Q 📄 Paper: doi.org/10.1111/2041...

Are interoception and mental health linked? Many assume so, with interoception even described as a psychiatric “p-factor.” But in our latest preprint, we were surprised to find little evidence for such a connection. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵 Thread with our reflections on the matter 👇

Could someone try to submit a fellowship to the #EU #Fellowship Database - and give some feedback on the form: Is everything clear? Have I missed anything? Feel free to just try it out with a fictive fellowship (please label the title as "FICTIVE"). opnform.com/forms/eu-fel... #ECR #postdoc

Inspired by @deniswirtz.bsky.social and team, I'm collating a database of #PhD and #postdoc fellowships in the #EU. I'm standardising the information an entry needs, making it easier to (1) search and (2) contribute - and I would appreciate input, especially from other #ECR! Please share! 1/3

Fellow #neuro / #animalbehaviour video tracking nerds: If you were to buy a brand new computer, your dream configuration (within reasonability), what would you go for and why? Would love some specs, models, GPU… asking for a friend (maybe 👀).

Fellow #neuro / #animalbehaviour video tracking nerds: If you were to buy a brand new computer, your dream configuration (within reasonability), what would you go for and why? Would love some specs, models, GPU… asking for a friend (maybe 👀).