Catherine Sheard

Catherine Sheard

@sheardcat.bsky.social

Lecturer & Interdisciplinary Fellow @ University of Aberdeen. Professionally: macroevolution, especially birds & languages. Personally: drinks too much coffee, plays too much D&D. she/her

2K followers832 following2K posts

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Catherine Sheard
@sheardcat.bsky.social

New pinned intro time: Hi! I'm Catherine, a PI (fellow/lecturer) at the University of Aberdeen. My lab works on trait macroevolution, particularly the causes/consequences of behavioural innovations. I'm a senior editor at GEB, co-chair of BES Macro, and have zero chill about the northern lights.

Catherine Sheard
@sheardcat.bsky.social

Hello from an endless series of trains. I've just spent the past two hours listening to a woman monologue to her mother on the phone by switching, sometimes sentence-by-sentence, between English, French, and Arabic. It's been fascinating to eavesdrop on, but also, ma'am, stop talking on the train.

Catherine Sheard reposted

Katie Mack
@astrokatie.com

It sounds like hyperbole to suggest the current administration WANTS measles to become common again but I can’t think of much they’d be doing differently if they didn’t want that. (I think some of them really are eugenicists who legit prefer disease spread to prevention; others just don’t care)

David Ho@davidho.bsky.social

The CDC denied a request from California, Hawaiʻi, Oregon, and Washington to validate a high-volume measles test, citing “other priorities.” 🤨

theguardian.comCDC denies approval for high-volume measles test, citing ‘other priorities’California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii health officials ask CDC, ‘prioritizing emerging technologies’, to reconsider

Catherine Sheard reposted

Dr. Genevieve Guenther (she/they)
@doctorvive.bsky.social

“Severe heat killed more than 50,000 people in European cities and towns this summer, according to peer-reviewed estimates released by scientists in London on Friday.” www.nytimes.com/2026/10/22/c...

nytimes.comHeat Waves Killed an Estimated 50,000 in European Cities, a Likely Record (Gift Article)This summer’s heat was the continent’s deadliest by far this century, according to new peer-reviewed estimates.
Catherine Sheard
@sheardcat.bsky.social

Super interesting stuff, though of course the cost of living will vary widely across different countries. For comparison, the standard non-London UKRI PhD stipend is ~25,000 EUR / year, tax-free, scholarship-based (i.e., not formal employment). www.nature.com/articles/d41...

nature.comWhat does a PhD pay? Data reveal huge gaps across EuropeEarnings come in a combination of scholarships and salaries and vary widely between countries, an analysis by international federation Eurodoc reveals.
Catherine Sheard
@sheardcat.bsky.social

Well, this is wild. And it's -- maybe real??? But also: it's gotta be satire, right?!

KetAnthropic JoshAI@ketanjoshi.co

The first genuinely honest ad for generative AI I've ever seen, from Microsoft / CoPilot A mediocre white guy sees his non-white colleague getting praised for good work, he asks AI to *literally copy it*, and then he gets all the praise instead: www.ispot.tv/ad/SoDi/micr...

Catherine Sheard
@sheardcat.bsky.social

Same trip: a friend-of-a-friend (FoF) somehow decided that I didn't speak French, and at a restaurant told the waiter in *painful* French that they'd have to switch to English for me. The waiter was then astonished when I ordered in, y'know, perfectly reasonable French, and roundly mocked the FoF.

Catherine Sheard@sheardcat.bsky.social

On the train from Cornwall to Montreal, I once was asked "Do you want quelque chose to drink?"

Catherine Sheard
@sheardcat.bsky.social

I think the FoF misheard me saying that I don't speak Kanienʼkéha? And then didn't notice that I'd been fine reading signs and interacting with those around me in French *all day*? 🤷‍♀️

Catherine Sheard reposted

Carrie M. Tribble, PhD
@tribblelab.bsky.social

The @burkemuseum.bsky.social is offering funds to support graduate and postdoctoral research visits to the collections, including our University of Washington Herbarium! Please help us get the word out! More information is available here: www.burkemuseum.org/collections-...

burkemuseum.orgCollections Study GrantsCollections study grants provide financial assistance for graduate students and post-doctoral researchers to study the collections of the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture (UWBM).
Catherine Sheard
@sheardcat.bsky.social

Is anthropogenic nest material always bad? Hébert et al. found no difference in outcomes for zebra finch nests made of natural and acrylic fibres. brill.com/view/journal...

brill.comAcrylic fibres do not affect nest building or incubation in laboratory zebra finchesAbstract As synthetic materials have rapidly accumulated in the environment over the past decades, birds have increasingly incorporated them into their nests. However, it is not clear whether such mat...

Catherine Sheard reposted

Michał Jezierski
@jezierskimt.bsky.social

Every future scientist kid wants to have a paper about dinosaurs. Here I go ✅ with this in @natrevbiodiv.nature.com with @tweetisaurus.bsky.social, @richardjbutler.bsky.social and T Matthews. We asked - how to study islands in the fossil record? Turns out - with great difficulty! @leverhulme.ac.uk

nature.comIsland biogeography in deep time - Nature Reviews BiodiversityIsland ecosystems feature unique species assemblages with diverse evolutionary histories, but identifying island communities in deep time comes with its own challenges. This Perspective explores the a...

Catherine Sheard reposted

Xiao Feng
@ecomodeler.bsky.social

Excited to share our study of the latitudinal diversity gradient and how it may be modified by humans. Working with millions of bird observations across ~500 cities, we found that cities significantly flattened the diversity gradient for native birds in winter. 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s44...

nature.comCities alter the latitudinal diversity gradient of birds in North America - Nature CitiesUrbanization considerably modifies the latitudinal diversity gradient of birds in North America, with native species exhibiting a flatter gradient in cities compared to surrounding areas, particularly...
Catherine Sheard
@sheardcat.bsky.social

I am once again astonished that a viable way to fly from Aberdeen to [somewhere else] is sometimes to change planes in Bergen, Norway. (Pro-tip, though -- the Bergen airport is lovely, and if you have a bit of time, you can pop out to visit a nearby stave church.)

Catherine Sheard reposted

Jessica Ellis
@baddestmamajama.bsky.social

Her illness started with Covid, and despite her incredible, international-competition level fitness at the time. I don’t know who exactly would have to get this for healthy people to understand that when they get Covid, which they will continue to get, they are spinning a chamber and firing the gun.

Long Covid Advocacy@longcovidadvoc.com

Olympic sprinter Beth Dobbin advocates brilliantly in this article: 🔹strongly rejects CFS label 🔹states there is no specialist NHS service 🔹conveys the severity of the disease 🔹raises the issue of how athletes are more 'believed' www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athlet...

bbc.co.ukBeth Dobbin: British Olympic sprinter in bed for 22 hours a day after ME diagnosisBeth Dobbin ran for Great Britain at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. Five years on, she is largely bedbound after being diagnosed with ME, a devastating illness for which there is no cure.
Catherine Sheard
@sheardcat.bsky.social

TIL what exam boards are in the context of A-levels (and GCSEs, presumably). I thought the whole point was that these exams are completely standardised -- and they're not??? The mind boggles. At least I now feel less silly explaining to Brits that our GCSE equivalents are done at the state level.

Catherine Sheard
@sheardcat.bsky.social

When I get sad about the state of the world, I think about graphs like this. The difference in global childhood survival in my own lifetime -- nevermind, say, my grandparents'! -- is remarkable.

Dave Hemprich-Bennett@davehb.bsky.social

Just... look at it. Not all down to vaccinations of course. But still, what a thing.

Catherine Sheard
@sheardcat.bsky.social

How my employer announces new all-staff training. Subject line "Staff Hub Update shared "Tuesday 6 October: Staff Hub Update" with you" Third link down, a button to click called "University Assessment and Feedback Standards" Tenth paragraph down, first mention of this training. 🙄

Catherine Sheard
@sheardcat.bsky.social

Okay, that being said, apparently I needed an idiot's guide to our new system for booking annual leave, because it took me *way* too long to figure out what was going on there.

Catherine Sheard
@sheardcat.bsky.social

Ellie Bath, one of my all-time favourite scientists, is advertising a PhD at Durham on the evolution of aggression. This looks like a kickass project combining a bunch of approaches and skills -- and, bonus, Durham is gorgeous. www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

findaphd.comWhat drives aggression? Linking Ecology, Evolution, and Genes at Durham University on FindAPhD.comPhD Project - What drives aggression? Linking Ecology, Evolution, and Genes at Durham University, listed on FindAPhD.com

Catherine Sheard reposted

Luca Santini
@lsantinieco.bsky.social

How mammals respond to human activity depends on who they are! Our new paper in Ecography shows that there's no single overall response to human impact: body mass, diet and life history traits drive whether density increases or decreases. @ecography.bsky.social sl1nk.com/kl3nzzb 🌐

nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.comSpecies traits mediate terrestrial mammal density responses to human impactsHuman activities are reshaping ecosystems, but their effects on species population density remain poorly understood. Most studies focus on species presence–absence, thus limiting insight into how ant...

Catherine Sheard reposted

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social

bigotry aside: imagine having to design an enforcement policy for this. what are we doing y'all?

QueerAF@wearequeeraf.com

ICYMI: The nation of Niger has become the first nation in the world to criminalise asexuality as part of a wider crackdown on the LGBTQIA+ community

wearequeeraf.comWhy Niger explicitly criminalising asexuality is significant to everyone, regardless of identityTo understand Nigers asexuality criminalisation, we should see this law as part of a bigger – and growing – global trend among conservatives about 'traditional families'
Catherine Sheard
@sheardcat.bsky.social

I watched A Quiet Place on the plane today, and I must say, I was moderately annoyed at the amount of signing that *wasn't shown on screen* (at least in the airplane cut -- this might be better in the original wide-screen).

Catherine Sheard reposted

Markus Eichhorn
@markuseichhorn.bsky.social

The reason I have not replied to your e-mail is that I'm now wading through so many excessively long LLM messages trying to work out whether there was ever a human involved and what point they were trying to make.

Louise Amoore@amoorelouise.bsky.social

Journal editors & research funders commonly report a doubling (+) of submissions as LLMs promise to circumvent the difficulty that is writing. Now people seem to be using Copilot to automate email my daily inbox also doubled to around 200 per day. It’s now useless to me. Among the hallucinations:

Catherine Sheard reposted

Jhan C. Salazar, PhD
@jhancsalazar.bsky.social

Happy to share that the last chapter of my dissertation is finally out in Evolution! 🦎⛰️ I'll share a longer thread soon about what we did and found. Huge thanks to all my coauthors: @jblosos.bsky.social, @juvelas.bsky.social, Steven Poe and Adam Algar doi.org/10.1093/evol...

doi.orgRepeated evolution of high-elevation occupation in tropical lizardsAbstract. Since Darwin and Humboldt, researchers have sought to understand how species adapt to elevation. Although tropical reptiles are typically most di