Katy Willcox
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katywillcox.bsky.social
Katy Willcox
@katywillcox.bsky.social
800 followers 840 following 24 posts
Kathryn (Katy) Willcox | PhD @ecobird.bsky.social | social environments <-> bird behaviour and cognition | 🐥🐦🧠🦦🐝 | ❤️ welfare & outreach | also 🎶🎨🎮🎲👩‍🍳🌿 | she/her
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katywillcox.bsky.social
Katy Willcox @katywillcox.bsky.social · Nov 25
Hi Bluesky 👋 I’m a PhD student @ecobird.bsky.social investigating the effects of early-life social environments on the behaviour and cognition of birds 🐦🧠 Follow for cute chick pics, stay for cool science 🐤😎
Reposted by Katy Willcox
c0nc0rdance.bsky.social
A male rock ptarmigan (Lagopus muta) in winter plumage.

Ptarmigan is from Gaelic 'tarmachan' meaning "croaker". The p- was added when people mistakenly assumed it was a Greek word.

A bird forever warning people: "A werewolf!" (just in case of werewolves).
December 6, 2025 at 1:46 PM
Reposted by Katy Willcox
wascherclaudia.bsky.social
Hope 😍
ec.europa.eu European Commission @ec.europa.eu · 16d
The United Kingdom is coming back to Erasmus+ 🇪🇺🇬🇧

We have concluded negotiations for the United Kingdom’s association to Erasmus+ in 2027, making further steps in our renewed EU-UK Strategic Partnership.

More ↓
link.europa.eu/vf3vJk
Illustration showing the EU flag and the United Kingdom flag painted side by side. Text reads: “The United Kingdom is coming back to Erasmus+.” An EU flag appears in the bottom right corner.
December 17, 2025 at 2:51 PM
katywillcox.bsky.social
Christmas came early, my "big chicken paper" has been accepted 🎉 very grateful to everyone involved and looking forward to sharing it soon
December 10, 2025 at 2:42 PM
Reposted by Katy Willcox
colinyeo.bsky.social
Tighter visa rules will cost UK up to £10.8bn giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
December 9, 2025 at 5:46 PM
Reposted by Katy Willcox
amyleedale.bsky.social
JOB ALERT! 🦜🔭🌿
Are you passionate about #Birds, #Ecology, #Fieldwork, #Research?
The University of Salford is looking for a #ResearchTechnician to assist with ecological monitoring of #Ringneckedparakeets in Manchester, UK.
More info & how to apply 👇
Hurry! Closes 15 Dec
@salforduni.bsky.social
December 5, 2025 at 2:25 PM
katywillcox.bsky.social
Today in end-of-phd-brain: had a hyper-realistic dream where I came up with some great research ideas for an animal that, unfortunately, only existed in that dream
December 5, 2025 at 8:28 AM
Reposted by Katy Willcox
ninawils.bsky.social
Relatable Corvid
December 3, 2025 at 9:27 PM
Reposted by Katy Willcox
alice-risely.bsky.social
Love looking through all the submissions on the Gulls Eating Stuff project website. Getting pretty good coverage of the UK too!

If you have photos of gulls eating stuff, you can submit them at citsci.org/projects/gul.... Thanks to @scistarter.bsky.social for promoting the project too :).
December 2, 2025 at 8:57 AM
Reposted by Katy Willcox
abcmicrogrants.bsky.social
This #GivingTuesday please consider donating to @abcmicrogrants.bsky.social to support undergraduate students globally!! 🫶🗺️
Help us make #animalbehaviourresearch more inclusive 🐝🐝🐝
Sign up to be a monthly donor, or make a one time contribution using this link
opencollective.com/animal-behav...
December 2, 2025 at 5:18 AM
Reposted by Katy Willcox
lizardlab.bsky.social
A huge congrats to Dr Jai Lake! Jai just gave his exit seminar at Macquarie on why lizards are social. To be slightly more precise, his PhD was about the mechanisms underlying sociality. Papers are submitted and in prep! Watch this space. Jai was cosupervised by Geoff While at Univ. Tasmania.
November 25, 2025 at 2:30 AM
Reposted by Katy Willcox
nnedi.bsky.social
Earlier today, I was notified that someone was at my door.

This is who it was:
A male Anna’s hummingbird at the door. So nosy! 🤣
November 21, 2025 at 12:59 AM
katywillcox.bsky.social
New results means new punny titles
November 19, 2025 at 5:27 PM
Reposted by Katy Willcox
birgitszabo.bsky.social
New study on the way 📣
I am currently raising cute quails 🐥 to study the effects of enrichment on the development of the brain, cognition, behaviour, and health! I am learning loads of new skills @ecobird.bsky.social
November 17, 2025 at 11:43 AM
Reposted by Katy Willcox
ecobird.bsky.social
🐦 EcoBird is hiring a Postdoc in animal cognition!

Join us + @themanybirds.bsky.social to investigate innovation & problem-solving in birds.

📅 Start: as early as Jan 2026
🌍 Funded through UGent’s international mobility scheme

More info & how to apply ↓
www.ugent.be/en/work/scie...
Postdoctoral fellow
www.ugent.be
November 13, 2025 at 2:23 PM
Reposted by Katy Willcox
lauraakelley.bsky.social
Turns out gulls don't like being shouted at (or stared at!) New paper led by excellent masters students @uniexecec.bsky.social with @neeltjeboogert.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
theguardian.com The Guardian @theguardian.com · Nov 12
Worth a shout? Yelling is best way to deter gulls, UK study suggests
Worth a shout? Yelling is best way to deter gulls, UK study suggests
Animal behaviourists tested 61 gulls in Cornwall to find most effective method of countering feathery threat Some people respond to the unwanted attentions of a gull eyeing up a bag of chips or a Cornish pasty by frantically flapping their hands at the hungry bird while others beat a rapid retreat into the nearest seaside shelter. But researchers have found that a no-nonsense yell – even a relatively quiet one – may be the best way to get rid of a pesky herring gull. Animal behaviourists from the University of Exeter tried to establish the most effective method of countering a feathery threat by placing a portion of chips in a place where gulls were bound to find them. Continue reading...
www.theguardian.com
November 12, 2025 at 8:50 AM
Reposted by Katy Willcox
hansonmark.bsky.social
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Reposted by Katy Willcox
ctennie.bsky.social
Is the psychology replication crisis (at last) catching up with animal cognition?

"Our results indicate low statistical power and inflated effect sizes in both primary studies and meta-analyses."

Preprint here:

ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...
The statistical fragility of animal cognition findings: a meta-meta-analytic reappraisal
ecoevorxiv.org
November 7, 2025 at 6:18 AM
Reposted by Katy Willcox
sofiaforss.bsky.social
Interested in early life learning and cognitive development ? In our new pre-print we present data on developmental trajectories of three cognitive traits spanning wild meerkat pups critical life transitions 👇🏼
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Developmental trajectories of cognitive traits in meerkats match socio-ecological demands
Understanding cognitive development is fundamental to contextualize adult cognitive phenotypes, and thus the operational pathways for cognitive evolution. The ontogeny of specific cognitive traits is ...
www.biorxiv.org
November 5, 2025 at 7:39 PM
Reposted by Katy Willcox
birgitszabo.bsky.social
It took almost a year to write this review on causes and consequences of ranging in chicken 🐔! This was a huge collaborative effort by @ecobird.bsky.social @pec-exeter.bsky.social and @vitorhbf.bsky.social ! I am very proud of the outcome. You can check out the preprint here: doi.org/10.32942/X22...
Understanding individual range use in free-range chickens - a systematic review
doi.org
October 31, 2025 at 9:21 AM
Reposted by Katy Willcox
ecobird.bsky.social
Just last week, one of the cinereous vultures born at Planckendael this spring was transferred to Bulgaria as part of the ongoing reintroduction programme. We visited the acclimatisation aviary to check in on our feathered friend — doing great and getting ready for release next spring.
October 30, 2025 at 1:30 PM
Reposted by Katy Willcox
cesarepacioni.bsky.social
New preprint out on bioRxiv

🌳 doi.org/10.1101/2025... 🌳

Using data from 19 forest plots in Flanders, we found that forest structural complexity isn’t a consistent predictor of multidiversity and responses across taxa were mostly weak or inconsistent.

@ecobird.bsky.social | @fornalab.bsky.social
Multitaxon assessment reveals inconsistent biodiversity responses to forest structural complexity in temperate forests
Increasing forest structural complexity is a key objective of future-proof forest management, with potential benefits for biodiversity. However, empirical evidence for consistent biodiversity-structur...
doi.org
October 29, 2025 at 12:55 PM
Reposted by Katy Willcox
biorxiv-behav.bsky.social
Social relationships promote access to food and information in wild jackdaws https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.25.684536v1
October 26, 2025 at 11:45 PM
Reposted by Katy Willcox
vernouilleta.bsky.social
Excited to announce that Eli Garcia-Pelegrin and I are co-editing a special collection for Animal Cognition on "Social Cognition in a Human World". Do you study how urbanization, pollution, heat stress, fragmentation, ... affects cognition? We want to hear from you! link.springer.com/collections/...
Social Cognition in a Human World
As humanity exploits and reshapes the environment to accommodate for development and population growth demands, animals need to adapt to these human-induced ...
link.springer.com
October 22, 2025 at 8:03 AM
Reposted by Katy Willcox
gfalbery.bsky.social
I'm v excited to be recruiting a PhD student to work on badger behaviour and ecology! Starting date is March 2026; see the ad here, or message me for more details: www.gregalbery.me/s/March-2026...
October 3, 2025 at 2:05 PM
Reposted by Katy Willcox
asab.org
Exciting ASAB news: increased grant money 💰💰 😍😍
ccioannou.bsky.social Christos C. Ioannou @ccioannou.bsky.social · Oct 14
📣 @asab.org grants BOOSTED! 📣

We've increased most of our research-related grants by 50%, effective from the next deadline of 1st Feb 2026.

Check out what we offer here:
www.asab.org/grant-overview
October 15, 2025 at 2:35 PM