Mason Youngblood
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masonyoungblood.bsky.social
Mason Youngblood
@masonyoungblood.bsky.social
1.5K followers 320 following 130 posts
Postdoc fellow researching cultural evolution at the Institute for Advanced Computational Science - Electronic music as Callosum - masonyoungblood.com
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Reposted by Mason Youngblood
sonjawild.bsky.social
Out today in @plosbiology.org (1/5)

Siblings and non-parental adults provide alternative pathways to cultural inheritance in juvenile great tits 🐦🧩

Link to study:
10.0.5.91/journal.pbio...

Co-authors:
@lucymaplin.bsky.social
@galarconnieto.bsky.social
October 9, 2025 at 6:06 PM
Reposted by Mason Youngblood
ercrema.bsky.social
⚠️Paper Alert!⚠️
Excited to share this paper with @roccoro.bsky.social where we examined whether ceramic technology in Saharan Africa was the result of a single or multiple episodes of innovation & diffusion
rdcu.be/eJi3g
Bayesian analyses of radiocarbon dates suggest multiple origins of ceramic technology in Early Holocene Africa
Nature Communications - Several possible points of origin have been proposed for the spread of ceramic technology in Saharan Africa between 11–10,000 years ago. Here, the authors...
rdcu.be
October 3, 2025 at 1:01 PM
masonyoungblood.bsky.social
Y'all these titles are getting out of control 😅
October 7, 2025 at 10:29 PM
Reposted by Mason Youngblood
eslr.bsky.social
ESLR is currently undergoing a transition, and a new committee (@alexschakowski.bsky.social, @ahnisnaahsi.bsky.social, @katebonner.bsky.social, @lucahahn.bsky.social, @mariapykala.bsky.social) is working on reinstating its presence and shaping its future. Please feel free to get in touch!
August 18, 2025 at 6:46 AM
Reposted by Mason Youngblood
apvelilla.bsky.social
My first PhD project is out there. Thank you to my advisor @psmaldino.bsky.social and to mentor, co-author and friend @babeheim.bsky.social for encouraging and helping build this exciting and insightful collaboration. Onwards!
psmaldino.bsky.social Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · Jan 28
The Development of Risk Attitudes and their Cultural Transmission

New preprint w/ Alejandro Pérez Velilla & @babeheim.bsky.social. This is one of the best modeling papers I have ever been involved in, tackling developmental, cultural, and class differences in risk attitudes.
osf.io/preprints/so...
The Development of Risk Attitudes and their Cultural Transmission. We use cultural evolutionary models to examine how individual experiences and culturally-inherited information jointly shape risk attitudes under environmental uncertainty. We find that learning processes not only generate plausible variation in risk attitudes, but also that conservative learning strategies—emphasizing the preservation of generational knowledge—excel in high-risk environments, promoting stable wealth accumulation and long-term survival but limiting asset growth as conditions improve. In contrast, exploratory learning strategies—leveraging risk-free juvenile exploration and peer influence—foster risk-tolerant attitudes that thrive in affluent, low-risk settings where wealth buffers and social safety nets reduce the costs of miscalculations. Introducing economic stratification to the model reveals how wealth disparities and inter-class interactions reinforce these patterns, exacerbating differences in learning strategies and risk-taking behaviors, and perpetuating socioeconomic inequalities through the cultural inertia of excessive risk aversion. By uniting developmental, social, and evolutionary perspectives, our framework provides a novel lens on the cultural evolution of risk attitudes and their broader societal implications.
January 29, 2025 at 3:07 AM
Reposted by Mason Youngblood
andyradford.bsky.social
Fancy joining us?
Check out this excellent @royalsociety.org Career Development Fellowship:
royalsociety.org/grants/caree...
If you're eligible & are interested in social behaviour, vocal communication or anthropogenic impacts on wildlife, feel free to DM or email me.
@bristolbiosci.bsky.social
Career Development Fellowship | Royal Society
This scheme provides the most talented early career scientists from underrepresented groups in STEM with research funding and high-quality training opportunities to build a strong base for a successfu...
royalsociety.org
September 28, 2025 at 2:19 PM
Reposted by Mason Youngblood
drugmonkey.bsky.social
This may be the most important paper ever published about NIH funded research.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
What if NIH had been 40% smaller?
Replaying history with less NIH funding shows widespread impacts on drug-linked research
www.science.org
September 25, 2025 at 9:20 PM
Reposted by Mason Youngblood
elizabethhobson.bsky.social
**PhD POSITIONS** I am recruiting 1-2 PhD students to work on sociality and cognition in Monk Parakeets, starting Fall 2026. Full ad is here: hobsonresearch.com/index.php/20... (please help spread the word!)
Image showing Hobson Lab logo (with parakeets, a social network, and R code), two Monk Parakeets, and several individually-marked parakeets with the text "Now recruiting PhD students!!"
September 23, 2025 at 6:58 PM
masonyoungblood.bsky.social
Tomorrow!
masonyoungblood.bsky.social Mason Youngblood @masonyoungblood.bsky.social · Aug 25
Performing "Alaka'i 1777" at Index Space (NYC) on 9/21 for TechnoMirage—a creative gathering exploring AI and speculative futures. Come hear extinct birdsongs in immersive spatial audio! 🦜 lu.ma/xda8t4h1
TechnoMirage · Luma
Join us for Reclaim, Reimagine, Rewire, a 3-part journey that pierces through the illusion of creative progress projected by AI. TechnoMirage is a half-day…
lu.ma
September 20, 2025 at 2:19 PM
Reposted by Mason Youngblood
babeheim.bsky.social
How to quantify the impact of AI on long-run cultural evolution? Published today, I give it a go!

400+ years of strategic dynamics in the game of Go (Baduk/Weiqi), from feudalism to AlphaGo!
Miyagawa Shuntei's 1898 painting, "Playing Go (Japanese Chess)"
September 16, 2025 at 2:04 PM
Reposted by Mason Youngblood
culturalevolsoc.bsky.social
The count down starts for #CESRabat! Follow @ces2026.bsky.social and join us May 11-13 next year for an exciting meeting in Rabat, Morocco.

Massive thanks to the #CESRabat organising committee:
Sarah Alami (co-chair)
Mathieu Charbonneau (co-chair)
Zachary Garfield
Edmond Seabright
September 13, 2025 at 3:14 AM
masonyoungblood.bsky.social
Keep yours eyes out for some incredible work from @sobchuk.bsky.social in the coming years 🥳
September 5, 2025 at 4:55 PM
masonyoungblood.bsky.social
Performing "Alaka'i 1777" at Index Space (NYC) on 9/21 for TechnoMirage—a creative gathering exploring AI and speculative futures. Come hear extinct birdsongs in immersive spatial audio! 🦜 lu.ma/xda8t4h1
TechnoMirage · Luma
Join us for Reclaim, Reimagine, Rewire, a 3-part journey that pierces through the illusion of creative progress projected by AI. TechnoMirage is a half-day…
lu.ma
August 25, 2025 at 2:15 PM
Reposted by Mason Youngblood
psmaldino.bsky.social
As grant money starts drying up, it's more important than ever not to waste it on paying publishers' open access "article processing fees" when we can host PDFs for free. Tom Morgan and I wrote a paper on this, forthcoming at Science and Public Policy. Accepted draft here: osf.io/preprints/os...
Author-Paid PublicationFees Corrupt Science and Should Be Abandoned Thomas J. H Morgan & Paul E. Smaldino
May 9, 2025 at 5:26 PM
Reposted by Mason Youngblood
twaring.bsky.social
🧠 Want to integrate cultural evolution into your course using award winning materials created by the field's experts, and get paid $2000 to do it? 💵

🚨 The Cultural Evolution Society is seeking applications for the ACE Teaching Innovation Awards.

🔖 Apply here: vuw.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...
Qualtrics Survey | Qualtrics Experience Management
The most powerful, simple and trusted way to gather experience data. Start your journey to experience management and try a free account today.
vuw.qualtrics.com
August 21, 2025 at 3:15 PM
Reposted by Mason Youngblood
kevinlala.bsky.social
I'm pleased to share this new article by @svenkasser.bsky.social, Laura Fortunato @anthrolog.bsky.social, Marc Feldman and myself.

The article extends gene-culture coevolution to recognize evolutionary effects of culture arising through drift and migration.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
August 13, 2025 at 1:54 PM
Reposted by Mason Youngblood
culturalevolsoc.bsky.social
We are pleased to announce our newly elected committee members of the Cultural Evolution Society:

Minhua Yan @minhuayan.bsky.social
Helena Miton @helenamiton.bsky.social
Wataru Toyokawa @watarutoyokawa.bsky.social &
Mason Youngblood @masonyoungblood.bsky.social

Welcome and congratulations!!
August 8, 2025 at 8:32 AM
masonyoungblood.bsky.social
Such a pleasure to be the first guest on the new bioacoustics podcast Wild Resonance! 🦜🐳

youtu.be/1gEI7Ihibac?...
Wild Resonance ep. 1: Animal Syntax in the Trees and Seas - a Conversation with Dr. Mason Youngblood
YouTube video by Wild Resonance
youtu.be
August 8, 2025 at 1:03 PM
Reposted by Mason Youngblood
garant-b.bsky.social
Our latest study on ant acoustic communication originated from a project about soil health monitoring. A picture being worth a thousand words, I will let my abstract explain it all!
Here's the paper in #OpenAccess: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
#acoustics #animalbehaviour #entomology
The drawing of an ant mound, titled "Soil secret surfaces: new communication method in an ant species?" with ants making various sounds. The sounds are labelled: "walking sound", "biting sound", "cleaning sound". One ant is producing a sound with a repeated pattern, and the label reads "unexpected sound". A text is under the representation of that sound, it reads: "Ants seem to react to it. Are they rubbing body parts to produce it?". Questions are at the bottom of the drawing: "Want to know how we recorded? What the sound could means? Full link to the study below!". There is also in the corner a QR code leading to the article mentioned.
July 9, 2025 at 9:25 AM
Reposted by Mason Youngblood
animal-prattle.bsky.social
How much does it cost to caw?

@wascherclaudia.bsky.social @masonyoungblood.bsky.social report that in 3 crow species, there is a strong negative relation b/t call sequence length & call duration --> they obey Menzerath's law of efficiency

1/2

#prattle 💬
#bioacoustics
July 31, 2025 at 12:16 PM
masonyoungblood.bsky.social
Crow vocalizations show Menzerath’s law (indicator of efficiency), with some interesting age and sex differences! 🐦‍⬛
July 31, 2025 at 12:29 PM
masonyoungblood.bsky.social
Posted a new preprint! Re-analysis of data from James and Sakata (2017) shows that zebra finches transform random songs to exhibit linguistic laws 🦜 osf.io/preprints/ps...
July 30, 2025 at 3:44 PM
Reposted by Mason Youngblood
evoldir.bsky.social
Bielefeld University seeks a postdoc for a 6-year scientific assistant position in Animal Behaviour, starting March 2026. Apply by Sept 10, 2025. More info: www.uni-bielefeld.de/fakultaeten/biologie/forschung/arbeitsgruppen/behaviour #job
Animal Behaviour - Bielefeld University
With a team of over 50 people, the different research groups study animal behaviour within the framework of the four questions of Tinbergen, both in the lab and in the field. Current model systems include laboratory studies on zebra finches (
www.uni-bielefeld.de
July 26, 2025 at 7:12 AM
masonyoungblood.bsky.social
My new installation Alaka’i 1777, which imagines the lost song culture of the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō, debuts in NYC 6/21-22! Come hear real-time simulations of extinct birdsongs in 24-channel spatial audio 🦜 Made possible by @cornellbirds.bsky.social @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social @divintelligence.bsky.social
June 11, 2025 at 1:15 PM
Reposted by Mason Youngblood
lucymaplin.bsky.social
Two paper just out from the #clevercockieproject!

@julia-penndorf.bsky.social reveals how cockies play politics when deciding who to aggress: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....
&
@barbaraklump.bsky.social describes a new 'drinking innovation':
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
June 4, 2025 at 11:50 AM