Ben Sheldon
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sheldonbirds.bsky.social
Ben Sheldon
@sheldonbirds.bsky.social
3.5K followers 430 following 4.2K posts
Ornithologist and Evolutionary Ecologist at the University of Oxford - natural history, science, cycling
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sheldonbirds.bsky.social
Ben Sheldon @sheldonbirds.bsky.social · Oct 20
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...
Examples of some recent papers from graduate students in my group - a full list of recent papers and preprints can be found here (https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=pTdxVdIAAAAJ) and profile of the group here: https://egioxford.web.ox.ac.uk/members The annual Wytham Field Team Photo! Celebrating a successful field season with great food & good company - May 2025 Front view of the Life & Mind Building, which opened in Oct 2025: The new home of Biology at Oxford
sheldonbirds.bsky.social
Just a reminder of today’s @egioxford.bsky.social seminar - all welcome
egioxford.bsky.social Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 4d
This week’s seminar will be given by Prof Daniel Field of @zoologymuseum.bsky.social & @cambridge-earthsci.bsky.social on the origins of modern birds. 3.30pm Friday 28 Nov in LT1 in the Life & Mind Building @biology.ox.ac.uk - all welcome & see below for live streaming joining information
November 28, 2025 at 9:35 AM
sheldonbirds.bsky.social
Well, this makes cheerful reading: assessing the economic cost of Brexit. In their almost understated conclusion: "In the case of Brexit, there was a substantial economic impact
on the United Kingdom"

siepr.stanford.edu/publications...
November 24, 2025 at 4:45 PM
sheldonbirds.bsky.social
This looks great - amazing work. Excellent video as well:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWCM...
November 20, 2025 at 7:20 PM
sheldonbirds.bsky.social
This week's @egioxford.bsky.social seminar is by @mmoiron.bsky.social at 3.30 on Friday. Still a highlight of the week getting people together and hearing about new science
egioxford.bsky.social Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 11d
This week's EGI seminar is being given by Dr Maria Moiron @mmoiron.bsky.social of the University of Bielefeld at 3.30pm on Friday 21 Nov in LT1 in the Life & Mind Building @biology.ox.ac.uk. See below for online joining details - all welcome!
November 17, 2025 at 6:21 PM
sheldonbirds.bsky.social
Couldn’t resist this - suitably hefty feeling for a long & transformative life in science
November 17, 2025 at 4:51 PM
Reposted by Ben Sheldon
christhorogood.bsky.social
Deep in the Sumatran jungle today we found the extraordinary flowers of Rhizanthes pushing their fangs through the forest floor. A sap-sucking, leafless parasite, this is one of the world's weirdest plants.
November 16, 2025 at 2:48 PM
Reposted by Ben Sheldon
jbyoder.org
This has gotten surprisingly little attention — it's not even on the front page of @science.org right now — but it's really hard to describe what the SAFE Research Act would do to US science and scientists without sounding insane

www.science.org/content/arti...
November 14, 2025 at 5:16 PM
Reposted by Ben Sheldon
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 Ben Sheldon
oxfordclarion.bsky.social
Are Oxford‘s poorest areas sharing in its prosperity? As billionaires pour more money into the city’s AI and biotech industries, we take a deep dive into gentrification in Oxford and the city’s housing crisis. (With maps and data!) oxfordclarion.uk/gentrifying-...
Gentrifying Oxford vs the left-behinds
Oxford’s poorest areas are not sharing equally in the city’s increased prosperity, new figures suggest. Parts of Minchery Farm, Rose Hill, and Wood Farm are now suffering more deprivation compared to...
oxfordclarion.uk
November 12, 2025 at 9:20 AM
sheldonbirds.bsky.social
"Sniper Tourism" - just beggars belief

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...
Milan prosecutors investigate alleged ‘sniper tourism’ during Bosnian war
Groups from Italy and elsewhere alleged to have paid Serb soldiers to shoot Sarajevo residents during siege
www.theguardian.com
November 11, 2025 at 9:55 PM
sheldonbirds.bsky.social
Details of this week's @egioxford.bsky.social seminar - all welcome, either in person (LaMB LT2, 1530 Fri 14 Nov), or online - details of how to get link in the poster below
egioxford.bsky.social Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 18d
Welcome to this week's EGI seminar in @biology.ox.ac.uk when Prof Craig White @craig-white.bsky.social from @monashbiol.bsky.social will talk on The Evolution of Metabolic Rate and Life History: 3.30pm Fri 14 Nov in Lecture Theatre 2 in the Life & Mind Building. Also live-streamed: instructions ⬇️
November 11, 2025 at 8:42 AM
sheldonbirds.bsky.social
Careful dissection of genetic association claims in a couple of recent studies of human genetics

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
Confounding fuels misinterpretation in human genetics | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
The scientific literature has seen a resurgence of interest in genetic influences on human behaviour and socioeconomic outcomes. Such studies face the central difficulty of distinguishing possible cau...
royalsocietypublishing.org
November 7, 2025 at 11:10 PM
sheldonbirds.bsky.social
Reminder of today’s seminar at 3.30
egioxford.bsky.social Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · 25d
We're all looking forward to this week's seminar, being given by Kristen Ruegg from Colorado State University on the power of avian landscape genomics in the Genoscape Project. Seminar at 3.30pm on Friday 7 Nov in Lecture Theatre 1 in LaMB. Welcome in person or to join online - details ⬇️
November 7, 2025 at 11:59 AM
sheldonbirds.bsky.social
View from my office window in the new @biology.ox.ac.uk building. I didn’t *ask* to be put somewhere with a Rook colony right outside the window but it worked out pretty well 🤓
November 5, 2025 at 12:54 PM
Reposted by Ben Sheldon
jennifer-morinay.bsky.social
🚨 Come join the fantastic long-tailed tit team 🚨
🐦We are recruiting a field technician to collect behavioural data on a long-term studied population of wild long-tailed tits (passerine birds).
🪶20 months contract in Sheffield, UK.
🌲Deadline: 23/11/2025.
jobsite.sheffield.ac.uk/job/Technici...
Colour-ringed long-tailed tit
November 5, 2025 at 9:32 AM
sheldonbirds.bsky.social
This is an exciting project as part of an exciting larger grant - excellent opportunity
cyanistesnord.bsky.social Andreas Nord @cyanistesnord.bsky.social · 23d
I am recruting a #postdoc for a project investigating the evolution of avian heat tolerance in @erc.europa.eu project #HotLife. Fieldwork over broad latitudinal gradients, common-garden experiments, and more. Read more and apply👇
shorturl.at/WA1Qa

Would appreciate a re-post!

@evoldir.bsky.social
November 5, 2025 at 8:52 AM
Reposted by Ben Sheldon
biologylu.bsky.social
We're hiring! Post-doctoral fellow in evolutionary ecology w/focus on ecophysiology.
Uncover why global warming and heatwaves reduce reproductive success and cause excess mortality in wild birds. Work with @cyanistesnord.bsky.social 👏

Please apply no later than 25 November.
👉 lnkd.in/dkAh9jnc
November 5, 2025 at 7:30 AM
sheldonbirds.bsky.social
This video summary (I think a new innovation for the RBBP) is excellent
ukrbbp.bsky.social The Rare Breeding Birds Panel @ukrbbp.bsky.social · 24d
Our report for 2023 is out now in @britishbirds.bsky.social. There's a summary at rbbp.org.uk/2023-report-... but if you prefer to watch rather than read then here's RBBP secretary @markaeaton.bsky.social with a few key points and some lovely photos! #ornithology #ukbirds youtu.be/arj1m7NfKmY
Rare Breeding Birds in the UK in 2023
YouTube video by Rare Breeding Birds Panel
youtu.be
November 4, 2025 at 7:05 PM
sheldonbirds.bsky.social
This week's EGI seminar - 3.30 on Friday in @biology.ox.ac.uk with Kristen Ruegg on the Bird Genoscape Project. Also live-streamed; details below

www.birdgenoscape.org
November 3, 2025 at 5:19 PM
Reposted by Ben Sheldon
sjportugal.bsky.social
Once a year I like to remind myself and others how amazing Guira Cuckoo eggs are!
November 3, 2025 at 8:29 AM
sheldonbirds.bsky.social
Dawn visit to Otmoor this morning rewarded with the elusive Water Pipit that's been around here the last few days in front of screen 1. Never close, light poor, and always looking nervous but a tricky species to see locally these days.
November 3, 2025 at 10:42 AM
Reposted by Ben Sheldon
denisewawman.bsky.social
More Mapping the UK's Flat Flies Project results published today with Adrian Smith & @sheldonbirds.bsky.social 212 host-parasite interactions, including 70 not previously reported, & a recent switch to gulls by some Louse Flies, Hippoboscidae. @btobirds.bsky.social @dipteristsforum.bsky.social
Citizen science reveals host‐switching in louse flies and keds (Diptera: Hippoboscidae) during a period of anthropogenic change
A study of louse flies in the United Kingdom, Isle of Man, and Ireland found 212 different interactions between Hippoboscidae and their hosts, of which 70 were previously unrecorded. No louse flies ...
doi.org
November 1, 2025 at 2:42 PM
sheldonbirds.bsky.social
Reminder of today’s @egioxford.bsky.social seminar from @cornishjackdaws.bsky.social in @biology.ox.ac.uk - will actually be in Lecture Theatre 1
sheldonbirds.bsky.social Ben Sheldon @sheldonbirds.bsky.social · Oct 27
We’re kicking off the year’s EGI seminars this Friday - follow @egioxford.bsky.social for details of these & forthcoming jobs, papers etc
egioxford.bsky.social Edward Grey Institute @egioxford.bsky.social · Oct 27
Now that we're properly moved in & set up in the new Life & Mind Building, we're pleased to restart our tradition of Friday afternoon seminar speakers, kicking off with Alex Thornton of @cornishjackdaws.bsky.social at 3.30pm on 31 Oct. Also live streamed: see below for details. Corvid-themed for 🎃
October 31, 2025 at 11:07 AM
sheldonbirds.bsky.social
A very close singing Coal Tit yesterday morning - fascinating to see these almost perfectly regular repeated motifs in the song with very rapid changes over huge frequency range. Must require some very precise neuromuscular control of bird's vocal system
macaulaylibrary.org/asset/644354...
Part of a sonogram of a singing Coal Tit
October 30, 2025 at 10:17 AM
sheldonbirds.bsky.social
Coming up soon (9 am today) an opportunity to hear this classic episode of In Our Time on Bird Migration featuring Tim Guilford of @biology.ox.ac.uk

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b...
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Bird Migration
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how birds navigate and the risks and benefits of migration
www.bbc.co.uk
October 30, 2025 at 8:58 AM