Dear ASAB members,

Welcome to the Spring 2024 newsletter. This is Sophia Daoudi-Simison, taking over as Communications Officer from Kirsty Graham, I know that I’ve got some big shoes to fill, and it's taking two of us to replace them - Jennifer Colbourne as the Social media officer. I think we can all agree that they have done an absolutely AMAZING job over the last four years.

Thank you for your patience as we get up to speed with how this all works.

At the Winter Meeting we welcomed some newly elected council members, including myself and Jennifer: our new President of the Society - Professor Melissa Bateson; and Secretary - Dr Sasha Dall.

🏅 Congratulations to the 2024 winners of the ASAB Medal - Prof Rebecca Kilner FRS, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, UK; and the Christopher Barnard Award - Dr Nobuaki Mizumoto, Evolutionary Genomics Unit/Computational Ethology Unit, Okinawa Insitute of Science & Technology Graduate University (OIST), Japan.

In this newsletter you can find:

• Message from the outgoing President

• ASAB AGM 2023

• News from Animal Behaviour

• Winners of the 2023 ASAB Video Contest

• ASAB Winter Meeting 2023

• ASAB Meetings 2024

• Grants News January 2024

• Education Committee News

• Inclusive undergraduate evolution education

• Newcastle University Animal Welfare MRes

• Book reviews and offers

If you want to contact specific members of the ASAB council, you can find their contact details here - we are always happy to answer your questions!

Happy reading everyone!

Sophia Daoudi-Simison

Message from the Outgoing President

Having had some time to reflect on my time as President of ASAB following another great Winter Meeting, a few thoughts about the last three years. First of all, it was a shame to lose so much interaction time due to Covid 19. One of the great joys of any learned society is interacting with friends and colleagues at meetings, over coffee and meals, and this was frequently not possible during my term. However, it was fabulous to observe the conference team and our social media experts, together with the many meetings organisers, moving proceedings into the virtual environment so smoothly, and it was equally wonderful to see how well these events were attended by our membership.  To some of us this feels like a distant memory, so a huge congratulations to everyone involved for getting us through those difficult times (and heart-felt best-wishes to those still not through them). 

Our Society also launched an EDIA Committee during my term. The group has been an invaluable guide to ASAB Council on many challenging themes and I thank them for that. Although it may seem a little non-inclusive to single out particular members of the team, my person thanks for this “launch phase” of the Committee go to Kirsty Graham, Jen Perry and Chiara Benvenuto, without your efforts the whole enterprise may have stalled, but you all ensured the launch was a success. Thank you so much.

We also tragically lost the fantastic Matt Gage, our then Treasurer, during my tenure. This caused much personal pain, for me and many others, but also generated difficulties for the Society. The fabulous Mike Siva-Jothy came to our rescue and Mike has spent a vast number of hours regaining control over matters financial, and he has also ensured we will never again have similar difficulty from such tragic events. Mike also stood in for me when I could not make Council, and for his heroic efforts on both counts my great appreciation.

 We also saw a change at Editor in Chief of our journal Animal Behaviour shortly after I became President, when the outstanding Sue Healy made way for the equally outstanding Andy Radford. The journal is our chief source of income, enabling us, and our sister society ABS, to do all the great things we do (grants, meetings, outreach) to support animal behaviour research and education, and having a great Editor is fundamental to all of this. To both Sue and Andy a huge thank you. The role is large and without such wonderful servants of ASAB the whole edifice would rapidly collapse.

There was also significant turn-over on the ASAB Committee. Thank you to all our committee member, recent and retired. Your collective input is invaluable and all of you have made being President easy and fun. I would especially like to thank Paula Stockley, our out-going Secretary, for her tireless work for ASAB in this, and her many other roles at the Society.  She carefully guided me through my three years and for this and much else I remain grateful.

And finally, to you, our members. Thank you for your involvement in our Society, which is only ever as good as its membership.  You review for us, organise meetings for us, and generally generate the milieu in which all this exciting and brilliant behavioural study takes place. Thank you. One final request, please ensure our incoming President Melissa Bateson has as much fun as I did. Thanks everyone. Hope to see you soon at some future ASAB conference.

Professor David Hosken

Former President ASAB.

ASAB AGM

Thanks to everyone who attended the winter meeting, the AGM 2023 agenda, AGM 2022 minutes and Council Officers AGM 2023 reports can be found here: AGM 2023

News from Animal Behaviour

Please remember that we are able to support so many animal behaviour endeavours (e.g., three conferences a year, a wide range of grant options and many educational activities) because of the funding that we receive from the publisher (Elsevier) of our society journal, Animal Behaviour. That funding will only continue to exist if the journal remains a success… so please do submit your great work to us and assist when asked to review papers. It is ultimately for the benefit of all in ASAB.

In addition to Research Articles and Reviews, we are now also going to be publishing Methods and Dataset papers (full details coming soon in the Author Guidelines). And if you needed any more incentive, there are now paper prizes too (see below).

We are delighted to announce the inaugural winners of the ASAB / Animal Behaviour paper prizes. The winner of each of the three categories receives £2,000 (thanks to Elsevier) to spend on animal behaviour research or associated activities (e.g., conference attendance). Winners are selected from papers that were received by the UK journal office (i.e., all parts of the world apart from the Americas – there are equivalent prizes awarded by ABS for those).

Student award - for any first author whose paper was accepted whilst they were still an undergraduate, Masters or PhD student.

🏆 Joe Morford (University of Oxford, left photo) for his paper 'Neural networks reveal emergent properties of collective learning in democratic but not despotic groups'; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2022.09.020

Early-career award - for any first or last author whose paper was accepted within 3 years (full-time equivalent) of receiving their PhD (taking into account breaks due to, for example, illness or parental leave).

🏆 Sophie Van Meyel (University of Helsinki, centre photo) for her paper 'Costs and benefits of isolation from siblings during family life in adult earwigs'; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2022.09.003

Geographical award - for any first or last author from an institute in a Low or Middle income country in the World Bank’s classification by the income of countries.

🏆 Kyle Lloyd (University of Pretoria, right photo) for his paper 'Density-related reproductive costs and natal conditions predict male life history in a highly polygynous mammal'; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2023.03.006

Winners of the 2023 ASAB Video Contest

Congratulations to the 3 winners of our 2023 ASAB video contest!! Each will receive a £100 cash prize and be featured on our website and YouTube channel.

🏆 The ASAB Council Choice winner is: Jonathan Webb – “Tales from the Bush: Firebirds and Wildfires in Northern Australia”

🏆 The two People's Choice winners are:

Amber Ramos – “Meet EVE: The Enclosure Video Enrichment System for the US Navy's Marine Mammals”

Ines Sanchez Garcia – “Why work when not motivated?” (domestic pig welfare)

Congratulations to all of you! The videos are all available through the ASAB website and YouTube so click through to watch them!! 

ASAB Winter Meeting 2023 

Many thanks to the organising team of the ASAB Winter meeting held in Edinburgh last month. Elisa Frasnelli, Tom Pike, Tim Simon and Anna Wilkinson curated an excellent, diverse and broad set of talks, plenaries and posters around the theme of Animal Cognition. There were very stimulating plenaries from Elli Leadbeater and Alice Auersperg, with a highly appropriately themed Tinbergen lecture from  Giorgio Vallortigara, and a public outreach talk by Gillian Forrester, followed by her talking with biology sixth form students from the city. Thanks to all of them for their contributions. Also, huge thanks to all the speakers and poster presenters - without your exciting research, our meetings would be dull indeed. 

If you are an ASAB member and want to watch the ASAB Winter Meeting recordings, please email asabwebeditor@gmail.com

One disappointment was that many people who had registered to attend in person did not turn up and did not notify us that they would not be attending. We were left with around 50 unclaimed name badges that we had prepared based on people's registration. What made this especially galling was that we also had a 'reserve' list of around 50 people who had tried to register to attend in person but did so after the limit of 300 delegates had been reached. We were able to notify some of these people that there were spaces when someone  who had registered told us in good time that they could no longer attend (thanks to those of you who did this) but there were still a number of members who could have made use of the wasted spaces. If we are to keep Winter meetings free to attend and yet to comply with the ever increasing administration demands and capacity limits of venues we need to have cooperation of members and delegates with people 'playing fair'. The alternative is to either charge for attendance or turn people away at the door when they have travelled to Edinburgh and booked accommodation.

Attention now moves to the 2024 Spring Meeting, to be held in Exeter. Do submit abstracts, book travel and apply for grants, and I really hope that you can join us for what promises to be an exciting meeting complete with ECR workshop the day before. We look forward to welcoming you to Exeter!

Jo Madden (ASAB Meetings Secretary)

Upcoming Meetings

Get out your calendars, it's time to plan for this year's ASAB meetings!

ASAB Spring Meeting 2024

Visit the conference website

When? Apri 23-25, 2024

Where? University of Exeter

Hosts: Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour - Lauren Brent, Sam Ellis, Andy Higginson, Lisa Leaver

Conference attendance grants more than £500 (only Developing Country applicants): 1st December 2023 (see also childcare & accessibility grants)1

Conference attendance grants up to £500: 1st February 2024 (see also childcare & accessibility grants)

Registration and abstracts open: Dec 18, 2023

Abstract submission deadline: Feb 9, 2024

Registration deadline: Mar 15, 2024

ASAB's Spring meeting is aimed at postgraduate students and postdocs but is open to anyone interested in animal behaviour. There will be three plenaries by leading researchers and the presentation by the winner of the Christopher Barnard award 2024.

Exeter is set amongst spectacular scenery on the Devon Coast, between the wilds of Dartmoor and the Exe estuary, and is easy to get to using public transport.

ECBB/ASAB Summer Meeting 2024

Visit the conference website

When: 16th-19th July 2024

Where: Zurich, Switzerland

Conference attendance grants more than £500 (only Developing Country applicants): 1st April 2024 (see also childcare & accessibility grants)

Conference attendance grants up to £500: 1st June 2024 (see also childcare & accessibility grants)

Abstracts submission deadline: TBA

Registration deadline: TBA

Join us for ECBB 2024, a joint meeting with the 2024 Summer Meeting of the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour (ASAB).

The theme of this conference is 'Long-term studies in animal behaviour'. Come hear more about these and many other topics in behavioural biology.

ASAB Winter Meeting 2024

When: 12th & 13th December 2024

Where: Edinburgh, Scotland

Conference attendance grants more than £500 (only Developing Country applicants): 1st August 2024 (see also childcare & accessibility grants)

Conference attendance grants up to £500: 1st October 2024 (see also childcare & accessibility grants)

Abstracts submission deadline: TBA

Registration deadline: TBA

Organising future ASAB meetings

We currently have opportunities for ASAB members to organise the ASAB Winter 2025 meeting (December 2025) and the Spring 2026 meetings. For the winter meeting, we look for a theme (recent ones include Animal Movement and Animal Cognition) - you (typically a team of 3-5 people) do the science and we (ASAB) do the logistics. For the Spring meetings, we look for an institution to host 2 days of talks and one of professional development - ASAB provides support, advice and some funding. For details of what this entails either please see https://www.asab.org/organise or contact Jo Madden, ASAB Meetings Secretary (j.r.madden@exeter.ac.uk). Without your offers to help with meetings, they will not be able to go ahead. 

Grants News January 2024

The next grants application deadlines are:

1st February 2024 for Research Grants and Undergraduate Project Scholarships

1st February 2024 for Conference Attendance, Childcare and Accessibility Grants for the ASAB Spring 2024 Conference in Exeter – please note that the deadline is already passed for the upper (‘developing country’) tranche of Conference Attendance Grants

1st April 2024 forapplications that include the upper (‘developing country’) tranche of Conference Attendance Grants for ‘ECBB/ASAB Summer 2024’ in Zurich, Switzerland. Other applicants requiring an early decision (eg to facilitate a visa application) may also apply in this round.

Grants awarded in the August 2023 and October 2023 application rounds

Research Grants (only October round): 5 applications were received and 1 grant was awarded:

• Blandine Doligez (CNRS (Biometry and Evolutionary Biology), University Lyon 1, France). Disrupted sexual communication in a polluted world? The case of plumage signals in the white-throated dipper. £ 8,300

Undergraduate Project Scholarships (only October round): 1 application was received (from India) and awarded:

• Ananya Agrawal (Ashoka University, India): Decoding the puzzle: stripe patterns, motion characteristics, and their role in confusion effect and numerical estimation. £ 4,600

Inter-disciplinary workshop grants (only October round): 1 application was received, and 1 award made:

• Holly Root-Gutteridge (University of Lincoln), Andrea Sommese (VetMedUni, Vienna), and Anna Korzeniowska (University of Surrey). Studying canine cognition and behaviour – towards standardization of research methods and protocols for enhanced replicability of results. Amount awarded: £ 4,435

Conference Attendance Grants (August and October rounds): 45 applications were received for the ASAB Winter 2023 Meeting in Edinburgh, 1 of which was not eligible. 40 of the 44 eligible applications were awarded (including 2 out of 4 eligible Developing Country applications) with a total amount of £18,756.70. Two of the grants, totalling £1675, were to Developing Country applicants.

Accessibility Grants (August and October rounds): One application was received in combination with an application for a Developing Country Conference Attendance Grant. The application was ineligible because it was not related to disability or medical needs.

Childcare Grants (August and October rounds): These grants contribute to the additional costs of childcare for ASAB members attending ASAB conferences. 3 eligible applications were received in the October round, all from the UK. All three of these applications would have been awarded a grant, but one application was withdrawn before a decision was made, and one of the remaining two awards was declined after it had been offered (in both cases due to family/carer issues). The total amount finally awarded was £200.94 to one applicant

Childcare Grants

ASAB childcare grants are available to ASAB members at all career stages to provide a flexible contribution to the additional costs of conference attendance. They have a high funding rate (including for repeat applications). Some of the uses to which these grants have recently been put include:

“… childcare for my primary-aged children during the day so that my working partner can care for them at home while I attend Behaviour 2023.”
- Miya, unsalaried Adjunct Professor.

“… my toddler son and a carer (my partner) coming with me to Behaviour 2023.”
- Natalie, Lecturer.

“… my primary-aged children coming with me to Behaviour 2023.”
- Elli, Professor.

“… my toddler twins coming with me to Behaviour 2023. Thank you so much ASAB!”
- Mylène, Early Career Researcher.

“… my pre-school son and a carer coming with me to ASAB Summer 2022.”
- Anna, Professor.

Grants for ASAB members from Developing Countries*

ASAB members from developing countries* may apply for any of the grants that ASAB offers under the same eligibility criteria as other ASAB members, but are also eligible to apply for extra funding for two types of ASAB grant:

Conference attendance grants

In addition to the standard grant of up to £500 for conference attendance, applicants from developing countries may apply for an additional tranche up to a maximum total grant of £2500. Applicants must be a citizen of, and working within, a developing country*. Please also note that the deadline for applications that include the higher tranche is 2 months earlier than those for £500 or less. These earlier deadlines are about 3-4 months earlier than the corresponding conference (1st April,1st August and 1st December).

(See https://www.asab.org/scholarships for more information on Undergraduate Project Scholarships)

Undergraduate project scholarships

In addition to the standard grant of up to £4600 towards subsistence for the student, and research and travel expenses, applicants at an Institute in a developing country* may apply for up to an additional £1000 towards expenses that are entailed by carrying out the project in another country (eg travel, visas, living costs).

(See https://www.asab.org/conference-grants for more information on Conference Attendance Grants)

*For the purposes of these grants, a ‘developing country’ is defined as a Low or Middle income country in the World Bank’s classification by the income of countries (scroll down in the link).

Education Committee News: Spring 2024

A massive thank you to Professor Gilly Forrester and all the organisers of the ASAB Winter Conference. Twelve students from The Royal High School Edinburgh had a brilliant time experiencing life at a science conference. Gilly gave an excellent talk and then joined to the students to answer their questions before the young people were tasked with choosing their favourite poster.

In October we listened to the world's first eight-legged musical instrument at Oxford IF Science Festival. The Sonic Spider played music from an arachnid's world, passing members of the public, as well as, ticket holders came into New Road Baptist church to be transported into an imagined world of vibrations and senses. The wonderful Amber Harper from Oxford Brookes University (McGregor Lab) bought her microscope and spiderlings she entertained, educated and enlightened local youngsters and adults alike.

Inclusive Undergraduate
Evolution Education

Dear Colleagues,

We are compiling a resource for undergraduate evolutionary biology education. One of the first places students engage with evolutionary biology in-depth is in undergraduate courses, and evolutionary concepts can be confusing and difficult to grasp at this early stage. Furthermore, to facilitate a deeper understanding of evolutionary concepts within our classrooms and research community, it is important to address how exclusionary systems influenced foundational work in our disciplines, and how it continues to shape the way we study the natural world.

We know that many members of our community have already developed fantastic teaching materials, and our goal is to create a central repository of resources for inclusive undergraduate evolution education. We will share resources on this database monthly: https://tinyurl.com/inclevoedu.

If you have any resources to share, we would greatly appreciate it. Please contribute resources and teaching materials by filling out a short Google form (should take <5 minutes to complete): https://forms.gle/Sjn9V3oezas9e8tG6. Please contact inclusive.evoedu@gmail.com with any questions, suggestions, or if you'd like to contribute further to this effort.

Please forward this message to your networks.

Thank you!

Alejandra Camargo
Dr. Nancy Chen Dr. Kiyoko Gotanda Dr. Suegene Noh Amanda Puitiza Lucia Ramirez Juleyska Vazquez Dr. Yaamini Venkataraman
on behalf of Women of Color in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Book: Being Your Cat

What’s really going on in your feline’s mind, by Celia Haddon and Professor Daniel Mills FRCVS, Octopus Publishing, £14.99, pp. 248,

Book: Aesop’s Animals