Dieter Lukas

@dieterlukas

Investigating the evolution of social behaviour. Comparative Behavioral Ecology group leader (he/him) at the MPI EVA 🌉 bridged from on the fediverse by

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Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· 6d

congrats to the "inaugural winners of the Ctrl-Z Award for courage in retracting their own work" https://centerforscientificintegrity.org/2026/08/04/2026-winners-ctrl-z-award-courage-retracting-own-work/ links with this recent xkcd comic https://xkcd.com/3275/

A single panel comic strip showing two people walking towards a podium while the announcer declares that "This year's Nobel Prize in calibrating your equipment carefully and not embararrsing yourself by publishing spurious results goes to Dr. Adams and Dr. Smith, who did not announce the discovery of microbes on Titan".

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· 6d

In spotted hyenas, "social inheritance of privilege is a powerful driver of reproductive inequality" paper: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aee7880 press release […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

A figure from the scientific paper showing that the more offspring individual hyenas have, the more grand-offspring they have. This correlation though is a lot steeper in females than in males, meaning that over generations successful female lineages spread much faster than successful male lineages.

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· Dec 3

Do you like cities? The Global Building Atlas has the locations and 3D models of 2.8 billion buildings from around the world https://tubvsig-so2sat-vm1.srv.mwn.de "1.22 of the 2.75 billion buildings are located in Asia" […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

Screenshot from the linked website, zoomed all the way out to show a map of the whole world with color codings indicating the density of buildings. South-east Asia, Europe, and North America have the highest density, with large parts of the world still relatively free of high clusters of buildings.

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· Nov 12

"Monk parakeets ‘test the waters’ when forming new relationships" https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2025.0399#d1e770 interesting new study by https://bsky.app/profile/elizabethhobson.bsky.social et al. J. Manson once reminded me that not […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

A cover for the journal Biology Letters of the Royal Society, displaying a photo of two monk parakeets (birds) preening each other

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· Oct 21

Wettbewerb für Kreative in #Leipzig zur Gestaltung von #Science #Comics auf Werbeflächen: https://lauramayer.space/Science-Streets-OPEN-CALL Open call for creatives in Leipzig to submit comics for Science Streets (the link has details also in English)

Poster advertising the open call to design science comics for Science Streets in Leipzig. Deadline is the 30 November 2025. The background shows an an example a connection between the heart and the brain.

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· Oct 19

Fieldwork simplifies bird identification: the bird on the left is "not a grackle", the bird in the middle is "not a grackle", as is the bird on the right #TheGrackleProject For actual ID's see alt text.

Photo of a small bird, a yellow-rumped warbler. Credit Dieter Lukas

Photo of a bird, a acorn woodpecker. Credit Dieter Lukas

Photo of a bird, a California scrub-jay. Credit Dieter Lukas

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· Sep 30

Bird migration season: last week, radar "captured about 10% of the (North American) continent’s birds in flight at the same time" https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/record-breaking-night-of-bird-migration/

A map showing the outline of the continental USA. Overlaid in colour is a graphic depicting where, on 25 September 2025, many birds were detected in flight at night. The map shows the large migration of birds from Canada and the Northern US down the eastern central parts of the US (along the Mississipi confluence).

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· Sep 15

"Overall, the message from this survey is positive– #evolutionary #biologists are readily employable outside of #academia, generally well-prepared for those jobs, and report high levels of satisfaction in their non-academic #careers" https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.19.671061v1

A scientific figure from the linked paper by Betancourt et al. It shows on the left, that most (70%) evolutionary biologists who switched to a career outside of academia felt prepared. The right panel is a graph showing what training individuals would like to have received more of during their academic career, with the top points being related to management skills.

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· Aug 27

The highly commended entries in this year's #Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition: https://bbc.com/news/articles/c70r7plrdndo The photo below by Lakshitha Karunarathna documents a lone Asian elephant navigating a waste disposal site.

An aerial photo showing an Asian elephant from above as she walks through a field of plastic garbage. Photo taken by Lakshitha Karunarathna, one of the highly commended entries in this year's Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· Aug 12

Another fun one from xkcd: "Various experts answer the question: where do babies come from?" https://xkcd.com/3127/

A drawing showing several stick figures representing experts answering the question: where do babies come from? The geneticist says "recent admixture event, roughly 0.001kya". The astronomer "low-impulse ejection from a parent body". The software engineer "off-by-one error in the population calculations". The geologist "the area was originally a uniform plane, but the non-baby parts eroded at higher rates". The meteorologist "moist ground-level turbulent mixing" .The alt-text for the image adds historians "Contemporaneous documentation of the initial events is often sparse, and in fact people often get testy and uncooperative when we urge better documentation for the historical record".

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· Aug 6

„behavioral flexibility, while helpful in allowing birds to adapt to new environments, is not the primary facilitator for range expansion“ https://news.ucsb.edu/2025/021980/both-flexibility-and-persistence-make-some-birds-successful-human-made-environments #TheGrackleProject

A great tailed grackle, a black slender bird with a long tail, is eating fast food cheese sauce in a parking lot. Photo credit C. Logan

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· Jul 8

Our #study finds that #male #dominance isn't the norm among #primates, and starts to unravel what shapes flexibility in intersexual power paper (OA) https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2500405122 press release https://www.mpg.de/24986976/0630-evan-beyond-the-alpha-male-150495-x?c=2249

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· Jun 30

New report from the WHO "From #loneliness to #social connection: charting a path to healthier societies" https://www.who.int/groups/commission-on-social-connection/report Looks like it can be relevant for those of us doing research in related field because […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

Figure from the report showing that the global prevalence of loneliness is 15.8% in all people who responded. The percentages is highest among the youngest individuals of 13-7 years of age, and lowest among the oldest individuals of more than 60 years of age.

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· Jun 25

Want to explore the expected relatedness in different social groups - and how this can affect competition? Check out the neat app L. White did for our paper: https://bsky.app/profile/drlozwhite.bsky.social/post/3lsgieizk4k2a paper: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.250385

Screenshot of the online app, showing the sliders for the settings of different social parameters on the left and the result relatedness and competition patterns on the right. The settings reflect the case we found for chimpanzees.

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· Jun 25

We have a new paper: "intergenerational conflict among females may play a role in the evolution of #chimpanzee #menopause" https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.250385

Two of the scientific graphs from the linked paper. The left side shows that as female chimpanzees get older, their relatedness to the males in their community increases because they now include their sons. The relatedness to other females however stays low, because new unrelated females constantly join the community. The graph on the right shows that these age-related changes in relatedness mean that females are expected to act selfish when they are young, but care about others in the group when they are older.

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· May 19

Observations from a seminar series in Biology shows that "Female speakers had smaller audiences, especially among professors, even with comparable productivity metrics." https://ecoevorxiv.org/repository/view/7175/ recommended @PeerCommunityIn Ecology […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

A figure from the linked article showing that across productivity levels, female professors have smalller audiences than male professors when they give a seminar talk

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· May 3

"Immediate and longer-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientific productivity in ecology and evolution...We show that although submission rates spiked when the pandemic began, they have been plummeting since." https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2025.0463

Figure showing the change in the average number of articles submitted to ecology and evolution journals over time. The plot starts in 2012 with around 55 submissions per month, this increase to around 60 sbubmissions right before the start of the Covid pandemic, at which point there is an immediate jump to about 70 submissions. Since then, the number of submissions has drastically declined to around 45 submissions per month in 2024.

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· Apr 25

New from #TheGrackleProject: "using multiple different methods for measuring boldness and exploration...our findings improve our understanding of the traits that are linked with flexibility in a highly adaptable species" […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

Figure 1 from the linked scientific paper showing the 6 different behavioral experiments the grackles participated in. They first had to perform a color reversal learning task, before checking how much they explore a novel environment, how afraid they are of a purple halloween cat / a stuffed pigeon / a stuffed hawk, and how well they are able to access food in two puzzle boxes.

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· Mar 18

Try to explain scientific journal publishing fees to non-academics... https://xkcd.com/2085/

xkcd comic showing a discussion between two women. In the first panel, one woman says "wait, all the papers in your field are posted as free pdfs on arxiv? That must be killing big scientific journals since they charge such huge subscription/publishing fees." The other woman replies "Nah, we have been doing it since the 90s, and nobody seems to care". The first woman gets agitated and says "That makes no sense at all", when the other woman shushes her "shh, you'll jinx it".

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· Mar 7

Interesting new study looks at how ice fishermen integrate personal and social information to decide where to forage https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/qbvp9_v1 thread by first author: https://bsky.app/profile/alexschakowski.bsky.social/post/3ljdgqlslc22h

Figure from the linked scientific article. The top shows an aerial view of the movement of a fisherman. It shows that they did not fish randomly, but focused on specific locations, where they are usually successful in about 3 of their 10 tries. The bottom shows how many fish they caught over time depending on whether they stayed in one place or moved to a new location.

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· Feb 24

Siphoning money out of academia... "Last year, Elsevier's publishing business had an operating profit of £1.17bn, growth of 5%, on a revenue of £3.05bn, giving it an operating margin of 38.4%...article submissions growing very strongly, particularly in […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

A figure from the linked paper by Logan. It compares the exploitative publishing route with a more ethical one. In the exploitative, currently common route, publishers take huge profits while excluding many people from either reading or contributing articles. In the ethical route, academics remain in charge of the system, only paying what is needed to maintain the infrastructure, providing access to all.

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· Feb 22

"Leistet passiven Widerstand – wo immer Ihr auch seid!" - 'Put up passive resistance, wherever you are' Three members of the "Weiße Rose" were executed #otd 22 Feb 1943 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rose 'Die "Weiße Rose" und die Geschwister […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

"Freiheit" / "Freedom“, written by Sophie
Scholl on the back of her
indictment paper.

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· Feb 21

Mice react to unresponsive conspecifics similar to what we get taught as first aid - and their interventions speed up recovery. Described in two new articles: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq2677 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq2679

Figure from the scientific paper by Sun et al describing the different emergency responses mice show towards unconscious conspecifics. They will first approach and sniff, then start to groom. If that isn't sufficient, they will bite the mouth and pull out the tongue to clear the airways. Sedated mice who receive this support from a partner recover much quicker.

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· Feb 13

New #survey on "#European citizens’ knowledge and attitudes towards #science and technology" https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/detail/3227 Some key findings: - 83% think that the influence of science/technology is positive - 80% think that results […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

A scientific figure, with one vertical bar for each European country to summarize the answer to the statement "The results of publicly funded research, such as scientific articles and data, should be made available online free of charge." In all countries the vast majority of answers was "strongly agree" or "tend to agree".

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· Jan 30

Catching up on #fieldwork #research with #TheGrackleProject: the great-tailed grackles in California often foraged in the shade, however limited the shade was. Not sure whether they don't want to stare into the sun, are better hidden from predators, prefer the lower temperature,...?

Photo of a grackle, a black bird, standing inside the head of my shadow on an otherwise sunny patch of grass. The bird has some food in his beak, looking back at me, but making sure that his whole body remains in the shade.

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· Jan 28

Catching up on #fieldwork #research with #TheGrackleProject: this female great-tailed grackle in California wanted to make sure that we collect the correct data...

A photo showing a brown bird, a female grackle, looking at a white board on the ground. She is right next to our feet, walking under a camera tripod, to get to the board.

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· Jan 27

Catching up on #fieldwork #research with #TheGrackleProject: grackles mostly ignore each other, but these two juvenile male boat-tailed grackles in Florida got into a disagreement....

Photo of two male boat-tailed grackles fighting. They are backlight, so only the silhouettes are visible. One male is pulling the wing of the other with his leg.

Photo of two male boat-tailed grackles fighting. One male is jumping, wings open, with his feet pointing toward the other male, who is turning with his beak opened.

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· Jan 24

Was passiert eigentlich beim #recycling der 'Wertstoffe'? Gute Infographik des @ZDF zeigt das nur 35% wirklich wiederverwertet wird: https://zdfheute-stories-scroll.zdf.de/gelbe-tonne-recycling/index.html Also: Plastik vermeiden wenn möglich

Grafik die zeigt dass von den jährlich 2508 kt Wertstoffabfällen in Deutschland 35% tatsächlich recyclet werden, 7% als Verlust gelten, und 58% verbrannt werden.

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· Jan 14

Part 5) of #pressrelease #blog: how to check the reaction to your press release? It can be interesting to see how others react to your findings. But it is impossible to control the reactions.

An image showing individuals behind their computers connected in a social network.

Dieter Lukas@dieterlukas· Jan 14

Part 4) of #pressrelease #blog: what to expect after your press release is out? Often nothing happens, but it is still worth thinking about your study in a different way. If journalists do contact you, be prepared for the new things you are going to learn.