Pheasants@Exeter Profile picture
Studying how natural selection shapes cognitive performance in the wild using the genius of the bird world - Pheasants. Tweets by Jo Madden
May 12, 2023 15 tweets 4 min read
Yesterday, I deliberately tweeted 2 contrasting headlines from our paper about ecological correlates of gamebird release & management

One portrayed them as ecologically +ve(⬆️🐦🦋,⬇️🦊)
The other as ecologically -ve(⬇️🪲⬆️🐀)

Both were true but partial

What would Twitter do?🧵 ImageImage For each tweet, I linked the underlying paper available to all AND a 2nd tweet warning the headlines were not ALL the results, linked to a thread that described the nuance and limitations of the study. This thread provided a neutral control

The full story was only 1 click away Image
May 10, 2023 9 tweets 5 min read
What relationships are there between gamebird release and management and numbers of other non-game species?

In our new paper out today, we explore these across the UK considering 🦊🐀🪲🦋🐦🦎🐍 and more

Some taxa ⬆️and some⬇️🐦‍⬛

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ec…

A 🧵 Image Relationships with e.g. generalist preds, corvids, rodents, butterflies, beetles, farmland & woodland birds) have been studied individually, often on a few sites or over a short time period. We used

@NBNTrust
citizen science data (2.5 million records) from 2000-2020 across UK Image
Aug 20, 2020 15 tweets 5 min read
What are the ecological consequences of gamebird release?

Review by me and Rufus Sage @Gameandwildlife
publications.naturalengland.org.uk/publication/50…

We scoured the published, grey and unpublished literature to document the ecological impacts of gamebird release

What did we find?

(Thread) Image It's a Rapid Evidence Assessment, so didn't set out to make specific recommendations. Policy makers may use this evidence for future decisions

Joint funded @NaturalEngland & @BASCnews

Neither org had input to Review content other than stipulate remit (exclude ethic/econ/social)
Oct 3, 2019 37 tweets 39 min read
"Why are pheasants so dumb?"

We’ve been asked this repeatedly over the past 5 years as we study how selection acts on cognition, using the ultimate bird-brain as our study species

Our @ERC_Research funded project finished this week😪, so here's a 🧵 outlining our findings @ERC_Research It’s a lot of work (39 papers/completed manuscripts); the product of a fantastic team of researchers & collaborators.

In this thread we’ve set these papers (with links) within the context of our overarching central question.

This figure summarises the thread structure