@DustRubenstein profile picture
Dustin Rubenstein @DustRubenstein

Thomas Hunt Morgan Professor of Conservation Biology @Columbia University l Animal Behavior | Integrative Organismal Biology | Evolutionary Ecology

Joined March 2009
  • Tweets 1,122
  • Following 50
  • Followers 1,668
79 Photos and videos
Patrick Kennedy and I are looking for two postdocs!
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Great opportunity for prospective PhD students: Simons Graduate Fellowships in Ecology and Evolution: simonsfoundation.org/grant/s…

Simons Graduate Fellowships in Ecology and Evolution

The purpose of these awards is to provide support for students entering U.S.-based Ph.D. programs with a plan to perform research in ecology and evolution. While we will consider all projects in...

simonsfoundation.org
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Gerry Carter and I wrote a wrote a Research Briefing on our latest @Nature paper looking at reciprocity in superb starlings. You can access the Briefing here (and the original paper itself is OA): nature.com/articles/d41586-0…
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Dustin Rubenstein retweeted
Columbia Science@ColumbiaScience
7 May 2025
A study of starlings in Africa shows that they form long-term social bonds similar to human friendships. news.columbia.edu/news/new-s…

New Study Shows That Birds Form Bonds That Look a Lot Like Friendship

A study of starlings in Africa shows that they form long-term social bonds similar to human friendships.

news.columbia.edu
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Our latest superb starling work in @nature. We observe long-term reciprocal helping relationships, and suggest reciprocity is an underappreciated mechanism promoting the stability of cooperatively breeding societies. Led by Alexis Earl and Gerry Carter. nature.com/articles/s41586-0…

A cryptic role for reciprocal helping in a cooperatively breeding bird

Nature - A study of the cooperative breeding behaviour of superb starlings during 40 consecutive breeding seasons over 20 years reveals long-term reciprocal helping between both related and...

nature.com
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Today marks the 25th anniversary of the superb starling project!
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statnews.com/2025/04/03/basi…

Why we study shrimp on treadmills: The case for curiosity-driven research

“If we cut or limit funding for curiosity-driven research, we risk shutting down the pipeline of future innovation,” writes Carole LaBonne of Northwestern.

statnews.com
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NYC subway now has private security to make sure people don’t sneak through gates. But guard told people to sneak over turnstile instead. They claim they are paid only to stop people at gates not turnstiles. WTF are you paying these people for @MTA ?
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Last year of the NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology focusing on Integrative Research Investigating the Rules of Life Governing Interactions Between Genomes, Environment and Phenotypes. Next year’s focus will be on Understanding and Solutions for a Resilient Planet.
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Pretty sad when @Columbia faculty hear about graduation being cancelled from @nytimes and not from the President. Add it to her long list of failures...   nytimes.com/2024/05/06/nyreg…

After Weeks of Protests, Columbia Cancels Main Commencement Ceremony (Published 2024)

Columbia’s president had earlier said that she did not want to deprive students of an in-person celebration after many graduated high school during the pandemic.

nytimes.com
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Working hard at dusk on the African savannah.
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Grading papers down by the river with the subject of those papers foraging in the background.
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Birders can get an HD video of an extremely rare half male-half female bird, but they can’t get a half decent video of an ivory-billed woodpecker? Hmmm….. phys.org/news/2023-12-extrem…

Extremely rare half female, half male bird captured on film

A striking and extremely rare half female, half male bird has been spotted by a University of Otago zoologist.

phys.org
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So cool. Gynandromorphic honeycreeper. phys.org/news/2023-12-extrem…

Extremely rare half female, half male bird captured on film

A striking and extremely rare half female, half male bird has been spotted by a University of Otago zoologist.

phys.org
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Dustin Rubenstein retweeted
Kim Rosvall@rosvall_lab
26 Sep 2023
📢💥We're hiring, TT position in ANIMAL BEHAVIOR!! 🐦🐸🐝🪰🦋🐟🐁 #job #academia @iu_eeb @IU_CISAB. Apply by 11/15/23 here: indiana.peopleadmin.com/post…
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Our latest theory paper thinking about group size and structure in animal societies using insider-outsider conflict theory. @ShengFeng_Shen sciencedirect.com/science/ar…
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Columbia’s Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environtmental Biology is hiring an Evolutionary Biologist/Evolutionary Ecologist. Note that the deadline we begin reviwing applications is actualy October 6 (it took awhile for this to get posted). apply.interfolio.com/131172
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Dustin Rubenstein retweeted
thednazoo@thednazoo
14 Sep 2023
Dig into some Cape dune mole-rat data with the new genome assembly out today @thednazoo! Thank you to @jtung5 @DustRubenstein, collaborators & teams for help with the sample. Read about awesome burrowing adaptations trending in the underground scene: dnazoo.org/post/digging-up-m…

Digging up mole-rat assembly data

The Cape dune mole-rat, Bathyergus suillus is the largest of the African mole-rats in the family Bathyergidae. It is a truly subterranean mammal that attains a body mass of up to 2 kg and uses its...

dnazoo.org
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Generative AI is poised to change the way organismal and evolutionary biologists do science. In our latest preprint, we use these cutting-edge techniques to study the evolution of morphological diversty in butterflies and moths. researchsquare.com/article/r… @ShengFeng_Shen

The rise of morphological diversity in butterflies and moths

As one of the most speciose animals groups1,2, butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera) are well known for their distinctive and colorful wings3,4. Yet, due to difficulties in quantifying differences in...

researchsquare.com
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Nice write-up by @SjoukeKingma in @CurrentBiology on our recent @PNASNews paper on superb starlings. More to come every soon on some of the questions he asks at the end on mutualistic and reciprocal benefits. Stay tuned! @shailee_shah93
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