The other day I had the chance of attending a lecture by the wonderful @waspwoman.bsky.social Not only did she show amazing research, but the love and passion for the poorly misunderstood wasps is really something!!

Not only were food stalls the most common way for ordinary people to eat, but when people ate home-cooked meals, they ate communally, sharing among neighbors, coworkers, or family/friends.

Phrictus quinquepartitus is what I'd call the dragon-headed lantern bug with the multiple tubercles lining its snout, or apical process. Photographed in Belize

Looking forward to giving this talk later today @naturerecovery.bsky.social! What better way to end the week than with a dose of #WaspLove! @uclcber.bsky.social

Episode 46: Sapiens It's an ambitious goal to write the entire history of humanity in just 400 pages. It's even more ambitious to do it without reading any research.

👩‍🌾 Grab your tools

#ThrowbackThursday brought by a Ripipteryx marginata seem at El Valle De Anton in Panama last March! The amazing matte finish is really not captured by the camera!

We are delighted to announce our upcoming LGBTQ+ seminar given by Dr Ross Brooks who will be talking about his upcoming book, Darwin and the Queer Origins of Life! 2nd December @ 4pm in the Life and Mind Building, open to all members of Oxford university 🥳🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rossb-brighton.bsky.social #QueerBiology

worm

Explore the rich SciArt ecosystem on Bluesky with my SciArt Starter Pack. Paleoart to fine art, comics to medical illustration, bioart to space imagery. 150 artists, plus the entire popular SciArt Feed 🐡. And no gen AI or NFTs. 🥳

I’ve released a tool to sketch and edit phylogenetic trees! yawak.jp/PhyloWeaver/ Load a Newick file and intuitively add/remove/resize branches. Useful for quick conceptual trees, extracting subtrees, or turning ideas into Newick.

🐜 Leafcutter ants and Shy shrimp

AI slop gracing the cover of Royal Society B. Not only in AI yellow but scientifically nonsensical. Come on. I'm certain human photographs and artworks were ignored to platform ... this.

Cloudfare coming back, just when I less wanted to work 😔

If you missed Cristina Banks-Leite's Nature Seminar on Friday, you can catch it here, and discover what truly drives species sensitivity to deforestation. 🍃 @ecioxford.bsky.social @oxfordgeography.bsky.social @biology.ox.ac.uk

Entomologists:

This so common in "environmentally friendly "countries. The case of Panama comes to mind, were the government was more than happy to let build a new mining operation in the middle of an old growth forest, and that sadly you can see now from space.

this is why representation in games matters

Reptiles confined to islands are facing a double jeopardy 🦎 New research from @ricardonature.bsky.social shows that 30% of island reptiles are threatened with extinction (compared to 12.1% of reptiles overall) - but only 6.7% of reptile-focused research since 1960 has studied them 👇 bit.ly/3LqQo1F

Q: Why are Bugs so silly? A: Because they don't have a serious bone in their body *loud booing* Anyway here's Apache degeeri, a silly derbid planthopper

In Summer 2024, a team of palaeontologists and geologists undertook an expedition to the Little Dal Group in the Mackenzie Mountains, Northwest Territories, Canada. Their purpose was to uncover some of the oldest fossil ecosystems that record complex life.

Pushing for open access is not enough. We need a push to end profit.

Big news - I’ll be starting an #insect #systematics lab at University of Nebraska-Lincoln this coming academic year! I’m looking to #recruit #PhDstudents to work in #wasp systematics, especially gall systems, to begin Fall 2026. Please help me spread the word — more details on the flyer below!

LGBTQ+ Journal Club is turning 1! 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈To celebrate, here's a bit about what we've been up to over the past year: a thread of interesting papers in queer biology (1/n) ⬇️🧵

🌟 Ready to take the next step in your career? Applications are open for the Cambridge Biosciences Doctoral Training Programme! 🔬 ➡️ Fully funded opportunities: supported by the BBSRC Learn more and apply now: bbsrcdtp.lifesci.cam.ac.uk/how-apply #Postgraduate #Cambridge #PhD

The days may be getting colder and darker, but there's still a chance to spot beautiful butterflies and moths in your gardens and green spaces 🦋🍂 #SaveButterflies #MothsMatter

that’s what I’ve been saaaayying maaan

(Leading him to the Sphinx) Yeah, it’s like a trivia night

Our DNA library is made possible thanks to the support of our funding partners. Today’s featured specimen is from the Cerambycidae family, collected from the Northern Cape of South Africa. This record was made possible through funding from the New Frontiers in Research Fund.

I will have an opening for a Ph.D. student (M.S. required) to begin Summer 2026, studying impacts to high Appalachian arthropod communities following Hurricane Helene. I'll be at Ent. Soc. America meetings next week. Please point interested students my way. More: sites.google.com/site/caterin...

Given the recent devastation to US #entomology, this thread is a resource list for aspiring entomologists or those who’ve lost jobs. I invite others to add links they think might help. I won’t pretend this is easy, but there’s no better time to start. Open below to read: 🧪 #AcademicSky #science

This is deeply disappointing from Starmer. The UK *helped design* this 'TFFF' fund, designed to stop deforestation, and supposedly 'continues to back the fund' (in theory). But now isn't putting any money into it 🤯 How embarrassing for the UK. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

#TBT With some Chlorion wasp on one my last visits to Barron Colorado Island this June! Remarkably hard to capture as they were moving all over the place.

I missed this paper before but it’s pretty wild “Sirenobethylus was probably a koinobiont parasitoid wasp, the unique grasping mechanism at the tip of the abdomen possibly being used for temporary host capture.” #wasps #wasplove #Cretaceous #amber #fossil bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Free formals are always a win

The black velvet is an optimal backdrop for these use cases, because even black paper or plastic tends to reflect a lot of light. Velvet is especially good for iridescent insects, IIRC it's what we used for these guys at DPI:

Brazil’s official data show deforestation in the Amazon fell 11% in the 12 months to July 2025, with independent monitoring by Imazon confirming a similar trend—evidence that policies under President Lula da Silva are reversing the sharp rise seen during Jair Bolsonaro’s administration.

Delighted my YouTube channel has >1/4 million views and >5k subscribers. Keen to find new audiences especially students and practitioners. Also keen for new subjects either in UK or online interviewing someone in the field. Ideas welcome! youtube.com/@bill_suther...

Spooky night at @sthughscollege.bsky.social

Our very own @biolliegist.bsky.social and @erolafenollosa.bsky.social will be will be part of this event next week. It’s always timely and important to discuss gender biases in quantitative ecology 🌈📊 @biology.ox.ac.uk #GenderBiasInScience #QuantitativeEcology

I'm proud to announce my latest pin design! These are for everyone with split pronouns who gets tired of people only referring to them one way. My lenticular pin shows different pronouns at different angles! Please share with anyone who might like one 💖 canopyrobin.etsy.com/listing/4396... #SciArt

Tomorrow (30th) at 11am CEST, Clara Thoma from agroforst.de will talk about creating resilient landscapes through agroforestry🌳🪱🌱 Register here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... Seminar series Forest Ecology: Science&Practice www.uni-goettingen.de/de/701005.html #agroforestry

Bring back throwing rotten food at rich people

I want to give this energy

🧪For those of us who do complex collaborations with multiple corresponding authors this is terrible . I suspect it will also hit female authors disproportionately as they tend to have more collaborations across fields…https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03281-4

Isopods!! 🧡

Little long-term change in regional species richness of tropical butterflies over the past 166 years masks turnover in community composition #ProcB #OpenAccess #Ecology royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...