And it’s day one of #MothsOnTour with @gmrc.bsky.social at #BSI25!! If you’re moth curious, come chat to either me, @jenniesc.bsky.social or Prof Wakefield about the #Galleriamellonella 3Rs in vivo model and see what it’s all about with the wiggly 🐛🐛

Its only been two months and our new PhD student is already making memes of me.

🚨New paper! 🚨 @jasminealqassar.bsky.social led this work on the silk glands of the pantry moth. These two long tubes inside the caterpillar continuously make a ton of silk How does this special organ work? www.cell.com/iscience/ful... @cp-iscience.bsky.social 🧵THREAD🧵

We have a funded NERC PhD studentship! Selfish X chromosomes are these bizarre things where males carrying the selfish X suffer from imploding testes. Lots to do in this space, especially in evolutionary, stress, and infection biology. Please share! #PhDchat #AcademicSky @uniexecec.bsky.social

Very patient wife entertained a visit to damp, slightly dilapidated velodrome, where the only other people present were playing blindfolded football. 148 days to go! #paris-roubaix2026

中国国家留学基金委和英国埃克塞特大学合作奖学金（博士生项目） There is still time to apply for this China Scholarship Council PhD opportunity. www.exeter.ac.uk/study/pg-res... Interested students please email at the email in the advertisement below. Thanks for circulating! #Drosophila #Aphid #AcademicChatter #AcademicSky

We’ve got a couple of PhD projects open. Including one with the lovely @adamgrieve.bsky.social and @scholpplab.bsky.social on Rhbdl proteins in #zebrafish which is open to UK and international students tinyurl.com/fishprotease

It's out, Minos transgenesis in the pantry moth by @donyaniyaz.bsky.social @lucalivraghi.bsky.social High efficient, glowing eye and silk gland markers peerj.com/articles/202... @peerj.bsky.social

Cool find on the dog walk - I believe it’s a scarletina bolete - not for the pot until you’re sure though!

Caught the last of the light on the way home and a few winter chanterelles for tea!

Shaggy inkcap time!

Picked up this lovely book from a charity shop for £2 and quite charmingly it’s full of little clippings from over a quarter of a century ago, yet still relevant.

This weekend‘s activity now sorted courtesy of Emorsgate - trying to bolster the species in my wild patch for next year.

More chunky chaps, this time rose chafer grubs - back underground now to see them next year

Today’s rearing had some chunky chappies, but I‘m looking forward to the day when the Moby Dick of Galleria reported in this study turns up at 740mg (current PB is ~650mg) pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC... #fatmothweek

Had a brilliant time in Liverpool at Edge Hill University for the Galleria mellonella Workshop 🐛 Grateful to be invited as a speaker, the great chats and new connections. Amazing to see the wide range of applications, hope our time lapse imaging work can add to the field!

Our final talk is from @doktorbasti.bsky.social at @cam.ac.uk on the scalable imaging platform is developing to automate health and mortality scoring during microbial virulence assays #galleriamellonellaworkshop2025

Next a presentation from Toby Jenkins and Simon Booth from @uniofbath.bsky.social on their work using lasers to improve the Galleria burn wound infection model originally developed by @evgeniamaslova.bsky.social #galleriamellonellaworkshop2025

@cjcoates.bsky.social from @universityofgalway.bsky.social and @swanseauni.bsky.social gives us an overview on Galleria as an aspirant toxicology model for shellfish poisoning syndrome #galleriamellonellaworkshop2025

After the first break we have Prof Vitaliy Khutoryanskiy from PEVITAC @uniofreading.bsky.social on their advances in toxicological and antimicrobial testing using Galleria #galleriamellonellaworkshop2025

Next up is @jenniesc.bsky.social of @exeter.ac.uk / @gmrc.bsky.social giving an overview of the Galleria mellonella Research Centre activities! #galleriamellonellaworkshop2025

The 2025 Galleria mellonella Workshop is off to a start at Edge Hill University, with an opening talk on the Galleria Envenoming Model from @rachelhclare.bsky.social #galleriamellonellaworkshop2025

🐛 Research-grade Galleria mellonella — hand-picked for researchers, BY researchers! Planning experiments for Sept/Oct? Get in touch now! ✅ In-house reared, no antimicrobial additives ✅ Hand-selected for quality ✅ +10% extra to cover in-transit loss ✅ Flexible shipping options 📩 [email protected]

Wasps (and me!) in @thesundaytimes.bsky.social today. Thanks @ben-spencer.bsky.social for championing wasps! Get involved with #WaspPicnicSurvey and #BigWaspSurvey! #SummerOfWaspLove Links below! @uclcber.bsky.social @uclnews.bsky.social @adamhartscience.bsky.social

Incredible what one application of Just For Men can do.

Back from Kolymbari, and had such an amazing time with an incredible community of lepidopterists #lepgencrete. Great to get the opportunity to talk about what we're up to with @gmrc.bsky.social and spread the word about the #galleriamellonella infection model. Can't wait for #lepgen13 in 2028!

You want to collect insects (and maybe other arthropods) for reference genome sequencing, but don't want to spend a fortune on dry ice shipping! All you gotta do is SQUISH. THAT. BUG! More details in our recent preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Galleria mellonella workshop in September, Edge Hill University nc3rs.org.uk/events/galle...

Wax moth larvae are growing in use as a partial replacement for rodents, from infection and immunity research to toxicology. The fourth annual Galleria mellonella workshop is organised by Dr Rachel Clare in collaboration with @gmrc.bsky.social 🗓️15 September 👉Register: nc3rs.org.uk/events/galle...

🌟Excited to announce our first speaker for GMW2025 🎤Prof. Khutoryanskiy (www.pevitac.co.uk) will join us with a talk on: “Galleria mellonella in Toxicology & Antimicrobial Evaluation: A PEVITAC Perspective on Scientific & Commercial Impact” 🐛Info: www.gmrcuk.org/galleria-mellonella-workshop-2025

Orthodox academy of crete knows how to do conference accommodation!

Ready for the 12th international workshop on molecular biology and genetics of Lepidoptera. Kolymbari here we come!

Our hop plant is doing a lot better this year, so looking to surpass last years target of 11 hops contribution to bristol hops collective. Bonus side benefit has been it acting as a little caterpillar farm with some knot grass moth and comma larvae coming along nicely

Our most recent visitor to the LSI had me do a double take, but is instead a closely related species to our very own moth residents! Turns out Aphomia sociella look very similar to Galleria, but with more distinct light and dark markings and a longer and flatter body

Quickly coming up next though is a return to Greece - this time to Crete for the 12th International workshop on Molecular Biology and Genetics of Lepidoptera! Bit of a mouthful to say, but i'll be giving a talk on the mothy things we have going on with #Galleriamellonella at the @gmrc.bsky.social 🐛

Back from holiday, but managed to sneak in a little moth excursion whilst in Athens where I met Bill Kotsinis! He's having a go at larger scale Galleria rearing as host for nematodes at the Agricultural University of Athens. Thanks very much to Prof Ioannis Giannakou and his lab for the hospitality!

And my first visit from a speckled wood butterfly this year, which gives a good reason to keep the grass longer

A beautiful Pyrausta purpuralis female chilling on the catmint. I imagine this means I’ll have plenty of hungry caterpillars to look at in a few weeks too!

Perennial cornflowers have recovered from a bit of transplantation shock and already up and running for the bee buffet 🐝🪻

May in the UK is my absolute favourite time of the year - especially in the West Country. Devon Avon currently top spot for favourite Avon!

Thank you Hodshill near bath for the reminder of what maximum heart rate feels like, and confirming that roadie legs are well and truly gone. A better plan next time would be to leave bike at home and just visit the Wheatsheaf

Dysdera crocata hiding under a pot of lettuce this morning, one of the few spiders in the UK that are likely to give you a nip!

Excited to see this UAS based enhancer trap working in Galleria embryos!

Love all the fantastic things happening at the Uni - today is the Exeter psychedelics @breakingconvention.bsky.social. Forum busy with exhibitors including #mushroommikey and his wares

Excited to finally announce this work which has been in the pipeline for 5 years: Layers of Immunity. Faustine et al. made a set of immune mutants covering 4 major immune modules in #Drosophila, deleting melanization (ROS), phagocytosis, and both Toll & Imd NF-kB responses. What did we find? 1/n 🧵

Modelling host–pathogen interactions: Galleria mellonella as a platform to study Pseudomonas aeruginosa response to host-imposed zinc starvation. Published as part of the Pseudomonas collection in #MicrobioJ: buff.ly/3CvQ25V

The Dynamics of Cryptococcus neoformans infection in Galleria mellonella https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.19.644221v1

The Dynamics of Cryptococcus neoformans infection in Galleria mellonella https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.19.644221v1

Happy to share our new ScienceTM paper from Yingjun Cui, Erol Fikrig and @aaronmring.bsky.social et al. We built a yeast display library of 3,000+ I. scapularis proteins to profile antigens recognized by tick-resistant hosts, and developed a new anti-tick vaccine. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

massive ant is massive