Exploring Copenhagen while at #SMBE2026 Visit The Little Mermaid & look a few m along the shoreline. You’ll see some impressive (and polycentric) Bolboschoenus (club-rush). Their polycentromeres are likely underpinned by satellites I called Garrett and Colleen More: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I’m excited to be at #SMBE2026! I’m keen to talk to people about chromosome evolution/centromeres in the polycentric sedges and rushes (see poster or www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...) … … or about population genomics of soil arthropods!

It's certainly not classic springtail weather out there. Most are reliant on the cool & damp and have hidden themselves away. But there are some summer specialists: on Monday, I found all 3 of the UK's Deuterosminthurus species in the grounds of the @sangerinstitute.bsky.social ☀️ 🧵⬇️

🧬🦋 New preprint out! 🦋🧬 What mechanisms underlie large-scale chromosomal rearrangements? Why do rearrangement rates vary so massively across taxa? We explored these questions in Erebia butterflies, a genus with extraordinary chromosome number diversity, from 7 to 52! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

When I sat down with @jamesimcc.bsky.social to learn about all things springtails, I never imagined I'd leave our conversation so inspired about the future of natural science research. I can't wait to see what the future has in store for James. I certainly look forward to following the journey! 😊

A big preprint from my group! Muller Elements are considered to be conserved in flies. We tested it by reconstructing the ancestral dipteran karyotype using 340 chromosomal genomes and suprise suprise, they're not... Led by @juliagries.bsky.social and Sam Ebdon. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧵👇

Huge congratulations to @stuwest.bsky.social on his election as a Fellow of the Royal Society! From fig wasps to Pseudomonas, he’s shown just how powerful behavioural ecology can be. I couldn't think of anyone more deserving. www.biology.ox.ac.uk/article/prof...

No clue what a springtail is? Never fret. We've interviewed the UK's national springtail biological recorder and PhD student @jamesimcc.bsky.social . Head to our blog to learn more ⤵️ https://sangerinstitute.blog/2026/03/26/studying-soils-unsung-heroes/ 📸 Tim Jonas #NameItToSaveIt

Want to start doing soil animal macrophotography? Or fancy a rare glimpse into mine and @mesofauna.bsky.social's minds? An article has just dropped in @soilorganismsj.bsky.social, showcasing mine and Andy's love for documenting soil biodiversity! 🧪🪱 Open Access: soil-organisms.org/SO/article/v...

Is there anyone around Newcastle owning a patch of green where we could collect springtails this Tuesday by any chance? More about the project in @jamesimcc.bsky.social's blog post: sangerinstitute.blog/2026/03/26/s...

This #IWD2026 we’re shining a light on the incredible women who’ve been nominated, highly commended or won an NBN Award for Wildlife Recording since 2015💛 Huge thanks to all. Know an inspirational woman who records or verifies wildlife? Nominations for #NBNawards26 are open! bit.ly/NBNawards26n...

And this is my favourite figure, nicely illustrating diversity and turnover of oligocentromeric satelites. Look at Carol and Sandra - one invaded the other at least 2x, which I find particularly amusing.

Very proud of @jamesimcc.bsky.social to submit his first PhD paper about evolution of genomes and centromeres in taxa with oligocentromeric organisation. Lots of interesting discoveries including possibly the first reported re-evolution of monocentricity.

Chromosomes are often classified as either monocentric (single centromere per chr) or holocentric (centromeric activity spread across each chr). In reality, there is a continuum in centromere organisation - and cyperids are a fascinating system to explore this in as James shows in this preprint! 🌱

Why do the chromosomes of cyperids (sedges & rushes) split and fuse so regularly on evolutionary timescales? Is it because they have so many centromeres? Our new preprint, the first major paper of my PhD, addresses this question. 🧵⬇️ 1/12 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I'm very happy to share that a paper from my DPhil thesis has been selected as the Editor's Choice article in Evolution. 😊 You can read it here: lnkd.in/eCnAQfzT 🐜 @journal-evo.bsky.social #EvolutionaryBiology #SocialEvolution #Insects

Does haplodiploidy - a method of sex determination seen in bees and ants among other animals - promote eusociality? New research from @rbonifacii.bsky.social and @stuwest.bsky.social enters evidence into this long debate that - despite popular belief - this is not the case 👇 bit.ly/4qEoEWm

It was such a privilege to work with @juliet-turner.bsky.social on this project while I was a research assistant in the West group @biology.ox.ac.uk. It's wonderful to see our paper in its final form! 🐜

Finding a colony of Hypogastrura springtails on this wall in Peterhouse, Cambridge started me on a trail through old papers, concluding that there may be another - morphologically distinguishable! - species in Britain. The story is in the latest issue of BJENH: www.researchgate.net/publication/...

366 days ago I started my PhD at the @sangerinstitute.bsky.social. No better time to publish my profile on the Sanger website ⬇️ www.sanger.ac.uk/person/mccul... I tend to have my taxonomic hat on when posting here, but there is a bigger picture!

I've reached 100 British springtail species! This was helped by a recent glasshouse sampling trip, where I added these 4 species. 3 are now in the pipeline to have reference-quality genomes sequenced for the first time, by the @sangerinstitute.bsky.social. More info in the thread below! 🧵1/7

We are excited to attending #ESB2025 find … @arf-mln.bsky.social to chat about beetle genomics @jamesimcc.bsky.social about sedges or springtails evolution Sam Ebdon about distr. of dominance Myself about diptera comparative genomics And all of us to chat about any whacky reproduction #obscuromics

I'm doing an online talk on 16/09 about my MSc thesis, which was all about iNaturalist data for invertebrates in the UK, and the alarmingly high proportion of it which 'falls through the cracks' due to data quality concerns. Please join if interested! Link: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/falling-th...

I'm so excited to share that this springtail, one that seems to have rapidly appeared in graveyards and gardens across the UK, now has a proper name: Entomobrya petri! I hope this will be the first of many new species descriptions, allowing us to track our rapidly changing springtail fauna. 🧵⬇️

James McCulloch (National Springtail Recorder) discusses the constantly increasing species list for UK Collembola.

This coming Tuesday lunchtime! I’m looking forward to talking springtails, speciation, and cryptic diversity. Sign up! ⬇️

Yesterday we had earthworm cocoons, today I bring you springtail spermatophores! Springtails, like many soil invertebrates, reproduce by a male leaving these structures (sperm-rich fluid on a stalk), which the female will sniff out and collect to fertilise her eggs. Romantic! #SoilBiodiversity 🧪

British Springtails: How Many Species Are There? Join @jamesimcc.bsky.social on 15 July as he reveals how genome data and citizen science are rewriting UK biodiversity. 🎟️ Book FREE: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1359900281... @royentsoc.bsky.social @fieldstudiesc.bsky.social @nbntrust.bsky.social 🌱 🌍 🧪

Good news! >6000 springtail records have been imported from iRecord and are now available on the NBN Atlas: species.nbnatlas.org/species/NBNS... Massive thanks to @duerden.bsky.social for his investment in verifying iRecord records. Keep them coming!

New to Britain! These springtails are Dicyrtomina signata, a European species that's never previously been seen in the UK. I found these while out and about in Wanstead Park, London (with @josscarr.bsky.social, @nmaybury4.bsky.social). One to look out for!

And that's my 4th record of Entomobrya nr. imitabilis (See below), this time right from the garden! Beautiful little species, waiting anxiously for updates...

In 1924, Womersley referred to Orchesella flavescens as "the most magnificent spring-tail". Today, 101 years later, the first reference genome for this species has been assembled and published, from a specimen I collected at Wytham Woods! wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/10-...

Let’s see if we can give it a name before too long!

Everything is ready for this year's @peterhousecam.bsky.social Biology Symposium. It looks like being another set of exceptionally interesting presentations. 🧪

🚨Registration open🚨 1st - 6th of June, me, Katie Jenike, @rayanchikhi.bsky.social and Gene Myers will run a week long workshop on k-mers for biodiversity genomics organised by @connectingscience.bsky.social at @sangerinstitute.bsky.social. Join us & get equipped to wrestle large genomic datasets!

A rainy afternoon looking for Smews near St Ives (Cambs) was sadly smewless. But this was somewhat compensated by us (specifically @joeparham19.bsky.social) finding this first-winter drake Lesser Scaup (right). A vagrant from North America and a new sp. for me! + some drake goldeneyes! 🪶

Excellent news - thanks for taking this on James and look forward to seeing how things develop. The late Peter Shaw would have been delighted to see the scheme continue in good hands.

Some very good news. Time to go out and find some more springtails to record 😀

Send me records: I am excited to be taking on the role of national springtail recorder. I have huge shoes to fill, but I hope to continue the progress Peter Shaw made in understanding the taxonomy and biology of the UK's #springtails. www.brc.ac.uk/scheme/colle...

We're halfway through the Bug of the Year '25 contest, and the Giant Springtail is still in the lead! BUT there's still four weeks of voting left, so get on it! Vote here, and please share with your friends and family: bugoftheyear.ento.org.nz/vote-here-20... #TeamGiantSpringtail #Invertebrate 🧪

Today was a day for skulking reedbed birds: two Bitterns and three Water Rails at @wwtworldwide.bsky.social's London Wetland Centre in the winter sun ☀️🪶

Our review is out in Nature Reviews Genetics! rdcu.be/d5AY2 We show how phylogeny-based methods can resolve the problem of non-independence in genomic datasets. These methods must be considered an essential part of the comparative genomics toolkit. @lauriebelch.bsky.social @stuwest.bsky.social

This may look like an amorphous blob, but it’s an exciting one (and new for me)! This is the <1mm springtail Neelus murinus. The second photo gives a sense of scale in comparison to my gloved finger. Let’s hope we can sequence its genome, and reveal what secrets it’s hiding #springtails

Feeling lucky to have been able to watch this drake Goosander expertly fishing in the rapids of the River Mersey in Manchester yesterday 🪶 The last one I saw was on the pond at the Sanger Institute last month… a little lost!

A lifer for me in Austria! It has been a joy watching a flock of c50 Alpine Choughs coming to drink meltwater from the gutters of neighbouring buildings each morning. Apparently this species holds the record for breeding at the highest altitude! 🪶

It may have been -12°C with a foot of snow on the ground in Seefeld, Austria, but that didn't seem to be an issue for this Western Conifer Seed Bug (Leptoglossus occidentalis)... They often hibernate indoors, but this one seemed satisfied with the outside wall!

An adorable fly from South Africa this past summer - a species of Atriadops, in the family Nemestrinidae (which has no representatives in the U.K.). Despite its cute appearance, its larvae are endoparasitoids of grasshoppers and praying mantises!

Having long lost the motivation to post on Twitter, I have quite the backlog of photos to share! Top of my list is this comical shot of a pair of Iberian Azure-winged Magpies curious as to what’s unfolding in front of them 🪶

As giant springtails age, they grow more robust and develop longer spikes on their antennae & backs. Nobody knows how long they can live for, probably a few years, but this gnarled Holacanthella duospinosa has all the hallmarks of a long innings!🧪 #SoilBiodiversity #SoilEcology #Macrophotography