On this #InternationalDayOfWomenAndGirlsInScience, let us pay tribute to all those past, present, and future, including those who were not given the chance to fly and flourish. 🔬🧪🔭👩‍🔬🦖⚒️

Your moment of back yard zen.

POV: you are ichthyosaur food

R4E is hosting a webinar for all, no cost. Learn how to design an effective poster webinar www.repro4everyone.org/blog/r4e-web... Thank-you to @addgene.bsky.social for sponsorship! #AcademicSky #EduSky #neuroskyence

"We were overwhelmed by the response and the massive number of creative name suggestions!" says Prof. Dr. Julia Sigwart..."The name we chose, Ferreiraella populi, translates to 'of the people.' "

And yesterday brought me a slime mould, the tiny pinheads of Comatricha nigra in vast profusion in our local Kent woodland. #slimemould #slimemold #fungifriends #naturephotography #myxomycetes #mycology

@josephwb.bsky.social thanks for inspiring today's post: scientistseessquirrel.wordpress.com/2026/02/10/o...

Rare example of a perfect ad placement 😂

It me.

When "Enough, already" is the entire text of a scientific paper. As you'd expect, there's a backstory...

Call for Donations to Support the SWEEET/CSEE Equity Fund 🌱🧬🎓 Help remove financial barriers by supporting grad students & postdocs attending #CSEE2026 in Toronto through donating to the Equity Fund. Support access to science by donating / sharing! @csee-scee.bsky.social #EcoEvo gofund.me/cca1d39af

Beautiful little cluster of (hatched) eggs on an Anthurium houseplant leaf. Probably stinkbug or something similar? Photos (c) Jim Robertson.

My copy of Jeremy Fox's "The Ecology of Ecologists" (https://amzn.to/3ZmHlmj) is now significantly enhanced! Lovely bookplate, and especially I love the little squirrel (in honour of my blog, of course). Book is great, by the way - review coming soon on 'Scientist Sees Squirrel'.

Sometimes it's mildly amusing when the link card for a journal doesn't match the article it's linking to. And then sometimes it's just a thing of beauty. Check out these colourful, befeathered, arboreal dwarf hippos!

Gearing up for the next offering of my intensive one-week Scientific Writing course (scientistseessquirre...) - starting tomorrow, this time for Grand Valley State University in Michigan. I always begin with a "Who am I?" slide (OK, and a few extra ones about my research too). 1/2

;)

Orange Rock Posy Lichen. NWT, Canada. Lichen is about 3cm long. #lichen #fungi #fungifriends

#WritingSky If you write long, LONG stories, at some point (maybe more than once...ha-ha!) you'll need to cut things down. Sometimes maybe even a LOT. The very first thing I had to cut down took a short-short down from 2300 to 1500. That's 34%, more than a third disappeared.

Excellent classification. xkcd.com/3204/

New today in The Important Work: @stephenbheard.bsky.social on asking his students to try out LLMs to help them "deformalize" their scientific writing *instead* of using them to reproduce unreadable scientific prose. theimportantwork.substack.com/p/chatgpt-ca...

Look at these scale insects!!

Your time for doing science waxes and wanes throughout your career. Don’t let anybody tell you that you’re doing it wrong. You get to decide what’s right for you (as long as you meet your basic commitments). 🧪

Look what my brilliant partner made for me! A felted chanterelle!

I like a fun Latin name, and a cool bird, and some unexpected etymology, and a ribald Greek myth. They all come together here: the story behind the fun-to-say Latin name Jynx torquilla (the Eurasian wryneck).

The narrative supporting much of the criticism of higher education is that university as a model is fundamentally broken. It is not. It’s just a poorly maintained and therefore increasingly inefficient and damaging to people that run it. But properly taken care of it can still deliver great results.

This is excellent, and scratches that etymological itch I get sometimes.

Being busy as an academic back then. Sitting in your working spacing (here it's the Initial "G"), wearing your thinking hat, doing scientific stuff with instruments (he's measuring), and forgetting the world outside (in this case a page in Latin about geography). The year is 1523. #academicchatter

Slime mold, Trichia decipiens in front of bright green #moss. NWT, Canada. #myxomycete #fungifriends The slime mold is about 0.5cm high.

I like a fun Latin name, and a cool bird, and some unexpected etymology, and a ribald Greek myth. They all come together here: the story behind the fun-to-say Latin name Jynx torquilla (the Eurasian wryneck).

One of the most rewarding things I do is help grad students and other developing writers take a jump in their scientific writing skills. It's a lot of fun to see them leave my course newly enthusiastic about tackling their writing!

TIDAL WAVES OF LAVA. Well, that's tonight's nightmare sorted. (But also, how COOL!)

🧪. Some day I'll remember.

Your occasional reminder: I offer an intensive, one-week scientific writing course for grad students (etc) that I can give at YOUR institution. I have some availability late in 2026, wide open so far for 2027. Get in touch!

As a Canadian, even I'm not sure what Canadian food consists of. But it definitely isn't this. (Tourtiere! Things with maple syrup on them! VERY reluctantly I am forced to admit poutine! And yes, @carlyziter.bsky.social, butter tarts!)

Cladonia #Winter #lichens #fungi

Shine on, Catherine O’Hara, you were brilliant 💐

This, every year, is the BEST MEETING EVER. I'm going to miss it this year, for the first time in about 20 years... take my spot! Do the things there I would have done! Learn the things I would have learned! Have the fun I would have had!*

If anything the shouting is underdone.

What ever happened to MOOCs? Remember how they were going to revolutionize education? Lots of OTHER things that are going to revolutionize education aren't going to either! Mostly because it doesn't need revolutionizing.

I get asked a lot about why there isn't a Lab of O for insects. This is why.

#NewReadingMaterial #RPVBooks I have always loved the work of @stephenbheard.bsky.social and can’t wait to read this book.

I love our @brittlestar.com

;)

In case you're looking for a palate cleanse for your feed, 🥳YOU'RE INVITED TO THE PUBLIC LAUNCH🥳 of the book that @stephenbheard.bsky.social & I wrote to try to change something for the better, even if it feels really small: lnkd.in/e3eDjmKE 1/

Most of us are pretty good at spotting problems with grammar, word choice, sentence structure, etc., right? These small-scale “errors” are abundant in an early draft of anything, and it’s easy (if time-consuming) to mark them, and maybe correct them. 1/ #scientificwriting #highered #scicomm

"AI can get in the way of learning, and it can promote learning, depending on how it's used." I really like Terry McGlynn Terry McGlynn's conceptual take on how we might think about student use of AI in courses. https:// scienceforeveryone.s... 1/2

Like searching for needles in a cosmic haystack, a team of astronomers used AI to find rare, oddball objects in archived Hubble data. Out of nearly 100 million sources, the team quickly found more than 1,300 celestial oddities, most new: https://news.stsci.edu/4sUNPpO

I never got to meet Dr. Duncan. But I have so many friend and colleagues who rave about her as smart and kind, and I see so much of what she accomplished. A truly special one.

Oh! xkcd is on zoology again! Critters doing weird stuff - a deep well and I love to see buckets drawn from it. https://xkcd.com/3199/

Money well spent 😉 #HigherEd Author @stephenbheard.bsky.social