First bumblebee sighting of the season in Aberdeen!

Had a marvellous time at my first annual meeting of the @britishecologicalsociety.org in beautiful Edinburgh. What’s more, I got to spend time with FABLab leader @fmanfredini.bsky.social and fellow member Jane Devlin who both gave exciting talks on research conducted in our lab.

Great representation of the FABLab in Edinburgh #BES2025 with two excellent posters, both involving charismatic bees and Scottish machair. On display tonight in the Lennox Suite - go find @tegangaetano.bsky.social if you’re interested.

And here we gooooo! Day 1 of #BES2025. Come visit me at my poster tomorrow between 5-6:30pm at B4.84. @britishecologicalsociety.org

At some conferences you get free pens, but at #NESEN (North East Scotland Environmental Network) you get potatoes. 🥔❤️😂 Many thanks to the organisers and presenters and to @srucnews.bsky.social for hosting.

Wow! Today was the final day of my last @quadratdtp.bsky.social ASM. How fast the last three years have gone! I am very grateful to QUADRAT, my cohort 4 colleagues and my supervisors (shout out to supervisor extraordinaire @fmanfredini.bsky.social) for this wonderful and challenging experience. 🥰

I am so grateful to @jyourstone.bsky.social and her former lab at @biologylu.bsky.social for hosting me this week to learn their novel pollen scanning protocol. What a treat!

I was fortunate to be supported by the Charles Sutherland Scholarship to conduct field sampling this summer for an ongoing project on the genetic structure of the cryptic bumblebee Bombus cryptarum. This work was featured in today’s @uniofaberdeen.bsky.social SBS blog: www.abdn.ac.uk/sbs/blog/cha...

The sun is shining in South Oxfordshire, perfect weather for FIT Counts on the Ivy covering our hedgerows! Female Ivy bees busy collecting pollen, not many other insects today. FIT in 😉your last counts before the @pomscheme.bsky.social survey ends on 30 Sept 🐝

I was so lucky to have been able to spend my first @royentsoc.bsky.social meeting with this great group I met this summer at an Insect Taxonomy course at @morethanadodo.bsky.social (aka Falk’s Followers). #Ento25

A spectacular Day 1 of #Ento25! #EntOlympics (we came in 7th), an address from RES President Jane Stout in a building with more marble than the Vatican and not 1 but 2 talks on micronutrient foraging in pollinators (one from me). A million thanks to @royentsoc.bsky.social!

Accurate.

Yay! So excited that the leader of the aptly named FABLab, @fmanfredini.bsky.social, got to present some of our research at the #IUSSI Italy meeting in Bologna! 🐝❤️🐝❤️

What a privilege to have been able to spend a week learning techniques in insect taxonomy from the legendary Steven Falk & @liamcrowley.bsky.social. A million thanks to Thomas Hesselberg & Zoë Simmons and her staff at @morethanadodo.bsky.social for the experience. ❤️🐝🪰🔬❤️

Finally we found them! Great yellow bumblebee in Barra 🐝🏝️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 the gorgeous weather surely helped! Wonderful to share the excitement with @tegangaetano.bsky.social and @jyourstone.bsky.social

Feeling very lucky to be back in the #Hebrides doing fieldwork with @fmanfredini.bsky.social & @jyourstone.bsky.social. Stunning machair and the pollinators it supports!

Barra 🏝️ Day #1 with @tegangaetano.bsky.social Waiting for the weather to improve 😬 Can’t wait to catch up tomorrow with @jyourstone.bsky.social for the project Hebribees!

Our new paper led by @manusaunders.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... takes stock of the evidence-base for global insect declines 🦋🐝🪳🪰🦗 and how uncertainty is being leveraged by science denialists to undermine efforts to reverse biodiversity loss 🌍🧪.

True story

🌼🐝 Join the Buzz with #FITCounts! Could you spend 10 peaceful minutes watching flowers and counting the insects that visit? Join @biologicalrecording.co.uk 2nd July 6.30pm – 9pm to learn how to plan and undertake FIT counts to monitor pollinators: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/flower-ins...

Zoom inside a virtual wasp’s nest and experience the hidden, intimate ‘World of Wasps’ – their homes, their lifestyles and their relationships. See our upcoming exhibition based on @ucl.ac.uk research. www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-coll... #GMZWasps

I have to highlight this amazing profile created for #PollinatorWeek and the folks studying them by the @uniofaberdeen.bsky.social Zoo & Roots student organisation. ❤️🐝❤️🐝

Great to be part of organising for today’s Career Planning event for PhDs and ECRs in life sciences with @sulsa.bsky.social!

For #PollinatorWeek, we’ve put together all the information you’ll need to make your own pollinator garden into one place. Learn how to pick the right plants, manage issues without pesticides, and provide the nesting habitat that bees & butterflies need to thrive! 🌻🐝🎓

For PhDs & early career professionals in life sciences: this is a great opportunity to get pro tips on how to use your CV and interview to make you stand out to employers. ✅ Hosted by @sulsa.bsky.social

‼️ Only a few more days ‼️

A great opportunity to work with a fun and dynamic research group at @uniofaberdeen.bsky.social ⬇️

Do you have a paper to submit to the #RESEcolEnt Special Issue: 🪰🕷️#Insect #symbionts as mediators of ecological interactions: from mutualists to parasites, with guest editors Awawing Anjwengwo Andongma & @danielleybourne.bsky.social 🪲🐜 🗓️ Letter of Intent deadline: 30 June 2025🔽 buff.ly/aLQZKYP

A million thanks to @hibernogruppe.bsky.social for coming all the way to Aberdeen to share your research with us. 🐝 🧬 🐝 🧬 @fmanfredini.bsky.social

Happy #WorldBeeDay! 🐝 Did you know the UK is home to around 270 species of #bee? We have 24 bumblebee species, 240+ species of solitary bees and one species of honeybee. Today highlights the importance of #bees and other pollinators for food security and #biodiversity 🧵🧪 1/

Such an exciting day! So much gratitude to the Agroecology Group at Cambridge for organising!

Student Assistant Opportunity! 🍃 Our work group seeks a motivated student assistant (f/m/d)! 📌 Install, activate & collect pitfall traps. 📌 Interest in fieldwork & a valid German driving license. 📌 Gain experience in entomological fieldwork! 📅 May–Sept 2025 (~40h/month) 📩 Dr. Marco Ferrante

Field assistants needed for research on social insects at a UK nature reserve (~2 months, June-Aug 2025). Experience preferred. Apply with CV to Lucy Winder ([email protected]). More info: http://biosciences.exeter.ac.uk/staff/index.php?web_id=Jeremy_Field. #job

Could you lead a Royal Society scientific meeting dedicated to your field of research? Proposals are considered twice a year. Submit yours by 9 April 2025 for consideration in June 2025: buff.ly/4idM4P3

Did you know there is no dedicated team or person in Defra for grasslands, despite them covering 40% of England? 🤯 We're joining @plantlifeuk.bsky.social & partners in calling for the Gov to establish a Grassland Taskforce to unlock their value 🌱 Learn more: www.plantlife.org.uk/our-work/the...

Please share widely! We have two open postdoctoral positions in my lab: lopezuribelab.com/join-the-lab/ Some details below👇👇👇

📢Senior Editor vacancy! We're looking for an active researcher with broad interests in #animal #ecology & related fields, to join our #editorial team ⏰Deadline 20th Feb 👇Full details www.britishecologicalsociety.org/content/seni...

It’s #fridaybee or #beefriday or #bestbeefriday so here’s my offering. A solitary bee. This one is a mining bee.Andrena nitida will nest in the soil.She is a single mum & does all the work to make her nest & provision her babies before she dies! She is messy & an efficient #pollinator! #Savethebees

And in the uk the Newton Fellowships too! royalsociety.org/grants/newto...

Mission: Bee-fly 1. Look out for bee-flies. 2. Photograph bee-fly. 3. Identify bee-fly species observed. 4. Submit record to Bee-fly Watch. Disperse and observe biological recorders.

When planting ornamental plants, consider their attractiveness to wild and domesticated bees. Figure out in a new publication by Verweij et al. what is important: doi.org/10.26786/192...

Where does iRecord data go? How does iNaturalist verification work? What recording app is best for bird observations? These are some of the questions I’ll be covering in this upcoming webinar. @nbntrust.bsky.social @ukceh.bsky.social @btobirds.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/using-wild...

In Spring 2024 I had the unique opportunity to visit JGU Mainz to learn bioinformatics from @hibernogruppe.bsky.social. This experience gave me a valuable new skill set and opened up a whole new area of scientific inquiry. I can’t advocate for this opportunity enough. Check it out 👇👇

New PhD opportunity on social behaviour in the context of ecological disturbance with me, @mdekauwe.bsky.social, and others. Sept 2025 start, funded by NERC Apply by Jan 13. Project and application details: www.exeter.ac.uk/study/fundin...

Great news for 🐝 and other 🦋 🪰 🪲 in the UK, not to mention freshwater ecosystems www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Great talk by Szymon Szymanski on research on GABAergic link of learning with DWV in honeybees conducted with Fabio Manfredini at @uniofaberdeen.bsky.social at #IUSSINW2024 in London. @iussi-nwes.bsky.social

First post on @bsky.app! I’m very excited to be at #IUSSINW2024 in London to present an experiment on #bumblebee foraging preference for essential micronutrients. @iussi-nwes.bsky.social

One day left to register!

📣 Fully funded PhD project supervised by me & @philstevenson.bsky.social within @treesdla.bsky.social on effects of forest diversity on floral reward production for pollinators. Nice mix of fieldwork in Finland & pollen and nectar chemistry 🐝🌼🌳🌲 🧪🌍 Apply by 20 Jan www.trees-dla.ac.uk/projects/eff...

As ecologists we celebrate diversity, both of the natural world and of the people in this field. This Transgender Awareness Week, @rowankuminski.bsky.social co-chair of EDGE Network shares 5 small steps you can make to support transgender ecologists www.britishecologicalsociety.org/five-steps-t...