Trump ousts National Science Board members www.washingtonpost.com/science/2026... This can't be good.

Monarch butterflies and Bogong moths are incredible navigators that annually migrate thousands of kilometers. In this review, Basil el Jundi and Eric Warrant @lundvision.bsky.social outline the neural mechansims underlying long-distance migration in insects. 🦋 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

American science is shrinking. 
A Post analysis found that, halfway through this fiscal year, the number of competitive grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health is down by more than half compared with the same period last year. https://wapo.st/3OgoHKV

Screwworm looks to be breeding locally 90 miles south of the TX/Mexico border.

When it comes to sensory processing, cortex should not get all the credit... In olfaction, a key challenge is identifying odors regardless of concentration. Our new paper in @natneuro.nature.com shows how the olfactory bulb performs this crucial computation before signals even reach the cortex.

New favorite mosquito, indeed! Thanks for such a valuable resource, Jonathan, Ben and all! @elissakhodikian.bsky.social and I are grateful and look forward to all the fun science ahead!

On the cover of our current issue: the 'cool' snow fly❄️❄️❄️ whose genome reveals several fascinating cold adaptations. www.cell.com/current-biol...

5 large data centers are being proposed in Seattle. They would use 369 megawatts, which is 1/3 of the electricity Seattle currently uses Seattle City Light declines to identify the four companies. They should hold a public input meeting before making any final decisions.

Are you a computational scientist? Within 7 years of your PhD? Come join us at Lund University! We have two new positions as assistant professor! Deadline: 25th of May. The advert is broad, but this is your chance to push computational neuroscience in a fantastic place! lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

Honeybee swarms do not come together and fall apart in the same way 🐝 In this new preprint led by Danielle Chase, we report how to trick swarms to repeatedly assemble and disassemble in front of our cameras, while tracking individual bees in 3D! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Pablo Villar et al discover male octopus mating arms are sensory organs used to find females, navigate internally to the oviduct & deliver sperm. From behavior to structure, these findings offer a framework for how sensory systems shape reproduction & species barriers www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

@jlarsch.bsky.social and I are organising the 2026 CIG Symposium on June 11-12 in Lausanne on "Information transfer: from genes to behaviour", featuring an eclectic set of brilliant scientists. Details and registration here (abstracts by May 1, registration by June 1): www.unil.ch/fbm/en/home/...

A new preprint shows that deep learning can make a fly walk realistically using a worm’s brain — exposing a fundamental problem with how connectome models are being built and sold to investors. By @natmesanash.bsky.social #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/systems-neur...

Open postdoc position in my lab at Cornell, conducting comparative and experimental studies on transcriptomic responses to diet and toxins, utilizing the milkweed-insect community. Background in molecular bio & herbivory desired. academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/31867

Honored to be among the other @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social faculty in the 2025 @aaas.org fellows class: news.berkeley.edu/2026/03/26/e...

our latest publication is now published! 🍾 Sensitivity to cuticular hydrocarbons across the odorant receptor family in the Indian jumping ant, Harpegnathos saltator Congrats to all of my co-authors, many of whom are undergraduates and this is their first paper! www.frontiersin.org/journals/ins...

#standupforscience Seattle stands up for science!

Super excited to have @yukihaba.bsky.social visit Seattle and @uwbiology.bsky.social and give a talk on his mosquito work!

March 1 was #WorldSeagrassDay, which celebrates the flowering plants that look like blades of grass waving in our oceans. @uwbiology.bsky.social Professor Jennifer Ruesink shared insights on what seagrass is and what makes the seagrasses in Washington unique. www.washington.edu/news/2026/02...

Hey #Seattle, come join the National Day of Action on March 7 from 12-3pm at #SeattleCenter and rally around Science, Health & Democracy with @standupforscience.bsky.social

In PNAS Science Sessions, Laura Duvall of Columbia University explains how a circadian peptide helps control when Aedes aegypti mosquitoes hunt and why understanding this timing could inform new disease prevention strategies. Listen now: https://ow.ly/scgm50Yl8F7.

🌟🌟Interested in a postdoctoral project about host-parasite coevolution and/or underlying mechanisms? 🌟🌟 Check your eligibility for this fellowship & contact me. I am particularly interested in hosting scholars from the Global South (¡Arriba mi gente!). www.hfsp.org/funding/hfsp...

Murthy Lab to Host Open House Showcasing the Science of Smell on March 6 🧠 🧪🧬 #AcademicSky #higherEd www.mcb.harvard.edu/department/n... @luxorboero.bsky.social @neurovenki.bsky.social @rachellegaudet.bsky.social @dulaclab.bsky.social @harvardbrainsci.bsky.social @kempnerinstitute.bsky.social

Congrats to @willemlaursen.bsky.social and Vikram Iyer on their Sloan Fellowships!

Congratulations to the @uofwa.uw.edu faculty members who have been awarded early-career fellowships from the @sloanfoundation.bsky.social! The new Fellows include #UWArtSci faculty members Maria “Masha” Baryakhtar, Matthew R. Golder, and Willem Laursen. www.washington.edu/news/2026/02...

My colleague is bringing it to faculty meeting today

Located on the California Coast, Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station has been a home to inspirational research for more than 130 years. In his Perspective, Mark Denny talks about the field station’s august past and current ground-breaking research journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

The first paper from the lab is now out in Science Advances: Multimodal social context modulates larval behavior in Drosophila www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... We find that fly larvae keep their distance to conspecifics in the absence of food, enjoy reading! @cbehav.bsky.social @uni-konstanz.de

My department at Washington State University is recruiting an Assistant or Associate Professor in vector-borne disease 🕷️🦟🦠 Full job description is linked below. Come join us on the Palouse!

@chantelpratphd.bsky.social and I found a welcome moment of joy in recording this episode of Brains for Dinner, where we got to geek out about the neuroscience of dreams. Hope you all can enjoy it too: substack.com/@chantelprat...

New preprint from our group (collaboration with @sueyeonchung.bsky.social) showing that discriminating odor components within a complex mixture is constrained by neural sensitivity rather than background interference - likely due to sparse representations at the front end.

We have a fully-funded PhD project on mosquito behaviour and AI, based at @durham.ac.uk and supervised by Amir Atapour Abarghouei (Durham Computer Science), @viveknityananda.bsky.social and myself. Check the project description here tinyurl.com/2hven83a and apply here: www.needl.org.uk/apply/.

The second paper from the lab is now available on bioRxiv: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... We discovered that cannibalistic behavior in fly larvae is social-context dependent. Larval groups avoid dead conspecifics; individuals show high attraction. They only do it when no one is watching 😉

Are you an early-stage graduate student (2nd or 3rd year) or early-stage postdoc based in the US or Canada, working primarily in Drosophila? Would you like to help improve the experience of all trainees working in Drosophila research? If so, read on. (Please repost to reach a broad audience.)

Come join us. Western University invites applications from outstanding early career investigators for a full-time probationary faculty position at the rank of Assistant Professor in the area of neural circuits in NHPs. www.nature.com/naturecareer...

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... We had a lot of fun working on this project (led by Itzel Ishida, not on bluesky). Some interesting highlights from the paper -

🐜 4-year #postdoc position in the @socialfluids.bsky.social lab @camzoology.bsky.social investigating metabolic cooperation between bodies in a BBSRC-funded project. www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/postdoc... #ants #socialtransfers #sociallytransferredmaterials #autophagy #socialinsects #aging #job (🧵1/n)

Impeachment. Now. @jayapal.house.gov

2025 RECAP: From installing an anti-vax conspiracy theorist as our nation's top health care official to taking an axe to lifesaving biomedical research, the Trump administration has systematically put politics over science.

Very proud of this new paper from the lab! Work by the magnificent Andrea Adden and many brilliant collaborators illuminate how moth and butterfly brains have evolved in light of different ecologies. Freely available here: rdcu.be/eVR3B; @lundvision.bsky.social @biologylu.bsky.social

I've never lived so close to a What Are We Even Doing Here real estate listing, and I am here, gifting you this experience, make sure to open the pictures www.redfin.com/MI/Ann-Arbor...

Ever wanted to know how the visual system of a long distance migratory moth looks like? Then you'll find your answers in our new paper. Finally out, after about a decade of collecting data by a group af amazing co-authors. Find it here, open access: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

As a both a PI that received a Diversity Supplement to support a student on my R01, and a PO that reviewed them, they were never about "handing out money at the end of the year based on race" and always about the training potential and commitment.

This is a really fun news story. www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/20...

Have you ever wondered what you would find if you could keep your eyes on a bee for more than a few meters? Us, too! preprint (with videos!) + thread 🧵 Precise, individualized foraging flights in honey #bees 🐝 revealed by multicopter drone-based tracking www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/9

New #PhD ad alert! Interested in wild #bee #cognition and #brains in different #bumblebees? Want to live in #Newcastle and the beautiful north-east of England? Check out this project with me, @lenariab.bsky.social and Sarah Scott. Contact me for further information. iapetus.ac.uk/studentships...

Let's compare our world models. I find that different people seem to have rather distinct internal world models. E.g. I personally have neither visual imagination nor an inner voice, found it weird others do. Here is a quick google forms to check idea: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

🚨RA/PhD position available in evolutionary neurobiology 🚨 Working on a deep dive into circuit changes during mushroom body expansion in Heliconius butterflies @camzoology.bsky.social - employment benefits - 4 years funding - 1000% fun Deadline: 14/1/2026 Details: www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...