🧪 Presenting my work on zombie ants at the 2026 Gordon Research Conference on Cellular and Molecular Fungal Biology! 🧟‍♂️🐜🍄‍🟫 Summary: Ophiocordyceps uses a novel effector to block communication in ants 🐜 Preprint available here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Full PDF of poster is in the comments!

Thanks again to @lastshow.bsky.social for having me on their program to talk about our Zombie Ants VR game and how gamification can be used to intuitively teach evolution! It was a lot of fun! I highly recommend checking out all the cool science he showcases on his podcast! 🧟‍♂️ 🐜 👾 🧪

@pintofscience.us is kicking off again this year, May 18th-May 20th! I’ll be giving a talk about neuroparasitology at Vintage Bar in Chicago, IL. You can check for local events across the USA at their official website: pintofscience.us Hope to see you there! 🧪

Niels Kerstes of Utrecht University has posted a fantastic synopsis of our recent pedagogical work with Zombie Ants VR as an official university news story. Check it out! 🧪 www.uu.nl/en/news/virt...

🚨Our new discipline-based education research paper in biology is out! 🧪 We created a VR game about zombie ants and used gamification techniques to teach the process of evolution to players without triggering preexisting biases about the topic! Find the link to the full open-access paper in comments!

@nature.com has published three groundbreaking papers on reproducibility, analytical robustness, and replicability across the social sciences. Sincere thanks are due to the many folks who contributed to these projects. It’s painstaking work, and a great service to social science.

well this is ridiculous and awesome, best science usually is #ScienceSky #NeuroSky 🧪

Can plant pathogens boost vector fitness? Together with @hassansalem.bsky.social, we review how phytopathogens can spread further by moonlighting as insect symbionts 🪲 More on this nifty lifestyle in @annualreviews.bsky.social! www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

“When participants used ChatGPT to draft essays, brain scans revealed a 47% drop in neural connectivity across regions associated with memory, language, & critical reasoning. Their brains worked less, but they felt just as engaged—a kind of metacognitive mirage.”🧪

BindCraft: an AlphaFold2-powered de novo protein binder design tool 🧬✨ Tested in some bacterial systems too! Designs so far are short peptides or mini-domains. Looking forward to long/full protein design ahead! 🧪 #microsky www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🧟🐜 Zombie Ant Research🚨 I can finally share my flagship research project characterizing the first ever Ophiocordyceps behavioral effector as an open access preprint! This international, interdisciplinary research approach involved many amazing collaborations! 🧪 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I am always excited to share about zombie fungi! 🧟‍♂️ 🍄‍🟫 Thanks to Natasha Dangoor for allowing me to contribute through an interview to her new piece in The Wall Street Journal about zombie spiders found in the UK! 🇬🇧 🧟🕷️. Link to the full article and audio translations in the comments 🧪

How about some spooky science! 🧟‍♂️ In this dispatch, I discuss the current state of molecular genetics work used to explore behavior-manipulating fungi and highlight new research by Zhao et al. describing a novel behavioral effector used by Cordyceps militaris in silkworms! 🧪 Link in the comments!

Very excited to announce that our new version of Zombie Ants VR is releasing soon for free on Steam! I’m also thrilled to share that our month-long test run in collaboration with University Museum Utrecht showed that it teaches players about evolution!🧪 store.steampowered.com/app/3765230/...

How cool! 🧟‍♂️🐜 Very interesting that it was found infecting an ant pupae, we normally only see adults infected. What mysterious evolutionary history! 👀 www.sciencenews.org/article/zomb... 🧪

🏳️‍🌈 A queer post a day for #PrideMonth2025 6/20: Florence Nightingale brought data and statistics to nursing. She also said “I have slept in the same beds with English Countesses and Prussian farm women. No woman has excited passions among women more than I.” 1/ sangerinstitute.blog/2022/06/29/l...

I know what you're thinking; how can we sustainably manage the banana weevil problem? Boy do I have good news for you. My piece for @cenmag.bsky.social 🧪

#ZebrafishZunday: Simultaneous tracking of 100 zebrafish larvae using open-source software. Credit to FastTrack (www.fasttrack.sh). 🧪

So excited to be partnering with University Museum Utrecht to debut our updated VR game about zombie ants! It’s an educational game that teaches about evolution, and will be free to download from both SteamVR and the Meta Horizon Store later this month. Just search “Zombie Ants VR” to find it! 🧪

#NextGenSci asked young scientists to write a rule that all principal investigators should be required to follow to improve the experience of young scientists in their lab. Check out their answers on #NationalHigherEducationDay: scim.ag/45zsFEr

Hello ecologists and evolutionary biologists! I work with scientists to transform discoveries into beautiful, accurate, publication-ready figures. Get in touch if you want custom illustrations for your next paper. Check out www.lifesciencestudios.com to explore services and get started! #🐡 #🧪

The first night of Pint of Science if off to a fantastic start with a packed bar here in Utrecht! 🧪 🤩 @pintofsciencenl.bsky.social

Wonderfully good video about the beauty of science and humanitarian motivation working together to defeat diseases and save people. youtube.com/watch?v=ybVZ... 🧪 #NIH #CDC #WHO #BMGF #NIAID

Pint of Science 2025 kicks off on Monday! This annual science festival brings scientists to local pubs to share their work with the community. It’s a powerful engagement initiative in 27 countries worldwide that fosters dialogue between scientists and the public! 🧪 pintofscience.nl/locations/

I am very excited to host one of this year’s Pint of Science events in Utrecht, NL! Join us at Body Talk, May 21st, to hear about topics like gender neutral/non-binary language, fungal materials, and AI! Tickets and more information can be found here: pintofscience.nl/event/the-sp...

Useful guidance in paper images: “The do’s and don’ts of scientific image editing." 🧪🔬💡🔌🌌 idp.nature.com/authorize?re...

Very excited about this years @pintofsciencenl.bsky.social event in the Netherlands 🇳🇱!

Nature Careers spoke to scientists about their tattoos, which include scientific images to mark career accomplishments and illustrate research passions. #Academicsky 🧪

Who’s excited for season 2 of #TheLastofUs? 🙋‍♀️ @williamycete.bsky.social & other researchers have been studying the fungus that helped inspire the show (don’t worry, it only zombifies insects in real life!). Learn how it makes ants walk like zombies: www.sciencejournalforkids.org/articles/whi...

It might be April Fools' Day, but we're more interested in zombies this month. In the new installment of our newsletter, you'll find a new adapted article about zombie ants along with other resources: open.substack.com/pub/sciencej.... Subscribe to receive the next one right in your inbox!

@sj4k.bsky.social is back with another fantastic adaptation of our work with zombie ants 🧟🐜! always an amazing experience working with their crew ❤️! Making science easy to understand, what an important goal! 🌍 You can check out the full version here: www.sciencejournalforkids.org/wp-content/u...

I’m kicking off the new year with some great teaching news 🍎! My peer-reviewed lesson plan for how to use replica plating techniques to teach students about the evolution of antibiotic resistance has been published in CourseSource 🧫! You can find it open source here: qubeshub.org/community/gr...

New Zealand now going the way of many other countries. The idea that “we must endeavour to invest our money in areas that we believe have the best chance of showing a return on investment” is so small minded and foolish. #Science 🧪 #Research #ResearchFunding theconversation.com/funding-rese...

I love to collaborate with the Science Journal for Kids to make science more accessible for everyone! 🧑‍🧑‍🧒‍🧒 Here is an adaptation about the many different ways that zombie fungi are able to manipulate animal behavior! 🧠 You can read the full article here: www.sciencejournalforkids.org/wp-content/u...

Here is one of my latest DBER papers! 🍎 In this paper, we explore how social personality, particularly ones level of extroversion, impacts their learning in active learning environments! 🧑‍🏫 You can read the full article here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Here is one of my latest publications on zombie ants! 🐜 In this paper, we show how Ophiocordyceps may use aflatrem-like alkaloids to affect motor coordination in infected ants, causing the ants to walk like zombies. 🧟‍♂️ You can read the full article here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I am the creator of the community science initiative The Zombie Fungus Foray. 👩‍🔬 This project uses iNaturalist to identify various species of Ophiocordyceps around the world! 🌍 🔍 You can find the project page by searching for TheZombieFungusForay on iNaturalist.

My research journey began with a fascination for the microscopic world 🦠. I have since trained extensively in microbiology and molecular genetics to understand the symbiotic relationships between microbes and other organisms! Fungi are particularly interesting to me! 🍄

As part of my pedagogical and outreach work, I have collaborated with several groups to create a virtual reality video game about zombie ants! 🕹️ You can try it out for yourself for free on steam, just type ZOMBIE ANTS VR in the search menu!

I also conduct discipline-based education research (how we can effectively teach biology). 👨‍🏫 This involves teaching both in the classroom and in our local communities! 🍎

Hi everyone! 👋 I heard this was a great place to share science! I research zombie fungi and how they manipulate the behavior of insects! 🧟‍♂️ 🐜 🍄‍🟫