There's a new episode of the Arthro-Pod podcast out. We interviewed @toomanywasps.bsky.social about gall wasps, especially the understudied herb gall wasps. www.podbean.com/eas/pb-xcecc...

UIowa put out a short news story about our lab’s gall wasp work! Take a look if you want to see the excellent work that our students are doing.

Vampire moths might sound more horror film than natural world, but they’re 100% real! 😱 See why some moths pick human blood over fruit juice in this week’s Surprising Science. 🩸🦇

Does #SexualSelection fuel #Speciation? Our new #meta-analysis of comparative studies finds support for a positive relationship, but the rather moderate global effect suggests it’s not necessarily a dominant force. doi.org/10.1093/evle...

Arthropod Photo of the Week: October 22, 2025 Jagged ambush bug Phymata sp. Hemiptera: Reduviidae By Tom Astle (@tjalamont.bsky.social), Montana, USA #arthropodPOTW

Nice paper showing a major effect of wing morphology on diptera flight by Camille Le Roy, Florian Muijres and collegues! doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

Day 18 #Invertober2025 - Black & yellow mud dauber (Sceliphron caementarium) 🧱 #SciArt #invertebrates

Beautiful gall 😍

Just published! A new discovery in biological pest control: Synopeas ruficoxum, a natural enemy of the soybean gall midge in North America. 🧪🧵 doi.org/10.3897/jhr....

More wasps from Sichuan! This time we describe a new rose gall found on a protected endemic rose from China. We named the gall wasp Diplolepis nezha and its ichneumonid parasitoid Orthopelma aobing, after characters from the Chinese legend/popular animated film. mapress.com/zt/article/v...

To end the week, a cynipoid with crazy long antennae I found in the MNHN collection this morning! 👀✨ #wasp #insect

Male and female chalcids that emerged from redbud seedpods. Both are in the genus Eurytoma and are possibly the same species but further identification is beyond my skill set. I can't find any mention of them being recorded as parasitoids of redbud bruchids. 🌿 #wasps #hymenoptera #insects #bruchidae

Not my photograph but thought others would enjoy. And if you know what it is, Kenneth Geisert would appreciate an ID. 🌿 #lepidoptera #peru #insects #moths #inaturalist www.inaturalist.org/observations...

Dark taxa are extremely diverse organisms that remain largely undescribed due to small size, subtle differences, & few experts. Take this quiz to find out what you are - I'm a gall midge! whatdarktaxonareyou.static.domains/insect-quiz.... by @vivianfeng.bsky.social & @flyliceresearch.bsky.social

Telltale signs of a bark-mining moth, likely Zimmermannia bosquella (Nepticulidae). 🌿 #lepidoptera #moth

In Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 292(2054)20251133 #OpenAccess "Bayesian modelling of the fossil record enlightens the evolutionary history of Hemiptera" #bayésienBrownianBridge @mat-bod-evo-23.bsky.social ., Peng,A., Nel,A. @isyeb.mnhn.fr et al. ➡️ doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

ℹ️ ESEB 2025 Satellite Symposium: "𝘌𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘎𝘦𝘯𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘤𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘰𝘦𝘷𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯"🧬 📅 Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025 🕑 2:00 PM This exciting half-day symposium will bring researchers exploring the genomic basis & ecological impact of coevolution across systems and taxa. 🔗 𝐒𝐮𝐛𝐦𝐢𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐚𝐛𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞: lnkd.in/d2-FN8PB

It's #FrohawkFriday, the day we celebrate the butterfly studies and artwork of FW Frohawk. Today features Painted Lady - Frohawk knew it as an annual migrant, but little did he know just how remarkable they are, capable of crossing the Atlantic... nature.com/articles/s41... #butterflies

A gallery of plant galls and gall-making insects.

Oh wow, a new lepidopteran fossil dated to 236 My! Along with a reanalysis of molecular data using the new calibration. Are Lepidoptera really older than 300 My? www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Modern tree-dwelling sloths are dwarf morphs of (usually) ground dwelling giant sloths 😮 reminds me the evolutionary trajectories of dinosaurs into birds. www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.... 🧪 ⚒️ #Paleobio #EvoBio #Geology

🚨New paper alert!🚨 We show that hummingbird beaks have changed in shape & size since around WWII, driven by the rise of commercialized feeders! 🧵 📄 Paper: dx.doi.org/10.1111/gcb.... #ornithology #evolution #GlobalChangeBiology

Excited to share my new Tansley Review @newphyt.bsky.social on emerging single-cell and spatial omics technologies, many of which are just beginning to be applied in plant biology! Big opportunities lie ahead for the field. [1/n]  nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Carboniferous insects

New Harvard grant terminations in the geosciences (plus others - geosciences are just my jam) are up at grant-watch.us/nsf-data.html. They include work on tracking mercury pollution in the Arctic; the longterm atmospheric impacts of 2022's Tongan eruption; and how earthquakes rupture the ground. ☠️

To end the week, a kawai gall wasp ✨ male of Plagiotrochus quercusilicis #gall #insect #wasp

Venez soutenir les jeunes chercheurs et chercheuses du Muséum et passionnez-vous pour leurs sujets de #recherche ! 📅 Du 14 au 16 mai, assistez au 30e Congrès des jeunes chercheur·e·s du Muséum à l'Amphithéâtre Verniquet au Jardin des Plantes. Inscriptions gratuites 👉 framaforms.org/inscription-...

Join SSE, @asn-amnat.bsky.social & @systbiol.bsky.social in a Week of Action for NSF! Call and write congress and engage with colleagues, friends and family about the importance of NSF funding! Our Media Tool can help you get started: shorturl.at/i7WfU #WithoutNSF #SaveNSF #SupportNSF

🎉 We’re hiring! Two ERC-funded #PostdocJobs on insect–phytopathogen mutualisms are available in my lab. Explore the chemical and molecular evolution of symbioses! 🧪Chemical ecology: tinyurl.com/chem-ecol-symb 🦠Phytopathology & mutualisms: tinyurl.com/symb-plantpath #SymbioSky #PlantPathology

Spring 2025 has been very good for the Map (A levana, landkaartje) on Dutch Butterfly Monitoring transects, recovering after a series of dry years with a large 3rd gen in 2024. However the lack of rain now is also worrying for the next generations.

#WorldRobberFlyDay assassin flies + their prey are fascinating - here Diogmites nigripennis (Macquart, 1847) (Dasypogoninae) with wasp prey - USNMENT00832604 - Costa Rica: Estación Biológica La Selva, 2010-08-19 - full details here n2t.net/ark:/65665/3... #FlyWeek

One of the things that I love most about flies is their abundant diversity! Check out this Cecidomyidae! 😎 #FlyWeek

The Dutch Grassland Butterfly indicator (www.clo.nl/indicatoren/...) shows a decline of more than 70%. It will be hard to achieve an increasing trend in 2030, as required in art 11 in the Nature Restoration Regulation (eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-conten...).

New #gall #wasp paper from our lab! We review the genera of Phanacidini herb gall wasps, present the first record from China, and identify a new tribal diagnostic character! Now onto revising the species and genera… every synonymized genus needs to be resurrected! www.mapress.com/zt/article/v...

Our global phylogeny of Eurytomidae is now published in Systematic Entomology @respublications.bsky.social resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

I can't agree more!! 😊 #gall academic.oup.com/ae/article-a...

Cuckoo Wasp! (Primeuchroeus sp.) #insects

Mercredi 16 avril, 15h, RdV Parc départemental du Sausset(93) Découvrez l’univers captivant des arachnides, leurs capacités surprenantes, dépassez vos peurs, apprenez à cohabiter. Rencontre avec Christine Rollard aranéologue @isyeb.mnhn.fr inscription 🕷️ parcsinfo.seinesaintdenis.fr/une-araignee...

So some extraordinary news came out today! We have received footage for the first time of a colossal squid in it's natural habitat! I remember watching the footage live and being in chat saying "Could this be Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni"? And glad to hear it was!! www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzPo...

Cuts to #science of >50% at NASA and >75% at NOAA would end US climate and space science research. NASA cuts are '...an "extinction level" event': arstechnica.com/space/2025/0... "At this funding level, Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research is eliminated...": www.science.org/content/arti...

BREAKING from @science.org: The Trump admin is seeking to kill nearly all climate research at NOAA, its climate science agency. Its near-final budget proposal would end all NOAA research labs, academic institutes, and regional climate centers. And it wants to fully end the NOAA Research division.

So many Ichneumonids, so little time. I collected this Exetastes bifenestratus, a species I'd never seen before, at a blacklight in central Texas.

A very cooperative chalcid wasp, smaller than a grain of rice (~3mm), yet dazzling. When people ask “Why bugs?”, I show them insects like this. Metallic, red-eyed, and basically a real-life xenomorph in biology. 🪲🪳 #Invertebrate #macrophotography #Chalcidoidea 🌿 #entomology #hymenoptera

🍀 𝐋𝐞𝐬 𝐠𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐝𝐞 𝐜𝐡ê𝐧𝐞 𝐝𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐬 𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐭 𝐥à ! 🍀 Les premières galles de Cynipidés sur chêne de l'année sont de retour. Cette première vague correspond pour la plupart des espèces à la génération sexuée. De petite taille, éphémères, les galles de sont peu observées. Il nous faut plus d'observations !

🍀 𝐋𝐞𝐬 𝐠𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐝𝐞 𝐜𝐡ê𝐧𝐞 𝐝𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐬 𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐭 𝐥à ! 🍀 Les premières galles de Cynipidés sur chêne de l'année sont de retour. Cette première vague correspond pour la plupart des espèces à la génération sexuée. De petite taille, éphémères, les galles de sont peu observées. Il nous faut plus d'observations !

✨ 𝘼𝙣𝙙𝙧𝙞𝙘𝙪𝙨 𝙦𝙪𝙖𝙙𝙧𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙪𝙨 🔴 Galles induites par A. quadrilineatus sur Quercus robur observées dans le jardin botanique du @mnhn.fr Deuxième donnée pour la France sur GBIF, première pour iNaturalist !!! www.inaturalist.org/observations... #insects #gall

Lueurs matinales sur le jardin des plantes✨️☀️🌿

Petabytes of critical government research that is marked for possible deletion cannot be archived because of technical and legal restrictions, meaning it is very likely to be lost forever: www.404media.co/nih-archives...

Speaking of waste.... @science.org www.science.org/content/arti...