Heather nectar metabolites reduce within-colony epidemics of the bumblebee parasite Crithidia bombi showing that anti microbial compounds in nectar are effective at improving bee health at colony levels. @rbgkew.bsky.social @markjfbrown.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Bags packed, on the train, and super excited to finally attend my first @britishecologicalsociety.org conference! #BES2025 🤸🏼‍♂️🐝 (luggage in bee-colour theme is accidental, promise 😅)

Delighted to publish Forum Article by @nicolasgaltier.bsky.social et al: "Journals run by learned societies or universities have more ethical policies while being cheaper and similarly cited" doi.org/10.1093/jeb/... Thank you for choosing JEB - we encourage the support of #societyjournals

I am absolutely thrilled to share my first chapter, published today in @jappliedecology.bsky.social! Results are summarised in the thread below, or you can read it OA here doi.org/10.1111/1365... @ellileadbeater.bsky.social @rhulbiology.bsky.social @uclcber.bsky.social @ucl-pnl.bsky.social 1/7 🧪

Delighted to share this note on only the second British record of the #hoverfly Paragus quadrifasciatus, which @amaeda16.bsky.social, @ellileadbeater.bsky.social, and I found during a #pollinator survey of the @ucl-pnl.bsky.social garden lab. Read and share! 🧪 www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Deciduous leaves may have evolved to be symmetrical and subtly lobed so they fall quicker and land near their parent tree, recycling their annually sequestered carbon. Join us 22 Oct 3:00 PM (London, UK) to hear #JRSocInterface author Kaare Jensen talk about his research: cassyni.com/events/5PbU2...

A common type of ant in Europe breaks a fundamental rule in biology: its queens can produce male offspring that are a whole different species go.nature.com/4mOb5T9

*Postdoc in Evolutionary genomics at Stockholm University* We are recruiting a postdoc for a large interdisciplinary project to investigate evolutionary drivers and genomic consequences of pollen evolution in response to pollination mode shifts in flowering plants. 1/5 su.varbi.com/what:job/job...

Is the Most Effective Pollinator Principle a zombie idea? How do plants adapted to one pollinator shift to another without traversing an adaptive valley? How should we measure fitness in pollinator selection studies? We explore these questions and more in a new review doi.org/10.1093/aob/...

Light pollution is causing birds around the world to sing for longer each day, prolonging their vocalizations on average by 50 minutes, according to a new study in Science. Learn more: https://scim.ag/3Uz7vzP

Press release for our @nature.com paper on the importance of #sterols in the diet of honeybees is here - the piece provides details on the yeast engineering & bioassays. The work was the research of my brilliant PhD student Elynor Moore www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-08...

This is devastating. We’ve lost most Lowland Heath in England. It supports unique flora & fauna & healthy bees. Our work @rbgkew.bsky.social w/ @cminnaar.bsky.social & @markjfbrown.bsky.social studies heather nectar for compounds that protect bumblebees from parasites www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Pollinating count to track Square Mile's ecosystem Bees, butterflies and moths are being counted across the City of London on Thursday to document the state of insect populations. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Insects usually care for their own young, but sometimes they also help other species. This #RSOS study found that yellow meadow #ants protect the eggs of root aphids in their nests during winter. Read more: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... @tparmentier.bsky.social @wybouw.bsky.social

If you've not already followed the cool trans nature experts in this starter pack, you're really missing out. Also, it's Pride! Get some more trans voices on your timeline!

As @royentsoc.bsky.social #InsectWeek begins, we’re excited to share the latest @pomscheme.bsky.social annual report 🐝🪰🪲 Explore this year’s findings and help us welcome The RHS as a new PoMS partner! 👏🏼 Planting a variety of flowers and creating diverse habitats is key for pollinators 🌼 🧵🧪 1/

Check out our latest blog post in celebration of #Pride 🏳️‍🌈 In this post, @zoomingbio.bsky.social‬ shares fieldwork advice for researchers with marginalized identities. Read the post here 👉 buff.ly/rJhjheF #RainbowResearch

I found some solitary wasps so engaged @whistlingjoe.bsky.social mode, set up the probe lens and filmed :)

Putting this out here, but I’m available for peer-review request, guest lectures, article writing & collaborations. My expertise is in animal behaviour & physiology with a focus in North America bats. I also have experience with wildlife diseases and veterinary medicine! 🦇🧪🌎🪶🐞🦅

Woodlands play multiple roles in supporting farmland populations of wild bees. Deciduous woods provide floral resources, and open woodlands extend availability of understory floral resources respite from hot weather resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Loving the benefits of nature restoration on our beautiful campus @royalholloway.bsky.social @rhulbiology.bsky.social

Global change reshuffles species communities: who could interact with whom? We introduce new ways to measure the capacity of species & communities to rewire interactions, which can be used to predict how ecological networks might adapt to changing conditions. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

In a new study just published, I teamed up with some Brazilian colleagues to explore how the different features of garden flowers help sustain #pollinators throughout the year in a subtropical urban garden. Read more about it here: jeffollerton.co.uk/2025/05/30/a... #biodiversity #ecology #bees

Methods paper by Ollerton et al. on how to improve data quality of plant-pollinator relationships in large data bases that would be worthwhile to become a standard for pollination research! doi.org/10.26786/192...

Ooh! This sounds mind-bendingly interesting 🤔

Lovely bee orchids on @royalholloway.bsky.social campus @rhulbiology.bsky.social

Stomatal transpiration and rapid programmed cell death ☠️ triggered by lowered ambient humidity causes anther tissue collapse for effective pollen release ! Happy to be part of this great PNAS story with @kampova.bsky.social, Matyáš Fendrych, and @svosolsobe.bsky.social! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

🚨 Our study from @bethbees.bsky.social lab is out in @royalsocietypublishing.org . We show that bumblebees taste some amino acids (valine), but not others (lysine). Bees might choose flowers not just by how sweet they taste! #bees 🐝 #taste 👅 #pollen #nectar 🌺 #protein 🥩 doi.org/10.1098/rsos...

Always a pleasure to come across a Golden-fringed Mason Bee (Osmia aurulenta) nest! This is one of 3 UK bee species to nest in empty snail shells. A female had just finished pasting leaf mastic over the entrance to the shell when I came across her yesterday at Porth Neigwl. #SolitaryBeeWeek

On #WorldBeeDay, counting the bees we count on for our project on bumblebee health (see below)👇 Such a privilege to work with @markjfbrown.bsky.social @philstevenson.bsky.social and @xuan-feng.bsky.social on this.

🐝 Happy #WorldBeeDay from WildPosh! Bees are essential to healthy ecosystems, protecting biodiversity and helping natural systems thrive. Today, let's take the opportunity to celebrate them but also offer our support by planting pollinator-friendly flowers and avoiding harmful pesticides. 🌼

📢 We are pleased to announce the launch of the WildPosh collection in the RIO Journal. 📄 The first publication is the grant proposal, outlining WildPosh’s objectives, approach, and expected impact. 🔗 Explore the collection: riojournal.com/topical_coll...

"Science is an investment. We will put forward a new 500 million package for 2025-2027 to support the best and the brightest researchers and scientists from Europe and around the world." — President @vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu at the ‘Choose Europe for Science' event at La Sorbonne 🇫🇷

This bumblebee worker is taking her first ever flight. Watch how she studies and memorises visual features around her hive entrance. These initial orientation flights help workers find their hives again on future foraging trips. What's with the odd, 90s-looking decor on the hive box? See thread 👇

Such a great lab to be part of! 🐝🏆

#Ubuntu is an African value system that upholds #humanity, interconnectedness and collective #wellbeing. Its philosophy can help lecturers to humanise #teaching, particularly when tech risks depersonalisation, explains Chipo Simbi of the @unisouthampton.bsky.social; ow.ly/kw7950VGVA6 #edusky

Caught one of our Buff-tailed bumblebee queens in the act of egg laying! To start a colony, queens lay eggs inside a pocket in/on a pollen ball so that larvae have direct access to plenty of food when they hatch. Amazed by the deft and speed with which she applies wax to close the egg pocket!

When you think about purchasing cute little succulents, be sure you know where they're coming from. "Botanists have recorded about 6,400 species of native plants here, about 2,500 of them found nowhere else — far more than any other arid region of comparable size." 🌍 e360.yale.edu/features/sou...

Really wish people would stop talking about the problem with Science under Trump as “budget cuts”. No. Budgets are set deliberatively by elected members of congress. Budgets haven’t been cut. What’s happening are *purges* and *censorship*.

My own, and a huge stack of other's, research on the impacts of light pollution and urbanisation on biodiversity would have been impossible without decades of light pollution data provided for free by the NOAA.

Our paper is out, and it is distressing. Rapid butterfly declines across the United States during the 21st century | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Thanks for all the help today @leofordham.bsky.social! Was super fun ☺️ The queens are all tucked in and ready to start laying eggs (soon, hopefully)🤞 Indeed a ridiculous and brilliant job.

The first many-analysts study in ecology is finally published! 🥳🙌 300+ coauthors and 5+ years, this was a massive effort by @elliotgould.bsky.social Hannah Fraser Tim Parker and co. Open access 👉 bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Hello, Bluesky! ☀️ We fund frontier research in Europe—bold ideas, unexpected discoveries and science that shapes the future. So it’s only fitting we’ve landed here. Sorry for being late. Follow us for updates on ERC funding, research policy, and our grantees' discoveries.

In the news!🗞️ Thousands of European citizen scientists helped identify shifts in the #floral traits of #insect-#pollinated #plants: besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

[new paper] You probably suspected that loss of pollinator diversity consistently reduces reproductive success for wild and cultivated plants, but here we quantify it: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Today I’m isolating DNA 🧬 from some of our Greenland 🇬🇱 pollinator samples 🪰🐝🦟. We use a modified Qiagen DNeasy 96 Plant Kit protocol, designed to optimize the yield of plant pollen DNA found on the insect. Each sample well will contain the DNA of all plant pollen found on a given individual insect!

PLOS to move away from APC model. PLOS moves designed to make publishing equitable. plos.org/redefining-p... #ScientificPublishing #AcademicSky #AcademicChatter

I created this stater pack with women in ecology and evolution. If you want to be added you can comment or DM me, but also please suggest the names of those I am missing 🧪🌎🌐 go.bsky.app/8jFH7cS