There were 52 species of Bulgarian herpetofauna (one is now thought extinct) & you can see them all exquisitely displayed, as @waspwoman.bsky.social would say at the National Museum of Natural History, Sofia, Bulgaria I’m loving the wiggle of the displays #museums #displays

I picked a fight with the wrong piece of kitchen equipment - a mandolin slicer. Our pizza will have nicely sliced veggies, but they may no longer be vegetarian and a lucky one may have a nail-biting experience... I will grab a knife next time; kitchen-based torture machines are not for me.

www.theguardian.com/politics/202... 'a few years ago, there was a global consensus around net zero. There’s not now' how can Labour keep on getting it so wrong. This is bollocks. There IS global consensus among those who recognise the primacy of data and evidence, not uninformed opinion.

I love this style!

This grass moth is often invisible in still frames, but easy to see in motion. BehaveAI can use this motion to track tiny & camouflaged moving objects in complex scenes. Its semi-automated annotation workflow also means this moth-tracker took only an hour to make. Preprint: tinyurl.com/BehaveAI

My initial positive reception of and experiences with the new Wiley REX system are quickly turning. I can't follow the decision-making that led to its development. I'm afraid it isn't quality, convenience, or efficiency. The only positive that remains for now is an overview of all work to be done.

A student told me today that my lecture on the ecology of mammals and birds was the highlight of her week, and my examples were often dinner time conversations at home. How cool is that? Also, the subject was cecotrophy, so possibly the worst subject during dinner time. Flattered nonetheless!

My book #TransformingNight argues that excessive focus on #LightPollution #ArtificialLight during clear-sky conditions until recently is a legacy of astronomy's early attn to issue. IOW, even recent scientific assumptions and practices have been shaped by the past. #histsci #ALAN #night #darkness

Paper no. 8 is out, in which Shannon Murphy et al. investigated the response of native and invasive plants under ALAN, showing that invasives tend to be more strongly promoted by light pollution than natives and increase their C:N ratios. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Insightful paper about distance to cities and cloud composition for the distribution and reflection of light pollution. These kind of measurements should become standard for monitoring, eg, of urban lighting impacts particularly on biodiversity beyond the urban environment.

Does anyone have a good-quality photo of a Common Yellowthroat in the field, which they would be willing to submit (without monetary compensation) as cover photo accompanying a paper in Canadian Field-Naturalist? You would receive credit for the photo of course. Let me know! 😄

🍂 November's issue is now live! 🔗 buff.ly/2VxZ16y With original articles on: 🥬 Nitrogen management 🌽 Maize yields & resource use 🕷️ Arthropod community structure 🐛 Pest biology 🏵️ Safflower pigmentation 🐝 Honey bee pathogens 💮 Raspberry pollination 🌿 Fennel reproduction 🍄 Biocontrol of termites

Recently, a reviewer made reference to the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum on a manuscript about extreme events. It sparked ideas for an exercise on the role of geological events in the evolution and distribution of biodiversity, which fit my lecture today. Including a mini (7) poster seminar!

Great to see the results of our massive biodiversity assessment at Berchtesgaden Natl. Park pour in! Cool insights on patterns & drivers of multidiversity! #1 Macro- and microclimate interactively shape species diversity of multiple taxa in mountain landscapes by L. Geres. doi.org/10.1002/ecog...

For those of you interested in plant chemical diversity, I highly recommend our latest preprint, led by Humay Newrzella. Her experimental efforts show the strong localized chemical responses to herbivory in Tanacetum. Great work with the wonderful @jpschnitzlerlab.bsky.social team

The grim task of recovering thousands of bodies from the rubble of Gaza

Which bird disperses which plant? What does bird dispersed fruit look like? Why do fruit sizes differ between regions? Why does ivy fruit in winter? How can we identify the disperser and distance carried from droppings? How did this collaboration arise? youtu.be/4vZ0w97ffRM?...

A good way to start the week, with a review manuscript accepted in Global Change Biology. This manuscript is the culmination of numerous really wonderful brainstorms I have had over the years with Maddy Thakur, Jeff Harvey and Rieta Gols. More on this work hopefully soon!

It took me some time, but I think my phone is now as decoupled from Google and other big tech tracking as possible. I removed dozens of apps, disabled even more, and replaced most of them for browser versions. DuckDuckGo insists that there are literally no more tracking attempts since a few hrs.

Plant-Insect-interactions & the chemistry behind it - I‘m happy that the 3rd chapter of the PhD thesis of #HumayNevrzella became online as pre-print. Again a great cooperation with @robinheinennl.bsky.social and @terrecolgroup.bsky.social #Plantscience

Looking for a PhD / researcher position on #arthropods in #urban green spaces? Our colleague @nadja-simons.bsky.social @cofeuniwue.bsky.social @uni-wuerzburg.de has a 3 year position advertised here: www.uni-wuerzburg.de/karriere/sin...

I'm not generally a big fan of AI. However, Lisa found neat ways to train models to help optimize placement of resource patches (or habitat) in cities in order to reach optimal connectivity. She used blackbird data, but should be possible for any species you have resource and observation data for.

We are constantly told by the media and authorities that these are both 'forest'. One is a complex, diverse native ecosystem, full of life. The other is an industrial monoculture deadzone. They could not be more different.

The world is deeply unserious about dealing with climate change. We need to reduce emissions by 50% in 5 years and we're nowhere near that.

Stile and lighthouse #ArtDD2025 #dailydrawing Two favourite subjects 😁 (no heron) From my little West Coast tour of Sweden Morups Tånge #lighthouse #style #watercolour @lakesstiles.bsky.social @drrjwarren.bsky.social @andykaitken.bsky.social @holnicotenh.bsky.social @stevecobbin.bsky.social

It's funny (and easy) to install DuckDuckGo, even if only to turn on App Tracking Protection in the settings and follow its behavior after scrolling through a couple of common and 'innocent' apps. They're collecting so much data on you that would make it rather easy to predict your every move.

I am very excited to share that we have a new paper out today in @natrevbiodiv.nature.com In it, we summarize the state of knowledge on the Circular Seabird Economy! 1/n 🧪 Link to paper here: rdcu.be/eMOUd

Climate change is disrupting animal migrations by altering environmental cues and reducing prey availability. This disruption not only threatens the survival of individual animals but also has cascading impacts on entire ecosystems and human communities.

Just deleted WhatsApp. There's really no need for me to support any Meta platform...

This is the ugliest picture of a bird species I've been trying to spot for a long time, but somehow never managed to. A beautiful water rail and it wasn't shy at all!

I'm fairly sure that most supervisors would be happy to spend more time with their mentees. However, the more you climb the proverbial academic ladder, the more people, teaching, and everything else seem to start pulling at you for your time. It's a system problem, not always a supervisor problem.

Strangely, posting about climate solutions (the things we need to do WAY more of WAY faster than we are now) in an effort to get more people to care about and push for the solutions sometimes attracts people replying that I’m not posting hard enough about all the climate problems. 🤷‍♂️

I'd say art is the road to finding the voice. Most artists never find 'their voice.' I think it's not one static thing.

There may be no significant difference, but I was happy to see this figure :).

Lectured about lagomorphs and rodents of Germany today. (I'm always amazed by the fact that 'we' are a sister clade to the Glires in the mammalian phylogeny). It's fun to hear students' thoughtful questions, particularly the creative ones I don't have immediate answers to. I always learn new things!

Great job, Andrew. Congratulations!

Happy that Lina Ojeda Prieto's latest work is online @funecology.bsky.social! We manipulated the number of plant chemotypes in a plot, and tested how this influenced visitation by different arthropod groups. A massive endeavor for Lina's PhD. doi.org/10.1111/1365...

By coincidence, it is @chemodiversity.bsky.social day today! Another piece came out just now, written by @mhanusch.bsky.social and colleagues @rrjunker.bsky.social in @newphyt.bsky.social. Plant species with more diverse scent profiles attract more pollinators, but have lower bacterial diversity!

Reminder to take a look at the new paper by Hugo Cabral and colleagues: Diversity Loss and Homogenization in Snake Communities in a Deforestation Hotspot -> out now in Diversity and Distributions. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.... #newpaper #snakes #chaco #deforestation #diversityloss

Happy that Lina Ojeda Prieto's latest work is online @funecology.bsky.social! We manipulated the number of plant chemotypes in a plot, and tested how this influenced visitation by different arthropod groups. A massive endeavor for Lina's PhD. doi.org/10.1111/1365...

I haven't used chrome, Google search, or other obvious Google apps since last week. I'm now getting ads for 'the amazing Google search experience' on every place that still runs ads otherwise. Time to shut those down too. I was willfully naive of how much Google ran through everything. Horrible.

It's been great working with @malacrino.bsky.social and other colleagues for Annals for years, and I'm sure Antonino will be a great new Editor in Chief, taking over from @raa12161.bsky.social. Looking forward to continuing to improve this @aabiologists.bsky.social society journal!

📢 Our meta-analysis examining effects of experimental inoculation of plants with soil rhizobacteria on insect herbivores is now online. 📜Inoculated plants reduce insect fitness and alter host-choice behaviours, promising effects also on recruiting natural enemies. ✔️ Open access at bit.ly/49cMX8v

We have an open Post Doc position in plant-volatile interactions, starting April 2026. Ideal if you love to use molecular tools to understand the natural world and improve agriculture. Interested? Send your CV, grades, motivation letter and refs (single pdf!) to [email protected]. Please share.

The Art of Transition Series: Cicada. (2025) Acrylic on canvas, 16x20". ~~~~~~ Where no crawly is creepy! LindZeamays Illustration LindZeamays.com ~~~~~~ 🪲🪳🐡🎨

The Art of Transition Series: Monarch Butterfly (2025). Acrylic on canvas, 16x20". ~~~~~~ Where no crawly is creepy! LindZeamays Illustration LindZeamays.com ~~~~~~ 🎨🐡🪳🪲🦋

Today, Lisa Ott presented her MSc thesis work on ground-nesting birds in agricultural landscapes near Nürnberg. Lisa combined her work for an NGO with ecological questions on how different aspects of agricultural landscapes affect breeding success in ao lapwings, skylarks and grey partridge.

As long as Alex's pictures are still there the internet will still be valuable :)

While the rest of the web flounders, I am pleased to report that my bug photo website is still going strong and may be the last thing available for you to look at.