The moral injury of watching incredible colleagues leave federal science because of what amounts to partisan sabotage is indescribable. Godspeed, Dr. Marvel. We’re lucky to share our one wild and precious planet with you.

It's that time of the semester when I advertise the fall entomology class.

This isn't the mechanism I'd have chosen, but Trump is doing tremendous work pushing the clean energy revolution.

Plenty of water for the refineries in Nueces County -- which are driving all the shortages -- but residents are being told to shower less and farmers are "planting crops that may never grow."

I remember watching this debacle of a press conference and thinking about the Russian families who waited for word on the Kursk disaster while Putin held a barbeque at his Black Sea villa.

We should increase public funding for taxonomy, because otherwise we get bitcoin flies. (Meanwhile, the agency that supports most taxonomy in the US, NSF, has all but stopped giving out any funds under the Trump regime. So we can expect more bitcoin flies)

Many freshwater fish populations are collapsing, according to the most comprehensive assessment to date by the UN’s Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species, which found freshwater fish populations worldwide have crashed by about 81% since 1970.🐟🧪 www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Really excellent paper on the genetics of caterpillar butt ornaments journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Iran can mostly just sit back and wait for Texas to collapse its own oil production from corruption and lack of regulatory oversight.

How soon until the financial markets die because no one wins except Trump regime players? Seriously, why invest when it's all rigged?

Texas sky update.

3,300 passengers travel through LaGuardia every hour, every day, every year. 29 million total. Running that airport with a single ATC in charge of both sky and ground traffic is inexcusable and if the shortage is that bad then we need to shut some airports down

We’ve told all the casting agents that the Weird Al biopic sequel is currently on hold, but they just keep sending in headshots.

All merch revenue must go to support campus natural history collections.

The people who make policies turning airport terminals into paramilitary dystopias travel by private jets and do not directly face the consequences of their decisions.

It's like the stock market is a giant lever anyone can use to control the U.S. president. A completely sane way to manage a country.

Texas sky update.

Another university getting rid of things you could only ever do at a university and replacing them with stuff a 13-year-old can do on a phone

What looks like an oil spill on a roadside puddle is in fact a gathering of thousands of springtails (Collembola). Video below…

This March heat wave is hitting an already drought-stricken Texas. Austin has been in extreme drought and we've got at least another week or so before meaningful rain chances.

Tetramorium immigrans pavement ants pin down a worker from a rival colony. Indiana Dunes National Park, USA.

Why does this feel like a mid-90s album cover?

The retractable antennae of Mycetophylax fungus-farming ants leave such a distinct scrobe on the head. Photo from a few years ago from Mindo, Ecuador. This is possibly an undescribed species. Too many ants, not enough taxonomists.

If Democrats aren't running ads 24/7 through November that Donald Trump is the reason why concert tickets cost $1200, the party should be dissolved for political malfeasance.

Texas ground update.

Well if you’re bringing scarabs, I’m bringing leiodids

Update: there are eggs on my milkweed.

Sometimes you just get that shot. Anna's hummingbird with a little friend, in my yard. Davis, CA. #birds #ants

Tectonicist Here! The Strait of Hormuz is busily slowly *closing* itself at a rate of 2 centimeters a year (about 3/4 an inch a year). It'll close off in about 2 million years or so.

Some of the Argentine ant ecologists who documented that species' invasive spread in California in the 1990s resurveyed the same sites, and concluded that the ant seems to have hit its physiological limits and has not spread further.

Mosquitoes don’t just stop biting when they’re full — their butts help flip the switch. New research reveals gut cells that signal “no more blood.” https://www.sciencenews.org/article/mosquitoes-butts-full-stop-biting

Just saw a monarch butterfly drifting northward. So I guess the migration is here.

Denton County and its economy are built around the University of North Texas. Denton County also went 56/43 for Trump in 2024. That's because most voters there wanted to get rid of immigrants. Now, as international students disappear, the university is collapsing. They burned down their own house.

Friday ice update - #Arctic sea ice extent is currently the *lowest* on record (JAXA data)... • about 640,000 km² below the 2010s mean • about 1,050,000 km² below the 2000s mean • about 1,480,000 km² below the 1990s mean • about 1,960,000 km² below the 1980s mean More: zacklabe.com/arctic-sea-i...

OK, take a moment away from whatever nonsense this world is throwing at you today, and have a look at this extreme insect 🪳🪲 wing macro photography by Chris Perani. (The image in the thumbnail is Xylocopa latipes, a carpenter bee.) www.thisiscolossal.com/2026/03/chri...

Here is the Cornell Chronicle article about our PNAS paper on the evolution of milkweed toxins (N,S-cardenolides), to which the monarch butterfly is sensitive, despite being co-evolved with milkweeds! @cornellentomology.bsky.social news.cornell.edu/stories/2026...

The clean energy revolution is indeed happening as a result of strong, impactful policies of the United States government. Just not the strong, impactful policies I'd imagined.

Pigeon milk.

Rough time to be a cattle rancher in Texas. Not just the imminent arrival of screwworm. Pastures are getting hit by a new invasive mealybug, Heliococcus summervillei, that kills grass at scale.

Even in a world of extremes, some events still stand out to me. This is one. All-time monthly records are being shattered. The size of this ridge across the western U.S. is truly striking for March, and we see a very clear climate change connection. Explore: csi.climatecentral.org/climate-shif...

A failing society.

This is the same pattern from the United States. Nazis take over the mainstream conservative voter block, enjoy massively boosted power, and the country ends up one election away from the abyss. Australia needs to take its Nazi problem seriously.

A gallery of fireflies.

A downpayment of $200 billion and what we're getting for it is a more extreme Iranian successor regime, a global economic crisis featuring staggering energy prices and potential famine, and what looks like an opening for China and Russia to upend the world power structure. We didn't need to do this!

I was surprised to discover, as a public school kid at an exclusive liberal arts college, how much better prepared public school kids were for college courses compared to the rich prep school kids. It makes sense to me now that I'm older. But yeah, the purpose of private schools isn't to educate.

Here are some lovely Puerto Rican 🇵🇷 critters for you to enjoy. I love seeing these little tropical guys and I'm looking forward to seeing and posting more! ☺️ #Vieques, PR

This drives me nuts. It matters what species you work on.

Such a nice guy

A gallery of fireflies.

In my #SciComm training, I tell folks "if you're funny, be funny in your outreach. If you're not, don't try." Then someone always asks "what if I don't know if I'm funny?" And I reply "if you're 30 years old and no one has ever told you you're funny, you're probably not funny." 🧪