Biology Department xkcd.com/3140/

How do we know that #kakapo will breed next year? Each autumn, we inspect rimu trees: if more than 10% of branchlets are developing fruit, then there'll be a rimu 'mast' and kākāpō will nest. This year the counts are the highest we've ever seen, which means most females should breed. #conservation

Hear more about the weird—sorry, different—life history of the clouded apollo butterfly from Niclas Backström (@uu.se / @evobiouppsala.bsky.social) on YouTube! 🌍🧪 ↓ www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObOH... #EvoSKy #EvoBio #Conservation #BioDiversity #Ecology #Butterflies

It is #InsectWeek! Which, as many of my papers show, and @restingdinoface.bsky.social has summarized, means we are in fact celebrating crustaceans. BUGS. IS. SHRIMPS. 🧪🦋🐝🪲🐞🦗🪳🪰🦐🦐🦐🦐

#ICYMI Happy summer solstice! 🌞 🌍 This year's solstice happened at exactly 04:42 CEST on 21 June, the moment the Sun reached its northernmost point in the sky. Viewed from space, these images capture a full year of shifting light and shadow, from one June solstice to the next 🧪🔭

What is common knowledge in your field, but shocks outsiders? A majority of the world’s insect species have no living expert who can identify them.

www.theguardian.com/environment/... Spread the word! Turn off the lights (unless you're trapping!), leave the leaves, plant all the native plants in every gap, make a pond, stop using chemicals in the garden. I know I am preaching to the converted but insects are important! #insect #teammoth #bugs

Every time I post about the astronomical numbers (many, many billions) of wildlife annually killed by cats, someone replies with "MY cat doesn't do that". The evidence is crystal clear: many cats are exterminators, and the ONLY way to be sure yours isn't is by keeping it indoors, or not at all.

I met some lovely creatures at a nature reserve this weekend that I wanted to share with you: a weevil with a snoot, a moth with a snoot, a huge chafer beetle, and a bagworm moth caterpillar - the first time I've seen one in real life!

the new developments on inat inspired me to make a diagnostic thread for every insect order because there's only like 30something of them. going to try and avoid exceptions and extremely technical characteristics when possible. 🧵

Breaking news: it appears Emperor penguin populations in Antarctica are declining faster than predicted. Latest satellite data shows a massive 22% drop in penguin numbers over the last 15 years in key regions. This is more than double the rate of loss that experts had expected... 🧵 1/8

Folks, if you're an iNaturalist user and especially if you are a monetary donor, please comment on their post and ask them to stop partnering with Google AI. It'll devalue and alienate the very scientists that have made the site great. They should be paying experts instead.

“Instead of just offering AI species suggestions of what you saw, we want to offer a why as well.” iNaturalist now has a statement explaining their controversial decision to partner with Google on a limited generative AI tool. www.inaturalist.org/blog/113184-...

Are you heading up to the Lake District fells this summer? You could help us monitor Mountain Ringlet - England's only mountain butterfly. This small, beautiful butterfly flies in June and July and we need help from hillwalkers to locate new colonies. buff.ly/AZYvjvk

preprints are common in science, but sharing names of new species before publication might invalidate them. this can make it difficult to communicate upcoming research. solution: taxonomists embrace being mysterious and simply do this

May 20 is World Bee Day. There are ~20,000 different bee species in the world. 🧪🧵🐝 Here in Ontario we have at least 400 native bees (none of which are honeybees, which are from Europe). Bees are key to pollination. According to the UN nearly 90% of the world’s wild flowering plant species depend, 🧵

A look at some of our #RareBooks for #WorldBeeDay. The author of this 1609 guide was among the first to recognise the largest bee was female. We also showcase some 18th century bees, wasps and ants from The genera insectorum of Linnaeus by James Barbut. More on the #RESLibrary 🔽 buff.ly/Fy0poK7

Fantastic and very detailed, evidence-based report from @greenpeace.eu @oekoinstitut.bsky.social out today on the environmental impacts of uncontrolled data centre expansion, predicated largely on machine learning applications like generation of text and images -> www.greenpeace.de/publikatione...

OK, this is wild. In September 2023, geophysicists across the world started monitoring a very odd signal coming from the ground under them. It was picked up in the Arctic. And Antarctica. It was detected everywhere, every 90 seconds, as regular as a metronome, for *nine days*. What the HELL? 1/

1. Because this issue is critical, but has received remarkably little coverage, here's a thread pulling out the key themes from my article yesterday, on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which puts decades of environmental protections to the torch. 🧵 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Authomaema pentacosma (I think) A new moth for our Perth Hills garden and a rare sighting in Western Australia if my ID is accurate. The colour and the details of the scales on this small moth's wings are just beautiful #teammoth #mothsmatter #ausinverst #wildoz #inverts

🥼𝗦𝗖𝗜𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗜𝗦𝗧𝗦! 𝗦𝗔𝗩𝗘 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗗𝗔𝗧𝗘🥼 🗓️ 𝗧𝗨𝗘𝗦 𝟭𝟯 𝗠𝗔𝗬 Alarmed by political decisions made at the expense of a habitable Earth? Join @chrisgpackham.bsky.social and many others in bringing science to Parliament this Spring. ⁉️ Info & FAQs: tinyurl.com/Scientists2025 ✒️ Signup: tinyurl.com/SciParl25

This is why the media’s credulous boosterism for Colossal is so dangerous. “Innovation, not regulation” is tech-bro propaganda. It’s the false promise that any problem can be solved with some future breakthrough that will enable the same people who got us into this to profit from the solutions.

I feel honored that our work: "On the origin of an insular hybrid butterfly lineage" was picked as "Editor's choice" and that my picture of a mating couple (🧡🤎) covers the latest issue of Evolution @journal-evo.bsky.social. Link to paper: academic.oup.com/evolut/artic... (1/8)

The resurrection circus keeps clowning, but make no mistake, Dire wolves remain very extinct. An angry, sweary piece by a frustrated geneticist. arutherford.substack.com/p/dire-wolve...

De-extinction is to biodiversity conservation what carbon capture and storage is to climate action A fantasy that lets us pretend that destruction isn't forever

🦋 Got an insect-related query? Our experts are here to help - Fill in the form on our website for advice & info about an #insect you’ve found 🔽 buff.ly/vjRd79b 📸 Milionia sp. larvae hanging on a silken thread (c) Anton Poon. #AskAnEntomologist #Entomology #AskAnExpert #InsectIdentification

So @wildjustice.bsky.social is too edgy for @privateeyenews.bsky.social ! We're fans because the magazine speaks truth to power . That's what WJ tries to do too . We were surprised when PE said that it wouldn't run our second and third adverts , especially as they gave no reason for this .

It's published! The largest research work I've ever undertaken: Lords of the flies: dipteran migrants are diverse, abundant & ecologically important Published in Biological Reviews: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... Thanks so much to co-authors @koralwotton.bsky.social & Myles Menz 1/x

Happy Transgender Day of Visibility! freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2...

The number of working satellites has soared in the past five years to around 11,000, mostly because of constellations of orbiters that provide Internet connectivity around the globe, but it comes with a series of problems. Nature explores the issues and how scientists are reacting. 🔭 🧪

happy #transdayofvisibility from this non-binary lesbian. trans people have always been here and we always will be - no one can change that. 🏳️‍⚧️ 📸: leslie feinberg, transgender activist, butch lesbian, and revolutionary communist (1949–2014)

From me. Both Australia’s World Heritage-listed reefs - Ningaloo and the Great Barrier Reef - hit by ‘profoundly distressing’ simultaneous coral bleaching www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The people who produce this Mauna Loa atmospheric CO₂ record have a lab in Hilo, Hawaiʻi, about 50 miles (80 km) from the observatory. By closing the lab, it'll be really difficult to maintain the CO₂ observations.

Our new @adriftlab.bsky.social paper is out, lead by @alixdejersey.bsky.social showing the insidious impacts of plastics on seemingly health birds (1/5) www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

#Wormwednesday and WOW!

The rare Shrill Carder bumblebee continues to decline in Somerset despite a decade of conservation work at the @nationaltrust.bsky.social Lytes Cary Manor 🚨 Our SOS Somerset project is leading efforts with the estate to reverse this decline 🤝 📰 www.bumblebeeconservation.org/decline-of-r...

Big news: we are setting up a new non-profit organization to run bioRxiv and medRxiv. It's called openRxiv [no it's not a new preprint server; it's dedicated organization to oversee the servers] openrxiv.org 1/n

born too late to get a two Western blot Nature paper, born too early to be a science TikTokker, born just in time to start a postdoc during a global pandemic and look for faculty positions during a historic hiring freeze

Functional Insights Into the Effect of Feralisation on the Gut Microbiota of Cats Worldwide. 🐈🦠🌍 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... Aizpurua et al. Molecular Ecology #microbiome #feralization #metagenomics

Do you have knowledge or expertise in taxonomic groups found in the UK’s uplands? I’m looking for naturalists to contribute to autecological analysis as part of a #biodiversity audit assessing impacts of land-use change across eight of northern England’s protected landscapes 1/4

Symbiosis and horizontal gene transfer promote herbivory in the megadiverse leaf beetles. 🪲🦠🌿 www.cell.com/current-biol... Neat example of how microbes enable hosts to adapt and diversify. @currentbiology.bsky.social #microbes #symbiosis #HGT #symbionts

Just some dry leaves. Move along, nothing to see here... Mimicry and camouflage never fail to amaze me. At least two species of leaf-mimicking katydids are in this photo, showcasing not only the diversity in appearance within their taxonomic group but also within a given species.

Happy #WorldWildlifeDay. A friendly reminder that livestock cannot replace native biodiversity, despite what you may have heard.

Dynamics of a supergene. A study of the BC supergene in wing color morphs of the African monarch #butterfly by @rishidekayne.bsky.social &co reveals dynamic evolution of #supergene haplotypes, fueled by incomplete recombination suppression 🧪 @plosbiology.org plos.io/3DiFhnL

Our new #OpenAccess paper How can long-term #ecology studies survive & resist political & social change, authoritarianism, war, but also embrace positive change? The Białowieża Forest as an example of the resilience of long-term studies in a changing world: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 1/

We selected for large body size in black soldier flies. Across three replicates the phenotypic response to selection was similar - faster growth, more protein and 15% larger body size. But the genetic changes were highly polygenic and mostly different between replicates

thinking about how beautiful the jwst photo of uranus and its moons is again