Faculty #job alert - come and join our lovely friendly School! The School of Environmental and Life Sciences @uniofhull.bsky.social are recruiting a #Lecturer in Marine Conservation. Closing date 19 Feb - see details below. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQF022/l...

Good morning #invertzoohull! Ready to start a new term with some glorious weirdness? So am I!

Great morning at Hull’s Community Orchard with @jamiesmithbio.bsky.social, sharing with the volunteers some results from the bee project, and getting vital feedback for future projects. This orchard sits on the last remaining common land in Hull. It’s a wonderful place full of vitality and energy ❤️

Just 3 days left to apply for this PhD position - email me with any Qs :)

🚨 New PhD opportunity 🚨 studying foraging movements of #masonbees using novel tracking technology and metabarcoding! With me and @domino-joyce.fishsci.com.ap.brid.gy at Hull and Mike Smith at Sheffield. More at FindAPhD www.findaphd.com/phds/project... or message me directly :)

First data coming through from our pollen nutritional analysis! Do mason bees provide predictably different nutrition to larvae within nests that have been experimentally heated to temperatures representing different climate scenarios? We are about to find out....

Thrilled to announce a Postdoc opportunity in our group on the evolutionary genetics and ecology of colour. Wonderful system, great collaborators, and room to shape your own ideas. Apply by 7 Jan: jobs.helsinki.fi/job/13477181...

*New paper alert* So proud of this paper led by MSc student Jasmin Merkel! It shows the long-term detrimental effects of high sugar diet and the lack of evolutionary adaptation to it. This is in insects but humans probably don't fare much better... academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-...

more absolute filth in the pollination literature

Death and Taxus. As a fan of bad puns in paper titles, this one is a classic. 🌲🌳🧪🌏 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

#Psakibriefing Science break. The Malaysian Dead Leaf Mantis mimicking a mouth with teeth to scare off predators.

🧵1/5 🌍🔬 Our new paper is out! We identify the global mechanisms shaping the elemental composition of organisms — and the results overturn long-standing assumptions in ecology. 👇 Thread ↓ doi.org/10.1038/s414...

🚨 Less than 1 week left! Early Bird registration & abstract submission for #ECE2026Tours close 15 Dec 2025. Join us in Tours, France for 50 symposia across 10 themes covering the full breadth of entomology. Submit your abstract & secure reduced fees today 👉 buff.ly/xfwQHLl irbi-tours.bsky.social

🚨 New PhD opportunity 🚨 studying foraging movements of #masonbees using novel tracking technology and metabarcoding! With me and @domino-joyce.fishsci.com.ap.brid.gy at Hull and Mike Smith at Sheffield. More at FindAPhD www.findaphd.com/phds/project... or message me directly :)

1/28 New preprint up, which I think is the best theoretical idea I've ever had. We asked a simple question: what are the costs of investment into non-reproductive somatic cells? Turns out these costs decrease with the *logarithm* of organism size! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Onthophagus rangifer, one of the most extraordinary horned dung beetles you might ever see. From a baited pitfall trap near Skukuza on our #MSc #Wildlife #Conservation field course in the #Kruger park. #HullWildlifeConservation #insects #coleoptera #wildlifephotography @uniofhull.bsky.social

Students on our #Msc #Wildlife #Conservation learning how elephants alter biodiversity and tree cover in the #krugernationalpark #HullWildlifeConservation. Exclusion experiments tell us how herbivores affect ecological comunities. When the herbivores are 🐘 you need serious gear to keep 'em out.

Biggest stingless bee nest entrance I’ve ever seen! [normal-sized adult male hand for scale]

New PhD position available! For applicants keen to combine evolutionary ecology, neuroscience and animal cognition. Based at UCL with me, @maxreuter.bsky.social, @fcamus.bsky.social and Tamara Boto (Bristol). Directly funded, see here for details and eligibility: www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

The University of Cambridge invites applications for a joint Assistant/Associate Professorship in Computational Biology starting April 2026. Strong research and teaching abilities are required. More info: cam.ac.uk #job

🚨New #behavioural #mimicry paper out in Proc B!🚨 In which we show that hoverflies have evolved to prefer the flower colour choices of their #bee models instead of their #fly relatives. Conversation article here: theconversation.com/natures-grea... Paper here: doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

PhD position at the University of Bristol (with me!) entitled 'The legacy impacts of extreme climate events on animal behaviour, physiology, and fitness'. Fully funded and is available for UK-domiciled students of black heritage. Please reach out with any questions. tinyurl.com/5n7s8yp9

Great PhD opportunity to work with @juliakoricheva.bsky.social & me looking at floral rewards in forests. @rbgkew.bsky.social @rhulbiology.bsky.social

An article I wrote for @theconversation.com in response to #allotment sell-offs. Featuring evidence from myself and @davegoulson.bsky.social and the amazing work led by Jill Edmondson's team at Sheffield. #communitygardens #urbanbiodiversity #growyourown theconversation.com/allotments-a...

🍅Our new paper in @plantspeopleplanet.bsky.social evaluating the effectiveness of #CitizenScience approach for understanding plant-pollinator interactions in urban food growing 🫛 @davegoulson.bsky.social @calacastellanos.bsky.social @leah-salm.bsky.social nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Congrats to Jamie Smith @jamiesmithbio.bsky.social on a great #ento25 talk presenting his PhD work on the dramatic effects of even mild heatwaves during the larval stages (simulating the 2022 UK heatwave) on fertility in mason bees. Wish I could have been there in support!

Congrats to our PhD researcher Matthew Chambers, who by all accounts smashed his first ever conference talk - presenting our preliminary results on mason bee nesting and provisioning behaviour in nests held at different temperatures - which he is now modelling #ento25

Good luck to all presenting at #ento25! Members of our lab talking today - @jamiesmithbio.bsky.social at 1615 on heatwaves and bee fertility - and Matthew Chambers at 1645 on mason bee provisioning. Find them at the poster session too where they are presenting our poster! Gutted to be missing it!

New paper (first work from Bristol!) 'Sulfoxaflor impairs bumblebee memory across moderate and extreme temperatures' @bristolbiosci.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

The garden has been busy since we've been away!

Urocerus gigas (giant woodwasp) in the garden, about 50mm long. Scary looking but entirely harmless! She uses her ovipositor to drill into the wood of dying trees to lay eggs.

Happy lab 😍 - mason bee experiments proceeding apace; expect some website updates pretty soon 🔥

Beautiful tiger beetle up at Dalby forest last weekend! 🪲

Hummingbird hawk moth in our garden in Leeds a couple of weeks back ❤️

⏰ Today is the deadline to submit your #Ento25 abstracts! Present your work to the global entomological community. With in-person & online options, there's opportunities for everyone to participate. 📅 Deadline: 17:00 (BST), 20 June 🔽 buff.ly/CS8MyOQ unistrathclyde.bsky.social

Thoroughly enjoying seeing our garden table becoming a home for a population of leaf-cutter bees 🥰

Today, over 20,000 bee species are buzzing for #WorldBeeDay 🐝 Bees & other pollinators keep 80% of crop and wild flowering plants alive. Yet, 1 in 10 bee, hoverfly, and butterfly species are now at risk of extinction in the EU.

@domino-joyce.fishsci.com.ap.brid.gy @jdjgilbert.bsky.social and myself talking about animal sex in the pub on Monday. Only a few tickets left! 🧪

every day we see more and more evidence of society descending into utter lawlessness and chaos

Great article from my marine biology colleagues about the area affected by the tanker collision https://theconversation.com/how-north-sea-tanker-collision-could-affect-one-of-britains-most-important-coastlines-252068 #marinebiology #hull #fish #northsea

Excellent article by my marine science colleagues at @uniofhull.bsky.social explaining the importance of the local coastline and the serious environmental risks from the North Sea tanker collision #conservation #nature 🧪

Annual Happy Lab shot! The #invertzoohull class of 2025 begin their #studentled practical experiments - pick from crickets, hermit crabs, stick insects, locusts, or winkles. Students design and test their own hypotheses. @uniofhull.bsky.social

"In this project [towards your PhD], you will develop models to study the coevolution of ageing and sociality...& evolution of eusociality and multicellularity." Sounds interesting? Look here! Bonus: you'll work with a supervisor with an infectious laugh. www.universiteitleiden.nl/vacatures/20...

Just accidentally wrote “bananae” on my shopping list #Entomologistproblems

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

The government has approved reintroduction of beavers to the wild in England. Really interesting to see how this has unfolded, and I'm proud to support these discussions through the England Species Reintroduction Task Force naturalengland.blog.gov.uk/2025/02/28/b...

How do complex social behaviors evolve and shape species' success? Here doi.org/10.1038/s420... we reveal how a key social behavior in ants - mouth-to-mouth food sharing #trophallaxis - emerged as ants opportunistically exploited new ecological niches as terrestrial environments changed.

#EarwigFunFact 11 - European earwig moms don’t discriminate — they care for almost anything: foreign eggs, eggs of other earwig species, glass pearls, or even small objects. Unconditional maternal love in action! ❤️✨ #InsectCare #SocialEvolution More info 👉 https://buff.ly/3Vh7OA6

Job! 2-year postdoc position in EVElab, Bristol UK on nutrition and infections in pregnancy (FLF-funded) www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DLV631/r... Apply if you are enthusiastic about: - experiments on insects which get pregnant - relevance of evolution to public health - a vibrant city & research environment

It’s not the head, it’s the butt! Meet a completely unknown organism: a blow fly (Calliphoridae) that evolved social integration in termite nests using a false termite head in the posterior part of the body. @CurrentBiology www.cell.com/current-biol...