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...

Excited to share our new preprint, in which we show that mimic hoverflies' flower colour preferences tend to follow those of their models. If the bees you are mimicking prefer visiting blue flowers, then so do you! Comments welcome www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... (LH image credit: Peter O'Connor)

absolute savagery in the Pan-Pacific Entomologist

Job alert! We seek to appoint a new Lecturer in Evolutionary Biology in the School of Biological Sciences, find out more at the link below! www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...

I have 1 PhD scholarship available for a domestic or international student. Includes tuition and a $41,763 per annum stipend (for 3.5 years). Project description: www.sydney.edu.au/research/opp... To apply. go to the url below and click ‘apply now’. www.sydney.edu.au/scholarships....

I have a fully funded PhD project with @juliakoricheva.bsky.social on effects of forest diversity on floral rewards for pollinators with field work in Finland. What’s not to like! Please reskeet!

Oooh spider navigation PhD with a brilliant supervisory team! This is going to be so much fun!

Where are all the field studies? This ⬇️ important but rather depressing paper describes how conducting, & crucially initiating, field studies is becoming harder & rarer. A short 🧵 (and a call for more fieldwork) www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

A new study finds ants best humans at tests of collective intelligence. Learn more: scim.ag/4h2K0ID

Would you like to work with Manchester Museum’s amazing Entomology collection?! An estimated 2.5 million historic and globally important specimens. You will also have a cool herpetologist as a neighbour! 👀 #entomology #museum #naturalhistory www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

PhD position on the ecology and evolution of animal memory! Please get in touch if you’re interested in joining us

🌟JOB ALERT🌟 We're hiring lecturers/senior lecturers @bristolbiosci.bsky.social Themes: ‘Evolution of life’, ‘Anthropogenic change’, ‘Reversing the biodiversity crisis’ & ‘Sustainable food production’ That very much includes #AnimalBehaviour Deadline: 24th Jan 2025 bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...

A great opportunity to do a fully funded PhD at the fantastic Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity in York, with @inesismartins.bsky.social and @cmbeale.bsky.social. www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

PhD alert: "Linking sociality and fitness", mixing theoretical modelling and baboon-based fieldwork, currently on offer with me and Guy Cowlishaw at the Institute of Zoology. Deadline Monday 13th Jan - get in touch with me asap if you want to know more. Details here: www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

We’re still looking for applicants for this PhD position on bees and anthropogenic stressors 🐝

Exciting PhD opportunity with @neeltjeboogert.bsky.social , @padpadpadpad.bsky.social (Exeter) and myself (Bristol) on gulls, their microbiomes, and role in transmitting disease. Details below - deadline 13 January!

Land-use change reduces bee diversity at local scales, but the impacts of agriculture and urbanisation differ at regional scales. Agriculture has more negative effects overall. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... 🧪 🌏 🌐

New paper: in what we think is one of the largest meta-analyses of animal behaviour, we find no evidence for inequity aversion in nonhumans (in accept/reject paradigms) royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... Led by Oded Ritov & with @engelmann.bsky.social & Christoph Völter

I have a new PhD opportunity with @juliakoricheva.bsky.social at Royal Holloway University of London on the effect of tree diversity on nutritional and chemical diversity of pollen and nectar resources for bees in the forest understory - deadline 20th January 2025 www.trees-dla.ac.uk/projects/eff...

*POSTDOC JOB* If you are excited about animal sociality/cognition, are computationally-inclined, and are looking for a postdoc, I'll be hiring soon! Please come talk to me today or tomorrow at #SICB2025, or reach out over email. Official ad coming soon!

Congratulations to @clarecowgill.bsky.social on publishing your first PhD paper 🎉… a systematic review and recommendations for monitoring terrestrial #rewilding with #eDNA www.frontiersin.org/journals/con... …

Excited to share my new (and first!) paper. We reviewed how environmental DNA can be applied to terrestrial rewilding monitoring- particularly which sampling substrates to use and how eDNA compares to other monitoring approaches 🧬 www.frontiersin.org/journals/con...

🐜 Ants learn to recognize enemy colonies through associative learning - when attacked, they link the attacker's colony scent with aggression. This explains why ants are often more aggressive toward neighboring colonies they've fought before. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Jobs, jobs, jobs. Come join us here in Bristol...

Alright, no need to rub it in.

Our new #salmon paper - individual migration success is genotype dependent. This was a big one (and even featured on Paolo's viva cake). Thanks to an awesome set of coauthors! #oa #fishsci #teamfish #freshwater https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.70682