This is excellent: Tips and Tricks for Writing Constructive Peer Reviews Perhaps the most excellent part is this subhead: "Remember that peer review is not meant to crush souls". Right? Peer review should improve papers (and OK, gatekeep a little) - not make an author regret their career choices!

1/8 A new spider genus from Madagascar! Researchers led by Matjaž Kuntner (National Institute of Biology, Slovenia) have described Osmooka aphana, discovered in the montane forests of Marojejy National Park.

We're excited to announce the finalists of the #RSPPhotoComp 2025! 🎉 Starting with #microimaging and overall winner, 'Mesmerizing spider threads' by Dr Martin Ramirez, capturing two exceptional silk threads of the Australian net-caster spider (sample obtained by Dr Jonas Wolff @evoimec.bsky.social).

Dr Mark “Spider Man” Harvey, Western Australian Museum Research Associate and Associate Editor of our journal Invertebrate Systematics, has reached an extraordinary milestone: he has described 1,000th species. www.abc.net.au/listen/progr... #InvertebrateSys

🚨Two funded PhDs on the evolutionary ecology of antipredator colouration 🦋 with myself and Iliana Medina. One in Swansea tinyurl.com/4thtbph6 deadline Jan 12th @crocus-dla.bsky.social The other in Melbourne - deadline Jan 1st Please share among potential students!

The International Society of Arachnology has a new website! 🕷️🕸️🦂🌎🌍🌏 arachnology.org/home

Come and work with us in our new home @bristolbiosci.bsky.social ! This fully funded PhD opportunity is open to anyone interested in spiders/eyes/light pollution/evolution/development! 🕷️👀 ⏰Deadline 15th December, online info event TODAY @2pm! Link in the PhD advert👉 www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

🚨Good news, everyone! 1) I'm thrilled to be joining the behavior powerhouse that is Indiana University!! So stoked, starting Jan 2026. 2) I'm recruiting grad students! Are you (or your trainee) interested in sensory ecology? behavior? evolution? fieldwork? spiders? Drop me a line Jstafstr(at)iu.edu

🚨 Uh-oh!!! A suuuper hot #PhD opportunity just dropped! My friend and collaborator Massimo De Agrò is looking for someone to explore jumping spider vision and neurophysiology! #psychophysics #jumpingspiders #greatPI - apply!!!! (Deadline December 17th) 🚨

ISS astronauts photograph two comets soaring over Earth’s auroras www.popsci.com/science/come...

Hello everyone! One of my colleagues and probably one of the best supervisors I've met, Dr. Iliana Medina, is advertising a PhD position involving lots of bugs and many different colours! More info in the image below, do share this widely!!

This is amazing! "a large cruciform cache containing the earliest known directional color symbols in Mesoamerica" www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

i want to go to there

New #PhD ad alert! Interested in wild #bee #cognition and #brains in different #bumblebees? Want to live in #Newcastle and the beautiful north-east of England? Check out this project with me, @lenariab.bsky.social and Sarah Scott. Contact me for further information. iapetus.ac.uk/studentships...

Bookmarked this for teaching but also for my own kid when he's old enough. "You'll probably forget most of what you learn, especially if you don't end up using it repeatedly in future. What you will always have, though, is the mind that taking the courses made."

super cool study found human artifacts in Bearded vulture nests, incl. "weaponry like a crossbow bolt and wooden lance, decorated sheep leather, and parts of a slingshot....a shoe made from twigs and grass is ~675-years-old." link to paper: doi.org/10.1002/ecy..... www.popsci.com/environment/... 🧪🌍🦉

🕷️#Arachnews alert! 🦂 New Foelix (the definitive reference for general spider biology, a must-have for every arachnologist & arachnophile) just dropped. Now called Spider Biology, this is an completely rewritten & updated version of the Biology of Spiders (2011). link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

AI abuse to skirt copyright law - macro photography by @nickybay.bsky.social Not only does AI steal photographers' work, it gets them wrong and introduces features that don't exist. #wildlifephotography www.nickybay.com/ai-abuse-to-...

Why do treehoppers look so weird?! Our latest paper, out this week in @pnas.org, suggests a perhaps unexpected reason - static electricity ⚡ We show that treehoppers can detect the electrostatic cues of predators and that their crazy shapes may boost their electrosensitivity! doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

We all have our favourite colours, but Adam Blake & Jeff Riffell have discovered that mosquitos can change their favourite colour, preferring to land on green when they smell flowers or dirty pond water, but love every colour when they smell dirty socks journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

We’ve been on a deep dive in the museum archives this week and you would not believe the letterhead game some of these gentlemen had

Foundations: please step up and take over the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). This is an absolutely essential scanned archive of all of the old journals and books from the 1500s to about 1920. Has been indispensable for my research. about.biodiversitylibrary.org/call-for-sup...

Why do imperfect mimics (such as many hoverflies) exist? We created 3D printed replicas of flies, wasps and our own custom intermediates and then "asked" various predators what they thought of our 3D stimuli. Read all about it here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Probably a habronattus jumping spider

What puzzles can the Vera Rubin Observatory help solve? In just its first 10 hours of observations, the Vera Rubin observatory discovered more than 2000 new asteroids. What else will it teach us? bigthink.com/starts-with-...

PhD position open with Dr. Jutta Schneider and @mherberstein.bsky.social in Hamburg, on sub-social behavior in crab spiders 🕷️ It even includes field work in Australia! Application deadline is 15 July, more info at the link: www.uni-hamburg.de/en/stellenan...

"Part of our task in the face of generative AI is to make an argument for the value of thinking – laboured, painful, frustrating thinking." activehistory.ca/blog/2025/06...

Interested in arachnid silk structures? Read this editorial by our @matjazgregoric.bsky.social, @dinrao.bsky.social, and André Walter, and see what articles appear in the new research topic at Frontiers in Arachnid Science. www.frontiersin.org/journals/ara...

currently reading The Ten Thousand Things, by Maria Dermoût, I found this book the traditional way, tucked away in an unexpected second hand bookstore , just like in the olden days youmightaswellread.com/2019/02/01/m...

New review paper out in collaboration with @pipilika.bsky.social : The relevance of goal directed movement for insect pest control. The paper is part of a special issue on behavioural ecology and pests www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Paraphidippus aurantius

@waynemaddison.bsky.social Any idea what this is ? Veracruz, Mexico www.inaturalist.org/observations...

Old art (2022) Another moth dragon based on endemic species in Puerto Rico This one is based on Composia Credula #dragon #moth #composiacredula #PuertoRico #creaturedesign #omegayumiART

:) #invertifest

The hand-written outline for Alfred Russel Wallace's last, unrealised, book – 'Darwin & Wallace' – has been published for the first time in #NotesandRecords. Read an analysis of Wallace's fascinating book that never was: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... #HistSci #HistSTM

It finally came! Spanish translation of 'The Scientist's Guide to Writing'. Hablo un poco espanol - entonces, puedo leer esta. ¡Estoy muy emocionado!

🧵New pub alert! This one is very close to my heart. I teach creative writing and this time last academic semester, I rage-wrote an experimental piece about how important human writing (and all other self-expression) was in a world where ChatGPT and other LLMs pretend at human expression:

Hoverfly with interference reflection colours on the wing