What a spectacular way to end the trip. Seeing my friend and colleague @soulsynapse.bsky.social at the social insect research group at ASU for showing me around their labs and facilities on my way out of Arizona. Really cool work with social behavior and it was amazing to see their ant colonies.

🔬🌑

I've seen folks talk about how "in four years" they'll be able to get back to their planned projects and I really don't think that's going to work out. People & projects losing funding now will not be able to hit pause and come back once funding is restored. Hard-won progress & capacity will be lost

Deflate style hand vacuum as an electronic aspirator. Best of both worlds. Needs a pooter with a filter built in. #entomology #antkeeping #ants

Interestingly weavers can climb up a thin oil film alone

Corn starch baby powder works great as an ant barrier. Comes off easily but at least it's not a known carcinogen 😅

A seed passes inspection (Pogonomyrmex barbatus)

Fantastic piece (doi.org/10.1073/pnas...) by @tlinksvayer.bsky.social on @arthurmatte.bsky.social and my recent paper in PNAS (doi.org/10.1073/pnas...). He really pulls together the threads of how we believe that socially transferred materials #socialfluids entrenched social complexity in ants. 1/2

We don't know much about these odd-looking Zasphinctus ants, except they seem to raid other ant nests, steal their larvae and eat them... Their narrow elongated bodies probably help them enter small galleries. #ants #myrmecology non #armyants #fourmis #science

Finally taking the time to learn Fusion360. Design for a co2 hose that will make noise (so people don't forget to turn it off) but diffuses the flow to knock out ants.

Today, the USDA lost experts in Psylloidea, Thysanoptera, Cerambycidae, Hymenoptera, Pseudococcidae, and Malacology. This is a devastating loss of expertise, occuring without warning. Their union's official statement on the issue can be found here: aginspectors.org/2-14-2025-a-... #entomology 🧪

High quality An't 🖤 Gelis species ichneumonid wasp.

A timely assist.

Pretty happy with this feeder. Ants seem to like it too.

Currently figuring out how to print this in high enough quality that it does it justice

#PhD Advert: Please share! Are you looking for a PhD studentship in comparative- or population-genomics, using 300+ species of #Drosophila and 1000+ genomes of #melanogaster? #Entomology #Genomics #PopGen #Phylogenetics

Pheidole rhea annoyed that I'm looking at em.

No, YOU'RE making increasingly elaborate conceptual diagrams instead of grading papers

Gonna repost this every so often until it's full: If you're into ecological niche modeling / species distribution modeling (ENM or SDM), here's a starter pack for you! And if you're an investigator in the field and you'd like to be added, please let me know in the replies. bsky.app/starter-pack...

Cephalotes clypeatus?! 🤯 via @alexwild.bsky.social

I'm doing a Reddit AMA tomorrow 1:30-3:30 Eastern. Looking forward to answering some questions! www.reddit.com/r/askscience...

We strongly suggest that academic publishers and other platforms that host research rapidly implement a Share to Bluesky button for their articles. Here's how: docs.bsky.app/docs/advance... #AcademicSky #HigherEd #Altmetrics

Well, it is sufficiently costly for scientists to be wrong. It is not sufficiently costly for news orgs to spread lies. The voters eat the cost of those lies; temporal discounting alone makes it hard for any reasonable string of accountability, à la an iterative prisoners dillema.

I agree with this article. It is time for scientists to build trust - we only do it by bringing everyone in and teaching the scientific method. We only beat misinformation and authoritarianism with the freedom that science brings. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

More reports out of the ant-keeping hobbyist community about canned crickets killing colonies. Latest: www.reddit.com/r/antkeeping... Previous: www.reddit.com/r/antkeeping... More: www.reddit.com/r/antkeeping...

A starter pack for myrmecologists and our allies 🩵🐜🩷 go.bsky.app/zo95qR

So icy and cool Cricket-cockroach I think not Grylloblattidae #insecthaiku #EntSoc24 (photo by Joyce Gross)

Legend has it that if you cite all five Wheelers in one manuscript, you can slot them into the myrmecology gauntlet and solve eusociality with a snap of your fingers. This paper got pretty close..

Taking a stab at a starter pack of Evolutionary Biologists — this was trickier than expected both because of the interface setup and because of the 150-person limit go.bsky.app/TUNHbNu

I tried to build a starter pack for researchers in ecology sensu lato. Who am I missing? go.bsky.app/2MdGeqi I can add more people and spread it around.

Temnothorax quercicola with featherweight forceps for scale

It is amusing that all the new entom people joining here are being flooded with anime and stuff, but if that is you and you would like it to stop, follow this starter pack.

School admissions forums are an interesting game. The resources' value decays over time, but contributions aren't even necessarily valid. If I'm being optimistic, it feels like a producer/scrounger game running on empathy. 1/2

Ornithology bsky punching air over the new icon 😤 Entomologists rise up

Me: "I hate people. They're selfish, cruel, and mindless. I want to run away to the woods." Also me: "There are so many interesting people online. It's cosmically unfair that I don't have the time to become friends with every single one of them."

The way I've been grappling with this for the last several months 😭

What? Conservatives used asian-american racial tensions to strike down affirmative action and it didn't benefit Asian-Americans and instead benefitted legacies? Say it isn't so. Who could have warned us this would happen? Other than the ENTIRETY OF THE BLACK COMMUNITY. www.nber.org/papers/w31527

I love how blue sky feels like early twitter. Between what's been happening on Reddit and Twitter I am somewhat waiting for the other shoe to drop, though.

Polistes fuscatus 🫠 heart was beating pretty fast taking these photos, they were not happy with me

Well, the good news is the experiment works as intended at least.

I don't know the ins and outs of this platform yet, but here's to hoping.