⭐Great news⭐ We have now extended the due date for the ASSAB Student Research Grants to 7th May 2026. You can find the full details and the application form to download at the ASSAB website: www.assab.org/grants-2026

Reminder: last date to submit your symposium proposal for the Australian Entomological Society conference is tomorrow, April 30! @austentsoc.bsky.social @ausevosoc.bsky.social @animbehav.bsky.social

In her Conversation Ximena Nelson discusses jumping spiders, how even the spiderlings are capable of extraordinary leaps to incapacitate prey & their unique visual system, comprised of up to 4 pairs of eyes, that provides astonishing high-definition vision doi.org/10.1242/jeb....

Wayne Maddison (waynemaddison.bsky.social), professor emeritus at UBC, captured this video of a nearly transparent jumping spider (tribe Amycini) from Canandé Reserve, Ecuador. Look closely & you'll see the principal eyes moving as it scans the area visually. Let's talk about spider-vision! 🕷️🧪

🚨PhD opportunity🚨 🪲Deep-red vision and infrared sensing in jewel beetles 🪲 Understand how jewel beetles detect and integrate deep-red light and heat information to drive behaviour. Location: La Trobe University, Bundoora Contact: [email protected]; www.amanda-franklin.com

We’re off to Sydney for this year’s AES Conference! We are looking for symposium leads to help shape the program. Submit your proposals to [email protected] by April 30!

Which ant was your favorite? 🐜 Let us know in the comments. ⬇️ Dr. Julian Katzke walked us through how the Antscan project created 3D scans of over 2,000 ants from over 700 species. Using X-rays, these scans reveal the tiniest details, from leg hairs to even their internal anatomy.

Delighted to announce that the 2026 Australian Entomology Society Conference will be at the Wallumattagal Campus, Macquarie University, Sydney from December 7-10. See attached flyer on how to submit a symposium proposal.

Exciting position at The School of Natural Sciences at Macquarie University. We are looking for an Associate Lecturer in Plant Ecology. A great opportunity to teach, mentor students and contribute to plant ecology research on the Wallumattagal Campus in Sydney.

⭐ASSAB 2026 Plenary Speakers⭐ 🐝Prof. Andrew Barron: Why the honey bee is smarter than ChatGPT 🐦🐿️Assoc. Prof. Kristal Cain: Chasing birds and shiny squirrels - an alternative path in academia 🪲Dr Kawsar Khan Behaviour ecology in the Anthropocene 🐟Dr Upama Aich Sex and stress in a changing world

New paper alert! "Estimating global bee species richness and taxonomic gaps" suggests that we have thousands of bee species left to describe and decades of taxonomic work ahead of us. We also provide the methods needed to apply more broadly :) doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Please take some time to look through some of the discoveries photographed in 2025. It should interest some invertebrate enthusiasts. yes? yes? bit.ly/nickybay2025

🚨SAVE THE DATE ASSAB 2026🚨 The ASSAB 2026 conference will be held in Adelaide in 2026! Keep an eye out on the ASSAB website and social media for more information! We will see you there!

Honored to announce the Hamilton Lecture 2026! Leigh Simmons, Emeritus Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Western Australia has made an outstanding contribution to the field of sexual selection acting from the whole organism to its gametes, and to our Society.

Incredibly honored and utterly excited to have been asked to give a plenary at @isbe2026.bsky.social hope to see you in Turin! #ISBE2026 #sleep #behavior

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...

In insects, motion processing is affected by background motion in Target Selective Descending neurons but not in presynaptic Small Target Motion Detectors. To explain this change, @puh23.bsky.social et al. examined three candidate TSDN circuit models. journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

The next deadline for ECRs, within 5 years of their first faculty position, to apply for JEB's next round of Kickstart Travel Grants and ECR Visiting Fellowships is 28 November, so don't miss the chance to apply for helpful funding biologists.com/grants/#jeb

New preprint from the lab: A reference brain for the clonal raider ant. With this resource, which is based on 40 individual brains, you can register and compare all kinds of samples in a common space. It comes with lots of detailed protocols and a user-friendly GUI. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Protein-rich flowers are spatially scattered food sources for Heliconinii 🦋. This requires a sophisticated spatial memory. @ebablab.bsky.social et al. monitors the flight behavior when 🦋 encounter novel 🌺 and compare this behavior with other 🦋 species. journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

Sublethal impacts of climate change on stingless bees, check out our hot off the press publication in @thermal-biology.bsky.social 🔥 How is flight speed impacted by changes in temperature? We tested #TPCs in an arid and subtropical bee 🐝 @pipilika.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

OIST is seeking up to four tenure-track or tenured faculty in Ecology, Environmental Science, Earth Science, and Oceanography. Application deadline: Oct 15. Please share. Thx! www.oist.jp/careers/facu...

Exciting news for #drosophila #connectomics and #neuroscience enthusiasts: the Drosophila male central nervous system connectome is now live for exploration. Find out more at the landing page hosted by our Janelia FlyEM collaborators www.janelia.org/project-team....

5/ Some wings have evolved strategies to help reduce damage resulting from collisions. For example, we learned a few years ago that wasp wings have a flexible joint that acts like a reversible crumple zone, allowing the wing tip to easily bend out of the way when it hits things...

Meet Chrissie Painting the new ASSAB president! @cpaintingnz.bsky.social is a Senior Lecturer and behavioural ecologist at the University of Waikato. Her research seeks patterns in animal behaviour and morphology, with a particular focus on insect and arachnid mating systems. 🪰🕷️🪳

The Entomological Society of Victoria invites nominations for the Le Souef Memorial and Emerging Awards, closing 30 September 2025.

Nesting behaviour drives the evolution of heat tolerance and climate vulnerability in bees! Check out our pre-print on 95 species of Australian native bee across the latitudinal extent of Australia! 🐝 #nativebee #climateadaptation #heattolerance #plasticity #behaviour #bees #climatechange

Look at this crazy thing! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🚨Just published🚨In Bolivia’s Yungas, we studied 3 rescued stingless bees sp. We found distinct foraging patterns within & among species → niche partitioning at multiple levels. 🐝🪻🌺#Pollination #Meliponini #Neotropics doi.org/10.1111/btp.70… @biotropica.bsky.social with @pammsantana.bsky.social

4 year fixed term postdoc position in Tasmania, Australia. Drones, camera traps, population monitoring. careers.utas.edu.au/en/job/50114...

The University of Sydney is recruiting senior and mid-career academics "within the top 5–10% of academics in their field, with a strong track record and availability to relocate to Australia within 6-months". If you're a psychologist/neuroscientist and are interested, get in touch with me soon.

Anyone considering taking the next steps of their research career in Germany should take a look at the @dfg.de Emmy Noether programme - fantastic support and an amazing opportunity to establish an independent group, hire a team, and commit 6 years to developing a research programme!

🚨 In our world riddled with misinformation and sensationalization, we must be cautious about handling accusations of scientific misconduct in our community. Weaponizing a public internet campaign is not the way. 📖 Read "A plea for academic decency" link.springer.com/article/10.1...

In about a week we (Biological Sciences @ Monash Uni in Melbourne, Australia) will be opening a search for 3 (!!!) permanent academic positions (40% research, 40% teaching, 20% service) at Lecturer/Senior Lecturer. 1 Genomics, 2 Ecology. Please share, email me, DM, follow, send carrier pigeons…

Come join us here at Monash. Supportive research and teaching environment. Fantastic colleagues. Inclusive. A great place to work. And Melbourne, Australia, is a wonderful place to live…

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...

The chair of Zoology II @uni-wuerzburg.de is looking for a candidate as a W3 Professor in Behavioral Physiology. 'A research focus preferentially on insect species other than Drosophila is desirable.' #neuroethology For more details: www.nature.com/naturecareer...

In 2012 driving across Oz I had stopped at Gilgandra & found an odd looking large-eyed strobe ant. It took us 10 years to start studying them. Fast forward to 2025 - @gmramon.bsky.social submits his PhD thesis on the sensory ecology of these fantastic ants. Wohooo! Keep an EYE for his papers 🥂🎉🐜🧭

The Australasian Society for the Study of Animal Behaviour conference is thus June in Armidale, NSW! Register to attend here: www.assab.org/assab-2025 If you are keen to present, we are also accepting abstract submissions until the 9th of May : docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

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

The New Zealand Journal of Zoology is calling for papers for a special issue on invertebrate conservation in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australasia, with preliminary proposals due by 30 April 2025 and final manuscript submissions by 30 November 2025.

I know there's a 𝒍𝒐𝒕 going on right now, but I couldn’t be prouder to share this long-incubated labor of love: the complete connectome of the male 𝐷𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑎 optic lobe 🧠🪰 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

While Fire ants are a menace, it is essential that media use correct images! Here is @cnn.com today that incorrectly refer to Australian Iridomyrmex #ants as Fire ants and have it as their featured image. Surely fire ant images are not to find!

Delighted to see Luis's beautiful study on the evolution and development of visual system diversity in spiders is out in @royalsociety.org Proc B! No Friday evening plans? We've got you covered! Click here for cute gummy spider babies 🕷️https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2024.2069

Please re-post: We have 2 new PhD positions on insect behaviour. We are looking for people with interests and expertise in development of behavioural assays, working with insects, computer vision, image processing and data analysis, and previous research experience. Please email us to discuss! 🦟💻🐝

Interested in doing a PhD on #insect #migration or #conservation at @monashuniversity.bsky.social i in #Melbourne, #Australia? If so, please feel free to email me. For international students, the application deadline is late March. shawanchowdhury.com/join-us/

📣🚨 Extension of Early Bird Registration Deadline 🚨📣 We are pleased to announce that the Early Bird Registration deadline for Behaviour Conference 2025 has been extended to accommodate ongoing interest from participants. 🗓 New registration deadline: 7th April 2025. 🗒️

Still 10 days left to apply for this 3-year Postdoc to study robber bees and their impacts on tropical bee communities 🐝 🇧🇷🇬🇧

Our latest paper on the jump kinematics and choreography in the Oz Splendid Peacock spider. We filmed & analysed locomotory jumps in male & female spiders. The males are incredibly light - measuring just 2mg - and oh they can jump! Videos in the thread. Open Access - read here: tinyurl.com/4bnpz9tz