New paper out today on hippocampus neuron morphology in homing and feral pigeons. 🧵 link.springer.com/article/10.1... #neuroskyence #neuroethology #anatomy

Beautiful ☺️

🤯

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA 10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

The buff-tip moth (Phalera bucephala) has mastered a very particular kind of camouflage. When they close their wings up, they resemble a broken twig. Native to large parts of Europe, there's regional pattern variation that reflects the local tree species. This one best resembles birch twigs?

Molecular evolution of dietary shifts in ladybirds 🐞 expansions of digestive & detoxifying #gene families in the herbivorous ladybirds, & absence of most plant cell wall-degrading enzymes in the ladybirds from the transition to carnivory link.springer.com/article/10.1...

SINGER, our ARG inference method, is finally published and freely available online: doi.org/10.1038/s415... It was a long journey – 16 months from initial submission to acceptance. Is it just me, or has peer review gotten more arduous lately? 4+ rounds of review isn't so unusual these days...

Unparalleled aerial agility and control

Speechless

Holy smokes!!!

BREAKING: Scientists are staging a “science fair” in the lobby of a Congressional building to tell elected officials about the critical knowledge the US will lose because their research grants have been canceled.

Pelecinus gothyturator. She's attending the Hymenoptera ball. 👗 #Pelecinuspolyturator

Bro can’t take a hint

Guess I’ll need to call in sick today.

🐛🕷️🕸️ @science.org Hawaiian caterpillar patrols spiderwebs camouflaged in insect prey’s body parts | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #entomology

This woman definitely has a man in her life. Nothing says “I’m taken” quite like the copious use of tape in repairs.

Subtle, but so cool.

No one does Easter eggs quite like stick and leaf insects do www.frontiersin.org/journals/eco...

Not sure about the Easter Bunny, but the Easter Beetle is definitely real

A little Eurytoma solenozospheriae drinking from the edge of a blueberry leaf. This was reared from a gall of Hemadas nubilipennis.

A tricky thing about modern society is that no one has any idea when they don’t die. Like, the number of lives saved by controlling air pollution in America is probably over 200,000 per year, but the number of people who think their life was saved by controlling air pollution is zero.

It is uniquely awe-inspiring to witness simple acts of living in the wild, such as this slender salamander I observed recently munching on springtails in the San Gabriel Mts near LA. ♥️🌎 Black-bellied Slender Salander (Batrachoseps nigriventris) Springtail sp., likely Ptenothrix maculosa #herps

Gorgeous!!

Well that’s sucky news. I’ve used CIRPES to run phylogenetic/evolutionary analyses from grad school to present. Such an important computational resource for the evolutionary biology community. What a loss. 😢

My personal opinion, as quoted in the article: If we don't keep #entomology employees working, we risk increases in food prices. Full stop. 🧪 www.wired.com/story/usda-f...

To mark Hubble's 21st anniversary, astronomers captured Arp 273, a stunning pair of interacting galaxies 300 million light-years away in Andromeda. The larger galaxy, UGC 1810, displays a rose-like shape due to gravitational interactions with its companion, UGC 1813. Credit: NASA, ESA, (STScI/AURA)

A nice Macrolepiota I came across last fall.

Once, in Gorongosa NP, I thought that I had found Halucinogenia, a near-mythical Cambrian animal with spikes on its back. The creature turned out to be a caterpillar of Acridotarsa melipecta who lives as an inquiline in the colonies of the termite Schedorhinotermes lamanianus. Still cool, though.

long distance relationship

This award-winning image depicts blood vessels in a pigeon’s head. It was captured by the veterinarian Scott Echols as part of an ongoing endeavour known as the Grey Parrot Anatomy Project, which aims to develop ways to aid diagnosis and treatment for a host of animals, from birds to humans.

Natural history collections, like the PERC, are the closest thing we have to a time machine! purdueag.exposure.co/perc

This is the most relevant article to NIH and research cuts I’ve seen. Imagine if this was today , how many people would be saying “Why are we studying Gila Monsters and their impact on diabetes ? That’s wasted money !” globalnews.ca/news/9793403...

Shoot. A healthier brain with a snort? Sign me up

Spectacular!

Weevil Weds

Spectacular!

PURPLE BEETLE WHAT!!!!! 🤯💜 This crazy-looking Fungus Beetle (Cypherotylus dromedarius) is one of the many INSANE bugs that are here at Manu Biological Station in Peru! 🪲🌳 Come visit to IMMERSE yourself in the BEST AMAZON BUGS!!! 😍🦋

i can’t fix anything that’s going on right now, but i can show you some beauty that’s out there… 🌌✨

Having RFK Jr. as US HHS Secretary would be akin to having a flat-earther run Google Maps. No, it would be worse.

I drew a diagram like this several years ago, but today's cold weather inspired me to upgrade it to something a bit more realistic. Have you ever wondered how birds don't lose all of their body heat through their legs? 🌿🪶 #SciArt

You’ve seen hairs, but you haven’t seen hairs like this (or imaged thus)!!! 🤯

Fine. Some mosquitoes are lookers after all. 😍

What an amazing woman and researcher! www.sciencenews.org/article/mara...

Crazy cool

Why Pigeons Make Bad Nests: A defense of pigeon aesthetics

Great reminder. #myrmecochory

Spiders smell with their legs. www.uni-greifswald.de/en/universit...

Our review is out in Nature Reviews Genetics! rdcu.be/d5AY2 We show how phylogeny-based methods can resolve the problem of non-independence in genomic datasets. These methods must be considered an essential part of the comparative genomics toolkit. @lauriebelch.bsky.social @stuwest.bsky.social