this little fellow struck me as quite arrogant, for some reason ...

Hey team - it’s looking very likely that I’ll be hiring not one but two four year postdocs! We’re a fun lab with tons of theoretical and applied pop gen projects - broadly in polyploid, conservation, and human evo. Competitive salary, sunny San Diego! Do share with your about to defend grads!

Scoville units. Nightshades. Hot ones. Sweet ones. Scandalous data. Burning remedies. Weird history. It's #Capsicumology (🫑CHILE PEPPERS🌶️) with The Chileman himself, Dr. Paul Bosland of @nmsu.edu. Also: I abuse myself with Ashes 2 Ashes. A BANGER, folks. www.alieward.com/ologies/caps...

was happy to see flowering white sage on July 4, and capture this nice Bombus in action. I guess that it's pollinating, and not nectar thieving ..

🧪 Physiology is a hidden dimension of diversity in the radiation of woodland salamanders | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Awesome new American cavefish! New genus and species just under our noses and feet Surprising cryptic cavefish diversity in a long-studied karst cave ecosystem of northern Alabama Niemiller et al. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

robber flies are always wringing their little foretarsi together .... "who shall I capture next ...."

Harsh critics

Here it is! 4.2 billion years in the making - Evolution. I had the privilege to be part of an incredible team who brought these stories to life. And of course, I got to look after a whole new host of delightful creatures - can't wait for you to meet them. www.youtube.com/watch?v=OG8s...

was happy to get this close to a flower-visiting Ammophila ... I typically find them quite fast & skittish around flowers check the excellent brushes on leg I, for their nests in often sandy soils 5 eyes, come on now ....

serious pollination party going on here ... Anza Borrego Desert State Park

snazzy race car aphid (*pretty sure that's not the actual common name) on some San Diego montane streamside veg

Y'all - the Smithsonian is hiring three new curators - herpetology, ichthyology, and ornithology! Notably, this is a 2nd fish curator position - i.e., not the same as the one advertised last month. So if you applied for that one apply again. www.usajobs.gov/job/873849000

That moment when you find a whip spider chewing on rainbow candy in the middle of the Amazon... Heterophrynus batesii, one of the most impressive arachnids in the Amazon area, seems to like feeding on the colorful Hyperphrona gracilis katydids. I see this scene very often on my visits to the region.

Re-visited a limestone gravel path yesterday after a rainy night and got lucky with harmochirine portraits 🕷️ 1 Sooty-faced adult male Habronattus borealis 2 Adult male Pellenattus(?) - first time seeing this guy! 3 Immature male w/ red face 4 Uniformly pale green-eyed female

Interested in mtDNA variation in birds, butterflies, snakes, or others with ZW sex chromosomes? Then this preprint is for you: "The Driving W Hypothesis as an Explanation for Low Within-Population Mitochondrial DNA Diversity and Between-Population Mitochondrial Transfer": doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Today, UCS released the Attacks on Science Tracker, an interactive tool that documents the second Trump admin’s ferocious, wide-ranging attacks on science & scientific integrity. The tool reveals a coordinated pattern of undermining science and expertise in the federal govt. ➡️ attacksonscience.org

From fossil evidence, millipedes were the first animals adapted to life on land about 425 million years ago. In this new paper, we reconstructed their ancient evolutionary history across nearly half a billion years. 🌎 www.cell.com/current-biol...

My Shasta at first light, iPhone

Stunning mural in downtown Red Bluff CA Depicting Mt Lassen I suppose ..

Awesome tree, CA Sierra Nevada near Sonora Pass

"tufted" dark morph of the dimorphic jumping spider Maevia inclemens 🤩 Excited to get a portrait (on a light bg highlighting his mohawk) as it's been a while since I've shot a dark morph - I usually only run into the colorful "light" morphs Still hoping to film their courtship display(s) someday

I was interviewed for Cornell's Research Matters video series. Fun to talk about the importance of insects and biodiversity, what is biogeography, and how herbivore ants use gut bacteria to gain nutrients! @cornellcals.bsky.social @cornellentomology.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=4br9...

Excellent Ummidia trapdoor spider, for some reason wandering about …

Read this story, it’s awesome 🤩

Currently, from my San Diego backyard

Crayfish, Crawfish, Crawdad; no matter what you call them, If you live in the southeastern United States, their biodiversity hotspot is in your backyard! Astacologist (crayfish biologist) Dr. Zack Graham joins us on this episode to tell us just how wild these freshwater crustaceans are.

Re-upping this! Come find me at #PEQG26 to learn more about this postdoc/sci-programmer opportunity in my lab.

More amazing research from this group!

Clockwise from top left: Nectopsyche sp. - White Miller Caddisfly Petrophila jaliscalis - Jalisco Petrophila Cyllopsis gemma - Eastern Gemmed-Satyr Cerastipsocus trifasciatus - Barklouse maybe the depicted salticid is at a low anterior angle: how real jumpers may encounter another face-to-face?

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Our study on a bacterial symbiont of the wasp spider Argiope bruennchi is available as a preprint. Likely an intracellular bacterium with a small genome of interesting phylogenetic placement.

“This project [Fungarium Sequencing Project] is transforming our understanding of fungal and lichen diversity, taxonomy, conservation and evolution with potential applications in medicine, agriculture, and environmental restoration.” 🍄 🧬 🧪

美しい日本の昆虫たち。これから先もずっと見続けられるように自然環境が豊かであってほしい。 #虫の日

Several undescribed species lurking right there. I know, they’re sitting on my desk !!

Well, we saw this coming. Now it's here, or should I say 'back'. We beat this fly once. We could do it again, if we invest properly in the research enterprise. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/03/b...

Iowa is #2 in cancer rates and are climbing toward #1. Source: National Cancer Institute. statecancerprofiles.cancer.gov/incidencerat... Nitrates in our water is examined in this video and the policies/political environment that has led to the current situation. youtu.be/AmiwQoxFNJw?...

🕸️ A variety of fungi was discovered living on spider webs in Thai rice fields, demonstrating that these silk structures can be used as natural collectors of environmental data. ➡️ Our blog post: blog.pensoft.net/2026/05/27/f... ➡️ Full study in @bdj.pensoft.net: doi.org/10.3897/BDJ....

Very happy to announce a big new paper from the lab, led by grad students @smishra677.bsky.social and Laia Pomar-Pallarès (in collaboration with @roblanfear.bsky.social). We introduce a new way to study introgression, with accompanying software (DAFT) 1/n 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

as suggested by Wikipedia - "tabanid bites can make life outdoors unpleasant for humans..." but, those eyes!

I posted this and somehow forgot to point out the #collectionsareessential aspect. We don't know if these mice are still on the island, but we definitely wouldn't know they were there in 1939 if we didn't have collections!

Garology is now a Smologies episode @ologies.bsky.social! LINK: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s... Thanks Alie Ward! “Ologies → Smologies. It’s all of the science, with none of the swearing! Smologies are shortened, kid-friendly episodes of the award-winning science podcast, Ologies”

Please take the time to review and sign this petition in support of the U.S. National Fungus Collections, which are being threatened in the face of the USDA reorganization efforts. c.org/KQWY7fNhGw 🍄

Great bug alert!! Longhorned beetle, evolved to look like a tarantula hawk

Just some goldenrod.

Divergent habitat selection across many loci maintains species boundaries during introgression https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.28.728564v1

Join me learn about UCEs and Phylogenomics in this workshop to be held at CIBNOR in the beautiful La Paz, Mexico, hybrid format and of course instructed En Español!!! Info: www.cibnor.gob.mx/posqrados/po...

the long spinnerets of a Megahexura mygalomorph, from the southern Sierra Nevada of California, in situ with 3 pairs of spinnerets, including the ANT lateral, POST median & POST lateral the long posterior laterals are used to make sheet webs, the likely ancestral web construct condition in mygals

Stellwagen & Burns assembled the genome of the Japanese harvester, a species that reproduces sexually and asexually and has mixed diploid and tetraploid populations, making it the first published genome of a wild-derived facultative parthenogen. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evag113 #genome #evolution