Netcasting spiders modulate silk thread stiffness via a tailorable multi-fibre meta-structure to construct a web that is hyperelastic and high load-bearing at the same time. Read about our discovery in PNAS: doi.org/10.1073/pnas... 🔓 & with video content!

SO EXCITED to be finally talking about some funky preliminary results on the eyes of this funky harvestman at #SICB2026 on Tuesday! Here are a few sneak peak pics :D

Funky harvestmen overwintering! Libitioides sayi/albolineata depending on who you ask lol. This suborder of harvestmen (Laniatores) is very speciose in the Neotropics but a couple families do range into the US. The yellowish striping on the body is UV-fluorescent! Better pics to come in Jan!

Very proud of this new paper from the lab! Work by the magnificent Andrea Adden and many brilliant collaborators illuminate how moth and butterfly brains have evolved in light of different ecologies. Freely available here: rdcu.be/eVR3B; @lundvision.bsky.social @biologylu.bsky.social

rdcu.be/eSIHs We reported on the chemosensory toolkit of an Orb weaving spider in our PNAS paper earlier this year. Here, we report on a cursorial spider: similar, sex-specific sensory equipment and evidence for olfaction. 🧪🕷

Jay has been an amazing mentor for me both during my undergrad and now!! Highly recommend people apply! Feel free to reach out if you want a mentee perspective hahah :).

Do bees see nothing? Primates with damage to the visual cortex have no conscious visual experience, but display adaptive visual behaviour (a phenomenon called blindsight). Here I team up with two primate researchers to ask if bee vision could be similar to blindsight. www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

Getting to live in a place with green tree frogs again has increased my mood by at least 10% each day

🚨 Using polarization vision to stabilize gaze 👀 would theoretically be helpful for animals living in visually noisy environments, but it seems two decapod crustaceans use achromatic cues instead. 🚨 From @maddy-janakis.bsky.social Check it out! 🦀 academic.oup.com/iob/article/...

love how absolutely audacious larger jumping spiders are with their prey. this is Phidippus whitmani I think. look at the twinkle in her eye!!

Funders must recognise that great discoveries often come from studies that seeks to advance knowledge for its own sake go.nature.com/3X5lbUg

I've unlocked a new science badge!! 🎉🛡️🎉 This thoughtful piece by @meganlinnay.bsky.social expands beautifully on a short review I wrote, citing 'the Sumner-Rooney cost-benefit model' of eye loss 🥲 honoured! For anyone interested in evolution in low light, have a read! 👉 doi.org/10.1111/1365...

Probably the most beautiful roach I've ever seen in real life - a flower roach (Eucorydia aenea)! This is a male, generally more iridescent than the females. Turns out, at least as adults, they love beetle jelly!

Local news story on why MotE/ PRI is special: $̳1̳ ̳m̳i̳l̳l̳i̳o̳n̳ left to raise before the end of 2025 to save the Museum of the Earth at the Paleontological Research Institution in Ithaca, NY. #SavePRI 🧪⚒️ #museums #dinosaurs #Mastodon #Ithaca #fingerlakes www.wbng.com/2025/10/27/m...

there is already a way to extend life and youth indefinitely 1. Be a stored-grain dermestid beetle larva (say, Trogoderma) 2. Every time food gets scarce, moult backwards into a previous instar 3. Proceed to grow as usual 4. Repeat step 2

#ABL2025 Plenary Spotlight: Dr Floria Mora-Kepfer Uy ⭐ Join us on Nov 13-14 to learn how @avispatica.bsky.social Dr Mora-Kepfer Uy’s team uncovered captivating ways in which parasites reprogram the behaviour and lifespan of insects. 🐝🪱 Learn more about the conference: ablaoc25.sciencesconf.org

A drop dead gorgeous roach! Look at that iridescence! 💙🧡

Banger paper! “Perhaps we should abandon the search for ‘cognition’ in terms of representational capacities distinct from systems for sensing and moving” royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

A Moment of Awe- a night walk at Kenting National Park by @brendanlan.bsky.social, SICB journals follower,& #PhD iobopen.com/2025/08/11/a... "Despite a societally ingrained fear of #bugs, #butterflies manage to enchant practically everyone. I mean how could they not? " #science #biology

“A new study, published today in PLOS ONE, identifies and describes 30 dance moves in captive cockatoos and suggests dancing can be a form of mentally enriching play for caged birds.” #scicomm #animalcommunication #playbahavior www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪 🦜

do you think maybe, if I just take and upload enough shrimp portraits, then somehow everything will turn out okay and museums won't have to run out of money and close anymore

National Moth Week starting off with a bang!! Found a live female imperial moth on the way into work and a dead male luna moth when I got there! First saturniids of the year for me :)

An endangered golden birdwing 黃裳鳳蝶 (Troides aeacus kaguya) along with a nearby chrysalis from southern Taiwan! This one looked to me like it had just emerged and was finishing up drying its wings. Beautiful and huge in person!

For the past few years in late June/July I've spotted a fancy Phidippus richmani lad hanging out on a particular oak sapling, and today there was another. I don't know why that little oak is so attractive, but I'm not complaining.🖤 They're relatively rare--and welcome--sights. #EmotionalSupportSpood

Highlight of this week: One of many collaborations effort with @binturong98.bsky.social that started ~ 2022 finally got published! We induced cataracts in the camera-type eyes of diving beetle larvae! journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Proud to share our newest gecko paper published @ecol-evol.bsky.social! We raised geckos either with or without their parents and found some effects on the development of behaviour and cognition! Read the rest here: doi.org/10.1002/ece3...

🚨 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...

Excited to find one of these! This is an adult male Phileurus truncatus (called 'triceratops beetles' tho I argue Strategus deserves that name), an oddly carnivorous rhinoceros beetle! A first for me!! 🪲🪲🪲

📣 job posting for an Entomology/Arachnology Collections Manager at the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles! @nhm.org Take a look 👀 workforcenow.adp.com/mascsr/defau...

Don't forget to join us tomorrow for this webinar with a fantastic line-up of speakers and topics! 🤩 🦗🐠🐸

Hi everyone, I am launching a community science scheme "Spider Spies" where we are asking you, to send us pictures and if you're keen and able samples of Misumena vatia, the Flower Crab Spider to investigate their interactions with their host flowers and the invertebrate community around them.

FINALLY found one of these after weeks of searching - Caddo agilis! One of the weirdest Opiliones out there. Looking like a bobtail squid on 8 legs 🐙 #invertefest

Day 1 of photoshopping John Oliver onto/into fossils in the hopes that he saves my old museum, the Paleontological Research Institution I think he makes a great snail! Fossil is the Murex shilhoensis type, a junior synonym of Favartia shilohensis, comedian is H. sapiens #savepri #Museumofthearth

One of the most underrated non-insect hexapod for sure. There are some huge species out there that *may* be inhabiting the niche that scorpions typically do.

Do you have questions about this "dire wolf" "de-extinction"? I am probably going to make a video tomorrow. (Note: They are not dire wolves, and it is not a de-extinction)

With its UFO-like display, the cuttlefish may look like it’s trying to get attention—but its intent is anything but. The undulating black stripes confuse prey, making the creatures all but invisible to crabs and other victims: scim.ag/3FVL43z

This is just plain awesome

Super excited to have received a @hfspo.bsky.social grant with with @neurofishh.bsky.social for our proposal: Eyes inside out: Visual coding without a multilayered retina in squid and worms.

We polled Nature readers to ask if they were thinking of leaving the US for jobs abroad. Three-quarters of them (who said they were US-based scientists) said yes. 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

why hasn't anyone told me how cool pencilfish are?! My partner and I got a few for a tank and they are SO COOL. slanted (oblique?) swimming and dark-induced pattern change! bioone.org/journals/zoo...

some Fun Finds™️ from a beach near Boston w/ my partner

MVZ Professor Jim McGuire and Former MVZ Postdoc Simon Scarpetta find that Fiji iguanas are most closely related to the North American desert iguana — evidence of the longest known transoceanic dispersal of any land animal. bit.ly/3DMIAUD

Taxonomic work depends on museums, herbaria, and other repositories where specimens are stored. This includes the specimens that authoritatively identify what a species name corresponds to- the type. University support for these institutions is declining, and they need our help www.priweb.org/donate

Happy #taxonomistappreciationday! Taxonomy is the science that names and identifies species, forming the basis of communication in other fields of biology. My own expertise is in marine snails, especially the Turritellidae.

the salamander 'migrations' (actually a wild sex party but the media censors that part) were glorious this weekend!

Do you think cities are LOUD 🔊? Spiders seem to think so! 🕷️ Urban 🌆 spiders construct webs that lose energy at a much broader range than the webs of rural spiders 🌱 likely to avoid sensory overload! 🧠 by Dr. Brandi Pessman & @hebetslab.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Parasites on pycnos....this Pallanopsis sp. sea spider (Pycnogonida; Pallanopsidae) has a gooseneck barnacle tag along....captured in #Antarctica on the continental shelf. LMG13-12 cruise. 🧪🦑🌎🐧🇦🇶

this twitchy creature traveling across a wooden handrail in Singapore is Myrmeplata wanlessi. if you are a human unfamiliar with this species, or a bird or lizard this display is aimed at, you might be surprised to learn that this animal is a jumping spider, not an ant.

on the hunt for boreids - no dice these guys were cute though ♥️