If you are interested in learning to identify the UKs ground beetles there are free guides to download on my website johnwalters.co.uk/publications...

A new set of some 600 grasshopper recordings from southern Europe, shared by Julien Barataud. Below an example Eugryllodes escalerae, xeno-canto.org/1095289

Decision relating to the #BritishList Pied Crow Corvus albus has not been added to Category A or Category D bou.org.uk/british-l...#BritishList The British List remains at 636 species #ornithology

Yesterday our Botanical Skills Northern Ireland Team practiced how to use underwater drones to collect under-recorded aquatic plant specimens! The drone will also be used for our @bsbiireland.bsky.social #AquaticPlantProject & we hope to raise money for a 2nd drone to survey Scottish lochs.

Our new paper shows that when birds breed in artificial wetlands, they can still depend on surrounding natural wetlands. GPS tracking of black-headed gulls in #Doñana @ebdonana.bsky.social @britishecologicalsociety.org @seobirdlife.bsky.social besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

If you're within reach of Northamptonshire on Sat 16 May there's a soldierfly identification workshop with the Wildlife Trust: learn how to identify soldierflies using keys, specimens & microscopes (suitable for beginners & more experienced) www.wildlifebcn.org/events/2026-...

New preprint: Guidelines and best practices for the scientific use of global iNaturalist data ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v... 🌍🧪

It was a real privilege to work on this paper - some important messages for the world here. Thanks @pnas.org @billsutherland.bsky.social

🎉 Huge news for BHL: The Field Museum is taking over the hosting of BHL’s website, servers & infrastructure, ensuring long-term stability and access for its 63+ million pages of open biodiversity literature. Learn more: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2026/02/tran... #BHLTransition #ILoveBHL 🌍 📚 🧪

The latest issue of #BritishandIrishBotany is out! It's our Open Access, online scientific journal. 6 papers inc @bsbiscience.bsky.social on garden escapes, a new hybrid grass, @floodplainmead.bsky.social on Scotland's wet grasslands, a hawkweed, drift seeds & sea bindweed: bsbi.org/about/news/l...

Somehow I missed this Californian record of Waved Albatross last autumn ebird.org/checklist/S2... an incredible vagrant 🪶

Cut blackthorn hedges less often = boost brown hairstreak butterflies. Really simple, cost-free (or even money-saving) measures can massively benefit wildlife. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Taxonomy and phylogeny are two sides of the same coin, but that doesn't mean they are always in agreement. I wrote a blog post on why the new Phylogeny Explorer in @birdsoftheworld.bsky.social is such a big deal in that regard, and what's in store next for us. eliotmiller.weebly.com/blog/birds-o...

Anisognathus mountain-tanagers. 6-7 species here, the middle is one of my favourite Andean birds: bold banana colours excellent shade of blue matching bright personality staple of mixed flocks - as well as being fab itself, has prospect of exciting companions. Almost perfect: 9/10 #birdart #sciart

This is the height of ecological illiteracy and shows how wannabe zookeepers have taken over UK nature conservation. Evidence for native status of these species is incredibly tenuous; releasing them into one of our most ancient & irreplaceable ecosystems would be crazy. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Climate-driven range contractions in species like Twite and Citril Finch can't be fixed by releases www.birdguides.com/news/citril-... #Ornithology ##UKBirding 🪶

The fragment of ND2 DNA that @tessaroo.bsky.social got from Calshot GT Grackle doesn't tell exactly where it came from but it excludes a USA west coast (nelsoni) origin and puts it in the Panama-Central-USA populations. Orange shape overlaid on map from DaCosta et al., 2008 doi.org/10.1525/cond...

My latest paper is now published in an issue! We showcased the incredible scientific contributions that local and amateur naturalists make for research on long term change! 💚🌍 doi.org/10.1111/icad...

New paper alert! Microclimate temperatures are more extreme than we previously thought! Near-ground temperatures are amplified in hot weather, cool refugia is lost and replaced with heat traps ☀️🔥🥵 escape from heat will be very hard for small ground-dwelling organisms doi.org/10.21425/fob...

Interested in moth trapping? Wondering which trap to use? Or if different bulbs collect different species? Using 100k samples from @gardenmothscheme.bsky.social our new paper looks at these questions and more! With with Bill Kunin and @katatrepsis.bsky.social #mothsmatter #teammoth

Bij veel leden ligt de nieuwste Entomologische Berichten op de mat, of is deze digitaal te benaderen via de ledenomgeving op NEV.nl! Ook deze mooie uitgave lezen? Word lid, of even wachten. Oudere jaargangen zijn ook beschikbaar via Natuurtijdschriften.nl

Huge News from the Western Amazon: it's the year 2025 and we are still describing entirely new, strikingly-distinctive large-bodied bird species! Behold Tinamus resonans sp. nov. the Slaty-masked Tinamou mapress.com/zt/article/v... #Ornithology @tetzoo.bsky.social 🪶

EARLY VIEW in IBIS A new species of jewel-babbler (Cinclosomatidae: Ptilorrhoa) from the Southern Fold Mountains of Papua New Guinea | onlinelibrary.wiley.... Iain A. Woxvold, Banak G. Gamui, Leo Legra, Samson Yama, Bonny Koane, Salape Tulai | #ornithology 🪶

🦢 What a swan’s 570km U-turn could tell us about water, wetlands, and a changing climate.... www.linkedin.com/posts/kane-b...

Might be good for plant spp. richness, but I'm not sure mowing field margins every 6 weeks in spring & summer is going to be helpful for other farmland biodiversity. Seems a perfect way to repeatedly destroy every breeding attempt of ground-nesting birds, small mammals or butterflies that use them.

Exciting news: we have a new British flea weevil. Less exciting news: it is a Rhamphus. I still don't understand how to tell them all apart. Even so, this is a very useful paper: www.mdpi.com/2075-4450/16... Six new Palaearctic species and a review of diagnostic characters. #coleoptera

Large citizen science datasets are powerful tools for biodiversity science, but they may have biases. Nice new paper from @louisbackstrom.bsky.social et al. showing that for eBird and Birdtrack lists there is a tendency for rare species to be over-represented onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

One for the occasional series of #ornithology papers you need in your life but might not have read - Common/Spotted Sandpiper flight style as an antipredator behaviour. academic.oup.com/auk/article-...

Solanum revealed 2 species: nigrum & nitidibaccatum, Black & Green Nightshade. Apart from the obvious berry colour, it always remained possible that Green Nightshade could have been unripe berries. Green= sepal lobes expand as the berries mature Black= stays the same

Can species reintroductions harm biodiversity rather than help it? Are we using reintroductions as a distraction from the real drivers of our nature crisis? Listen to my conversation with the one and only @alexanderlees.bsky.social 🌍🦤🧪🪶 ➡️ pod.fo/e/32fae6

An Intergeneric Hybrid Between Historically Isolated Temperate and Tropical Jays Following Recent Range Expansion | doi.org/10.1002/ece3... | Ecology and Evolution | #ornithology 🪶

How to find Mogulones crucifer: The weevil is native to Europe/West Asia, but has been introduced to North America to control its host (Cynoglossum officinale; Hound's Tongue) which is invasive there.

Crazy discovery in ants 🤯🐜 One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants | Nature www.nature.com/articles/s41... "Males from the same mother exhibit distinct genomes and morphologies, as they belong to species that diverged over 5 million years ago."

If you want to identify, well, anything, I recommend this post from @weevil-see.bsky.social. His choice of weevils to illustrate it is of course excellent, but it applies to everything from mushrooms to marsupials. This is how you can be a good identifier of things. [Link contains spider]

Top film. The smartest look at this subject I've ever seen. Also funny and sweary. youtu.be/zl-wAqplQAo?...

Thought I'd post something about separating Nysius senecionis and graminicola, as both are now widespread. The features to focus on are the extent of the matt field of the evaporatory area (the brown bit) and the length of the 1st hind tarsal segment relative to the 2nd and 3rd.

At #EOU2025 @eounion.bsky.social conference next week, we'll show new evidence implicating forestry in declines of British Marsh Tits during the era of woodland conversion in 1950/60s-1980s. This was period of steepest decline in Marsh Tits. Why? What was going on back then? #ornithology 1/5

We just published a new issue of #BritishandIrishBotany, our Open Access online journal. 7 papers for you to enjoy inc Lady's-slipper orchid reintroductions; variation in Restharrows; a new Comfrey hybrid for UK; montane plants; sea-grapes new to Europe! bsbipublicity.blogspot.com/2025/08/brit...

NEW! The latest UKCEH Land Cover Map, describing the UK land surface in 2024, is now available 🏞️ 🌳 See what broad habitats—ranging from broadleaved woodland and arable land to freshwater and urban areas— there are and where in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. #LandCover #LCM 🧵🧪 1/

Also, white stork is doing very well on the continent (partly due to reintroductions), see fe breeding trend in the Netherlands ((c) @sovonvogels.bsky.social ). No doubt this population outbreak will spread to the UK. Better to use limited funding for conservation to species that really need it.

Most weevils have a snout, elbowed antennae & a heart-shaped foot—making them easy to recognise (with a few exceptions). 🪲 Learn more for free with @markgurn.bsky.social: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1491232379... #Weevils 🧪 @amentsoc.bsky.social @britentsoc.bsky.social @royentsoc.bsky.social

How do broomrapes find their hosts? How can they specialise on different hosts? Enter the astonishing world of strigolactones . youtu.be/mUp9n_RW2eg?...

Absolutely incredible turnout for Budapest Pride! So proud of all the organizers, including some old friends, who estimate hundreds of thousands— major embarrassment to Orban

The BMS's Field Mycology journal is now available to all on a new, open access online platform. Find out more, and visit the journal website to read the latest articles and access back issues here: www.britmycolsoc.org.uk/fm-journal.h...

A monumental taxonomy unification effort has just been published - thanks to all those who've collaborated for years to make this happen! birdsoftheworld.org/bow/news/avi...

Has the Nechisar Nightjar Mystery Been Solved? A fascinating summary on the identity of the mysterious single wing found in Ethiopia in 1990. www.aba.org/has-the-nech... #birds #birding #ornithology @aba.org

We trained 10 large language models with 6 retrieval strategies then compared all of these with our experts with access to literature. Well-trained LLMs won! General LLMs without extra training are likely to perform poorly and misinform decision-makers journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Since we are still talking about interactions, I worked with some ecologists a couple of years ago on measurement scale, interactions and interpretation issues. I think some problems arise from failure to distinguish prediction from inference, a chronic problem in ecology imo doi.org/10.1111/brv....

1/6) New paper out in Molecular Ecology! We uncover the intriguing biogeographic history behind the Holarctic disjunct distributions in Vanessa butterflies. @phylomigrationlab.bsky.social #biogeography #insectmigration #butterflymigration #butterflies #evolution shorturl.at/UFrrU

Every year, fewer #WhiteStorks cross the Straits of Gibraltar on their annual migratory journey. In this paper, we unveil the mechanisms driving the recent and rapid loss of their migratory behaviour. 👉https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1365-2656.70035