Goodbye #eseb2025 @eseb2025.bsky.social see you next time! Perhaps what stuck most was powerful talk on resilience and survival by Palestinian researcher, play director, and ESEB EUEA awardee May Shehady. Let's not forget, let's not look away. 🇵🇸

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Phew! What a rush presenting for the big, scientifically diverse #ESEB2025 crowd this morning. Thankful for this amazing opportunity to show off the interdisciplinary work my research team and our collaborators have been doing to better understand parasite manipulation of behavior. #zombieants 🧟‍♀️ 🐜 🍄

Brilliant plenary today from Carrisa de Bekker @zombieantdoc.bsky.social at @eseb.bsky.social conference. On her work funded by @erc.europa.eu CoG. Great example of inter-disciplinary collaboration to solve a mystery..

Fantastic keynote by @zombieantdoc.bsky.social at #ESEB2025 taking us on a journey through zombie-making strategies of Ophiocordyceps fungi to hijack ant behaviour, with lots of amazing new data, behaviour, functional genetic essays.. @ebablab.bsky.social @alealisousa.bsky.social @r3rt0.bsky.social

How do fungi manipulate ant behaviour? A beautiful story unfolding through multiple elegant approaches from @zombieantdoc.bsky.social in today’s plenary #eseb2025

#ESEB2025 Excellent Keynote by @zombieantdoc.bsky.social on how parasites affect host behavior using fungus- 🐜 as a model. Nice combination of multi-omic approaches with functional genetic assays and quantitative behavioral assays to pinpoint host pathways that are affected during fungal infection

@zombieantdoc.bsky.social spreading the biology of zombie ant fungus in the ESEB plenary. Showing mechanisms of how fungi hijack ant behaviour to help their own dispersal.

Folks going to #ESEB2025 : To help people connect on Bluesky, I've started making starter packs. Here is a first one with the names that were available when I started. Ping me if you want to be included in the next one!

Parasites 🦠🪱🍄‍🟫 that hijack insects 🐜🪰🐛and induce “zombie behaviors” 🧟‍♀️🧟‍♂️ often affect the host’s daily rhythms. But how do they do it? In this npj bts publication @joanadopp.bsky.social and I propose that they co-opt host circadian plasticity 🧠⌚️ We hope you’ll enjoy the read! rdcu.be/eyPz0

Excited to have joined the Editorial Board of @plosbiology.org a few months ago, the #PLOS flagship journal in the Life Sciences. As an editor, I aim to contribute to their support of equitable #OpenScience and reaching global audiences to help advance science faster.

Only a couple of weeks till the @eseb2025.bsky.social conference! I’m so honored to be one of the keynote speakers, and incredibly excited about the amazing scientific program and the opportunity to meet up with old friends and make new ones! #eseb2025

Willkommen im Reich der Pilze.

It was a pleasure presenting our #ZombieAnt research at the #LeidenBiology symposium this afternoon. Thanks for the invite and the great discussion!

BREAKING NEWS: the number of #fungi species on the IUCN Red List has surpassed 1000!! 🥳🥳 Today's update confirmed that #deforestation, agricultural expansion and urban development are driving fungi to decline worldwide. It's the top story on the press release — iucn.org/press-releas...

My friends at @terzijdehorde.bsky.social are supporting those who fight the good fight. And so could you by buying one of their shirts! Trans rights are human rights. ✊🏳️‍⚧️

Our newest research on plant-fungal trade published today in @nature.com. The work, led by scientists from Vrije Universiteit, Princeton University, SPUN & AMOLF combines robotics, mycology & biophysics to reveal underground supply-chain dynamics. Open access: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Such a great opportunity to present our research at #CMINorwich2025 in front of a room filled with microbiologists with such diverse and exciting research interests.

Some frivolous food for thought about parasites in case you’re up for a lighter note amidsts all the current chaos and despair. www.uu.nl/en/news/para...

This is a room where we turn very modest salaries and budgets (and lots of coffee) into new knowledge, life-saving innovations, and technology that feeds business growth. It's literally the loom that spins hay into gold but these numpties are suddenly worried about the cost of hay.

🎙️ New Interview Alert The Scientist sat down with @fhagen.bsky.social from the Westerdijk Institute to discuss a global health challenge: the silent pandemic of antifungal resistance. Read here: www.the-scientist.com/the-silent-p...

Looking for conversation material for the holidays? Look no further! Here’s some fun zombie fungi facts to share with unexpecting family members and friends. I mean, who wouldn’t want to chat about fungus-infused, out of their mind ants, flies and cicadas? www.the-scientist.com/zombie-fungi...

My department is hiring a fungal biologist! aprecruit.ucr.edu/JPF01990

For Fungus Friday, here are some of the first dissection scope pictures taken by one of my grad students for their current MS project. These are hyper parasites of the zombie-making fungus Ophiocordyceps. Yes, indeed that’s parasites parasitizing on parasites! 🧟‍♀️🐜🍄🍄‍🟫

Latest zombie ant pub by former grad student Sophia Vermeulen who investigated if fungal infections affect ant gut microbiomes TLDR: zombie-making Ophio changes ant microbiome during host manipulation while the non-manipulating Beauveria fungus does not! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Loved old science Twitter, left the garbage pile it is now a few months ago. Finally found the energy to start anew on here. So, where are you science community? Did you make the migration as well? Cute dog pic to stop you from scrolling ✌️