like 50% of orchid pollination is horny male insects having their day ruined

A List of Things Said to Have Been Ruined by Women 🧵

Part of the new exhibit highlights the William Holland archives, but regrettably leaves out their absolute highlight (Holland Mad About Stink Beetle)

The whole team is here for the off-season I guess

Our rad new exhibits opens to the public Nov. 8th. I will be one of the rotating Tame Scientists in the “open lab” display, probably prepping and IDing tiny beetles from @mosquitolab.bsky.social . Come see us! carnegiemnh.org/explore/stor...

Boy howdy we just got a staff preview of the new “Stories We Keep: Collections” exhibit and have got some GOOD STUFF for YOU. Featuring: voles! goose art! netsukes! ammonites!

This is huge news in @cameronwilson.bsky.social's @thesizzle.com.au- Microsoft is being forced by the Aus regulator refund all the ultra-dodgy AI plan pushing it was doing for Office 365 Wild that other regions aren't also using regulatory power to punish Microsoft thesizzle.com.au/p/google-sur...

bored: do you prefer the big spoon or little spoon inspired: do you prefer the dorsal valve or ventral valve of a brachiopod

"The future offers us little hope for those who expect that our new mechanical slaves will offer us a world in which we may rest from thinking. Help us they may, but at the cost of supreme demands upon our honesty and our intelligence.” ~Norbert Wiener, God and Golem (1964)

A devastating set of decisions on the part of UC leadership to withdraw support from our nationally recognized postdoc program that prioritizes research excellence combined with addressing our university public service mission. www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

gut-checking my ID on bugguide, found this wholesome tableau of Tick Romance captured by Powdermill's very own Andrea bugguide.net/node/view/19...

Today we’re clocking ticks (just as the prophecy foretold)

man who else remembers that brief, shining moment in the late 80s-mid 90s when folks in the US briefly sort of cared about "saving the planet" and "protecting the rainforest," what a time that was

Are you a POC student, early career researcher, or professional entomologist from a country in the Global South? We are now funding memberships! Apply from October 1st to December 15th. More info: www.entopoc.org/apply.html Apply: docs.google.com/.../1FAIpQLS...

All issues of Mycotaxon (1974–2024) are now digitised, #OpenAccess & discoverable in BHL! Thx to the work of Diane Rielinger & BHL’s Team #RetroPIDs, every article now has a DOI, connecting 50 years of #Mycology to today’s scholarly network. #Fungi 🍄 🧪 🔗 www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography...

The black velvet is an optimal backdrop for these use cases, because even black paper or plastic tends to reflect a lot of light. Velvet is especially good for iridescent insects, IIRC it's what we used for these guys at DPI:

today in Keyence adventures: experimenting with a black velvet backdrop to improve clarity on pale specimens (pictured: a pallid Paratachys)

Thinking about buying a macro lens for insect photography? Along with @ageofarthropods.bsky.social we have been testing many options! Our results are summarized in 2 blog posts in the field www.insectid.org/post/macro-l... and in the lab www.insectid.org/post/lab-tes...

Submissions for the WAC Student Grant program are open now until Dec 1. We anticipate making up to three $1,000 awards to support student (graduate or undergraduate) research on copepods. See details👇 www.monoculus.org/student-gran...

The shutdown has left NOAA's network of cooperative research institutes locked out of federal labs and cut off from federal collaborators. In some cases, it's affecting research aimed at public safety—like toxic algae monitoring in the Great Lakes. My story 🔏 & quick 🧵 www.eenews.net/articles/shu...

Neat paper: A Guided Tour of Phylogenetic Comparative Methods for Studying Trait Evolution www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

In 2010-2013, conservation teams on #Chichijima - 1 of the main islands in the #Ogasawara chain - captured & removed 131 feral cats. The goal was to reduce predation pressure on an endangered pigeon. The results were immediate: adult pigeon numbers rose from 111 to 966 www.nature.com/articles/s42...

I believe you mean the 🇦🇺 Democracy Sausage 🇦🇺

Hey antiquarians, any idea what this tiny envelope could be? Offering/tithe/internal petty cash?

Love a pragmatic natural history museum

listen I don’t make the rules

Nature suggests you use their "Manuscript Adviser" bot to get advice before submitting I uploaded the classic Watson & Crick paper about DNA structure, and the Adviser had this to say about one of the greatest paper endings of the century:

Snootflies are back 🖤 Spotted a handful of these silly creatures this afternoon near a cypress swamp. Panorpa lugubris, the mourning scorpionfly. Distant relatives of fleas. I make a small pilgrimage or 7 to this spot every year around this time in hopes of seeing them, as one does

SECOND ANNIVERSARY OF FOOTBALL POSSUM LET HER PLAY

A poll from the journal Nature found that 75% of researchers in the U.S. are considering leaving the country. That includes a man who’s been dubbed the "Mozart of Math." (This PBS story on the scientific brain drain is heartbreaking & ominous for medicine, imo.) www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLvO...

And more #PlantSciJobs!

hey @tyuge.bsky.social how small can a carabid be and still have eyeballs?? Asking for a this guy (ruler = mm)

Academia.edu wants permanent rights to your likeness, signature, voice, name, etc. to be used in any setting. My answer was "absolutely not." Log in, click on "privacy policy" when prompted to accept the new terms (don't accept!" then find "account settings" @ dropdown, scroll down to delete.

A FLYing visit to the Fynbos, Western Cape, South Africa A fabulous opportunity to film in an incredible habitat (thanks BBC)- in terms of flora its unique but maybe not the most pristine in terms of disturbance. That didn't seem to perturb the flies...SO MANY BEEFLIES @dipterists.bsky.social

Skeletons usually sit dormant for 91% of the year. In this faltering economy, you need your skeleton to be generating joy during transitional & off-peak times. Asset managers looking to beat expected scare earnings estimates need to find creative synergies to drive utilization higher in H1 2026.

it’s time

#invertober day 30: Christmas Beetle I love love their color, they really do look like cashews!!! 🪲 #art #invertober25 #Beetle #insect

Okay that’s the good stuff

Kid’s title 1 school just sent out a request for food drive donations with an Amazon wishlist link Why are we supporting the company that’s giving millions of $$ to the people blocking SNAP, this is… not rational

yes, YES

The amount of AI generated art in slides at this conference, primarily used by older scientists, is killing me. Scientists please. Don’t use these ai platforms to make your figures or slides. They look bad and I have yet to see them meaningfully improve the message of talks.

Quick thread of the many crabs named for Halloween related topics. This one is Gecarcinus quadratus, aka THE Halloween crab 🦀 1/

fungus gnat detected

Lol it is clear that no one on Waroona Shire council is on the internet. I so hope they do this. “Waroona Shire suggests blowing up rotting whale carcass to save money” www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10...

Might anyone know of modern / contemporary artists whose work centers on the sun, light, and the solstice? I'm thinking of Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels, Emily Sheffer's Winter Solstice cyanotype project, etc...

Stop what you're doing and watch this little guy lol

There are 14 “smarties” per pack which is ALSO (famously) the number of legs on an isopod.

repatriation! You love to see it!!

My latest for @nytimes.com! For 40 years, paleontologists have grappled over whether a small tyrannosaur — named Nanotyrannus — was its own animal, or simply a teenage T.rex. The debate has been ... contentious. Which is why it's so fun to finally be able to say this: Folks? Nanotyrannus is real.

good afternoon ONLY to the dynastine scarab Ruteloryctes morio, pictured here peeking out of its cozy little flower house (from Hirthe & Porembski 2003)