Julie Craves

Disheartening to learn that after 18 years, founder Ken-ichi Ueda has left iNaturalist, citing irreconcilable differences in the direction of the company.

kueda.net/blog/2026/01...

He has a Patreon while he figures out his next move: www.patreon.com/cw/kueda

In Scientific Publishing, Who Should Foot the Bill? Publishers often charge authors to publish their publicly-funded research. Will a federal crackdown make a difference?

I spent my entire career as a non-tenured researcher, not allowed to author/be PI on grants by my university. Finding $$ to publish was always a major impediment. @undark.org

Isn't it odd that the United States has enough money to suddenly run Venezuela, but not enough to run our own country?

There is always cash in the piggy bank for bombs to kill people, but never for healthcare to keep them alive.

“Say No to Sabotaging the Endangered Species Act” A few monarch butterflies rest on an evergreen tree to overwinter.

The US government has proposed changes that would completely undermine the Endangered Species Act’s ability to protect wildlife.

Strong public backlash can make a difference; join us today and say NO to sabotaging the ESA! ➡️ xerces.org/protect-the-esa

But how bad can it be? Find out 🧵⤵️

Woohoo!! He did it! Now to find and ship a Bionomia mouse pad and stickers...

An historic illustration of of two brown stripy butterflies and a caterpillar on a plant with white flowers.

🌱 Help secure the future of the Biodiversity Heritage Library! 🙏
Your donation will keep biodiversity knowledge open, connected, and growing, and fund the dedicated staff who make it all possible. 📖 👩‍💻 🌱 🌏 🧪
🔗 Donate: ancrywkv.donorsupport.co/page/BHLDona...
#BHLTransition #ILoveBHL

New open access paper in The Urban Naturalist: Predictors of Coyote Occupancy and Detection Probability in the New York Metropolitan Area. eaglehill.us/URNAonline2/...

New in The Urban Naturalist: Predation of the Endemic Ring-tailed Ground Squirrel (Notocitellus annulatus) by Introduced Cats and Dogs in a Protected Natural Area in Colima, Western Mexico by Peña-Mondragón, Ortega-Álvarez, Casas, Pacheco-Flores, and others.
eaglehill.us/URNAonline2/...

New open access paper in The Urban Naturalist: The Nesting Ecology of Southern Two-lined Salamanders (Eurycea cirrigera) in Urban Streams by Rittenburg, Downing, and @twpierson.bsky.social.
eaglehill.us/URNAonline2/...

"Women are PIs on 58% of the canceled grants, although they are PIs on only 34% of all active NSF grants.

Similarly, Blacks are PIs on 17% of the terminated grants, although they make only 4% of the total pool. Hispanic PIs and those with disabilities were twice as likely to lose a grant."

Apparently, it's #WorldTapirDay! My life and career have not intersected much with tapirs. This is my rather peripheral connection: bootstrap-analysis.com/2005/10/book...

A cover photo of the latest issue of the Natural Areas Journal Invasive Species Compendium. It shows 2 people spraying herbicide on a hillside.

Latest Natural Areas Journal is an Invasive Species Compendium, and includes a paper of mine (doi.org/10.3375/043....) on the dispersal of buckthorns in North America. bioone.org/journals/nat...

How cuts and $1 payment limits are making federal jobs harder Interior Department employees say they have been scrambling to keep the lights on and do their jobs as budget cuts driven by the Department of Government efficiency team start to bite.

This is absolutely impacting us. No paper for the copier, returning to the office (but no supplies, monitors, or chairs), and no field equipment.

The DOGE cuts are wasting taxpayer money, not saving it.

At the same time Elon’s companies continue to get contracts.

Conservation over corporations.

Thank you, @entsocamerica.bsky.social, for making this fund a reality in just a few weeks. The recent terminations of #entomology employees have been halted for now, but we know the government will likely attempt to return and finish what they started. 🧪
entsoc.org/support/memb...

It’s amazing to find out at this late date how much the rule of law depended on people simply deciding, on a voluntary, daily basis, not to break the law.

Appreciate that my paper continues to be discovered and adds context to European Goldfinch sightings in the U.S. #birds #IntroducedSpecies #birding #GreatLakes

Simultaneously fascinating and horrifying: a coot nest in Amsterdam, reused over many years, turned out to be a time capsule of plastic trash dating back to the early 1990s. #ornithology

THIS. THIS. THIS. THIS. THIS. ⬇️

A map of North America with the Brood XIV cicada emergence highlighted in blue. The brood more-or-less follows the Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States.

An illustrated plate from my book "The Cicadas of North America". The plate shows a periodical cicada species called Magicicada septendecim, which is expected to be the most abundant cicada in the United States this year. The cicada is mostly black with orange patterns on its belly and wings. It sports a pair of bright red eyes. The M/F labels below the illustration stand for "melanic" and "ferruginous", or "blacker" and "redder" color forms. The common name of this species is "Northern Pharaoh Periodical Cicada", because its song sounds like "phaaaaaaa-raoh"

This spring, cicada Brood XIV will emerge in the eastern US! This is the second-largest periodical cicada emergence on the planet (after Brood XIX, which emerged last year).

Expect to see them in parts of the following states from May to June in 2025: KY, TN, IN, OH, WV, GA, NC, MD, PA, NY, MA.

This makes me so happy! Also, Puck Arks looks like a great account to follow.

Excellent opportunity to learn about the incredible diversity of spiders (& their relatives) at the Southwestern Resesrch Station in the beautiful Chiricahua Mountains.

@ibycter.bsky.social & I did the spider course there in 2015 & it was fantastic.

North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences on LinkedIn: #museumjobs #conservationsciencejobs #landmanagementjobs #scicomm… Job Alert - Head of Conservation Dream job incoming! Want to make a real difference to the conservation work of the state's science museum? Do you wake up…

For the right person, this is a unicorn dream job. 🧪🌎

www.linkedin.com/posts/north-...

Support Early Detection of Invasive Species to Protect Health and Agriculture Investing in research to promote early detection and prevent the establishment of invasive insect and arthropod species is crucial for preserving biodiversity and ecosystem health.

We also urge you to send your stories directly to your legislators. 3/3 https://entsoc.quorum.us/campaign/109016/

Image of a CASENT digitization process with many dead insects in three boxes. A CHATGPT agent has ROIed many, and attempted to determine them into three categories. The prompt used was: "Create an SVG Region of Interest around each individual insect in this picture. For each ROI predict if the insect underneat is a Beetle, Lepidopteran, Hymenopteran, or unknown."

The integration of LLM agents into TaxonWorks is inevitable.

The amazing: A *single* prompt and image was all it took to generate this, 10 seconds of human work.

The horrible: It is for all intents and purposes 100% wrong, hours to fix.

Over time we will find a balance.

I had so much fun taking photos of my colleagues at the @asubiocollections.bsky.social last week.

Here is Sangmi Lee, ASU Hasbrouck Insect Collection Manager. She poses with her study species -Gelechiidae - the twirler moths.🦋✨

Open access paper just published in The Urban Naturalist: Fisher Use of an Ecological Corridor Near the City Center of Edmonton, Canada, A City of Over One Million People by Sage Raymond and Colleen Cassady St. Clair

This Backyard Bird Has a Lot to Teach Us about Sex Variability White-throated Sparrows demonstrate that traits we usually associate with sex can be influenced by genes that are not on sex chromosomes

Your Friday #ornithology read: White-throated Sparrows will overturn all of your assumptions about the differences between bird sexes.