Bugguide photo of a "Thief weevil" (Attelabidae: Pterocolus sp) by user Metrioptera. He is a jolly iridescent turquoise and sort of rectangular in shape, with an unusually wide stance.
let's all take a moment to consider the Thief Weevil and his outrageous pantaloons
๐ฅ
Giant Clothespin by Mehmet Ali Uysal
With @saramitri.bsky.social, @sonjalehtinen.bsky.social and L. Lehmann weโve launched the UNIL Center for Theory in Ecology and Evolution @unil.bsky.social๐จ๐ญ
To kick things off, weโre offering short visiting fellowships for theorists in ecology & evolution. Apply & pls RP ๐
tinyurl.com/2wem36zz
This could be your dream job!
PhD in ecology, and English and Japanese language skills required... working for POKEMON!!!
www.ign.com/articles/the...
A detailed digital composite image based on the 1947 historical photograph of geneticist Barbara McClintock. McClintock, with her characteristic short hair and round glasses, is seated at a microscope, using tweezers in a Petri dish. While based on the original photo distributed for her AAUW award, this image presents a significantly expanded and fictionalized laboratory environment. The simple wooden workbench is now densely populated with a vast, colorized collection of complex glassware, numerous amber-colored reagent bottles, intricate distillation columns, and botanical specimens relevant to maize cytogenetics, creating a rich, illustrative narrative of her "jumping gene" research context that was not present in the original photo. The expanded background shows complex vintage laboratory cabinetry. This image explicitly states it is a composite: a digital recreation where Seriously Scientific has taken the historical figure and placed them into an augmented, complex fictionalized environment. Based on original source from Smithsonian Institution Archives. Digital composite by Seriously Scientific.
Remembering Barbara McClintock on International Women's Day!
She discovered that genes aren't static, they can actually "jump" around on a chromosome.
Her discovery of transposons ("jumping genes") fundamentally changed how we understand evolution and the complexity of DNA! ๐งฌ๐ฝ
#WomenInScience
Luckily, I was in the company of fantastic tropical ecologists (and friends). @mattgreenwell.bsky.social and Paddy Cannon, poined out that the colours of this katydid closely matched that of delayed greening leaves which many tropical plants produce as a defence against herbivoresโฆ ๐ค๐ค 4/n
Yes, the French booksellers association forced the Paris Book Festival to drop Amazon sponsorship due to Amazon "seeking to flood the market with fake AI-generated books, promoted by fake reviews, written by fake readers [which rise] to the top of fake rankings"๐ฅ MORE OF THIS, PLEASE ๐ฅ
#NewSpeciesAlert! We discovered & described a new species of gall wasp, Belonocnema mesoamericana, on the central American live oak, Quercus oleoides. Great collaboration between Alejandro Zaldivar & lab at #UNAM, @ymilesz.bsky.social at #EdinburghUni, and my lab at #RiceUniversity. #biodiversity
TAXACOM is being reborn. After the mailing list was abruptly discontinued (and its archives apparently deleted) it is being relaunched in Google Groups groups.google.com/g/taxacom Let us rejoice knowing there is once again a place to endlessly argue about โwhat is a species?โ Iโve missed it.
Oh and the best part is they have detailed example setups on their website!
This is cool. Our researchers have "grown" muscle fibers in bioreactors. This and similar tech should replace petrochemical materials used in manufacturing and textiles. The time to scale up biomanufacturing is now. ๐งช #ChemSky #ScienceSky #ClimateSky #AgSky
source.washu.edu/2026/02/putt...
Ooh I like this game! My underrated life hack suggestion for academics, including graduate students is: pick an organization system and use it. Getting Things Done, Full Focus Planner, Bullet Journal, something. Academia is not a place for trying to do things haphazard.
I really like Todoist. There are many different ways to set up your tasks with subtasks, priority ranking, โdo datesโ vs โdue datesโ, and moreโso you can design a system that works best for your brain. Iโm not sponsored, just a fan ๐
Illustrated logo with a square bottom and round top, light blue background showing a lake and trees in the background. Three flies, a robber fly, midge, and crane fly sit below the Dipterists Society logo. Bottom wording says "Itasca Biological Station"
Photo of a lake with a rocky shoreline, with clouds and trees in the background
We're excited to announce registration is open for the 19th Dipterists Society Field Meeting, to be held June 15โ19th at the Itasca Biological Station in northern Minnesota!
For more information & to submit talks please visit: dipterists.org/field_meetin...
We look forward to seeing you there!
Trumpโs Department of Education has moved to strip nurses of our professional status and make school more expensive โ but there's still time to push back.
From now until March 2, we need you to raise your voice and submit a public comment in opposition: www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...
Iโd gladly join the roster! ๐ I have done outreach about nature research, taxonomy and new species, evolution, field work, entomology, and ants. And if itโs ever relevant- I have an invisible disability.
Acanthogammarus from Lake Baikal #amphipodstoday www.inaturalist.org/observations...
Schedule of talks at Staffordshire Invertebrate Science Fair featuring insect close-up photos and detailed event timings.
Sticky Feet: How Insects Inspire Technology ๐
Join us & @amentsoc.bsky.social for the Young #VerrallLecture, where Prof. Stanislav Gorb will explore how insectsโ adhesive abilities inspire innovation & design.
๐ Staffordshire Invertebrate Science Fair
๐๏ธ Free
buff.ly/LXW0q5V
#BritishScienceWeek
We are thrilled to announce that, thanks to the support of our institutional subscribers, all Royal Society subscription journals will be open access in 2026 through #S2O. Researchers can read all articles and publish #OpenAccess in our eight subscription journals for free buff.ly/4Lu9VpW
After exposing an ant to the air pollutant ozone, its nestmates acted aggressively toward it. Image credit: Henrik_L / iStock via Getty Images
Air pollution isnโt just bad for usโtiny increases in ozone can scramble antsโ chemical signals, making them misidentify nestmates and unraveling their social order. ๐ฎ๐ชฒ
In Smithsonian Magazine: https://ow.ly/jYcx50Yh6vI
In PNAS: https://ow.ly/EW2T50Yh6r4
Using our bee-tracking drone, we discovered that honey bees ๐ have highly precise and individual routes. Now published at @currentbiology.bsky.social : doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...
one of the few bad bunny facts i know is his incorporation of said toad in his music led to a boost in awareness and popularity and therefore funding for conservation projects for it! my local zoo has been helping w it for a while and talked about it!
share.google/SqYuqRVsLEmp...
The cutest wasp in the whole world! It attacks spider eggs
Scotland has passed a law that all new buildings must install โswift bricksโ which are hollowed out bricks to help nesting swifts and other endangered birds! Swifts are especially endangered because so many chimneys now have chimney caps. Swifts return to the same nesting spot year after year.
"Dark Linnaeus" - a portrait of the famous biologist with scary glowing red eyes
INSECT TAXONOMY IN THE 21ST CENTURY @entsocamerica.bsky.social
Online, April 27-29! Featuring keynotes from Rudolf Meier @rudolf-meier.bsky.social, Erinn Fagan-Jeffries, and Dominic Evangelista.
Now accepting contributed talks! Grant deadline Feb 4, abstracts due Mar 6. entsoc.org/membership/b...
In other words: Persistent, perceptive encounters with nature yield truth. Keep looking! ๐ฌโจ
Thanks for reading :)
You can find the open access article at Scientific Reports (doi.org/10.1038/s415...) and an overview in German at National Geographic (nationalgeographic.de/wissenschaft...).
In summary, we demonstrate the โcontinued potential and relevance of historical collections for systematic revision and paleobiological interpretation. Through this lens, Goetheโs own epistemological commitment to observation, metamorphosis, and morphological synthesis finds renewed relevance.โ 8/
To sculpt the discussion, I found myself reading and re-reading Goetheโs Schriften zur Naturwissenschaft, working to understand his philosophy on scientific inquiry. It was an enjoyable change of pace from my entomological work, and also a nostalgic revival of my German Studies BA ( #heymac !โจ). 7/
