James Pearce

And it’s day one of #MothsOnTour with @gmrc.bsky.social at #BSI25!!

If you’re moth curious, come chat to either me, @jenniesc.bsky.social or Prof Wakefield about the #Galleriamellonella 3Rs in vivo model and see what it’s all about with the wiggly 🐛🐛

Hehe! I mean they also happen to be spot on, so can’t complain!

I fear that particular horse might have already bolted

Its only been two months and our new PhD student is already making memes of me.

🚨New paper! 🚨
@jasminealqassar.bsky.social led this work on the silk glands of the pantry moth.

These two long tubes inside the caterpillar continuously make a ton of silk
How does this special organ work?

www.cell.com/iscience/ful...
@cp-iscience.bsky.social

🧵THREAD🧵

An advertisement for the project Cryptc consequences of a selfish X chromosome. It shows chromosome mapping indicating many inversions, flies with eye colour phenotypes (wild-type brighter than selfish X), and sections of testes that show ordered (wild-type) or deformed structure (selfish X).

We have a funded NERC PhD studentship!

Selfish X chromosomes are these bizarre things where males carrying the selfish X suffer from imploding testes. Lots to do in this space, especially in evolutionary, stress, and infection biology.

Please share!

#PhDchat #AcademicSky @uniexecec.bsky.social

Very patient wife entertained a visit to damp, slightly dilapidated velodrome, where the only other people present were playing blindfolded football. 148 days to go! #paris-roubaix2026

中国国家留学基金委和英国埃克塞特大学合作奖学金（博士生项目）
There is still time to apply for this China Scholarship Council PhD opportunity.

www.exeter.ac.uk/study/pg-res...

Interested students please email at the email in the advertisement below.

Thanks for circulating!
#Drosophila #Aphid #AcademicChatter #AcademicSky

Funded PhD SWBio DTP- (STANDARD) Brains, Blades, and Zebrafish: Dissecting Rhomboid Protease Roles in Neuronal Development and Signalling at University of Bristol on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - Funded PhD SWBio DTP- (STANDARD) Brains, Blades, and Zebrafish: Dissecting Rhomboid Protease Roles in Neuronal Development and Signalling at University of Bristol...

We’ve got a couple of PhD projects open. Including one with the lovely @adamgrieve.bsky.social and @scholpplab.bsky.social on Rhbdl proteins in #zebrafish which is open to UK and international students tinyurl.com/fishprotease

It's out, Minos transgenesis in the pantry moth by
@donyaniyaz.bsky.social
@lucalivraghi.bsky.social

High efficient, glowing eye and silk gland markers

peerj.com/articles/202...
@peerj.bsky.social

Red and yellow stemmed bolete with brown cap, with stem staining blue in places

When cut in half, the bolete changed colour, going from yellow to staining a vivid blue within a second or two

Cool find on the dog walk - I believe it’s a scarletina bolete - not for the pot until you’re sure though!

Caught the last of the light on the way home and a few winter chanterelles for tea!

Shaggy inkcap time!

Picked up this lovely book from a charity shop for £2 and quite charmingly it’s full of little clippings from over a quarter of a century ago, yet still relevant.

This weekend‘s activity now sorted courtesy of Emorsgate - trying to bolster the species in my wild patch for next year.

More chunky chaps, this time rose chafer grubs - back underground now to see them next year

Today’s rearing had some chunky chappies, but I‘m looking forward to the day when the Moby Dick of Galleria reported in this study turns up at 740mg (current PB is ~650mg) pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

#fatmothweek

Me (Sebastian Bruchmann) giving a presentation titled "Towards a scalable platform for high-throughput virulence assays"

Had a brilliant time in Liverpool at Edge Hill University for the Galleria mellonella Workshop 🐛
Grateful to be invited as a speaker, the great chats and new connections. Amazing to see the wide range of applications, hope our time lapse imaging work can add to the field!

hopefully galleria users can celebrate the end of hourly galleria poking sessions

Our final talk is from @doktorbasti.bsky.social at @cam.ac.uk on the scalable imaging platform is developing to automate health and mortality scoring during microbial virulence assays #galleriamellonellaworkshop2025

Next a presentation from Toby Jenkins and Simon Booth from @uniofbath.bsky.social on their work using lasers to improve the Galleria burn wound infection model originally developed by @evgeniamaslova.bsky.social #galleriamellonellaworkshop2025

@cjcoates.bsky.social from @universityofgalway.bsky.social and @swanseauni.bsky.social gives us an overview on Galleria as an aspirant toxicology model for shellfish poisoning syndrome #galleriamellonellaworkshop2025

After the first break we have Prof Vitaliy Khutoryanskiy from PEVITAC @uniofreading.bsky.social on their advances in toxicological and antimicrobial testing using Galleria #galleriamellonellaworkshop2025

Next up is @jenniesc.bsky.social of @exeter.ac.uk / @gmrc.bsky.social giving an overview of the Galleria mellonella Research Centre activities! #galleriamellonellaworkshop2025

The 2025 Galleria mellonella Workshop is off to a start at Edge Hill University, with an opening talk on the Galleria Envenoming Model from @rachelhclare.bsky.social #galleriamellonellaworkshop2025

🐛 Research-grade Galleria mellonella — hand-picked for researchers, BY researchers!

Planning experiments for Sept/Oct? Get in touch now!

✅ In-house reared, no antimicrobial additives
✅ Hand-selected for quality
✅ +10% extra to cover in-transit loss
✅ Flexible shipping options

📩 gmrc@exeter.ac.uk

Wasps (and me!) in @thesundaytimes.bsky.social today. Thanks @ben-spencer.bsky.social for championing wasps!

Get involved with #WaspPicnicSurvey and #BigWaspSurvey!
#SummerOfWaspLove
Links below!
@uclcber.bsky.social @uclnews.bsky.social
@adamhartscience.bsky.social

Incredible what one application of Just For Men can do.

Ps. for those who might have on the fence and considering coming - the scenery, wildlife and snorkelling on your doorstep are incredible

Back from Kolymbari, and had such an amazing time with an incredible community of lepidopterists #lepgencrete. Great to get the opportunity to talk about what we're up to with @gmrc.bsky.social and spread the word about the #galleriamellonella infection model. Can't wait for #lepgen13 in 2028!