Blake Dawson

New preprint!

Courtship choreography is stabilised among genetically isolated populations

Check out the mesmerising courtship display of Apotropina ornatipennis (Diptera: Chloropidae)

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

with @bioblake.bsky.social, @angmcgaughran.bsky.social, @thekeithing.bsky.social, et al

RESEARCH ARTICLE 🔬

„Overall, we have shown there are potential #biodiversity benefits in adding non-floral resources to localised #crop landscapes as #flies were able to utilise the resources for #larval development“
- Dawson et al. (2025)
@bioblake.bsky.social

Article:
doi.org/10.1016/j.ba...

Adding non-floral resources increases wild insect abundance but not yield in Australian hybrid carrot crops Many insect pollinator-dependent crops heavily rely on managed honey bees for pollination, yet flies and other wild taxa can be highly abundant and ef…

Can non-floral resources on farms enhance pollinator diversity and abundance, and does this lead to increased yield? In our new paper, we experimentally test this idea with a focus on fly biodiversity
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Happy to announce that today I have started a new position as a postdoctoral research associate at Michigan State University. Looking forward to working on insect IPM and climate change, though it might take me a while to get use to this cold ❄️

Effect of Insect Exclusion and Microbial Perturbation on Piglet Mass Loss and Total Body Score Recent conceptual and empirical developments in decomposition research have highlighted the intricate dynamics within necrobiome communities and the r…

New paper out led by PhD student Donna McIntyre. She did a great job investigating the role of insects and microbes during carrion decomposition, finding that the exclusion of both microbes and insects significantly slowed decomposition
shorturl.at/02OXL