Stephanie Bilodeau

#amphipodstoday "Picture of the Day

A riot of color, otherworldly: Two amphipods on a coral off the coast of Bali. The tiny creatures were photographed by Yury Ivanov from Indonesia."

#amphipodstoday wow!

This is the most incredible footage of blue whales I’ve ever seen

I need you to see this video of a tardigrade crawling on a volvox cluster immediately. It's amazing.

Greater Hatchet-faced Tree Frog, in situ
Orán, Peru
#herps

A tortoise beetle on a leaf. The clear elytra extend past the body of the critter. The body is blue and yellow and iridescent.

Sometimes there are jewels just sitting on leaves out here

This is a tortoise beetle, beautifully iridescent, about the size of my fingernail.

A school of juvenile striped eel catfish huddle closely together as protection from predators as they take turns feeding on the ocean floor.

I know crayfish and neocaridina shrimp mix well.

I know shrimp will ride the crayfish and pick at algae & stuff on the shell and the crayfish won't mind.

But this is takes the biscuit.

A dark background features 23 seahorses of various sizes, colors, and patterns. This is a cartoon-style artwork of a real seahorse species. A colorful and cute atmosphere.

🐟 Seahorses 🐎

A little green tree frog delicately spotted with red, sitting on a fern frond and singing into the night. Dozens of others nearby sing the same song, and females are hard to come by.

My team and I have spent a few days in the rainforest of Ranomafana National Park on our way east to the littoral forest south of Farafangana called Agnalazaha. It’s been dry here, but we were happy to find a few calling frogs, like this beautiful male Boophis tasymena. 🧪🐸

Have you ever seen a weedy seadragon do barrel rolls? There are no clear records of this behaviour in the literature.
So what’s going on?

Huge thanks to Anita Futterer for sharing the original footage and allowing it to be reposted.

An illustration of a great cormorant standing in front of buttering

The wildest dream of a Cormorant🫧

#bird #birdart #illustration #digitalart #fish #bitterling #animalart #creature #artist

Can't wait for the next #MolluscMonday to post this:

This adorable chiton gets to be named by the public! Let's find it the name it deserves 😀

#biodiversity #deepsea #deepseacreatures #redlist #DeepSeaDrilling

#SuperbOwl

McCoy's elf skink from northeastern Australia. Look at those stubby little arms, likely an adaptation to its burrowing lifestyle.

Other-wordly looking snail with half see-thru head and tail with white dots and green trim. Her shell is solid pink with squiggly lines. Completely alien looking.

I posted a video of this remarkable creature yesterday, here's a photo. It's a sea snail called a Miniature Melo. Amazing that I saw it because it's the size of a few grains of rice. This is at 10x zoom.

#marinelife #eastcoastkin #photography #love #ocean #maui #seascape #nokings #nature #amazing

Sea cucumbers spend their lives burrowing into and eating mud + sand. But this beautiful species—Enypniastes—is also capable of swimming by slowly undulating the cape-like structure around its top. And it's not a trick of the light: its organs actually glow in the dark, which may deter predators.

A beautiful Tritonia (nudibranch) from @schmidtocean.bsky.social dive 600 #CliffReefs #MarineLife

The taxonomic family Caprellidae contains 400+ species. They're sometimes called skeleton or ghost shrimps.

Here's what a male Caprella mutica looks like.

Trying NOT to imagine these as 9 foot tall and with a craving for human flesh. The swarm of tiny ones is terrifying enough.

Each division of #SICB is working on having a named role of media rep to build community and support for members throughout the year. 9/12 divisions have a rep now!

Welcome DEE's
Camille Boucaud of
www.heathheckmanlab.org

mgi.natsci.msu.edu/people/micro...

Thanks for coming aboard Camille!

Two milk colored gribbles with beady black eyes. from https://lastwordonnothing.com/2013/08/13/snark-week-the-gribble/

A milky bug with big black eyes looking alarmed. From: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gribble

Wood munched on by gribbles. From https://lastwordonnothing.com/2013/08/13/snark-week-the-gribble/

Meet the gribble. These tiny pill-bug relatives live in the ocean and nosh on wood and plant debris. They were Enemy #1 during the days of wooden ships (along with shipworms), but have since faded into peaceful obscurity.

Like the gribbles of yore, may your future be filled with uneventful days.

Even in the frigid seas of Antarctica, life blooms 🪸

In just 24 hours of brooding in the lab, these Antarctic deep-sea coral larvae began to sprout their very first tentacles, giving WHOI biologist Rhian Waller a glimpse into the earliest stages of life far below the surface.

The most beautiful #snail ever to exist!
Many #marine snails go through an early life stage called #veliger, wherein they drift along with the #plankton before settling onto the sea floor as an adult. We call this, #sparkles

#blackwater #blackwaterdiving #mollusk #gug

La entrada sobre Acociles (cangrejos de río en Náhuatl) de la Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España muestra que Bernardino de Sahagún no los conocía de Castilla
Normal, mediado el sXVI el cangrejo italiano, eso que @miteco.gob.es llama cangrejo ibérico, aun no había sido introducido
(sigue)

Disco slugs (for science!) This sea slug steals chloroplasts from the algae it eats, making it one of the few animals that can do photosynthesis. But what kind of relationship does the slug have with these organelles stolen from a different kingdom of life? 🦑🧪

Baby Squid Kindergarten 🦑🫧 ͛.*

Ocean Heroes: Kristina Gjerde She spent twenty years protecting half the planet. You have probably never heard of her.

Ocean Heroes: Kristina Gjerde
open.substack.com/pub/weareoce...

Home from another wonderful #SICB2026! A special thanks to all the symposium hosts and contributors who spoke with me for the SICB/ICB blog. I learned so much this meeting! ❤️

The US Academic Alliance for the IPCC (USAA-IPCC) was formed in March 2025 in part to prepare for this possibility and to ensure that US scientists remain able to engage in IPCC work regardless of the status and role of the US government. With the support of the USAA-IPCC, more than 70 US citizens and US-based experts who are currently serving the IPCC as coordinating lead authors, lead authors, review editors and committee members will continue to play these roles. “US climate scientists have made incredible contributions to understanding our planet’s life support systems and the impacts and risks of climate change. Their role as key players in IPCC reports have helped the US maintain our preeminent position in science and technology, and this global scientific cooperation will continue despite this unfortunate decision,” said Dr. Pamela McElwee, Professor of Human Ecology at Rutgers University, who serves as chair of the steering committee of the Alliance. “There is a reason we call our community the global scientific enterprise. We cannot grow, innovate, or advance unless we are linked together sharing, analyzing, and deliberating on vital climate data through critical international organizations like the IPCC. In the wake of this devastating move, AGU pledges to do all it can to bridge global partnership, research, and dialogue,” said Dr. Brandon Jones, President of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), which hosts the Alliance. The Trump Administration began disengaging from IPCC prior to yesterday’s formal announcement. Since February of 2025, the US State Department has not nominated experts for involvement in IPCC work, nor supported travel to IPCC meetings for selected authors, a role they have played in all prior administrations. The US government also did not participate in either of the IPCC business sessions in 2025, the first time the US has not been in attendance since the IPCC’s founding in 1988.

As a result, the USAA-IPCC has assumed a key leadership role in nominating US scientists for consideration as authors for IPCC reports, including for the Seventh Assessment Report (nominating 282 authors in April 2025) and the Methodology Report on Carbon Dioxide Removal Technologies, Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (nominating 33 authors in December 2025), as well as for roles on the IPCC Task Group on Data Support and for participation in several expert workshops. AGU and the USAA-IPCC have also raised funds to support travel for US scientists and technical experts selected by IPCC to attend author meetings and workshops. Since the founding of the IPCC over four decades ago, US scientists and other experts have made critical contributions, leading formal processes as Working Group co-chairs as well as filling vitally important author and reviewer roles. IPCC findings have shaped science-based policy at all levels—from global climate agreements to local resilience plans—and strengthen the ability of policy communities to make informed decisions. Ensuring US scientists remain fully engaged in the IPCC and the global climate science community will lead to important new research opportunities and international collaborations that benefit the US in substantial ways. The USAA-IPCC looks forward to continuing our support of US climate experts, climate science research, and the IPCC. —-- The USAA-IPCC (https://www.usaa-ipcc.org/) is composed of all the US academic institutions that have observer status with the IPCC – Colby College, College of the Atlantic, Dickinson College, Emory University, Indiana University, Princeton University, Rutgers University, Washington University in St. Louis, University of California San Diego, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and Yale University – together with the American Geophysical Union (AGU), which hosts the Alliance.

The Trump Administration's announced withdraw from the IPCC is disappointing, but not surprising. US scientists will continue to play key roles in the @ipcc.bsky.social. A statement from the US Academic Alliance for the IPCC:

The world feels rough right now

So please enjoy this shrimp, filmed off Cozumel, Mexico. It may be a larval reef shrimp, but we don’t know what species or how long it lives or what it eats. The world is still full of wonder and beauty and mystery.

🎥 @pedrovalenciam scuba diver on Insta