Mark Gurney

An historic black and white illustration of a paper nautilus floating on the ocean. There are boats, a city and hills in the background.

🎉 Huge news for BHL: The Field Museum is taking over the hosting of BHL’s website, servers & infrastructure, ensuring long-term stability and access for its 63+ million pages of open biodiversity literature. Learn more:
blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2026/02/tran...
#BHLTransition #ILoveBHL 🌍 📚 🧪

The yellow flowers of American Skunk-cabbage bloom in the bog garden at RHS Harlow Carr

Sea Bindweed, with pink and white trumpet flowers, blooms in a sand-dune on the Sefton Coast

The latest issue of #BritishandIrishBotany is out!
It's our Open Access, online scientific journal.
6 papers inc @bsbiscience.bsky.social on garden escapes, a new hybrid grass, @floodplainmead.bsky.social on Scotland's wet grasslands, a hawkweed, drift seeds & sea bindweed:
bsbi.org/about/news/l...

Somehow I missed this Californian record of Waved Albatross last autumn ebird.org/checklist/S2... an incredible vagrant 🪶

Rare butterflies bounce back after landowners in Wales cut back on flailing hedges More than 300 brown hairstreak butterfly eggs were recorded in hedgerows near Llandeilo this winter after decade of decline

Cut blackthorn hedges less often = boost brown hairstreak butterflies. Really simple, cost-free (or even money-saving) measures can massively benefit wildlife. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Birds of World's new Phylogeny Explorer It’s been an exciting week. Five years in the making, we’re very excited to release this new, updated, dynamic phylogeny of the world’s birds. By harnessing Open Tree of Life ’s existing...

Taxonomy and phylogeny are two sides of the same coin, but that doesn't mean they are always in agreement. I wrote a blog post on why the new Phylogeny Explorer in @birdsoftheworld.bsky.social is such a big deal in that regard, and what's in store next for us.

eliotmiller.weebly.com/blog/birds-o...

Nine brightly coloured birds arranged in three rows of three. They are all facing left in the same pose. Seven are bright yellow and blue or black, two are black and scarlet with patches of sky blue. All are superb.

Anisognathus mountain-tanagers. 6-7 species here, the middle is one of my favourite Andean birds:
bold banana colours
excellent shade of blue
matching bright personality
staple of mixed flocks - as well as being fab itself, has prospect of exciting companions.
Almost perfect: 9/10
#birdart #sciart

I don’t know whether that is the reason here, but the protocol is Historical, which will exclude it from some eBird outputs and stats.

Three frogs to be reintroduced to West Acre 'pingos' The money will be spent on breeding thousands of frogs and managing their release in 2026.

This is the height of ecological illiteracy and shows how wannabe zookeepers have taken over UK nature conservation. Evidence for native status of these species is incredibly tenuous; releasing them into one of our most ancient & irreplaceable ecosystems would be crazy.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Climate-driven range contractions in species like Twite and Citril Finch can't be fixed by releases www.birdguides.com/news/citril-... #Ornithology ##UKBirding 🪶

The fragment of ND2 DNA that @tessaroo.bsky.social got from Calshot GT Grackle doesn't tell exactly where it came from but it excludes a USA west coast (nelsoni) origin and puts it in the Panama-Central-USA populations. Orange shape overlaid on map from DaCosta et al., 2008 doi.org/10.1525/cond...

Local entomologists shine a light on moth communities: The value of amateur records in cataloguing long‐term change Written records associated with museum collections are often underutilised. We use two new macro-moth collections donated to the University Museum of Zoology (Cambridge) to investigate long-term cha...

My latest paper is now published in an issue! We showcased the incredible scientific contributions that local and amateur naturalists make for research on long term change! 💚🌍
doi.org/10.1111/icad...

New paper alert! Microclimate temperatures are more extreme than we previously thought! Near-ground temperatures are amplified in hot weather, cool refugia is lost and replaced with heat traps ☀️🔥🥵 escape from heat will be very hard for small ground-dwelling organisms
doi.org/10.21425/fob...

Effect of bulb type on moth trap catch and composition in UK gardens We analyse 10 years of records Garden Moth Scheme (GMS) to estimate the effect of bulb and trap type on the number of moths caught by moth traps. We find that brighter, higher wattage bulbs collect ...

Interested in moth trapping?

Wondering which trap to use? Or if different bulbs collect different species?

Using 100k samples from @gardenmothscheme.bsky.social our new paper looks at these questions and more! With with Bill Kunin and @katatrepsis.bsky.social

#mothsmatter #teammoth

Bij veel leden ligt de nieuwste Entomologische Berichten op de mat, of is deze digitaal te benaderen via de ledenomgeving op NEV.nl!

Ook deze mooie uitgave lezen? Word lid, of even wachten. Oudere jaargangen zijn ook beschikbaar via Natuurtijdschriften.nl

Photo montage of Tinamus resonans sp. nov., a new species of tinamou from the montane forests of the Serra do Divisor, western Amazonia, Brazil. The species is distinguished by a unique combination of plumage pattern, vocal repertoire, and ecological characteristics, including a conspicuous dark slate facial mask, vivid rufous-cinnamon underparts, and a uniform brownish-gray back. Its vocalizations are remarkable, consisting of long and powerful songs that echo strikingly across the steep montane slopes, producing a characteristic resonant effect. The species was documented exclusively at higher elevations within a transitional zone between submontane and stunted forests, where the understory is densely structured by root mats. A preliminary population estimate, based on field detections and spatial extrapolation, suggests approximately 2,106 individuals restricted to the Serra do Divisor massif. Although no immediate anthropogenic pressures were observed within its range, the species may be highly vulnerable to climate change and to proposed infrastructure projects that threaten the integrity of this federally protected region. The discovery of T. resonans highlights the biological uniqueness of the Serra do Divisor, reinforces its status as a center of montane endemism, and underscores the critical importance of maintaining its long-term conservation.

Huge News from the Western Amazon: it's the year 2025 and we are still describing entirely new, strikingly-distinctive large-bodied bird species! Behold Tinamus resonans sp. nov. the Slaty-masked Tinamou mapress.com/zt/article/v... #Ornithology @tetzoo.bsky.social 🪶

EARLY VIEW in IBIS

A new species of jewel-babbler (Cinclosomatidae: Ptilorrhoa) from the Southern Fold Mountains of Papua New Guinea | onlinelibrary.wiley....

Iain A. Woxvold, Banak G. Gamui, Leo Legra, Samson Yama, Bonny Koane, Salape Tulai | #ornithology 🪶

🦢 What a swan’s 570km U-turn could tell us about water, wetlands, and a changing climate.... www.linkedin.com/posts/kane-b...

Might be good for plant spp. richness, but I'm not sure mowing field margins every 6 weeks in spring & summer is going to be helpful for other farmland biodiversity. Seems a perfect way to repeatedly destroy every breeding attempt of ground-nesting birds, small mammals or butterflies that use them.

Illustrations of five identical looking small black weevils next to their dissected aedeagus. There are also illustrations of three dissected aedeagi, none of which is an exact match for the illustrations of the five species.

From the paper, the four British species plus betulae, which might be here too. I've added the aedeagus from three specimens I have. My two from willows look like they might be crypticus. The one from hawthorn looks like to me like subaeneus, but the weevil is not metallic so must be oxyacanthae.

A tiny black weevil with its head ticked under its head and large eyes on the top of the head. The antennae look like they come out in the front of the eyes. It is a Rhamphus flea weevil, but we do not know which species. They are cute but difficult.

Exciting news: we have a new British flea weevil.
Less exciting news: it is a Rhamphus.

I still don't understand how to tell them all apart.

Even so, this is a very useful paper:

www.mdpi.com/2075-4450/16...

Six new Palaearctic species and a review of diagnostic characters. #coleoptera

Large citizen science datasets are powerful tools for biodiversity science, but they may have biases. Nice new paper from @louisbackstrom.bsky.social et al. showing that for eBird and Birdtrack lists there is a tendency for rare species to be over-represented
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

One for the occasional series of #ornithology papers you need in your life but might not have read - Common/Spotted Sandpiper flight style as an antipredator behaviour.
academic.oup.com/auk/article-...

Solanum revealed 2 species: nigrum & nitidibaccatum, Black & Green Nightshade. Apart from the obvious berry colour, it always remained possible that Green Nightshade could have been unripe berries.
Green= sepal lobes expand as the berries mature
Black= stays the same

A middle-aged man with a bald head sits in front of bookshelves filled with scientific and academic texts in what appears to be a home office or study. He's wearing a dark grey jumper and has a slight smile whilst looking directly at the camera.

Can species reintroductions harm biodiversity rather than help it? Are we using reintroductions as a distraction from the real drivers of our nature crisis? Listen to my conversation with the one and only @alexanderlees.bsky.social 🌍🦤🧪🪶

➡️ pod.fo/e/32fae6

An Intergeneric Hybrid Between Historically Isolated Temperate and Tropical Jays Following Recent Range Expansion | doi.org/10.1002/ece3... | Ecology and Evolution | #ornithology 🪶

How to find Mogulones crucifer:
The weevil is native to Europe/West Asia, but has been introduced to North America to control its host (Cynoglossum officinale; Hound's Tongue) which is invasive there.

One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants - Nature In a case of obligate cross-species cloning, female ants of Messor ibericus need to clone males of Messor structor to obtain sperm for producing the worker caste, resulting in males from the same moth...

Crazy discovery in ants 🤯🐜

One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants | Nature
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

"Males from the same mother exhibit distinct genomes and morphologies, as they belong to species that diverged over 5 million years ago."

If you want to identify, well, anything, I recommend this post from @weevil-see.bsky.social. His choice of weevils to illustrate it is of course excellent, but it applies to everything from mushrooms to marsupials. This is how you can be a good identifier of things.

[Link contains spider]

LISTERS: A Glimpse Into Extreme Birdwatching YouTube video by owen reiser

Top film. The smartest look at this subject I've ever seen. Also funny and sweary.

youtu.be/zl-wAqplQAo?...

Thought I'd post something about separating Nysius senecionis and graminicola, as both are now widespread. The features to focus on are the extent of the matt field of the evaporatory area (the brown bit) and the length of the 1st hind tarsal segment relative to the 2nd and 3rd.