The discovery of a new โspeciesโ invariably leads to the discovery of new โspecies interactionsโ - new connections in the web of life. Here, the discovery of a new gall wasp also uncovered EIGHT new interactions with other insects - some likely new species as well. #biodiversity @ymilesz.bsky.social
๐๐ฆ๐ญ๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ฐ๐ค๐ฏ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ข ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ด๐ฐ๐ข๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ช๐ค๐ข๐ฏ๐ข is a new gall #wasp found in the galls of a live #oak Quercus oleoides in Mexico.
The research increases the systematic knowledge of poorly known species in the genus Cynipini in the Neotropics: doi.org/10.3897/jhr....
This looks like a great workshop for people interested in learning how to do lcWGS and UCE work! ๐งช
Thanks to micro-CT and www.antscan.info, you can now explore high resolution, 3D ant images from anywhere in the world. Fantastic work from Julian Katzke, Francisco Hita Garcia, @economo.bsky.social, Thomas van de Kamp and colleagues just dropped: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Regrettably, I have decided to decommission SimpleMappr, www.simplemappr.net on September 1, 2026. You may read about its origins, what others have accomplished in its 18 year run, and the reasons why I must turn it off in a document I wrote last night bit.ly/simplemappr.
#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
Yes likewise! Can't wait to see what y'all find in Baja in the near future :)
Meet Belonocnema mesoamericana, a new species of Belonocnema that we described on Mexican live oak! This is a fun little critter that makes velvety root galls, a great find by @scottpegan.bsky.social and Alejandro Zaldรญvar-Riverรณn's team at UNAM.
jhr.pensoft.net/article/1851...
What Derek said, also I could've done without the old man yelling at cloud view of "morphology good, DNA bad", that's so Sanger era talking point, get over it the field has moved far beyond that!
New #OpenAccess research by M. Prous, @niinakiljunen.bsky.social et al. in #RESSystematicEnt found that multiple full-length variants of the mitochondrial COI DNA barcode region are prevalent in north European sawflies.
doi.org/10.1111/syen.70031
@gkergoat.bsky.social @wileyecology.bsky.social
An historic black and white illustration of a paper nautilus floating on the ocean. There are boats, a city and hills in the background.
๐ Huge news for BHL: The Field Museum is taking over the hosting of BHLโs 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 ๐ ๐ ๐งช
Marie Curie fellowships are madness this year. A score of 97% required for funding. To all those who didn't succeed - you and your project are probably brilliant, hang in there and keep trying
I worked on euphorine braconids for my PhD but I haven't really touched it since, so it was nice to be included and help contribute in this updated version of the dichotomous key. Hope it will be useful to people as the old version was to me.
cjai.biologicalsurvey.ca/articles/ssv...
teeny tiny wingless parasitic wasp, probably genus Baeus. It is so round and fat and perfect. Its head is the size of the rest of its body.
just a little baby child (from @mosquitolab.bsky.social's pitfall samples; I can see how this one got sorted into the beetle pile)
No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientistโbecause the person felt she did didnโt deserve the recognition.
Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
"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...
Cool ๐ science ๐งช
Responsible publication of your research!
To help you do this @nicolasgaltier.bsky.social and coauthors have put together a handy database of academia-friendly journals, DAFNEE. You can read about it in their article recently published in @jevbio.bsky.social:
doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...
Calling all OrthoFinder users!
Weโve just released GLADE, a tool to infer gene gains, losses, duplications, and ancestral genomes across a phylogeny.
GLADE runs directly on OrthoFinder results.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
github.com/lauriebelch/...
(1/10)
Excited to share a new piece of work in @embojournal.org
Parasitoid wasps hijack a bacterial gene that governs venoms against host. Coauthors include @rokaslab.bsky.social and others.
Read more from: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
New work in @Cell Research
We conducted a large-scale structural genomics analysis of #insects, integrating phylogenomics with protein structure prediction to uncover hidden functions and evolutionary insights across the insect tree of life.
Read more from www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The Trump regime got rid of 10,109 PhDs in science and related fields, representing 14% of the total number of PhD scientists in the federal workforce.
The preprint of the first of the batch of parasitoid wasp genomes that we are generating is now out. Erythrina gall wasp is an invasive pest on the Hawaiian wiliwili tree, we were able to generate a HiFi genome using 1/10 of a flowcell, costing only ~$100 for the sequencing.
This line graph illustrates the percentage change in agency staff levels from the previous year for nine major U.S. federal scientific and health organizations between the fiscal years 2016 and 2025. The agencies tracked include the CDC, Department of Energy, EPA, FDA, NASA, NIH, NIST, NOAA, and NSF. For the majority of the timeline between 2016 and 2023, the agencies show relatively stable fluctuations, generally staying within a range of +5% to -5% change per year. However, there is a dramatic and uniform plummet starting in the 2024โ25 period. Every agency depicted shows a sharp downward trajectory, with staffing losses ranging from approximately -15% to over -25%. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows the most significant decline, dropping to roughly -26%, while the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) shows the least severe but still substantial drop at approximately -15%.
This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again.
www.nature.com/immersive/d4...
Like so many, Iโve been affected by the new US federal stance against science. As a result of this and seeking a better life balance, I have accepted a new Full Prof position at the University Helsinki, Finland ๐ซ๐ฎ๐คฉ
I will miss CA deeply, but a new adventure awaits ๐
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
LSU Museum of Natural Sciences is hiring a postdoc! Come join our very active and supportive museum community. Applicants can work with any of the major divisions: ๐๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ธ๐
Review begins February 15th, please share!
lsu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/LSU/job/0119...
I love these illustrations!
I really enjoyed reading the paper, such a great example of leveraging genomic scale data to investigate interesting evolutionary questions while also resolving taxonomic problems. Honestly I am a bit surprised ME allows taxonomic description haha. Great work and congrats to y'all!
Photo of a tank-like black parasitoid wasp, a new species called Eurytoma trixa
New paper from the Martinson Lab! A fun study where we find a nice example of cascading speciation and describe three new species. Plus some exciting data to suggest that ecological guild may influence the impacts of host-associated differentiation. A ๐งต. #galls #insects ๐งช doi.org/10.1111/mec....
Hahaha yes I appreciate this so much as an aging metalhead.
