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Marcus Stensmyr

@marcusstensmyr

Science, drosophilids, mosquitoes, and cats. Currently clean on OPSEC. Lund university, Sweden. πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦πŸ‡ΈπŸ‡ͺ

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05.10.2023
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Latest posts by Marcus Stensmyr @marcusstensmyr

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After 5 years of developing, a new preprint from the lab - introducing our workflow for comparative insect connectomics, aimed at democratizing connectomics. @erc.europa.eu @lundvision.bsky.social @biologylu.bsky.social Read it here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

01.03.2026 20:58 πŸ‘ 82 πŸ” 40 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 1

Well...once you filter out the loonies and follow reliable accounts, its much better than this useless site. Here there is nothing, only people wondering where there NSF/NIH grants are (hint: its currently being spent blowing up shit in the mid east).

02.03.2026 08:21 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Muevlo interesting paper!

27.02.2026 06:22 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
26.02.2026 10:47 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social!

A dive into the deep history of vertebrate vision, together with @mikebok.bsky.social, @neurofishh.bsky.social and @denilsson.bsky.social

Photo credit : Vasilis Karkalas

23.02.2026 17:55 πŸ‘ 46 πŸ” 22 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 0
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Myrmecomorphomania Ants are so abundant that mimicking them has become a profitable way of life for many species. Florian Maderspacher and Marcus Stensmyr take a trip into the world of ant mimicry.

www.cell.com/current-biol...

20.02.2026 05:51 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Sarah Kendzior and the Permanent American Conspiracy I have to confess that I’ve spent the last few months getting utterly obsessed with the Epstein story.

New review of my book THEY KNEW, which lays out the backstory of the Epstein conspiracy. It was published in 2022 and therefore lives up to the title! I appreciate this essay and its broader insights: carter719.substack.com/p/sarah-kind...

18.02.2026 13:42 πŸ‘ 159 πŸ” 70 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 3

Nice one Andrew!

17.02.2026 06:57 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Target-independent retinotopy in Drosophila / Curr. Biol., Feb. 3, 2026 (Vol. 36, Issue 5)
Target-independent retinotopy in Drosophila / Curr. Biol., Feb. 3, 2026 (Vol. 36, Issue 5) YouTube video by Cell Press

Check out this amazing video summarising the recent discovery from Robin Hiesinger's lab on target-independent formation of retinotopic maps in the fly's visual system: www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhZP...

10.02.2026 15:08 πŸ‘ 7 πŸ” 3 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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937 results. Who else is in the Epstein material?

01.02.2026 08:37 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1

Sponge! sponge! sponge!

27.01.2026 20:34 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Bizarre 400-million-year-old fossil was an unknown life form Enigmatic organism known as Prototaxites cannot be fungus, new analysis finds

This silica-rich rock preserves fine detail about an ancient mysterious organism known as Prototaxites, preserved here as a grayish blob rife with black speckles. https://scim.ag/45mGfKH

26.01.2026 18:37 πŸ‘ 33 πŸ” 12 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 2

This Wednesday!

26.01.2026 19:43 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Don't hesitate to apply to our new Masters in Neuroscience 🧠 @univparissaclay.bsky.social

23.01.2026 21:36 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Cover girl Veronika is making headlines across the globeπŸ‚
(animal cleverness trumps human stupidity)

Notably, she is a 'companion cow' not used for meat or dairy.

Maybe if we saw other creatures less as a means to an end, we could appreciate their richness better...

www.cell.com/current-biol...

22.01.2026 15:15 πŸ‘ 112 πŸ” 34 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 3
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Our paper on the mysterious Devonian organism Prototaxites has now finally been published! See the paper here (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...) and our explainer thread below!
Prototaxites reconstruction by Matt Humpage

21.01.2026 19:25 πŸ‘ 1136 πŸ” 414 πŸ’¬ 39 πŸ“Œ 110
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The transcription of a single olfactory receptor per neuron is enforced by epigenetic silencing of their enhancers The ability to discriminate thousands of odors in our environment requires each olfactory neuron to express a single olfactory receptor from hundreds of available genes. The biochemical mechanism enfo...

What a breakthrough! Such a puzzle for 30 years, this is real progress!

I wonder how general this mechanism of repression is for other systems where highly-selective expression is needed.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

07.01.2026 19:46 πŸ‘ 54 πŸ” 19 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 2
23.12.2025 13:40 πŸ‘ 22 πŸ” 5 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
20.12.2025 22:22 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 1
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β€œA process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress - though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known"
- Bertrand Russell, 1976.

Time-lapse video of Vampyrella lateritia eating Spirogyra algae from Science Source/Oliver Skibbe. 🦠

17.12.2025 16:53 πŸ‘ 509 πŸ” 155 πŸ’¬ 19 πŸ“Œ 33
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You should be able to respond to reviewer comments with memes to liven up the peer review process.

18.12.2025 02:41 πŸ‘ 201 πŸ” 44 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 2

Clay letters from ancient Mesopotamia are alive with idiom, sayings, and everyday language that I love.

Here are just a few random ones so you can enjoy them too.

17.12.2025 15:47 πŸ‘ 1889 πŸ” 643 πŸ’¬ 30 πŸ“Œ 53
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A global screen for magnetically induced neuronal activity in the pigeon brain How animals detect the Earth’s magnetic field remains a mystery in sensory biology. Despite extensive behavioral evidence, the neural circuitry and molecular mechanisms responsible for magnetic sensin...

Scientists around former IMP group leader David Keays (@lmumuenchen.bsky.social show that #pigeons detect magnetic fields through their inner ear. Their discovery was now published in the journal @science.org: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
More: www.imp.ac.at/news/article...

20.11.2025 19:17 πŸ‘ 26 πŸ” 8 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 4
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Have you ever wondered what you would find if you could keep your eyes on a bee for more than a few meters? Us, too!

preprint (with videos!) + thread 🧡

Precise, individualized foraging flights in honey #bees 🐝 revealed by multicopter drone-based tracking

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

1/9

06.12.2025 13:57 πŸ‘ 371 πŸ” 151 πŸ’¬ 9 πŸ“Œ 16
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Extra virgin?

05.12.2025 13:49 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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That was not really what I meant...

03.12.2025 15:22 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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A Cell So Minimal That It Challenges Definitions of Life | Quanta Magazine The newly described microbe represents a world of parasitic, intercellular biodiversity only beginning to be revealed by genome sequencing.

A newly discovered archaeal cell has a tiny genome and can’t metabolize biomolecules. It’s upending biologists’ definition of a living thing. β€œThese types of organisms have been found before, but not as extreme as this,” said microbiologist Thijs Ettema.

30.11.2025 21:04 πŸ‘ 52 πŸ” 23 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 1

When I had hair!

27.11.2025 16:27 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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a man with long hair and a mustache wearing a pink shirt with a unicorn on it . ALT: a man with long hair and a mustache wearing a pink shirt with a unicorn on it .

Good job!

27.11.2025 10:14 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
A painting of a house by one of Charles Darwin's children. We see a simple outline of a house with a pitched roof, two chimneys and some lead-paned windows. We see the kitchen fire, with a clock on a mantle, and some cast iron pots on a window sill. In a window at the stop of the house we see a cat, or possibly a squirrel!

A painting of a house by one of Charles Darwin's children. We see a simple outline of a house with a pitched roof, two chimneys and some lead-paned windows. We see the kitchen fire, with a clock on a mantle, and some cast iron pots on a window sill. In a window at the stop of the house we see a cat, or possibly a squirrel!

A hand-written page of Charles Darwin's original manuscript for the Origin of Species. There are many ink blots and crossings out, and some foxing consistent with its age.

A hand-written page of Charles Darwin's original manuscript for the Origin of Species. There are many ink blots and crossings out, and some foxing consistent with its age.

#OnThisDay in 1859, Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species was first published.

Much of the original manuscript was used as scrap paper by Darwin's children. On the back of this painting of a house is an original manuscript page from Origin!

#CambridgeUniversityLibrary (DAR 185)

24.11.2025 03:26 πŸ‘ 137 πŸ” 58 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 3