Pieter Vantieghem
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pietervantieghem.bsky.social
Pieter Vantieghem
@pietervantieghem.bsky.social

Belgian #biodiversity enthusiast, main interest in #butterflies & other things with wings

(westpal) butterfly ID help anytime

#refugeeswelcome

Every fraction of a degree is worth fighting for

(he/him)

Environmental science 40%
Biology 27%

Economisch gezien houdt het dus blijkbaar steek om 1 van de hoofdverantwoordelijken voor de dood van 400.000 kinderen een bonus van 1000 miljard te beloven. #fightfascim
I had dinner with a colleague from @inaturalist.bsky.social yesterday and Jeanne shared that their users are discovering an average of one brand-new-previously-unknown-to-science species EACH MONTH!
Citizen Scientists Are Accelerating Ecology Research, Study Suggests
www.nytimes.com

Reposted by Pieter Vantieghem

In France, Common #Cranes are particully exposed this year. Already +10 000 casualties were reported in what is the greatest migration corridor for the species (up to 450 000 individuals crossed in the humide area of the "Champagne" region)

#birds

jhm.fr/jusqua-10-00...
Hey folks, as news of Watson's demise spreads, please don't set aside his weighty legacy of misogyny and racism. He was truly among the worst of us. www.vox.com/2019/1/15/18...
DNA scientist James Watson has a remarkably long history of sexist, racist public comments
“People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty,” he said in 2003. “I think it would be great.”
www.vox.com

I did see a hedgehog in the garden a few times in summer and one of the traps was tipped over during prebaiting with the bait gone... So I think our garden hedgehog is still present and residing somewhere near the woodpile where I had put the mouse traps...

So today I looked at the fleas and they appear to be hedgehog fleas! A species that should be monoxenous on hedgehogs! And also a new garden species! #urbanbiodiversity

Once inside, I found a flea creeping on me. And then i felt some itching and found another one... and another one. I had 6 fleas in total! I put them in ethanol for ID #entomologist4life

At 21:20 I checked again and there where 2 wood-mice, I shortly put them in a box to take some pics to show my son and released the mice, taking the traps inside. I hadn't done this before at home so woud-mouse was a new garden species.

My 4y old son wanted to see real mice. So I set up four life traps in the garden, prebaited for 2 days and then we put them on sharp yesterday evening. We checked just before his bedtime around 19:00. Nothing yet....
One analytical model shows that, as of November 5th, the dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. has already caused the deaths of 600,000 people, two-thirds of them children. https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/jUzNSc
The Shutdown of U.S.A.I.D. Has Already Killed Hundreds of Thousands
The short documentary “Rovina’s Choice” tells the story of what goes when aid goes.
newyorkermag.visitlink.me

Or do like I did and contact one of the authors to get a copy of the article ;-)

And it doesn't look like any other species in the western palearctic, so not some cryptic species stuff here but an amazing new find! Here's a pic by Süleyman Erdeğer, the person who first found it (and after whom it is named) www.trakel.org/kelebekler/?...
TRAKEL | Fotogaleri | Süleyman’ın Kaplanı
TRAKEL Öncelkle ısparta'dan selamlar kelebek dostlarıma.İki yıla varan bir çalışmamız az önce makalenin yayınlanmasıyla sonuçlandı. Herşeyden önce iki yıldır gece gündüz desteklerini esirgemeyen Onat ...
www.trakel.org

What a remarkable discovery! In SW Turkey a new species of Lycaenid was discovered, Rapala suleymani sp.n., of a genus that was only known from the eastern palearctic & indomalayan realms, it's closest relative flies 7000km away! doi.org/10.31184/M00...
Rapala suleymani sp. n., (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae) a new thecline...: Ingenta Connect
doi.org

Reposted by Pieter Vantieghem

🔥 What happens after Europe’s NGOs are dismantled?

Last week, @alemanno.bsky.social mapped how civic space in Europe is being suffocated – how NGOs die.

This week, we asked the next question: what happens when they do?

🧵👇

euobserver.com/eu-political...
What happens after Europe's NGOs are dismantled?
What does Europe look like when independent civil society is silenced, sidelined or slowly starved out of existence? This is not dystopian fiction. It is the logical end-point of a trend already visib...
euobserver.com

Reposted by Pieter Vantieghem

Discover a new data paper by Barberis, Bitonto, Costantino et al. where they make "Insect-flower interactions in the Mediterranean area: a Citizen Science dataset collated within the Life4Pollinators project" available: doi.org/10.26786/192...

Check out our new insect decline paper. By analysing 36 yrs of German ground beetle distribution data, we show:
- ~80% of species have declined, with significant declines for >50%.
- The decline was similar across species traits and threatened status.
doi.org/10.1111/ddi.... @consbiog.bsky.social

Yes, both my pics have an upperside egg. I think you meant S. confusella but wrote S. continuella? The start of the mine indeed isn't full depth so looking greenish, maybe not so obvious on my pics, best seen with some magnification. I'm sure it won't be long before it'll get confirmed for the UK!
Het kolonistengeweld tegen Palestijnen op de bezette Westelijke Jordaanoever is nog nooit zo hevig geweest. Belangrijk mikpunt is de Palestijnse olijvenoogst. https://rightsforum.org/kolonistenterreur-houdt-westoever-in-zijn-greep/
Kolonistenterreur houdt Westoever in zijn greep - The Rights Forum
Voor een rechtvaardig Midden-Oosten beleid
rightsforum.org

Stigmella naturnella was discovered only recently in the low countries (nl.pensoft.net/article/99360/) but in my region (Ghent, Belgium) it already seems to be the most common birch #leafminer. It probably spread naturally from S Central Europe. Here's how the mines look.

#mothsmatter #teammoth

Reposted by Pieter Vantieghem

Green islands on beech leaves with Stigmella tityrella mines and galls caused by Hartigiola annulipes

While getting wood out of the shed at my parents, I found this Nathusius's Pipistrelle. It has probably flown 1000+ km to get there. I placed it back, hoping it can safely spend its winter there!
Gelechioidea, that superdiverse superfamily of Lepidoptera that has been a super mess taxonomically, finally gets some structure at the family level with phylogenomics! Read all about it in our article led by PhD student @etkayapar.bsky.social !
resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Integrating Sanger and next‐generation sequencing data sheds light on phylogenetic relationships among gelechioid moths (Lepidoptera: Gelechioidea)
The maximum-likelihood analysis of a phylogenomic dataset of 1767 protein-coding genes from 57 ingroup taxa yields a robust family-level topology for Gelechioidea, revealing novel among-family relat...
resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

On my latest Alpine trip I took the time to make some more pictures of a few widespread mountain species, like these Aricia artaxerxes and Erebia melampus.
More #butterfly pictures of this trip on my flickr page: flic.kr/s/aHBqjCyeci
📢New paper: Night-flying insects over UK in decline, weather radar study reveals @universityofleeds.bsky.social with Rothamsted Insect Survey🦋🐝🪰🦟
Full story 👇
www.rothamsted.ac.uk/news/trillio...

Reposted by Pieter Vantieghem

Jongens en meisjes, de organisatie die het dichtst bij mijn hart ligt, Een Hart Voor Vluchtelingen, heeft middelen nodig met het oog op de winter.

Met het weghalen van de middelen voor de daklozen door ons Anneleen, zitten ze in de shit.

Alle info op de prent en hier 👇
eenhartvoorvluchtelingen.be

Reposted by Pieter Vantieghem

Love @royalholloway.bsky.social campus! Short walk around my office building provided sufficient material to demonstrate green islands phenmenon at today's lectures on herbivory simonleather.wordpress.com/tag/green-is...