Emily May
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emtomology.bsky.social
Emily May
@emtomology.bsky.social
Agricultural conservation scientist @xercessociety. Pollinators, pesticide toxicology, IPM, habitat restoration, resilient food systems. Views are my own.📍Vermont | she/her
Pinned
Hello new followers! I am a
🐝 conservation scientist
🐝 ecologist & entomologist
🐝 Vermonter
🐝 native plant & veggie gardener
🐝 pinball champ
🐝 lover of hiking, biking, baking, poetry, and crafts/creative pursuits of all kinds.

Glad to join you here.
Excited to share our new video, Growing Pollinator-Safe Plants: What Nurseries Can Do (and How You Can Help)! 🐝🌸🌎 This project has been 3 years in the making, featuring interviews with nursery managers on steps they take to reduce pesticide risks.

Watch here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcdv...
Growing Pollinator-Safe Plants: What Nurseries Can Do (and How You Can Help)
YouTube video by The Xerces Society
www.youtube.com
September 26, 2025 at 7:33 PM
Reposted by Emily May
Time for the world to install a gigawatt of solar power capacity
2004: A year
2010: ~ a month
2015: ~ a week
Now: < A day
ourworldindata.org/data-insight... 🧪
September 21, 2025 at 9:44 PM
Exciting new meta-analysis: compared to calendar spraying, threshold-based management cuts insecticide use by 44% and costs by 40% without reducing yields, and supports more beneficial insects. www.nature.com/articles/s43...
Threshold-based management reduces insecticide use by 44% without compromising pest control or crop yield - Communications Earth & Environment
Pest control programs using pest density thresholds cut insecticide uses by 44% and costs by 40%, while maintaining yield and pest suppression, and enhancing beneficial insect populations, as revealed...
www.nature.com
September 12, 2025 at 2:25 PM
Newly registered or re-registered insecticides and herbicides will be rolling out with labels that may require drift/runoff mitigations to protect ESA-listed species. Learn more about how to navigate the menu of mitigations in a 90 min webinar next Tuesday from EPA: www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/...
Mitigation Math: Webinar Offers Tips to Tally Points for Pesticide Use
In 2026, more pesticide labels are likely to require measures to protect endangered species. EPA is offering a webinar next week to help farmers navigate these requirements.
www.dtnpf.com
September 12, 2025 at 1:55 PM
Reposted by Emily May
"Places that are used to fire, to relying and thriving on it, are now encountering fire regimes that are staggeringly different from those with which they evolved...The complex ecologies that thrived alongside their milder predecessors will be pushed beyond the point of recovery." 🌏
August 26, 2025 at 11:41 PM
Reposted by Emily May
“As classroom temperatures rise over time ... students tend to show declines in attention, memory and test performance,” said @edithdeguzman.bsky.social @ucanr.edu @luskininnovation.bsky.social www.latimes.com/environment/...
Rising heat is causing students to underperform across the globe
A new study, which reviewed dozens of published articles from around the world, found that cumulative heat exposure has negative consequences for students' cognitive outcomes.
www.latimes.com
August 5, 2025 at 7:07 PM
Vermont is a soccer state! What an incredible season and undefeated run to the national #USL2 championship @vermontgreenfc.bsky.social
August 3, 2025 at 5:07 PM
Reposted by Emily May
UNDEFEATED NATIONAL CHAMPIONS! 🏆

THE INVINCIBLES! ✨

YOUR VERMONT GREEN FOOTBALL CLUB! 💚
August 3, 2025 at 1:25 AM
Reposted by Emily May
Hundreds of monarch butterflies died in a winter 2024 event. Investigation implicated multiple pyrethroid insecticides:
tinyurl.com/3h3y7wuf

From The Guardian:
"Combinations of pesticides can have a synergistic effect that makes them even more toxic.
The solution...less pesticides."
🧪🌍🦋
Monarch butterflies’ mass die-off in 2024 caused by pesticide exposure – study
New peer-reviewed research found an average of seven pesticides in each of 10 butterflies tested
www.theguardian.com
August 2, 2025 at 4:32 AM
Reposted by Emily May
Starlink's connection speeds drop below the federal definition of "broadband" at a density of ~7 customers per square mile, according to recent research. The more the customers in an area, the slower everybody's connections get. Data shows that 83% of US Starlink customers get sub-broadband speeds.
thexlab.org
July 21, 2025 at 2:15 PM
Reposted by Emily May
US scientists describe the effects of Trump's cuts.

“If you cut the funding to the people who are doing the work right now, you don’t know what they would have innovated in 10 years or 15 years or 32 years like Rosalind Yalow. We don’t know what we’re losing.”
🧪
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
‘A disaster for all of us’: US scientists describe impact of Trump cuts
President’s assault on science –particularly climate science – has led to unprecedented funding cuts and staff layoffs
www.theguardian.com
July 21, 2025 at 8:28 AM
USDA rescinded more than $1 billion in regional conservation grants. These local partnerships help make federal dollars go further. Without RCPP investment, tens of thousands of acres of land and water conservation projects won’t happen. www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/...
Groups Weigh Options After USDA Rescinds $1 Billion in Regional Conservation Grants
In June, USDA canceled more than $1 billion in conservation grants to nearly 70 groups under the Regional Conservation Partnership Program. Some groups are appealing USDA's decision. Meanwhile, other ...
www.dtnpf.com
July 12, 2025 at 4:10 PM
USDA disaster assistance is now open for farmers hit by 2023–24 storms or weather events! If you had crop insurance or NAP, check your mail for a pre-filled form and apply at your local USDA office. A separate sign-up for uninsured losses is coming this fall. www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/...
USDA Opens up Natural Disaster Aid for Crop Farmers Who Faced 2023, 2024 Losses
USDA has opened up enrollment for the Supplemental Disaster Relief Program (SDRP), which will provide aid to crop farmers who suffered losses in 2023 and 2024 due to natural disasters. The first stage...
www.dtnpf.com
July 12, 2025 at 4:02 PM
Third year of flooding on July 10th in Vermont - the impacts are being felt, and the urgency is real.
"With the data now showing faster warming than anticipated, a lot of policies now need to be urgently updated with a matching acceleration of ambition.
Acceleration means net-zero by 2050 is simply not good enough to avoid the disastrous impacts of rapid climate change..."
The widely acknowledged acceleration of global warming has deep policy implications, not just for climate policy, but everything from migration to insurance, from food security to building codes.

drtomharris.substack.com/p/what-accel...
#climatechange #acceleration #policy #migration #finance
July 11, 2025 at 2:52 PM
Reposted by Emily May
🚨 New paper published in @nature.com today by L. Monclús, H. P. H. Arp, K. J. Groh, A. Faltynkova, M. E. Løseth, J Muncke, Z. Wang, R. Wolf, L. Zimmermann & M. Wagner 👇

Mapping the #chemical complexity of #plastics

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Mapping the chemical complexity of plastics - Nature
An inventory of 16,325 known plastic chemicals, including &gt;4,200 hazardous&nbsp;compounds, supports the development of safer plastics.
www.nature.com
July 9, 2025 at 6:10 PM
Reposted by Emily May
On Aug 1, tariff rates are scheduled to rise to historic highs. average tariffs on women’s clothing will rise to 48 percent, wine to 20 percent, and toys to nearly 50 percent.

taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/too-m...
July 9, 2025 at 12:10 PM
So sad to hear about Sheila’s passing. She was a brilliant native bee scientist, advocate, and mom, gone far too soon. The world feels smaller today.

Rest in power, Sheila. We’ll keep fighting for the wild things and for justice, as you did fiercely and with so much heart. 🐝🌻💛
July 9, 2025 at 11:07 AM
Reposted by Emily May
BREAKING: Scientists are staging a “science fair” in the lobby of a Congressional building to tell elected officials about the critical knowledge the US will lose because their research grants have been canceled.
July 8, 2025 at 3:31 PM
In January 2024, 200 monarchs were found dead or dying on the ground at a CA overwintering site. The likely culprit? Nearby residential/commercial pesticide use. 1/ academic.oup.com/etc/advance-...
Pyrethroid insecticides implicated in mass mortality of monarch butterflies at an overwintering site in California
Abstract. Since the 1980s, monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus plexippus) populations across North America have declined by 80–95%. Although several studie
academic.oup.com
July 2, 2025 at 1:22 PM
Reposted by Emily May
Stay connected with ESA—even through employment disruption.

The ESA Member Support Fund supports entomologists who have faced job loss in 2025 by waiving membership dues, allowing beneficiaries to maintain access to key benefits.

Learn more and apply: www.entsoc.org/support/memb...
June 27, 2025 at 9:00 PM
Reposted by Emily May
No Climate Action, No Food.
Climate change reduces farming efficiency, which leads to more land use to grow enough food, which leads to more emissions, and so on and so forth...

Major paper coming out on this feedback loop in a couple of days from the University of Minnesota, @projectdrawdown.bsky.social, and others!
‘On a knife edge’ – hot dry spring threatens arable harvest
Analysis suggests the harvest could be one of the worst in records stretching back to the 1980s.
www.independent.co.uk
June 18, 2025 at 5:39 PM
Reposted by Emily May
We feed you.
They hunt us.
June 11, 2025 at 5:05 AM
Reposted by Emily May
It's 50 pages of legal contortion trying to find a way to argue that the Antiquities Act does not say what it clearly says — presidents only have the power to create national monuments. Congress reserved the power to eliminate or shrink them.
June 10, 2025 at 9:56 PM
Reposted by Emily May
"Secretary Kennedy’s team argues that there is insufficient evidence to support updated COVID-19 vaccines for healthy Americans under 65, but this claim is unfounded. Years of data demonstrate that vaccines save lives and reduce hospitalizations across all age groups." time.com/7292898/rfk-...
RFK Jr. Purging the CDC Advisory Committee Will Put Lives at Risk
"The stakes are high, but a better path is possible," writes Trump’s first Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams.
time.com
June 10, 2025 at 9:52 PM