Lucas A. Nell | Lightnews

Isa Betancourt @isabetabug.bsky.social · Sep 19

That previous photo is me taking a video of an adult, winged, female damselfly who is underwater and laying eggs in the stems of the underwater plants. Here is the view. You can watch her curl her abdomen around and insert the two eggs!! 🥚 🌿

Anurag Agrawal @anurag-asclepias.bsky.social · Sep 15

Tachinid #parasitoid emerging from #monarch #butterfly chrysalis... The larva was never exposed, but field collected leaves were fed to the caterpillar. Many tachinids lay their eggs on leaves, only to be consumed by caterpillars, later consuming the caterpillars from the inside out

Daniel Bolnick @danielbolnick.bsky.social · Sep 12

The next stand-alone meeting of the American Society of Naturalists @asn-amnat.bsky.social will be on the East Coast!!! Mark your calendars for January 8-12, 2027 and we'll talk evolution, ecology, behavior, and integrative organismal biology at www.themansionatglencove.com/meeting-venues

VENUES | The Mansion at Glen Cove | Luxury Mansion Wedding Venues & Events

Discover premium meeting spaces at The Mansion at Glen Cove. Our mansion is perfect for corporate events with elegant surroundings and modern amenities.

www.themansionatglencove.com

Lucas Nell @lucasnell.bsky.social · Sep 4

Mind blown

Veeloxxy Bites @the-episiarch.bsky.social · Sep 4

So this ant...can give birth to male clones of its own species AND of a different species... then mates with the male clones of the other species to produce hybrid workers...and mates with males of its own species to produce new queens... 🐜
Yo these ants are wildin'
🧪
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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...

www.nature.com

Veeloxxy Bites @the-episiarch.bsky.social · Sep 4

So this ant...can give birth to male clones of its own species AND of a different species... then mates with the male clones of the other species to produce hybrid workers...and mates with males of its own species to produce new queens... 🐜
Yo these ants are wildin'
🧪
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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...

www.nature.com

Lucas Nell @lucasnell.bsky.social · Aug 8

I'm going!

Lucas Nell @lucasnell.bsky.social · Aug 1

Very cool and love the artwork!

Skyler Berardi @skylerberardi.bsky.social · Jul 31

Check out our paper in Evolution Letters!

We used D. melanogaster pigmentation as a focal trait to explore parallelism in phenotypic and genomic responses to environmental change - read more at the link below 👇

Evolution Letters @evolletters.bsky.social · Jul 31

How predictably does complex trait adaptation proceed over space and time in wild populations?
doi.org/10.1093/evle...

Now in @evolletters.bsky.social by @skylerberardi.bsky.social, @paulrschmidt.bsky.social et al.

📷: Dr. Rush Dhillon

Tom Astle @tjalamont.bsky.social · Aug 1

Two bombardier beetles (Brachinus sp.) attacking a termite. Many insects defend themselves with smelly/irritating chemicals; these beetles go to 11. They mix chemicals in their abdomen, and the resulting reaction reaches near boiling; the noxious mixture is emitted with an audible pop. 🐙🌿 #insects

A macro photo of two beetles attacking another insect, on a pale, crystalline rock. The beetles have dull dark bluish abdomens and orange head/legs/thorax. Their prey is a similar-sized, orange-brown insect, probably a termite alate (an alate is a winged, reproductive male or female termite or ant that leaves to form a new colony; this one has lost its wings, which they do after their short nuptial flight; in this case, it might also have been due to the beetles' attack).

Skyler Berardi @skylerberardi.bsky.social · Jul 31

Check out our paper in Evolution Letters!

We used D. melanogaster pigmentation as a focal trait to explore parallelism in phenotypic and genomic responses to environmental change - read more at the link below 👇

Evolution Letters @evolletters.bsky.social · Jul 31

How predictably does complex trait adaptation proceed over space and time in wild populations?
doi.org/10.1093/evle...

Now in @evolletters.bsky.social by @skylerberardi.bsky.social, @paulrschmidt.bsky.social et al.

📷: Dr. Rush Dhillon

Figure showing the experimental overview as a graphic. Remaining alt text taken from the figure caption in the paper: (A) we sampled flies from six wild orchard populations ranging from Homestead, FL, to Lancaster, MA, and established isofemale lines in the laboratory. (B) We returned to a focal orchard in Media, PA, at early- and late-season timepoints and collected flies to capture evolutionary patterns following winter and summer conditions. (C) We then seeded outdoor mesocosms (N = 9) with an outbred population originating from early-season collections in Media, PA, and sampled flies at the end of summer (mid-season) and fall (late-season) to determine if seasonal patterns are recapitulated in experimental populations controlled for migration, drift, and cryptic population structure. (D) Across each wild or experimental context, we sampled flies, established lines in the lab, completed common garden treatment to remove environmental effects, and scored females for abdominal pigmentation. We also conducted pooled DNA sequencing on additional flies sampled from each population to map genomic patterns for candidate pigmentation SNPs.

Alejandro Montenegro @aemonten.bsky.social · Jul 10

👀

"We argue that permissive open-access data policies naturally facilitate exploitative workflows, from direct API access for data dredging to large language model authoring of papers."

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Quantifying new threats to health and biomedical literature integrity from rapidly scaled publications and problematic research

The last three years have seen an explosion in published manuscripts analysing open-access health datasets, in many cases presenting misleading or biologically implausible findings. There is a growing...

www.medrxiv.org

Andrea L Graham @grahammunology.bsky.social · Dec 30

Just 3 more weeks to apply for the Princeton EEB Fellows Program! 🌵🦥🦩🦠🧫🌻Please identify at least 2 faculty collaborators, craft your research program, & apply here:

puwebp.princeton.edu/AcadHire/app...

@sse-evolution.bsky.social
@asn-amnat.bsky.social
@eseb.bsky.social
Please repost &/or apply!

puwebp.princeton.edu

Chenxin Li, PhD @chenxinli2.bsky.social · Dec 10

Friends don't let friends make bad graphs repo has been updated!

Friends don't let friends use boxplot for binomial (bimodal) data. Is your box plot hiding something from you?

#DataVisualization

github.com/cxli233/Frie...

A figure comparing box plot and showing all data points.
Group1: normally distributed data.
Group2: bimodal data.
Group3: Data with 3 modes.

Lucas Nell @lucasnell.bsky.social · Nov 27

Could I be added please?

Elena Litchman @elenalitchman.bsky.social · Nov 26

I am looking for a PhD student to start in fall of 2025 at MSU. Potential topics include trait-based approaches to plankton community resilience, temperature effects on communities, harmful algal blooms and many others. Please get in touch if interested. More info: www.kl-lab.group.

Klausmeier-Litchman Lab

Welcome to the Klausmeier-Litchman lab! We study empirical and theoretical community ecology, biodiversity and climate change, focusing on phytoplankton, other microbes and general theory. We use obse...

www.kl-lab.group

Nicky Bay @nickybay.bsky.social · Nov 26

Saiva bullata is endemic to the mountains of Northern Thailand. Despite its colours, it remains extremely well camouflaged when resting on the tree trunk. Yet another polka-dotty species!

Oded Rechavi @odedrechavi.bsky.social · Nov 19

Hope I'm the first to post this all time classic on this platform

Lucas Nell @lucasnell.bsky.social · Nov 17

Yep, thank you!

Lucas Nell @lucasnell.bsky.social · Nov 17

@lucasnell.bsky.social

bsky.app

Lucas Nell @lucasnell.bsky.social · Nov 17

@lucasnell.bsky.social

bsky.app

TRAstonDrs @castltrastondrs.bsky.social · Oct 30

NIAID releases alternative to BioRender, all illustrations freely available in public domain
bioart.niaid.nih.gov

Christie Wilcox @nerdychristie.bsky.social · Mar 20

Brains are soft and squishy—but they might preserve better than other soft tissues. That story, a conversation about eco-evo dynamics with @lucasnell.bsky.social, and more of the best in Science and science in today's #ScienceAdviser www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪

Alexandra Morton-Hayward is a forensic anthropologist at the University of Oxford studying the way brains preserve in the archaeological record. GRAHAM POULTER

Lucas Nell @lucasnell.bsky.social · Mar 15

Excited to share our new paper out in Science! We combined simulations, experiments, and field data to show how dispersal simultaneously stabilizes species and genetic diversity, which results in persistent eco-evo dynamics. doi.org/10.1126/scie...

Dispersal stabilizes coupled ecological and evolutionary dynamics in a host-parasitoid system

Experiments and simulations show that dispersal maintains host genetic diversity and promotes host-parasitoid coexistence.

doi.org

Tom Astle @tjalamont.bsky.social · Jan 23

The very cool caterpillar of an African death's-head hawkmoth (Acherontia atropos), found at night in Madagascar.

#ento #invertebrate 🌿 🐙

Macro photo of a bright yellow caterpillar with blue diagonal stripes and white dorsal spines, clinging to the underside of a spiny twig, against a black background.

Lucas Nell @lucasnell.bsky.social · Dec 16

New preprint out: many individual chironomid midge species can live in some wild places (e.g., Himalayan glaciers, hot springs). What shared features allow them to do this? doi.org/10.1101/2023...

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