Maxime Dahirel
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mdahirel.bsky.social
Maxime Dahirel
@mdahirel.bsky.social
250 followers 71 following 300 posts
they/he | Urban ecologist, Dr of Snails, sometimes Spider Wrangler, these days mostly Computer Swearer-At. May make and give baked goods without warnings. https://mdahirel.github.io/
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Reposted by Maxime Dahirel
jopabinia.bsky.social
Never not be snailposting 🐌

Amphissa versicolor, Montana de Oro state park, CA
Bright pink snail with elongated/quite spired shell. Pale foot slightly visible. On light colored rocks in a tidepool
November 10, 2025 at 2:53 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
If you see this, post your bird art
A clean digital doodle of a northern cardinal perched on a fence, with a grey-green square as background A messier digital sketch of a blue tit, interrogative A quick digital sketch of a common kingfisher, on a messy green background meant to evoke leaves
November 10, 2025 at 7:03 PM
Reposted by Maxime Dahirel
petrathepostdoc.bsky.social
We're snailposting, post your snails!

#invertebrates #SciArt
grid of 3x2 white square, each one having either a single or a pair of snails, scaly foot snail in black, two banana slugs intertwined, two sea snails in a cream stripey shell poking underneath, two suspicious leopard slugs, two bright green very long shell snails, one lava looking slug with a black and red shell and a red foot.
November 9, 2025 at 10:34 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
I did not break this shell, nor did it break after the snail died; they are just Like That* www.inaturalist.org/observations...
November 9, 2025 at 6:57 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
I obviously have many, but let's go with this one because you can see it loping www.inaturalist.org/observations...
November 9, 2025 at 9:34 AM
mdahirel.bsky.social
Apparently there are Birds outside?
A bunch of Northern Lapwings flying towards the left of the frame on a grey sky. These are blue/black and white birds with quite large wings A Goldcrest on a tree branch. It's a small bird with a black spot around its eye making it look bigger, and a big yellow stripe on its forehead. The background behind it is very orange, very fall colours
November 2, 2025 at 2:40 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
so many good goobers
petrathepostdoc.bsky.social Petra Korlević @petrathepostdoc.bsky.social · 15d
how we doing on goobers, we good on goobers?

#invertebrates #SciArt
a grid of teeny tiny inverterbrate drawings on a white background, 6 rows and 23 columns, ranging from crabs, butterflies, grasshopers, moths, caterpillars, starfish, cephalopods, scorpions, dragonflies, spiders, isopods, mantises, clams, snails, flies, sponges, sea worms, flatworms, jellyfish, sea cucumbers, bees, bumblebees, ants, shieldbugs, slugs, sea slugs, centipedes, millipedes, anemones, and more
October 27, 2025 at 11:03 AM
Reposted by Maxime Dahirel
kymdeyn.bsky.social
Reposting this poem here for @thelabandfield.bsky.social who retweets it every winter. Yet again, I'm wondering where *is* my soup and hibernation?
No Talk, I’m Sleepy Unfortunately, the spotted garden eel. With regret, the lark. My apologies, the dark bleating of winter, the vice-like grip of my heart. How language deserts me, its most faithful engineer, its very best silly sod. There is altogether too much of everything. The light is only pretending to get out of bed. Where is my soup and hibernation? Why am I expected to be? I have become a dormouse. Undisturbed until spring.
November 23, 2024 at 9:44 AM
Reposted by Maxime Dahirel
americanbeetles.bsky.social
lil sticker design for ECN this year, trying to retain design consistency with last year's stickers but also needed to add little gumboots and a tiny oatmilk latte
sticker design for a bug professionals conference, featuring an iconic beetle of the PNW (a rain beetle, Pleocomidae) in front of a generically Portland-like backdrop. I know that's not a perfect Mt Hood but at least I didn't just draw Mt Rainier like I always do photo of last year's sticker, an Eleodes in front of a generically Sonoran desert landscape (for the same conference but in Phoenix)
October 8, 2025 at 8:27 PM
Reposted by Maxime Dahirel
jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social
Most Nighthawk
Most Pauraque
Most Seedsnipe
Most Sandpiper
Most Auklet
Most Tern
Most Grebe
Most Storm-Petrel
Most Bittern
Most Pygmy-Owl
Most Boobook
Most Honeyguide
Most Flycatcher
thelabandfield.bsky.social Dr Alex Bond @thelabandfield.bsky.social · Sep 12
There are 13 birds with "Least" in the common name and none with "Most".

This seems to be an oversight.
September 12, 2025 at 6:11 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
One of my main snail models and what looks like one of my main spider models? On the same 17th century painting? #InverteFest

(Flowers in a Glass Bottle on a Marble Plinth, Jan Davidsz. de Heem, about 1670, National Gallery, London www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/ja...)
A detail of the bottom part of an old painting. We can see a glass bottle on a plinth, with the stems of flowers visible in the bottle, and some fruits and flowers visible around the bottle. But more importantly, on the plinth, there is also a bumblebee, a grove snail, and what looks like a cross spider (and is at least definitely an Araneus)
August 29, 2025 at 10:31 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
In addition, @youn-henry.drosophila.social.ap.brid.gy also happens to be a very talented illustrator and artist (more, including lots of stuff of interest to the #InverteFest crowd, at jesuisunstegosaure.artstation.com)
A watercolor illustration showing a parasitoid wasp on some bramble, probing cutesy little green aphids passing by to see which ones she's gonna lay eggs in. There's one aphid that looks very brown and dead: it's a "mummy", there's a parasitoid developing in it! The background is full of very detailed greenery; there's a couple bugs hidden in it, including a caterpillar munching on a leaf
August 29, 2025 at 10:00 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
In continued #InverteFest published paper catchup: Sometimes I work on inverts that are not snails or spiders! Like here, where I used my Computer Swearer-At skills to help a friend analyse an experiment with aphids attacked by parasitoid wasps, to see when aphid symbionts help protect them vs not
August 29, 2025 at 9:12 PM
Reposted by Maxime Dahirel
citrussapling.bsky.social
horSeShoe crabS!! #art #invertefest
Two horseshoe crabs, drawing an S in the sand with their tracks. There's some starfish and shells in the sand, and the ocean coming in on the right.
August 29, 2025 at 5:05 PM
Reposted by Maxime Dahirel
franzanth.bsky.social
We present: The Art of #InverteFest - August 2025 Edition
A digital art book showcasing the work of 100 artists from around the world, in celebration of overlooked invertebrate fauna.

Thank you to the artists who contributed to our book!

Download here drive.google.com/file/d/19wfG...

#Art #SciArt
a promo image showing various pages from the book, each page showcasing different animals like an orchid mantis, opabinia, a butterfly. the art featured shows a range of different medium, including digital, plushie, papercraft, 3D render, comic, and so on.
August 28, 2025 at 5:32 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
I was literally explaining this to a couple of friends a few days ago, so: these upper tentacles are what the larger group making up the overwhelming majority of land snails and slugs is named after: Stylommatophora, roughly "wearing eye on stalk" #InverteFest
restingdinoface.bsky.social Riley Black - When the Earth Was Green out now 🌱 @restingdinoface.bsky.social · Aug 27
What lovely tentacles you have!

The upper tentacles of snails house the eyes, but even more important is the lower pair. The tentacles closet to the ground are their sniffers, picking up olfactory cues. #InvertFest
A common brown snail on a concrete sidewalk
August 27, 2025 at 4:49 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
A tiny part of this paper was motivated by me learning a few years ago that (i) snails can get sexually-transmitted worms and (ii) that the species infecting this snail was literally described at my alma mater a few years before I was born, but had barely been studied since. #InverteFest
August 26, 2025 at 5:53 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
It's #InverteFest, so it's time to correct my forgetting to post about my latest paper from a couple months ago. It has *double* the invertebrates: snails, and their parasites! doi.org/10.1093/cz/z...
How does urbanization shape shell phenotype, behavior, and parasite prevalence in the snail Cornu aspersum?
Abstract. Urbanization is a complex and multivariate environmental change, leading to habitat fragmentation and loss, changes in local climate, soil imperv
doi.org
August 26, 2025 at 1:21 PM
Reposted by Maxime Dahirel
biologizing.bsky.social
Perfect timing for #InverteFest because my second thesis paper is out! TLDR; I counted two bajillion hydrozoans and about a dozen guys of every other species combined on four different types of substrate (rock, mesh, plastic, and wood) to see if larvae have preferences! peerj.com/articles/198...
A photoplate from a scientific article, it shows images of a bunch of different tiny invertebrates on different substrates, including copepods, amphipods, hydrozoan and coral colonies, sponges, worms, and more.
August 26, 2025 at 12:29 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
Shy jumping spider for the first day of #InverteFest
A jumping spider on a metallic fence. The spider is overall brownish, which makes the teal color of its eyes pop
August 25, 2025 at 11:14 PM
Reposted by Maxime Dahirel
delightmonster.bsky.social
reupping my sweet-faced snailcerers for #invertefest
delightmonster.bsky.social kate horowitz (she/???) @delightmonster.bsky.social · May 15
The Snailcerers' Journey

These are Cuban land snails (Blaesospira echinus infernalis), and they actually [mostly] look like that. *Please* go look them up. You will not regret it.

#art #SciArt #invertebrates #snails
Extremely cute cartoon of two snail sorcerers journeying down a pink crystal path across a pink landscape. The snailcerers wear their spiny corkscrew shells on their heads like wizards’ hats. A pale pink moon hangs in the distance above a pink mountain range.
August 25, 2025 at 3:52 PM
Reposted by Maxime Dahirel
franzanth.bsky.social
Greetings, chordate comrades. #InverteFest is upon us.

tl;dr: Over the last 7 days every April, August, and December, we invite you to show the internet your coolest bugs & slugs.

Go find critters, post your art, write wikipedia pages, do whatever you like to celebrate invertebrates with us!
What is #InverteFest? It's a periodic event where we invite you to celebrate the overlooked invertebrate fauna around you and share the joys of discovery online. #InverteFest takes place every April, August, & December over the last 7 days of the month. Going out? 1. Find invertebrates 2. Share observations online using the hashtag #InverteFest 3. Interact with others who are celebrating the event NOT Going out? - Post your squid painting - Stream a game where you play as a crab with a knife - Selfie with your 27 beetle enamel pins - Write wikipedia pages Questions? ask franzanth / maureenbug / saimihanma More info and ideas on: invertefest.com
August 4, 2025 at 4:39 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
Thinking about the Worms trapped in Snail Shells again (writing an application where a small part is about them)
mdahirel.bsky.social Maxime Dahirel @mdahirel.bsky.social · Jan 28
Continuing my quest to mention the Worms trapped in Snail Shells every opportunity I get
mdahirel.bsky.social Maxime Dahirel @mdahirel.bsky.social · Jan 28
Not bivalves but in land snails, you can find nematodes trapped in the shell (gonna need a microscope at the table to point it to everyone though): www.nature.com/articles/s41... - and one of mine where we used that to compare urban and non-urban snail pops peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10....
July 18, 2025 at 5:31 PM
Reposted by Maxime Dahirel
americanbeetles.bsky.social
Thank u Vanessa for this excellent photo of my proposed classification scheme for Coleoptera
A photo of a blonde lady holding a long stick and gesticulating towards a projected slide of general beetle categories. These include “squiggly guy,” “swimmy guy,” and “bitey guy”
July 17, 2025 at 5:20 PM
mdahirel.bsky.social
Very happy with this new lens I got myself a few weeks ago, both it and the local parks keep delivering
A Western Willow Spreadwing hanging under a grass blade, with all the background vegetation completely out of focus. it's a very metallic green damselfly An immature Bush Snail (Fruticicola fruticum) hanging under a nettle leaf. It's a yellow/cream snail with dark brown blotches A painted lady butterfly (Vanessa cardui), on some valerian flowers (I think? I am bad at flowers). Its wings are closed, so we see the underwings, and it looks great: the forewing is red and black with white spots, while the hindwing has a very complex mesh of brown spots, which also eyespots A close-up of a fencepost jumping spider (Marpissa muscosa), you guessed it, on a fencepost. The spider is directly facing the photographer, and it's so close only its head is in focus
July 1, 2025 at 12:07 PM