Free pile score! Awesome plant apical meristem electron microscopy!
#scicomm #botany #plants

Red Sprites are a form of high-atmosphere lightning, extending upward from lightning clouds. When lightning strikes, it sends electrons from the bottom of the cloud to the ground. If the pull of electrons to the ground is strong enough… 🧵1/2
📸 @paulmsmithphoto.bsky.social

Similarly, the town of Kikinda, Serbia erected this statue to celebrate their esteemed community members that are the world’s largest roosting population of the Long Eared Owl (Asio otus)

📸 @reuters.com & Brian Sullivan / Macaulay Library

#scicomm #SuperbOwlSunday

Wishing everyone a very Happy #SuperbOwl Sunday!

Sometimes artistic depictions of these incredible creatures doesn’t always go as planned… like this statue of Australia’s largest owl, the Powerful Owl (Ninox strenua)

📸 ABC News & Stephen Mudge

#scicomm #SuperbOwlSunday

How do tall plants keep their footing in shallow, saturated soils? Buttress Roots! A common adaptation in tropical regions - our favorite example is the palm tree, Iriartea deltoidea, which produces a shapely bouquet of buttress roots at the base of its stem to help stabilize it.
📸 Alexey Yakovlev

This is what the actual fossils look like! …our extremely ancient ancestor 🥹

🧵 3/3
#scicomm #evolution #evo

This incredible illustration from Marianne Collins depicts is a reconstruction based on a particular soft-bodied organism that’s prevalent in Middle Cambrian fossil. Its odd body plan has historically placed it among phylum Problematica (a.k.a. Incertae sedis) 🧵 1/3

...but WHY did the King Fire end up shaped like that?! The fire began downslope (yellow) and then quickly ran upslope (orange > red). Since heat rises, slopes become a natural path of least resistance allowing fires to move easily and rapidly upslope. 
🧵2/2

📸 Natural Hazards by Keller & DeVecchio

As our hearts ache for everyone in LA, we're reminded of the heaviness that can come with inhabiting fire-adapted landscapes. It can be difficult to find light in a moment of such darkness, but I hope this map of the 2014 King Fire is a moment of levity. Fire can be such a dick sometimes. 🧵1/2

The Peter Pepper is an heirloom chili pepper (Capsicum annuum var. annuum) with a spice level of 10,000-23,000 Scoville Units, making it slightly hotter than a jalapeño. This spice is caused by the molecule Capsaicin, which evolved as part of an evolutionary arms race: fungi vs. pepper… 🧵

If you ever find yourself without potable water in a jungle, just look for some pitcher plants with young, unopened pitchers, like this Nepenthes bokorensis in Cambodia. They have pure water inside!

Well that was cathartic. Thanks and welcome to my new followers! Onwards to a brighter, bluer, skyier future full of silly, yet very serious #scicomm 🤗

One of my favorite photos from Nikon’s Small World competition. This is the brain of a fruit fly larva. Those psychedelic rainbow colors are photoconvertible EOS-tagged tubulin cytoskeleton showing neuronal connections.
📸 @vgelfand.bsky.social & Wen Lu from Northwestern U.

...since they're genetically identical, they made the quick decision to collaborate and completely fuse together so they end up growing as one individual from that point onwards. Thus two spores become one tube, or hypha. These fun guys will eventually grow up into a cute pink fluffy mold... 🧵

Wondering about my profile pic? I'm so glad you asked! It's a baby fungus under the microscope! Two spores landed right next to each other, and when they started to germinate, they became a aware of each other and realized that they were related! Clones, in fact, from the same parent!... 🧵