Wow--5000 followers!! Thank you so much, Twitter!! I never thought I'd get there! I did a screen capture just in case it's a momentary blip...

After I spent much of last week searching for moths to celebrate National Moth Week with little success, this witch showed up literally at our front door. Pretty sure it's a black witch, Ascalapha odorata; its 6-inch wingspan gives it away

Victor Robles of the Washington Nationals plays center field with a praying mantis on his cap; maybe the mantis was waiting for a pop fly? nbcsports.com/washington/nat…

A tiger is loose on the UIUC campus! (Fake news? it's a tiger swallowtail nectaring on bee balm at the UI Pollinatarium prairie)

This spider showed up at our door with an interesting take on the concept of the exo-skeleton

Yesterday the world lost E O Wilson, who drew paradigm-changing insights from studying "the little things that run the world" Beyond science I'm grateful to him for using his incomparable communication skills and enormous intellect to advocate for protecting Earth's biodiversity.

The Scientist starts off 2022 with a story about a new paper (Esselstyn et al. 2021) describing 14 new shrew species in Sulawesi; Happy Shrew Year? bit.ly/3mWDzgz

Here's my first time recruiting a postdoc via Twitter--a project focused on biology, metagenomics, and toxicology of honey bee pollen, beebread, nectar and honey needs you! igb.illinois.edu/sites/default/…

Our paper on olfactory receptor (OR) expression in seabirds is finally out! academic.oup.com/genetics/advan… Apparently the first expression study of ORs in any bird species, including chicken! Let's here it for society journals Genetics Society of America #olfaction #Popgen

Over his film career Nicholas Cage has one regret: eating a live cockroach in Vampire's Kiss. "I still feel bad for the cockroach" nyti.ms/3OwF9lr

Anurag Agrawal (Anurag Agrawal) of Cornell University is being inducted as a member of the National Academy of Sciences for ecological analysis which has increased our understanding of species adaptation. Watch the #NAS159 livestream: ow.ly/7YNN50IU6qx #ecology

US CBP recovered a pyralid species in baggage not collected for >100 years , but no news stories report the species name; maybe that's because specimens were sent to an "etymologist" for ID? bit.ly/3ljoyEe

Fascinating new study in MBE (bit.ly/3QMoeMNon) the Demodex folliculorum genome (Smith et al 2022). As reported in Popular Science bit.ly/3Nn8XiF One major discovery--face mites have an anus. Somehow that discovery seems so well-suited to 2022.

Schadenfreude? A native spicebush swallowtail (Papilio troilus) enjoys nectar from a Canada thistle (Cirsium arvense), which, name notwithstanding, is invasive from Eurasia (aka "lettuce from hell thistle")

We are seeking a TT Asst. Prof. in Quantitative Plant Biology at the U of Illinois! illinois.csod.com/ux/ats/careers… DiversifyEEB The Black Botanists DiversifyPlantSci Black Microbiologists Association (BlackInMicro) ESA_TEK #BlackBotanistsWk Queer EcoEvo #firstgenforward #queerinSTEM #postdocchat #evolution EvolDir

Come work with my new colleague in U of I School of Integrative Biology. And work with the #ABCLab too since we study the surface features and biomechanics of insect wings.

Thanks, Danaus plexippus, for stopping by for a snack on your way out of town. Have a safe flight to Mexico!

One might think a raindrop could do serious damage to a tiny water strider. But a study shows that their low-density, hydrophobic exoskeletons allow them to surf jets and craters made by drops—or easily resurface if pushed underwater. In PNAS: ow.ly/Aznz50Qupys

ILL-INI-NAS!! #NAS161