This won’t be for everyone An amazing aggregation of harvestman Sequoia national Park, CA
Nathan Butterworth
@butterworthbugs.bsky.social
Studying big questions with little bugs 🐌... the ecology of sex 🦐🪰🦚 | ephemeral resources 🍂🦌| biodiversity🪲 @ Deakin University, Australia He/him https://www.nathanbutterworth.com
Do you like invertebrates with small geographic ranges? Join our symposium at this years Australian Entomological Society @austentsoc.bsky.social "Short-range endemism in Australian invertebrates: Patterns, problems, and conservation imperatives" Abstracts due July 30th! event.mq.edu.au/aes2026/
Do you have a background in behavioural ecology and are you interested in doing a PhD in Australia? I’m looking for new grad students so check out our website (BobWongLab.org) or come find me in Torino at #ISBE2026. 🐟🐠
Panorpa insolens, a scorpionfly, defends her delicious mystery lump from a patient flesh fly (Sarcophagidae). Wing-flagging in Panorpa is used for both intraspecific and interspecific communication, and in some species studied, these displays are often used to guard food from other scavengers
Leptometopa latipes (Milichiidae)...2-3mm freeloader fly. Seem to be few records nationally, but conservative estimate of 5000 today at Bempton Cliffs, where I suspect they associate with seabird guano. They were all over the cliff edge hand rails! @dipteristsforum.bsky.social @ynuorg.bsky.social
Published today in @nature.com, our study shows that the #foodweb trophic structure is critical for #ecosystemfunctioning. Read it here: rdcu.be/frxEl This has been an incredibly rewarding collaboration with many amazing scientists! 🌐🧪🦑🍁🌱 @waikatouniversity.bsky.social @idiv-research.bsky.social
Introducing the world's only known cave-adapted spider wasp... Troglopompilus miracaecatus (Pompilidae) from the caves of the Nullarbor, Australia. A world first: Eyeless, long limbs and antennae, highly reduced wings. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #cave #wasp #biodiversity
Why is it so hard for animals to invent a new mating dance? @thekeithing.bsky.social @theconversation.com
A waltz over evolutionary timescales: why it’s so hard for animals to invent a new mating dance
Dune flies have 41 different dance moves. Changing even one of them is rarer than you’d think.
aus01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com
A chilly 12 Celsius day in Melbourne, but the blowflies are out showing their colours off in the sun. In blue, Lucilia porphyrina. In orange, Calliphora ochracea. Interestingly - L. porphyrina (blue) is only known from the northern states. Climate change may be driving a southern range extension!!
Happy #flyday! An ideal day to share the 1st chapter from my PhD, now published in Animal Behavior! We did a deep dive into courtship in the apple maggot fly, famous for sympatric speciation and spider mimicry @animbehsociety.bsky.social #evosky 🧪 1/2 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Mutual visual displays and female signals underpin mating success in Rhagoletis pomonella flies
Courtship is an interactive process that serves multiple functions and often involves signals and responses from both sexes. To understand how sexual …
sciencedirect.com
How do courtship dances evolve? Paper out now in Behavioral Ecology 🪰 "Courtship choreography is stabilized among genetically isolated populations" doi.org/10.1093/behe... Video of our study species the dancing dune fly (Apotropina ornatipennis) below.
The courtship display of Apotropina ornatipennis (Diptera: Chloropidae)
YouTube video by Nathan
youtu.be
Mary E. Fuller pioneered the field of carrion ecology. Her work was cited by Charles Elton in 1966 (The Pattern of Animal Communities) as "the only full-dress account of the whole community in natural carrion and its stages of succession".
🆕 in "Ecology": Who spreads more disease - males or females? At least in water fleas, it depends on temperature 📄The sicker sex is plastic: Thermal plasticity determines sex biases in pathogen transmission doi.org/10.1002/ecy....
A bugs-eye view from the forest floor 🪰🐌 Currently collecting across South East New South Wales to assess hotspots of invertebrate endemism! @heloisegibb.bsky.social @paigematheson.bsky.social
New preprint! Courtship choreography is stabilised among genetically isolated populations Check out the mesmerising courtship display of Apotropina ornatipennis (Diptera: Chloropidae) doi.org/10.1101/2025... with @bioblake.bsky.social, @angmcgaughran.bsky.social, @thekeithing.bsky.social, et al
The courtship display of Apotropina ornatipennis (Diptera: Chloropidae) from Australia
YouTube video by Nathan
youtu.be
"The house fly is a migrant, and it appears to suffer from an incurable case of wanderlust. The fly is born in a mass of filth, being, according to one philosopher, the resurrection, the reincarnation of man's own dirt and carelessness" - Murvosh & Thaggard 1966 Ann Ento Soc Am. Photo by M. Bertone
Excited to have this one published! Carrion-breeding flies of Australia and New Zealand: A review and key to adults. We summarise over a century of information on the ecology and physiology of the many beautiful carrion flies 🪰 An enormous effort led by Nikolas Johnston doi.org/10.1111/aen....
Carrion‐breeding flies of Australia and New Zealand: A review and key to adults
Carrion-breeding flies are diverse with over 70 species in the Australasian/Oceanian region, predominantly from the families Calliphoridae and Sarcophagidae. These flies play crucial roles in ecosyst....
doi.org
I'm Nathan - I research and photograph bugs. To start my bluesky account, here is a cool fly I found from Raglan, New Zealand. 🦟
One of the #strangerthings find in the Upside Down, whoops I mean #DownUnder is the Western Clawless Upside-down fly - Nothoasteia clausa. Always facing down, they dart around inside Xanthorrhoea grass trees. I'm looking forward to exploring the mystery of their relationships to other #Diptera
A dream comes true! In Feb'25, I will join @MonashUni as a group leader on Global Change Biology. Our lab's primary focus will be understanding how animals respond to global change using heterogeneous data and developing an efficient conservation plan to mitigate the impact. (1/3)
