Tessera
Folgen

Adrian Smith

@dradriansmith.bsky.social

Scientist on-exhibit at NC Museum of Natural Sciences & NC State. Creator of Ant Lab on YouTube

37 Posts1558 Follower429 Folgt
John P. Friel, Ph.D.@friel.bsky.social · 2d ago

New publication from @dradriansmith.bsky.social on media-based storytelling becoming a prominent application for natural history museum research.

Natural History Collections and Museomics@nhcm.pensoft.net · 2d ago

🏛️ In the following article, an opportunity for media-based storytelling to become a prominent application of natural history museum research is proposed, following a field-wide survey revealing that these stories are underrepresented on institutional social media: doi.org/10.3897/nhcm.3.176227

Ksepka Lab@ksepkalab.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Ants: Tiny Creatures, Big Lives is officially open at the Bruce Museum! Enter the tunnel and you will meet "Buckley", our five foot long scaled-up Dinoponera ant. Buckley is named after her creator, the great Dan Buckley. The smaller ant is my daughter, dressed as an alate queen for the opener.

Bild
Matt Bertone@bertonemyia.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Still looking for horror now that Halloween's over? Fortunately/unfortunately it's all around! 💀 A parasitoid laid a few eggs in a moth egg. As the caterpillar hatched & grew, wasp embryos multiplied inside to 100s of larvae that ate the entire host, eventually killing & turning it into a husk 😳 🤢

A pale yellow caterpillar husk, filled with rice-like wasp larvae, sits doubled on itself inside a silken cocoon. the caterpillar was almost certainly a looper (Noctuidae: Plusiinae) and the parasitoids are encyrtid wasps (Encyrtidae: Copidosoma). Brought to me by a generous and curious client.Close up of the pale yellow caterpillar husk, filled with rice-like wasp larvae. The caterpillar was almost certainly a looper (Noctuidae: Plusiinae) and the parasitoids are encyrtid wasps (Encyrtidae: Copidosoma). Brought to me by a generous and curious client.Close up of the pale yellow caterpillar husk, now filled with dark wasps waiting to emerge. The caterpillar was almost certainly a looper (Noctuidae: Plusiinae) and the parasitoids are encyrtid wasps (Encyrtidae: Copidosoma). Brought to me by a generous and curious client.A composite plate of tiny parasitoid wasps on a white background. The top has two views of the small wasp, showing the meallic green and purple body, while the bottom shows the wasp dwarfed by a US quarter coin. Brought to me by a generous and curious client.
Aeon Magazine@aeon.co · 9mo ago

In this video, the biologist Adrian Smith @dradriansmith.bsky.social provides close-ups of a diverse array of caterpillars and shows how they support healthy ecosystems, employ a range of strategies to protect themselves from predators and transform into seemingly entirely different creatures

Close-ups reveal how caterpillars live long enough to cocoon | Aeon Videos

From poison spikes to fake snake eyes, caterpillars employ many clever strategies to survive to their dazzling adulthoods

buff.ly

Adrian Smith@dradriansmith.bsky.social · 11mo ago

We put out some social science research via preprint: "Natural history museums are missing an opportunity to present research and collections on YouTube" doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Natural history museums are missing an opportunity to present research and collections on YouTube

There have been repeated calls in the US for scientists to communicate the importance of biological collections to both a general public audience and to policy makers. Natural history museums that hou...

doi.org

Bhamla Lab @ Georgia Tech@bhamlalab.bsky.social · 12mo ago

How do tiny ripple bugs surf raging rivers? Check out our new work in @science.org Work led by Victor Ortega-Jimenez, Dongjin Kim, Sunny Kumar, Changhwan Kim, Je-Sung Koh, and Saad Bhamla - a collaboration between UC Berkeley, Georgia Tech, and Ajou University. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Ultrafast elastocapillary fans control agile maneuvering in ripple bugs and robots

Rhagovelia ripple bugs use specialized middle-leg fans with a flat-ribbon architecture to navigate the surfaces of fast-moving streams. We show that the fan’s directional stiffness enables fast, passi...

science.org