How has #evolution shaped Transcription Elongation Factors, important for #GeneExpression? This study by Alex Francette, Karen Arndt &co traces ten core factors to the last eukaryotic common ancestor, and shows they display both conserved and lineage-specific domains. 🧪#AcademicSky plos.io/4eaCUTJ

How ancient are the building blocks of animal sensory systems? Key components of animal sensory systems evolved before animals. We find that choanoflagellates possess diverse & spatially segregated TRP channels, pointing to ancient origins of sensory specialization. doi.org/10.64898/202...

Had a busy summer and collected a lot of flies. Well here is the perfect course providing all sorts of information about how to manage your dipteran specimens @dipteristsforum.bsky.social get a discount :) @dipterists.bsky.social @biologicalrecording.co.uk www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/managing-d...

Managing Diptera Specimens

Learn how to process, preserve and manage fly specimens for recording, research and reference collections.

eventbrite.co.uk

🚨 New bee paper in press, with @jamiesmithbio.bsky.social at Hull and @ejduncan.bsky.social at Leeds! Delighted to have this accepted - huge congrats to Jamie on the first paper out of his PhD 🥳 🎉 Read the paper in online early view form, here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Lasting Impacts of Sublethal Prepupal Heatwaves on Fertility-related Traits of the Solitary Bee Osmia bicornis

Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of heatwaves, which can have severe consequences for insect physiology, development, and repr…

sciencedirect.com

Really excited to see this paper published — congratulations @jamiesmithbio.bsky.social and @jdjgilbert.bsky.social! It’s been a pleasure to contribute to such a fantastic project. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Lasting Impacts of Sublethal Prepupal Heatwaves on Fertility-related Traits of the Solitary Bee Osmia bicornis

Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of heatwaves, which can have severe consequences for insect physiology, development, and repr…

sciencedirect.com

Excellent accessible overview of his research project at @biologyatyork.bsky.social by former post-doc Sandor Piross "When a key resource disappears: what wood ant networks can teach us" - ecolres.hun-ren.hu/en/when-a-ke...

When a key resource disappears: what wood ant networks can teach us - Centre for Ecological Research

At first glance, the world of ants may seem far removed from our everyday lives. Yet, on closer inspection, they often face surprisingly similar challenges.

ecolres.hun-ren.hu

📢Out now in @jevbio.bsky.social, we tried to work out whether heat limits of survival or fertility are reflected in heat shock protein expression across Drosophila 🪰 species. The answer is, well, a bit. With the wonderful @chsmithson.bsky.social @ejduncan.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/jeb/...

Expression of heat shock proteins and thermal sensitivity of male fertility across six Drosophila species

Abstract. Understanding the mechanisms that confer resilience to thermal stress is crucial in the context of climate change. Recently there has been increa

doi.org

Parental care, and more complex cooperative systems of care, have independently evolved in hundreds of animal lineages. In an article published today, we explore how these behaviors evolve 𝘢𝘵 𝘢 𝘮𝘰𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘳 𝘭𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘭l shorturl.at/g5OPw /1

Convergent evolution of a conserved molecular network underlies parenting and sociality - Nature Reviews Genetics

Kay et al. review evidence that parental care, and more complex social behaviour based on parental care, evolved in multiple species through the repeated co-option of members of a pleiotropic molecula...

shorturl.at

Too warm to buzz? Check out our newest paper on how warming temperatures affect bee buzzes in the Arctic. Well done to Charlie and Guadalupe and other coauthors for this nice study in the Swedish Arctic! @hfspo.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Increasing temperatures affect thoracic muscle performance in Arctic bumblebees - Nature Communications

Increasing temperatures threaten cold-adapted pollinators such as Arctic bumblebees by disrupting their physiology. This study found that thorax acceleration during non-flight vibrations peaks at 25 °...

nature.com

🌏 Biodiversity loss has deep-rooted causes—from power imbalances to short-term priorities. These shape indirect & direct drivers like land/sea use change, exploitation & climate change. Graphic from the IPBES #TransformativeChange Assessment ⤵️

Radar technology has been around for decades, used to track & predict weather. Now scientists have made a breakthrough using it to monitor insects - paving the way for cost effective biodiversity tracking across huge areas @katatrepsis.bsky.social @ncas-uk.bsky.social www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article...

Trillions of insects fly above us - weather radar reveals alarming declines

Scientists have made a breakthrough in monitoring insect populations across the UK using an unexpected tool: weather radar.

leeds.ac.uk

📢 PhD opportunity! 📢 Join me, @ejduncan.bsky.social, Tom Sloan + the wider #GairWood team to investigate climate-resilient woodlands in the UK 🌳 with @yes-dtn.bsky.social @earthandenvleeds.bsky.social @leedsleaf.bsky.social

Leeds Ecosystem, Atmosphere, & Forest (LEAF) centre@leedsleaf.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Developing Climate-Resilient Woodlands in the UK: Insights from Gair Wood Join @catzigle.bsky.social and the #GairWood team for a PhD working with our newly-planted research woodland! yes-dtn.ac.uk/research/dev...

What looked like a hearing organ on a tiny stinkbug’s leg turned out to be something far stranger: a fungal nursery that mother bugs use to coat their newly laid eggs in protective symbiotic hyphae, shielding their offspring from parasitic wasps. Learn more in Science: https://scim.ag/4nDrDNm

Bees exhibition at World Museum Liverpool is beautiful! Wonderful perspectives on pollination and the lives of bees. Go and see it. After all, bees are furry, vegetarian wasps. I wish it could visit us at NHM London.

#PrimatePost 🦧💧 Chimps pee when seeing others peeing! 💦 Contagious urination may have social implications for group cohesion, marking territory and long-distance travel - like when you ask your friends to pee before a long car ride! We do it too! 🧪 #science 🏺 #BioAnth www.cell.com/current-biol...

Socially contagious urination in chimpanzees

Onishi and colleagues report socially contagious urination in chimpanzees, whereby individuals synchronize urination with conspecifics.

cell.com

During the last six months there’s been a substantial increase in academics approaching me to ask about leaving #academia… This article articulates many of the reasons why they’re doing that…

David M. Perry@lollardfish.bsky.social · 2y ago

"It is impossible to be a top-line manager and administrator and mentor and researcher and writer and outreach officer and IT expert and online instructor and pedagogical innovator and recruiter and teacher and marker and external examiner and press pundit and grant bidder and editor."

📢 CUT&Tag version 3 Sometimes the preprint to paper route can be quite the odyssey. And so in that vein, we are delighted to give you version 3 of our CUT&Tag optimization and benchmarking manuscript: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

CUT&Tag recovers up to half of ENCODE ChIP-seq histone acetylation peaks

Techniques for genome-wide epigenetic profiling have been undergoing accelerated development toward recovery of high-quality data from bulk and single cell samples. DNA-protein interactions have tradi...

biorxiv.org

A massive study with 71,922 people in 68 countries shows widespread trust in science. Most people believe that scientists should take an active role in shaping public policy www.futurity.org/trust-in-sci...

Study debunks claims of 'crisis of trust' in science

"Our results show that most people in most countries have a relatively high level of trust in scientists."

futurity.org

Nancy Rothwell: UK science and research ‘at risk of declining’. Interview: Ex-Manchester vice-chancellor, advising ministers on industrial strategy, warns “erosion of funding” will create long-lasting legacy www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-u...

Eusociality evolves more readily in haplodiploid #insects because of an inflated #genetic relatedness between sisters - the transition rate from solitary to eusocial life was 15-100 times higher in haplodiploid than diploid lineages www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Eusociality evolved at a much higher rate in haplodiploid insects

As a corollary to inclusive fitness theory, W.D. Hamilton’s famous haplodiploid hypothesis proposed that eusociality evolves more readily in haplodiploids because of an inflated genetic relatedness be...

biorxiv.org

In a new Science study, researchers present CASTER, a tool that uses arrangements in DNA sequences known as site patterns to infer “species trees,” which are diagrams that depict the evolutionary relationships among species. Learn more:

CASTER: Direct species tree inference from whole-genome alignments

Genomes contain mosaics of discordant evolutionary histories, challenging the accurate inference of the tree of life. While genome-wide data are routinely used for discordance-aware phylogenomic analyses, due to modeling and scalability limitations, the...

scim.ag

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Government overturns Tory measure and bans emergency use of bee-killing pesticide

Emergency use of Cruiser SB, a neonicotinoid pesticide highly toxic to bees, to be outlawed in UK in line with EU

theguardian.com

Hurray! Some good news for bees at last. Our new government has followed the science, and refused the application by sugar beet farmers to use banned neonicotinoid pesticides.

The University of Leeds has become the first Russell Group university to officially announce that it is quitting Elon Musk’s social media site X. It will, however, be alive and well on Bluesky. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-u...

I'm so proud of the University of Leeds for being the first Russell Group university to leave X.