Greg Pask
@gregpask.bsky.social
Associate Professor of Biology at Middlebury College, lover of insect communication, good teaching, and nerd stuff
Reposting!
Greg Pask@gregpask.bsky.social · last mo.Middlebury Biology department is hiring two VAPs for the upcoming years. Please help spread the word, and positions like these can be very helpful in gaining experience to be competitive for TT positions at small liberal arts colleges (it helped me a lot!). www.middlebury.edu/college/acad...
There's one more day to preorder the newly updated version of my first comics collection, Birding Is My Favorite Video Game, and get a PDF download of one of my most popular comics that you can't buy as a print. site.andrewsmcmeel.com/birding-is-m...
Working with @cosplayforscience.bsky.social at #SDCC today! Come check out our panel, "Pokopia: The Science of Saving the World!"
I'm at SDCC and my 1st panel was awesome and about teaching and learning with comics. Some audience members were championing AI for coming up with new superheroes in the activities... 🥱 Like, aren't we here to celebrate creators and artists? If you can't do that without AI, stay in your lane! 🤬
🐜 New in @cp-iscience.bsky.social: We show that leaf-cutting ant OR gene expression is colony-specific and that it changes after exposure to non-nestmate odours. We think that this means they tune their antennae for nestmate recognition. www.cell.com/iscience/ful... #Ants #Olfaction #Behavior (1/2)
Exposure to non-nestmate odors changes the odorant receptor profile in Acromyrmex echinatior leaf-cutting ants
zoology; entomology; neuroscience
cell.com
People who choose AI as their creative output: - hate people and having to work with them - are all hat and no cattle, which is to say, they have "ideas" but don't want to even learn the work to implement them - hate the craft itself, and care only about content, about product, about "end results"
Congrats Mohammed, this looks like an amazing study!
Mohammed Khallaf@khallaf.bsky.social · 3w agoOur new paper is out in @nature.com! We uncovered how a naked mole-rat queen 👑 controls an entire colony: a natural contraceptive scent that suppresses reproduction in other females! A remarkable mammalian parallel to bees and ants! 🐝🐜 @garyrlewin.bsky.social youtu.be/enfv3zJrWKM?...
As an academic, I have decided to pre-empt AI taking my job, so I am going to take ITS job! I am going to start hallucinating, lying to my students, and drinking 700,000 litres of water
#WorldFireflyDay is July 4th-5th! Why is a “day” running over a night? Because that’s when these amazing animals are out and about! 🪲🎆 Get involved in firefly conservation ➡ fireflyatlas.org Learn more about fireflies & where to go see them ➡ xerces.org/fireflies
Middlebury Biology department is hiring two VAPs for the upcoming years. Please help spread the word, and positions like these can be very helpful in gaining experience to be competitive for TT positions at small liberal arts colleges (it helped me a lot!). www.middlebury.edu/college/acad...
Open Positions
middlebury.edu
Welcome, everyone, to our annual meeting for the International Society of Chemical Ecology!!!! Tag us or use #chemecol2026 to share your journey!
A conversation science communicators need to have about AI art 🧪🐙🐡🧵
Spent the weekend with the family doing the Plein Air Festival with Sparrow Art Supply 😊
🚨 Lifer alert! 🚨 Check out this deer bot #fly that @dradriansmith.bsky.social found while we were hunting bugs - my first time getting pics of a wild adult of this family! It's a convincing bee mimic, whose babies live in the sinuses & throats of deer 😋 👀 #Oestridae: #Cephenemyia phobifer NC, USA
Do you know an outstanding aquarist? We're hiring a Senior Aquarist to help run our cephalopod facility at Columbia University. Our team maintains a colony of 250+ cuttlefish, develops new husbandry techniques (inc transgenics) & studies cuttlefish camouflage and social behavior. 1/3 [Pls repost!]
NEW PAPER, JUST OUT! 👀 Insects from the '70s and '80s were already collecting microplastic, decades before the term microplastic even existed. 🤯 A thread on the surprising history of this pollutant and the incredible insect larvae that helped us uncover it. 🐛 Let's dive in! 🧵👇 1/x
"The rise in the island’s invertebrates – beetles, weevils, bush cockroaches and other bugs – has come after a campaign seven years ago to rid the island of about 300,000 invasive rats and mice." #Environment #LordHoweIsland #Biodiversity #Invertebrates #Insects #Conservation
Lord Howe Island got rid of its rats and mice – now its ‘wonderful’ insect life is back
Invasive vermin decimated the island’s native flora and fauna – but its unique cockroaches and beetles are thriving once again
theguardian.com
We (me and @njdowdy.bsky.social) are hiring a PhD student! Come work with us! We seek a PhD student to investigate the evolution of acoustic behavior in Lepidoptera within a comparative evolutionary framework... Job closes this week! Apply ASAP! njdowdy.gitlab.io/balogh-fello...
Kenneth F. Balogh Graduate Student Fellowship
A PhD position investigating the evolution of acoustic behavior in Lepidoptera, co-advised by Dr. Nicolas J. Dowdy (Milwaukee Public Museum) and Dr. Chelsea Cook (Marquette University). Apply by June ...
njdowdy.gitlab.io
Some beautiful moths out tonight with our family blacklighting!
The technology the shits out D papers is impossible to grasp. Yes, that’s it. 🙃
Ketan Joshi@ketanjoshi.co · 2mo agoGoogle's CEO saying that the reason there's intense backlash to AI is because humans aren't "evolved" enough to understand it youtu.be/RgV57kDzcng?...
Alright we’re in business here. Crank the cuteometer to 11 and full steam ahead, boys!
WILL COCAINE MAKE COLLEGE OBSOLETE?
Jeff (Gutenberg Parenthesis) Jarvis@jeffjarvis.bsky.social · 3mo agoWTF, NYer. "If we agree that college primarily serves a credentialling process that stamps select young people as worthy of work..." We do not. So much for the bastion of erudite journalism. This is sensationalism, damaging our most vital institution: education. www.newyorker.com/news/fault-l...
Love this #HKAM26 drawing by my son. Apparently ice cream preference is a huge topic at the Hallownest hot springs 🤣
inspired by a post I saw on here and have since lost, I've started reading "AI companies" as "cigarette manufacturers," so something like this becomes "maker of Newports backs bill to fund smoking literacy in schools"
Sam Cole@samleecole.bsky.social · 3mo agothe biggest tech companies in the world are endorsing a new bill that would shove AI onto kids in school www.404media.co/literacy-in-...
I suspect that the Powers That Be looooove AI because it disengages your brain and softens your thinking. Your free thought, your imagination, gets unplugged and into the socket, the AI node goes. And they control that node. Which means they control your mind. So: they start with kids.
Jordan@jordanpfot.bsky.social · 3mo agoWhat the hell www.newyorker.com/culture/prog...
