In zijn project "We Were and Still Are… Here" legt de Palestijnse onderzoeker Tarek Bakri bloot wat de Israëlische bezetter probeerde te verbergen. Hij spoort verdwenen dorpen op, brengt gestolen huizen in kaart en bewaart wat de bezetting niet heeft kunnen uitwissen. www.mo.be/analyse/wij-...

‘Wij waren, en zijn nog altijd... hier’ – MO*

mo.be

Veel mensen die naar Ceuta zwommen waren jongeren. Minstens 88 van hen kwamen om het leven. Vorig najaar gingen veel jonge Marokkanen uit protest de straat op, en ook dat was niet zonder gevaar. We spraken drie demonstranten. ‘Voor het eerst durfden we onze onvrede te uiten.’

Jonge Marokkanen zijn het zat: ‘Niemand vertrouwt de overheid nog’

Drie jonge Marokkanen vertellen waarom ze in opstand komen, ondanks de gevaren.

buff.ly

New paper out 😊 besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Plant species richness is key for restoring grassland butterfly assemblages

The results indicate that successful restoration of grassland vegetation and butterflies is strongly linked. To fully restore target butterfly assemblages, future grassland restoration should aim to ....

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

To nobody’s surprise, “Payment‐based open access is biasing scientific participation from the Global South in ecology” - Glad that these authors have put some data into it, but gutted that this is the reality. nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Payment‐based open access is biasing scientific participation from the Global South in ecology

Opening access to the products of scientific research is widely considered a key step toward both fairness and better science worldwide. Since the 1990s, different forms of open access (OA) to journa...

nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Bordeaux, France, has now recorded more days above 40°C in 2026 alone than during the entire 105-year period from 1920 (when observations began) to 2025. This is deeply shocking.

Grote bek voor een land dat niet eens fatsoenlijke opvang in Ter Apel kan organiseren.

Sometimes you've gotta go metallic to mimic your model! This common tropical hover #fly at the top is a convincing mimic of the local orchid #bees in the genus #Euglossa (bottom). #FlySchool2026 #Syrphidae: #Ornidia obesa Soltis Center, Costa Rica

Sometimes the butterfly gods smile down on you... A bilateral gynandromorph Common Blue at Grafton Wood, Worcs 1/8/26. @westmbms-99.bsky.social @worcswt.bsky.social @savebutterflies.bsky.social @ukbutterflies.bsky.social

In @dev-journal.bsky.social, an 'In Preprints' perspective on our recent biorxiv paper. Honestly a massive honour to be written up by the great @pbeldade.bsky.social !!! journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

In preprints: the genetic basis of the development and evolution of melanic pigmentation on butterfly wings

A recent preprint by Joseph Hanly and colleagues (Hanly et al., 2026 preprint) investigates the role of a recently identified long non-coding RNA, ivory, and an associated microRNA, mir-193, on wing s...

journals.biologists.com

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Predicted decline in common bird and butterfly species even under conservation policy scenarios in Europe - Nature Ecology & Evolution

Projections for 265 common bird and 144 common butterfly species across Europe under multiple sustainability scenarios, including those of existing conservation objectives, find no scenario in which t...

nature.com

Please share: Full-time PhD position on Butterfly Evolution at High Elevations 🦋⛰️ The project aims to understand the evolution and adaptation of Andean white butterflies using genomics. DEADLINE: September 11, 2026 More info: pavelmatos.wordpress.com/join-us/

Join us

Opportunities Below are the positions currently open in our lab. Open PhD position (full time) Comparative and Population Genomics of Butterflies at High Elevations. The project aims to understand …

pavelmatos.wordpress.com

Britain today: An elderly woman in a wheelchair is escorted away by the police and risks up to 14 years in prison for supporting terrorism since the Home Secretary proscribed a protest group in 2025. Her crime? She said: "I support Palestine Action and I encourage you to join".

We just released a new open resource for studying evolution, ecology, colour, behaviour & biodiversity. OzButterflies 🦋 ✨ 4,000+ individuals 🌈 Visible + UV images 🧬 CO1 barcodes 📈 Spectral reflectance data 🏞️ 125 species doi.org/10.1093/data... @mherberstein.bsky.social @livuni-ives.bsky.social

👀 open.substack.com/pub/davidzmo...

👁️ Effective Altruists Paid for Citations in Long-Term Intellectual Fraud Scheme

“I find all this to undermine research and public intellectual debate, and to be deceptive to those who are unaware of what goes on behind the scenes.”

open.substack.com

From collections to conservation: the indispensable role of natural history museums The IUCN Species Survival Commission has published a Position Statement on the vital role of biological collections in biodiversity conservation iucn.org/news/202607/...

From collections to conservation: the indispensable role of natural history museums

The IUCN Species Survival Commission has published a Position Statement on the vital role of biological collections in biodiversity conservation: a formal acknowledgement that natural history museums,...

iucn.org

Today, Belgium is furthest from its historic norm in Reuters’ Western Europe Climate Monitor. Its national average high is forecast at 32.3°C, 11.6°C above the 1961-1990 norm. #Belgium #ClimateData www.reuters.com/graphics/CLI...

Tracking Western Europe's heatwave

How today's temperatures across Western Europe compare with the historic norm.

reuters.com

🦋📉 14 butterflies disappearing from the Mediterranean landscape #8 Green hairstreak (Callophrys rubi) One of the first butterflies of the year. It is typical of scrublands and woodland clearings, where caterpillars mostly feed on rockroses. 🔗 More information: catalanbms.org/en/especies/lyccru/

Another Lego life raft lost overboard from the Tokio Express back in 1997 has been discovered, this time by Belgian fisherman Chris Meyers of fishing vessel Z-91 Franson who hauled it up in his nets southwest of the Isles of Scilly. Picture credit: Chris Meyers

I spent my last #butterfly day of our family holiday in the higher part of #Taygetos mts, #Greece, and had a wonderful day with all specialities seen, some boc pics of fiery copper, odd-spot blue, eastern brown argus and taygetos blue, all species with a very limited European range.

"A New Challenge to Species Delimitation: Remarkable Genomic and Ecological Diversity in the Butterfly Melitaea diamina" has been published! Read it here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #PublishedArticle @WileyInResearch

Springwatch icon, humanist, and probably the UK's best-loved birdwatcher, Bill Oddie, has died aged 85. Very sad. Thank you for a lifetime of helping us understand nature.

Would assume everyone knows it by now, but just in case "First the traitors, then the invaders" is an explicit reference to The Turner Diaries, where a white supremacist revolution overruns "The System" and kills all their enemy during the evocatively named "Day of the Rope".

The Turner Diaries - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Sunder Katwala (sundersays)@sundersays.bsky.social · last mo.

X owner Elon Musk indicates he would prioritise political violence (assassination of pro-migration politicians is the common sense meaning) over violence against "invaders" (refugees, asylum seekers, maybe ethnic minorities generally) while endorsing call for violence (killing) against both groups

On July 15, a judge ordered the detention of 34-year-old Moroccan rap star Mehdi Lyoubi, known as Mehdi Black Wind, pending his trial for offending the king or crown prince. Criticism of government officials is protected under international law. Lyoubi should be released immediately.

Ook bij de komst van Aziatisch lieveheersbeestje zagen we dat het toen nog algemene tweestippelige lieveheersbeestje sterk terugviel in abundantie. Misschien speelt concurrentie met de invasieve Aziatische hoornaar ook hier een nog onvermelde rol. Ping @adriaenstim.bsky.social

Jan Wieringa@janwieringa.bsky.social · 2w ago

Natuurpunt ziet dat er in België opvallend weinig (limonade)wespen zijn dit jaar. Dat wijten ze niet alleen aan het koude weer, maar ook aan het bestrijden van de #geelpoothoornaar. Blijkbaar zijn de "selectieve" vallen niet zo selectief als de naam doet geloven. www.natuurpunt.be/nieuws/opval...

Insect decline usually focuses on species we can name. But "dark taxa" like true flies kept revealing new species over 37-years of sampling a German stream, while well-studied mayflies/stoneflies/caddisflies plateaued with far fewer individuals. doi.org/10.1111/icad... @swarmofthoughts.bsky.social

Comparing species accumulation within taxonomically well‐ and poorly resolved insect groups over 37 years

Here, we used a unique 37-year (1969–2006) freshwater macroinvertebrate time-series, collected over seven sites in central Germany, to study biodiversity patterns and species accumulation over time......

doi.org

Second-chance speciation in the Clouded Apollo butterfly: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...

Second-chance speciation in the Clouded Apollo butterfly

Lancho-Silva et al. reveal two successive contacts between butterfly populations that capture the surprisingly rapid emergence of reproductive isolation driven by selection for chemical differences, a...

cell.com

25% wil de Belgische regering besparen op ontwikkelingssamenwerking. Bij de start van nieuwe begrotingsonderhandelingen vestigen vertegenwoordigers van verschillende Belgische ngo’s de aandacht op de menselijke kost van die besparing. www.mo.be/nieuws/-ontw...

‘Ontwikkelingssamenwerking is een klein budget met grote impact’ – MO*

Bespaar niet op internationale solidariteit, zeggen Belgische ngo's. ‘Achter elke budgetlijn schuilen mensen.’

mo.be

📣EUROPEAN RED LIST OF MOTHS PUBLISHED!📣 A m(amm)oth task - huge congratulations to the team! Spoiler: >3000 species assessed at the European level, 704 of them endemic. Ca. 25% are listed as Data Deficient & 11% threatened with extinction. op.europa.eu/en/publicati...

The Netherlands is the largest destination for Israeli investment abroad, our new investigation reveals 🚨 
 Could it be because the Dutch system allows corporations to avoid taxes when they invest in other countries via the Netherlands, often using letterbox companies? www.somo.nl/flag-swappin...

Flag swapping capital: a Dutch investment service - SOMO

The Netherlands is the world’s biggest recipient of Israeli foreign investment and the second largest source of investment into Israel. Read more.

somo.nl