Excited for the Zombie Hunt event today at River Trail Nature Center, IL! 🧟‍♂️🪲A big thanks to Forest Preserves of Cook County for inviting me to lead the BioBlitz. This event is also part of the @inaturalist.bsky.social global iNat together event. 🧪 www.zombeetles.com/post/inat-to...

The iNat Together BioBlitz in Cook County

William C. Beckerson will be hosting a BioBlitz in collaboration with the River Trail Nature Center as part of their Party for the Preserves and the iNaturalist iNat Together event!

zombeetles.com

A big thanks to Bregje Huisman from New Scientist in the Netherlands for writing a piece about our research efforts to teach evolution using virtual reality! You can read more about it here: www.newscientist.nl/nieuws/leren... 🧪

Fellow science nerds in the Chicago area 🚨. Come join me at FANEXPO - Chicago for a panel on the science behind The Last of Us! I’ll be presenting Saturday August 15th at 5:15 pm, RM 33 stage! Hope to see you there! 🧪

🧪 Presenting my work on zombie ants at the 2026 Gordon Research Conference on Cellular and Molecular Fungal Biology! 🧟‍♂️🐜🍄‍🟫 Summary: Ophiocordyceps uses a novel effector to block communication in ants 🐜 Preprint available here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Full PDF of poster is in the comments!

Thanks again to @lastshow.bsky.social for having me on their program to talk about our Zombie Ants VR game and how gamification can be used to intuitively teach evolution! It was a lot of fun! I highly recommend checking out all the cool science he showcases on his podcast! 🧟‍♂️ 🐜 👾 🧪

A Zombie Ant Video Game That Teaches Evolution

Podcast Episode · The Last Show with David Cooper · May 27 · 11m

podcasts.apple.com

@pintofscience.us is kicking off again this year, May 18th-May 20th! I’ll be giving a talk about neuroparasitology at Vintage Bar in Chicago, IL. You can check for local events across the USA at their official website: pintofscience.us Hope to see you there! 🧪

Pint of Science USA

Bringing you scientists so you can hear about the latest research and discoveries

pintofscience.us

Niels Kerstes of Utrecht University has posted a fantastic synopsis of our recent pedagogical work with Zombie Ants VR as an official university news story. Check it out! 🧪 www.uu.nl/en/news/virt...

🚨Our new discipline-based education research paper in biology is out! 🧪 We created a VR game about zombie ants and used gamification techniques to teach the process of evolution to players without triggering preexisting biases about the topic! Find the link to the full open-access paper in comments!

@nature.com has published three groundbreaking papers on reproducibility, analytical robustness, and replicability across the social sciences. Sincere thanks are due to the many folks who contributed to these projects. It’s painstaking work, and a great service to social science.

well this is ridiculous and awesome, best science usually is #ScienceSky #NeuroSky 🧪

John Tuthill@tuthill.bsky.social · 6mo ago

🧵 New preprint led by @bingbrunton.bsky.social, @elliottabe.bsky.social, @lawrencehu.bsky.social We gave a worm brain control of a fly body and it walked What did we learn? Nothing, other than deep reinforcement learning is effective We call it the digital sphinx www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Can plant pathogens boost vector fitness? Together with @hassansalem.bsky.social, we review how phytopathogens can spread further by moonlighting as insect symbionts 🪲 More on this nifty lifestyle in @annualreviews.bsky.social! www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Plant Pathogens Moonlighting as Beneficial Insect Symbionts

Herbivorous insects can shape the epidemiology of disease in plants by vectoring numerous phytopathogens. While the consequences of infection are often well-characterized in the host plant, the extent...

annualreviews.org

“When participants used ChatGPT to draft essays, brain scans revealed a 47% drop in neural connectivity across regions associated with memory, language, & critical reasoning. Their brains worked less, but they felt just as engaged—a kind of metacognitive mirage.”🧪

David Hull 胡大衛@hushuo.bsky.social · 10mo ago

I finally got around to reading this. You should read it too. "We are exporting the very labor of teaching and learning—the slow work of wrestling with ideas, the enduring of discomfort, doubt and confusion, the struggle of finding one’s own voice." www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...

BindCraft: an AlphaFold2-powered de novo protein binder design tool 🧬✨ Tested in some bacterial systems too! Designs so far are short peptides or mini-domains. Looking forward to long/full protein design ahead! 🧪 #microsky www.nature.com/articles/s41...

One-shot design of functional protein binders with BindCraft - Nature

BindCraft, an open-source, automated pipeline for de novo protein binder design with experimental success rates of 10–100%, leverages AlphaFold2 weights to generate binders with nanomolar affinity without the need for high-throughput screening.

nature.com

🧟🐜 Zombie Ant Research🚨 I can finally share my flagship research project characterizing the first ever Ophiocordyceps behavioral effector as an open access preprint! This international, interdisciplinary research approach involved many amazing collaborations! 🧪 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I am always excited to share about zombie fungi! 🧟‍♂️ 🍄‍🟫 Thanks to Natasha Dangoor for allowing me to contribute through an interview to her new piece in The Wall Street Journal about zombie spiders found in the UK! 🇬🇧 🧟🕷️. Link to the full article and audio translations in the comments 🧪

How about some spooky science! 🧟‍♂️ In this dispatch, I discuss the current state of molecular genetics work used to explore behavior-manipulating fungi and highlight new research by Zhao et al. describing a novel behavioral effector used by Cordyceps militaris in silkworms! 🧪 Link in the comments!

Very excited to announce that our new version of Zombie Ants VR is releasing soon for free on Steam! I’m also thrilled to share that our month-long test run in collaboration with University Museum Utrecht showed that it teaches players about evolution!🧪 store.steampowered.com/app/3765230/...

Zombie Ants VR: Definitive Edition on Steam

Zombie Ants VR is a short educational experience that takes the player through the life cycle of Ophiocordyceps, a fungus that manipulates the behavior of insects in order to increase the spread of it...

store.steampowered.com

How cool! 🧟‍♂️🐜 Very interesting that it was found infecting an ant pupae, we normally only see adults infected. What mysterious evolutionary history! 👀 www.sciencenews.org/article/zomb... 🧪

Zombifying fungi have been infecting insects for 99 million years

Two bits of amber discovered in a lab basement hold ancient evidence of a fungi famous for controlling the minds of its victims.

sciencenews.org

🏳️‍🌈 A queer post a day for #PrideMonth2025 6/20: Florence Nightingale brought data and statistics to nursing. She also said “I have slept in the same beds with English Countesses and Prussian farm women. No woman has excited passions among women more than I.” 1/ sangerinstitute.blog/2022/06/29/l...

LGBTQ+ scientists who shaped history - Wellcome Sanger Institute Blog

Science thrives on diversity. Diversity of opinions, upbringing, experiences, and lifestyles, brings about innovation. It is imperative that everyone feels safe and comfortable to be their true selves...

sangerinstitute.blog

I know what you're thinking; how can we sustainably manage the banana weevil problem? Boy do I have good news for you. My piece for @cenmag.bsky.social 🧪

Field trial success for fighting banana weevils with fungal compounds

Researchers say one particular fungus-derived compound could help farmers avoid banana drama

cen.acs.org

#ZebrafishZunday: Simultaneous tracking of 100 zebrafish larvae using open-source software. Credit to FastTrack (www.fasttrack.sh). 🧪

So excited to be partnering with University Museum Utrecht to debut our updated VR game about zombie ants! It’s an educational game that teaches about evolution, and will be free to download from both SteamVR and the Meta Horizon Store later this month. Just search “Zombie Ants VR” to find it! 🧪

#NextGenSci asked young scientists to write a rule that all principal investigators should be required to follow to improve the experience of young scientists in their lab. Check out their answers on #NationalHigherEducationDay: scim.ag/45zsFEr

Hello ecologists and evolutionary biologists! I work with scientists to transform discoveries into beautiful, accurate, publication-ready figures. Get in touch if you want custom illustrations for your next paper. Check out www.lifesciencestudios.com to explore services and get started! #🐡 #🧪

The first night of Pint of Science if off to a fantastic start with a packed bar here in Utrecht! 🧪 🤩 @pintofsciencenl.bsky.social

Wonderfully good video about the beauty of science and humanitarian motivation working together to defeat diseases and save people. youtube.com/watch?v=ybVZ... 🧪 #NIH #CDC #WHO #BMGF #NIAID

Defeating a Virus That Killed Half a Billion People – The Plea

YouTube video by Neil Halloran

youtube.com

Pint of Science 2025 kicks off on Monday! This annual science festival brings scientists to local pubs to share their work with the community. It’s a powerful engagement initiative in 27 countries worldwide that fosters dialogue between scientists and the public! 🧪 pintofscience.nl/locations/

Pint of Science Locations

Pint of Science is the largest global science festival taking place in many countries simultaneously

pintofscience.nl

I am very excited to host one of this year’s Pint of Science events in Utrecht, NL! Join us at Body Talk, May 21st, to hear about topics like gender neutral/non-binary language, fungal materials, and AI! Tickets and more information can be found here: pintofscience.nl/event/the-sp...

Useful guidance in paper images: “The do’s and don’ts of scientific image editing." 🧪🔬💡🔌🌌 idp.nature.com/authorize?re...

The do’s and don’ts of scientific image editing

Acceptable image-editing practices are partly a matter of common sense. But researchers say journals and funders could help scientists by standardizing policies.

idp.nature.com

Very excited about this years @pintofsciencenl.bsky.social event in the Netherlands 🇳🇱!