Great!😂 @cellpress.bsky.social

Garlic inhibits mating and egg laying in Aedes vector mosquitoes

And another great paper in Cell from the best ever behavioralist, Dr. Shimaa Ebrahim!!!

New @currentbiology.bsky.social paper from Dr. Leila Elabbady on neural circuits that transform a touch stimulus into spatially targeted grooming.

Leila discovered a leg somatotopic map and used it to infer tactile receptive fields in the fly VNC connectome.

authors.elsevier.com/a/1mvu83QW8S...

The NASA live stream is terrific but low on visuals for the mo (nearly 600k ppl watching and the audio is fab). So great to see this brief image of an iphone picture of the moon taken by one of the astronauts.

Thank you Jeff!

Receptor sequence divergence, gain, loss, duplication, and neofunctionalization drive olfactory adaptation in Drosophila suzukii | PNAS Shifts in ecological niches are often driven by evolutionary changes in the olfactory system, yet the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understoo...

Receptor sequence divergence, gain, loss, duplication, and neofunctionalization drive olfactory adaptation in Drosophila suzukii | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Excited to share our work exploring how fly larvae flexibly adjust their foraging decisions based on resource quality and valence, shaped by prior experience 🪰🥳! Check it out: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Thank you, Ian. Several experiments were built on your beautiful previous work.

Congrats!!!

And we celebrated Dr. Xue's first PNAS paper with Cake!!!!

Why is Spotted Wing Drosophila attracted to fruit at its prime, instead of overripe fruit like other flies? Xue and Dweck found the neuron receptor shifts responsible for this $500M agricultural problem, in this impressive 2-author work out of the CT Ag Experiment Station!

Thank you Islam!

Thank you ya Mohammed!

Thank you, Marcus!

You are welcome.

Receptor sequence divergence, gain, loss, duplication, and neofunctionalization drive olfactory adaptation in Drosophila suzukii | PNAS Shifts in ecological niches are often driven by evolutionary changes in the olfactory system, yet the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understoo...

I am very happy to share that the latest work from the lab, led by Dr. Qi Xue, has been published in PNAS and is now online: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Genome of the Abominable Snowfly uncovers the mysteries of cold tolerance in a winter active insect! New cool (literally) paper in @currentbiology.bsky.social from Marco Gallio, @matthewcapek.bsky.social, @tuthill.bsky.social, myself, and fine colleagues! ⛄ 🦟
authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

Just a friendly reminder as we go into the holidays:

Folks don't have to explain to you why they don't drink.

If you offer them a drink and they decline, don't ask them why. It's not your business.

Just offer them something without alcohol to drink instead. And move on.

#microsky #mevosky @spp2389.bsky.social

A PhD position is available in my lab to work on:

Emergence and self-organisation of bacterial metabolism in consortia of cross-feeding bacteria.

Please RT

Deadline: 12.11.25

More infos 👇
shorturl.at/rAKAT

A revised version of our preprint now includes results from D. biarmipes Or67a paralogs, data from a second D. suzukii Or67a4 mutant, and a model describing how Or67a paralogs are expressed in two distinct neuronal types in D. suzukii. Stay
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Good job Qi!

Thank you Mohammed!!!

Thank you my friend!

Thank you Kristyn!

Genomic plasticity drives olfactory adaptation in a pest fly Preference shifts in insects are often driven by changes in the olfactory system, yet the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. The worldwide pest Drosophila suzukii, which oviposits in ripe rather th...

Our first big preprint, led by the great Dr. Qi Xue
@Qi_Xue_94
. We discovered three mechanisms for olfactory adaptation in the fruit pest Drosophila suzukii, two of which are novel .Well Done Qi; you will be a great professor. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Raghav is a high school student who has been working in the lab on spotted lanternflies for the past two years.

Implications of successive blood feeding on Wolbachia-mediated dengue virus inhibition in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes - Nature Communications Dengue virus transmission by Ae. aegypti mosquitoes poses a significant public health threat, necessitating innovative control strategies. Here, the authors demonstrate that, while successive blood fe...

So glad to finally have this out with co-author @mallerybreban.bsky.social and very thankful for the many amazing people who contributed to this study and provided materials and input! 🦟🦠1/12 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

NIH Extends the ESI eligibility window A tiny ray of positive news has sunbeamed through the storm clouds. The NIH has announced (NOT-OD-25-114) that Early Stage Investigators (ESI) who reached the end of their eligibility from the Fall…

NIH Extends the ESI eligibility window drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2025/05/21/n...

Thank you so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

🎈Our latest 🪅

We know that in addition to exteroceptive mechanisms, interoceptive chemosensation is also critical for regulating physiology/behavior.

We find that an enteric neuron in worms senses ingested salts via a variant ionotropic receptor (IR like the fly IRs) to regulate salt stress. 1/n