This morning I was interviewed on BBC Radio Gloucestershire and Newcastle on the BGB regarding the new guidance on birdfeeding and my favourite places to bird in the North East! You can listen on BBC sounds from 7am on Glocs and 8:20 on Newcastle 🐦⬛🪿🦆🦉
The Yellow Horned moth
It's #MothFaceFriday which means it's time for one of the cutest moth faces there is...
The ewoch-mimicking Yellow Horned 🥹
Moths that look like sticks, dead leaves, or bird droppings are one thing. Moths with kitty cat ears are something else altogether! 🐱
#TeamMoth
Join a new citizen science project and help us to uncover the hidden lives of Europe’s ground-nesting #bees - please share with your networks:
jeffollerton.co.uk/2026/04/02/h...
Butterfly Conservation's hairy caterpillars to see in spring & summer: Oak/Northern Eggar, Drinker, Dark Tussock, Vapourer, Emperor Moth, Fox Moth, Wood Tiger. Graphic of a pen and a checklist next to text which reads: "Spotted a hairy caterpillar? Report your sightings via the ‘Peatland Caterpillars Recording Project’ activity on the iRecord app or website: irecord.org.uk" Photo credits: Bob Eade, Russell Gomm, Iain Leach, Mark Parsons
Look out for these seven hairy caterpillars found on our precious peatlands in the North of England 🐛🔍
Spotted a hairy caterpillar? Report your sighting to us through the ‘Peatland Caterpillars Recording Project’ on iRecord 👉 irecord.org.uk/join/peatland-caterpilla...
The photo shows the cover of the nature journal, displaying a colorful moth sitting on moss. The caption says: Heat Sensitive. Tropical insects show limited ability to cope with a warming world.
Really happy that a moth made it to the cover of @nature.com! Thanks to my co-author Gunnar Brehm for this great photo 📸
Find our study on thermal limits in this week's issue:
www.nature.com/nature/volum...
@ecoresearchzoo3.bsky.social
@biologie-uniwue.bsky.social
@uni-wuerzburg.de
Lighting rig in situ
A sunset view of a field and hills
Sunset over a field
Lighting rig in situ
Wonderful to be back to fieldwork, investigating how we can mitigate light pollution impacts on moths. Only a few weeks in and I've been treated to some amazing moths, sunsets and plenty of blue skies. Excited for the rest of the field season! #moths #ALAN #mitigations
@nclneg.bsky.social
New paper! Bird nests (Wood Warblers) are hubs of invertebrate biodiversity on forest floor, hosting more species/individuals than leaf litter. Probably due to heat & food detritus. Losing Wood Warblers = ecological networks lost. #ornithology
resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
📍Algarve, Portugal 🇵🇹
Menophra japygiaria
Aleucis distinctata
Agrotis
Spodoptera exigua
Nice few moths this morning, including Menophra japygiaria, Agrotis, Small Mottled Willow (Spodoptera exigua) and Aleucis distinctata! #teammoth #mothsmatter
A beautiful Two-tailed Pasha (Charaxes jasius) caterpillar found in south Portugal 🦋
@europebutterfly.bsky.social
A group of researchers and participants gather at night in a mountain landscape around a glowing blue light trap used for collecting moths. The scene is illuminated by the bright light, with trees and dark mountain silhouettes in the background. The group is examining specimens and taking notes during fieldwork. Photo credit: Alena Suchackova.
(1/2) Applications are open for the second field workshop of WG 2: Specimen collection for genomic work
📍 Vlahi, Pirin Mountains (Bulgaria)
📅 15–19 June 2026
We’re bringing together Lepidoptera taxonomists, enthusiasts, bioinformaticians, and students for real hands-on learning and exchange.
⬇️ ⬇️
It’s official!
The 'Urban Flora of Newcastle and North Tyneside' will be published on Monday 9 March 🌿 📖
I’m hugely proud of this, and ever so grateful to @nenature.bsky.social and @bsbibotany.bsky.social for their support in making it happen. #botany #urbanflora
Tardigrades are small but mighty- and tell us a lot about the environment! Read more in our newest EntoBite article by Dr. Alfonsina Grabosky. ⬇️
🌙💡 Does light pollution go deeper than we think?
Our new study shows that LED light at night alters thyroid gland histology in Triturus newts, a key endocrine organ. Suggesting ALAN as a subtle endocrine disruptor, beyond known effects on melatonin and corticosterone
📄 www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/16...
Artificial light at night is an unlit conservation blind spot for amphibians.
Our review highlights that even small changes to natural night lighting can disrupt amphibian behavior, physiology, reproduction, and species interactions. #lightpollution #amphibians
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Did you want to see the behind the scenes of London's Natural History Museum? Baxter and Lucas wrote a fabulous blog for EntoBites about their current placement 🐝🐜
entobites.blog/2026/02/02/b...
Moths move significantly less when exposed to artificial nighttime light, new research from the Centre for Ecology and Conservation at the University of Exeter, Cornwall shows.
Read More: news.exeter.ac.uk/faculty-of-e...
@uniexecec.bsky.social #ExeterEcology
I’ve recently decided to get back into digital art starting with my most ambitious project. Depicting some key life history and anatomical elements of one of my favourite animals. The secretary bird.
#BigGardenBirdwatch 🐦🔭
Spending an hour watching the birds in our little sub-urban garden? Yes please! Equipped with binoculars and notebook, 16 birds of 9 species, including Collared Doves, Wood Pigeon, Blue and Great tits, Blackbird, Starlings, Magpies, House Sparrow and Robin @rspb.bsky.social
Great new research shows that light pollution prevents activity in the critical twilight period (just after sunset) in a moth and spider species. 🕷️🦋💡- this calls for mitigations targeting this critical time period. Read more in our dispatch:
www.cell.com/current-biol...
A u shaped structure made out of sticks called a bower, built under a small tree. In front of the bower is a pile of grey, white and green objects that make up the display court. The whole scene is in dappled sunlight and shade created by the tree above.
New bowerbird paper out, we asked whether male great bowerbirds care about the light environment around the bower where they display to females. Short answer: not really. What they do care about is having a display arena with strong visual contrast on the ground. 🐦 tinyurl.com/2v7rycdz
🦋🧬 A milestone for biodiversity genomics.
Project Psyche is building chromosome-level genomes for ~11,000 European butterflies & moths — 1,000 sequenced, 3,000+ collected, across 34 countries.
🔗 Read the publication: bit.ly/ProjectPsyche
@projectpsyche.bsky.social
#BiodiversityGenomics 🧬🌍
A Hoopoe perches on fallen tree trunk showing its orange crest, down-curved bill, and black, white and sandy brown plumage. Image credit bottom right reads Hoopoe by Edmund Fellowes / BTO.
1/🧵 Two bird species bred in the UK in 2023 for the first time since the 1990s!
The latest report by @ukrbbp.bsky.social published in @britishbirds.bsky.social confirmed a pair of Hoopoes raised three young from a nest in Leicestershire and Rutland. #Ornithology
Multiple anthropogenic stressors can negatively impact species but can a single stressor also have multiple, concurrent impacts? Here we show that light pollution creates several simultaneous impacts to the nocturnal movement ecology of a moth and a spider: tinyurl.com/5eku5bff (1/5)
Se me está quedando pequeña la pared 😱
Ever wondered if molecular biology be used to control aphid and whitefly pests?
You can learn more in our new EntoBites post by Maddie Park below:
entobites.blog/2025/12/05/c...
https://www.instagram.com/p/DSJXsuIDMPu/?igsh=MTJjY2J3ZTdoandiYw==
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/national-geographic-society_natgeoexplorers-activity-7404984609353932800-C7Xs
I am absolutely delighted to see the post by National Geographic Society covering our recent publication on new bush #frogs 🐸 🐸 from northeast #India just in time for #frogfriday 😃
Want to work on biodiversity in the Alps? ⛰️
We are offering several internship positions for the upcoming spring and summer in collaboration with the Biodiversity Monitoring South Tyrol 🕷️🦋🦇🐜🌼🦗🪱
biodiversity.eurac.edu/interns-want...
As we approach the end of a tumultuous academic year I’m thankful more than ever to lead an amazing and talented group of researchers who are committed to the best of science @nclneg.bsky.social
Genome sequencing progress for Lepidoptera. Stacked bar charts represent the cumulative number of lepidopteran species with a reference genome per year. The colours represent the different levels of genome assembly quality, ranging from contig to chromosome-level. Numbers in brackets represent the range in numbers of species that have a given assembly level per year. Data derived from GoaT on 05.09.2025.
(1/6) 🦋 We are thrilled to announce the release of the 1,000th reference genome of Lepidoptera species found in Europe!
This goal was reached with the release of Stenoptilia islandicus, also known as the mountain plume moth.
Read the story below!👇🏽