Pinned ladybirds from the UCMZ that were collected by Alfred Russell Wallace

I was lucky enough to spend some time with our Entomology collection this week, and sometimes it’s the small things that stick. This is a case of ladybirds 🐞 collected by Alfred Russell Wallace (www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/who...) who co-discovered the idea of natural selection and evolution. Just wow 🤩

Beautiful!

📢We need you!📢Volunteers are essential at the Museum from providing a warm welcome to visitors, to getting hands on with our specimens. No zoology knowledge is needed, just enthusiasm! Different times & days available. Get in touch 🙂University of Cambridge Museums https://ow.ly/EB4i50YJPIZ

Webbs Hole Sluicegate

Artificial sand martin nest holes

Sand martins and artificial nest holes

Homes and a cloud of sand martins - always uplifted by how small interventions can have big impacts on biodiversity. Great work at Webbs Hole Sluice - incorporate their homes in your industrial architecture and they will come. So, what small thing can each of us do to make a difference?

@cubotanicgarden.bsky.social looking lovely today 😍

Cambridge histories through blur plaques

Giant bugs

Pinned wasps of different sizes

Bat skulls arranged by size

Different sized golden moles

I’ve been thinking about scale this week. And that’s something zoology museums are great at helping us grasp. Many of our public specimens are arranged to help people understand the physical range of closely related animals, so I thought I’d share some of my favourites @zoologymuseum.bsky.social

Families doing activities at the museum

Museum of zoology

It’s Family Day at the Museum, with lots of fun activities. Having a great time being a volunteer for the day @zoologymuseum.bsky.social

‘It’s like flowers on steroids’: what happened when scientists heated a Rocky Mountain wildlife meadow by 2C? A long-running experiment in Colorado provides an ‘alarming’ view of how rapidly unchecked global heating could transform fragile ecosystems

Really important work by @aclassen.bsky.social and colleagues, demonstrating the importance of long-term ecological studies - climate change will drive the disappearance of alpine meadows 🌼🌸🪻😢 www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Leopard seal, taxidermy

Cambridge University Museum of Zoology

Today is the International Day of Happiness, a chance to reflect on what makes us happy. Right now, working with all my amazing new colleagues @zoologymuseum.bsky.social @camzoology.bsky.social makes me 😍. This leopard seal is also very happy, and would love to have you visit. What makes you happy?

And our numbers weren’t too shabby either! www.alva.org.uk/details.cfm?...

Very sad to learn of Paul’s death. A brilliant mind, a great mentor to so many grad students, and a kind and funny man. Definitely not a life without controversy, but the fields of ecology and conservation are lucky to have had him

Python skeleton

Giant armadillo skeleton

Sloth, taxidermy

Koala, taxidermy and skeleton

Today is World Sleep Day 😴 and in celebration of that, here are some of the snooziest animals in the world @zoologymuseum.bsky.social

Kenya arrests Chinese national over attempt to smuggle 2,000 queen ants The suspect had packed some ants in test tubes while others were concealed in tissue paper rolls, prosecutor says.

Never thought that the genus of ants 🐜 I worked on in my PhD would be the target of illegal wildlife trade. ❤️ 🐜 but dont illegally trade them! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Research groups here in Zoology play an important part in Europe’s response to pollinator decline.

Read about their recent work: bit.ly/40rpMly

@markjfbrown.bsky.social @restpoll.bsky.social @safeguard-pollinators.eu

Cambridge University Library, University Museum of Zoology and the University of Cambridge - Collections Connections Communities

Here’s a great PhD opportunity in the crossover between humanities and natural history- please repost 🙏 www.ccc.cam.ac.uk/initiatives/...

So, marsupials are in the news this week, with the discovery of a new genus of possum in New Guinea. Museum specimens were key to the identification of this new species. So, here’s our lovely ring-tailed possum, a relative of the new discovery. For more, read on: theconversation.com/meet-tous-an...

European red list of bees - Publications Office of the EU

IUCN updated Red List of Bees finally published: op.europa.eu/en/publicati...

Katarzyna Biala (European Environment Agency) gives a final stakeholder perspective and suggests how we can build for the future across scales and costs of action and inaction @safeguard-pollinators.eu final meeting #bee 🐝 🪰 🦋

Delphine Depeux (European Landowners Organisation) gives a stakeholder view and landowner perspective on the context for pollinator conservation - it is a land management conversation delivered through partnership @safeguard-pollinators.eu final meeting #bee 🐝 🪰 🦋

Her conclusions

Zafarani Uwingabire (Dijon) digs into the important detail of how world views impact effective pollinator conservation - we need to understand this to get conservation right @safeguard-pollinators.eu final meeting #bee 🐝 🪰 🦋

Rene van der Wal (SLU): pollinators mean different things to different people, enabling multiple actors to gather; if we define the ‘right’ pollinator, we lose the chance to engage the multiple parts of society needed to generate effective conservation @safeguard-pollinators.eu final meeting 🐝 🪰 🦋

Now Lorenzo Marini (Uni Padua) tells us how total wild bee abundance can be a good indicator for wild species richness, and so a valuable monitoring tool, particularly for citizen/community scientists @safeguard-pollinators.eu final meeting #bee 🐝

Dirk Maes (Butterfly Conservation Europe) talks about how the Grassland Butterfly Index is generated, the trends in butterfly abundance it identifies, and how to mitigate and reverse butterfly declines in Europe @safeguard-pollinators.eu final meeting 🦋

Simon Potts (Uni Reading) introduces understudied pressures and focuses on traffic impacts on pollinators in Europe @safeguard-pollinators.eu final meeting - clear recommendations to enhance pollinators (see new paper at bottom of last photo) #bee 🐝 🦋 🪰

@ingolfsteffan.bsky.social (who led the project) shows what factors in protected areas and the landscapes around them drive pollinator populations in Europe @safeguard-pollinators.eu final meeting - identifying drivers enable conservation actions to enhance pollinators #bee 🐝 🦋 🪰

Olli Schweiger (Leipzig) explains what factors drive large-scale distribution in bees, and how extreme climate events can drive local declines and collapse in pollinator populations - but also how we can mitigate against such dangers @safeguard-pollinators.eu final meeting #bee 🐝 🦋 🪰

Niamh Phelan (IUCN) shows the red list of pollinator taxonomists in Europe @safeguard-pollinators.eu final meeting - saving pollinators requires pollinator experts #bee 🐝 🦋 🪰

Denis Michez (Mons University) follows up at the @safeguard-pollinators.eu final meeting by updating us on the status of wild bees and hover flies across Europe #bee 🐝 🦋 🪰 - key message, we now have distributional data to underpin conservation strategies for wild bees and hover flies across Europe