those are terrible jellybeans! 120?

10/10 concept! In love! Will have to sneak these palettes into my next talk :)

Oxygen supply through the tracheolar–muscle system does not constrain insect gigantism - Nature New evidence suggests that diffusive oxygen transport through the tracheolar–muscle system is not the limiting factor on insect body size.

Seems like a pretty important result; title says it all.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We’re off to Sydney for this year’s AES Conference! We are looking for symposium leads to help shape the program. Submit your proposals to aes2026@mq.edu.au by April 30!

🚨ABSTRACT SUBMISSION DEADLINE EXTENDED🚨

If you need more time to get your abstract together for the 2026 ASSAB conference, we have great news!

The deadline for abstract submissions has been extended until the 27th of March!

www.assab.org/assab-2026

The Australian Entomological Conference call for symposia is out!! Time to promote your niche insect interests by organising a symposium about it!!!

🚨ABSTRACT SUBMISSION REMINDER🚨

Submissions for the 2026 ASSAB conference are still open until the 13th of March.

Submit now to take part in a friendly, warm and welcoming conference for behavioural ecologists

The cutest field assistant 😊

Biomedical and life science articles by female researchers spend longer under review Women are underrepresented in academia, especially in STEMM fields, at top institutions, and in senior positions. This study analyzes millions of biomedical and life science articles, revealing that f...

And here's a thought provoking study on other disparities in research, this one addressing different aspects of the gender gap. #WomenInSTEM journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

We've got ISSUES. Literally.

We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do?

arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563

A 🧵 1/n

a 3D printed ant rests on a 3D printer bed showing all the branching supports used to print the model. The ant is printed in a dark and sparkly PLA plastic

a 3D printed ant being held after supports have been removed. The ant is printed in a dark and sparkly PLA plastic

Polyrhachis sokolova! This beautiful intertidal ant took 48hrs to print and was a heck of a challenge to clean-up! All those supports had to be carefully trimmed away from spindly legs and antennae but it came through cleanly!
Printed in PLA on a Prusa MK4

A 3D printed jumping spider, sitting on a desk. The spider is about 25cm in length and is printed in a dark sparkly plastic.

Printed this beautifully behaved Ocrisiona jumping spider from a microCT scan. She kindly kept all her arms and legs inside the ride and didn't have any fragile spindly bits to work around unlike some ants that I could name...
Printed in PLA, about 12hrs, Prusa MK4

An obviously AI-generated figure with AI slop and fake text all over it, recently published in Scientific Reports.

Since AI slop is again all over Scientific Reports, a thread on the economics of grey-zone publishing.

Why does slop keep getting published? What does it mean for science? How can we stop this?

Background readings:
Understand the strain: tinyurl.com/2b6wxx5r
Stop the drain: tinyurl.com/3jfscscy

David Pocock - Independent Senator for the ACT TRUST. INTEGRITY. LEADERSHIP.

"The CSIRO plans to cut another 350 research jobs, on top of the 800 jobs already lost in the past 18 months, on top of people in non-permanent roles whose contracts won’t be renewed."
www.davidpocock.com.au/save_our_csiro

Net-casting spider stretching it net

enlarged forward facing eyes of Asianopis subrufa

🚨Good news, everyone!
1) I'm thrilled to be joining the behavior powerhouse that is Indiana University!! So stoked, starting Jan 2026.
2) I'm recruiting grad students! Are you (or your trainee) interested in sensory ecology? behavior? evolution? fieldwork? spiders? Drop me a line Jstafstr(at)iu.edu

let me share a little story about a remarkable wasp that I encountered yesterday in our local deserts

I stumbled across her, and scrambled to get a few crappy photos .... but then realized that she had a burrow, perhaps a better photo op was possible ??

here she is at her burrow entrance.

Nullarbor cave expedition unearths world's only known eyeless wasp An eyeless wasp is just one of several new cave-dwelling invertebrates discovered within the proposed boundary of a massive renewable energy project.

www.abc.net.au/news/science...

A collage of three images showing, from left to right: (1) a high-resolution 2D photograph of a metallic green moth (Jordanita notata) taken by the 'scAnt' device; (2) a preview of the generated 3D model; and (3) a hand holding the final printout. Source: my own Photo credits: A. Sánchez Albert and Carlos A. Palancar.

🚨 Methods paper out now!
nhcm.pensoft.net 📄

How can we make #entomology more engaging? Printed insect #3Dmodels can help! 🖨️ 🐜

Here we provide a guide to producing insect replicas to help overcome common issues in entomological #outreach activities! 🧩

Check it out!
doi.org/10.3897/nhcm...

Springer Nature Discovers MDPI – The Strain on Scientific Publishing Home page for the paper ‘The Strain on Scientific Publishing’ by Mark A Hanson, Dan Brockington, Paolo Crosetto and Pablo Gomez Barreiro

Springer-Nature launched a series of "Discover" journals that closely mimic MDPI titles -- sharing *identical* journal names, and likely similar business model.

What is going on, and why researcher will - as always - fall for it?

A 🧵

the-strain-on-scientific-publishing.github.io/website/post...

The exteriors of spider eyes are part of the exoskeleton, so can't move. But in jumping spiders, the internal parts of the large central eyes have muscles that can swivel and twist to help the spider aim its eyes from inside the head. This is a 4-frame.gif showing that internal movement. 🌿🐙🕷️👀

Teeth first evolved as sensory tissue in the armored exoskeletons of ancient fish, fossil scans find Anyone who has ever squirmed through a dental cleaning can tell you how sensitive teeth can be. This sensitivity gives important feedback about temperature, pressure—and yes, pain—as we bite and chew ...

New paper from the lab: Our teeth arose as sensory organs on the outside of the body of ancient jawless fish.!! Congrats to Yara Haridy and the team!
Background and video: phys.org/news/2025-05...
Open Access Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
News and Views: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

So cool!

Nothomyrmecia - Download Free 3D model by tunosemi Please read before downloading. ●The model here is modeled by referring to images from AntWeb, etc. 　 https://www.antweb.org/images.do?subfamily=myrmeciinae&genus=nothomyrmecia&species=macro...

This beautiful 3D sculpt is available here: sketchfab.com/3d-models/no...
I couldn't print the whole body large enough to make the finer parts robust (lost a leg and a few tarsi) but the head print came out beautifully and I was even able to retain the mouth parts after removing supports.

I couldn't help myself and also tried out printing tunosemi's Nothomyrmecia macrops model. This is a species near and dear to my heart after a very memorable field trip to work on these guys with @pipilika.bsky.social. Long drives, cemeteries, wild pigs, that trip had it all!
#3Dprinting

Santschiella kohli - Download Free 3D model by tunosemi ●The model here was modeled by referring to images from AntWeb, etc. 　 https://www.antweb.org/images.do?genus=santschiella&species=kohli&rank=species ●Can be downloaded for non-commercial us...

You can find this beautiful model and print your own here:
sketchfab.com/3d-models/sa...
It's quite delicate to clean off the supports but I had good results! I had to glue her medial legs back on at the coxae but surprisingly that was the only breakage I experienced.

A while back I saw @futurebird.sauropods.win.ap.brid.gy 's post about Santschiella kohli and thought it was such a cool species! So small, such large pronounced eyes and weird anatomy! I had to print her out! She now happily perches on my wall :)

this species is so striking I just had to have a closer look so I printed her out!

Little peacock spider print to celebrate our paper on spider jumping coming out, check it out here: tinyurl.com/4bnpz9tz
Male Maratus splendens printed in PLA #prusa #jumpingspider #microCT

Our latest paper on the jump kinematics and choreography in the Oz Splendid Peacock spider. We filmed & analysed locomotory jumps in male & female spiders. The males are incredibly light - measuring just 2mg - and oh they can jump! Videos in the thread. Open Access - read here: tinyurl.com/4bnpz9tz

We have a fully funded International 4-year position (combined Master of Research+PhD) to study visual navigation in jumping spiders. Project will be supervised by @pipilika.bsky.social, @mherberstein.bsky.social, @dinrao.bsky.social & Ximena Nelson. At Macquarie University, Sydney. Details below