Hello everyone!

One of my colleagues and probably one of the best supervisors I've met, Dr. Iliana Medina, is advertising a PhD position involving lots of bugs and many different colours! More info in the image below, do share this widely!!

Analysis of a soil core under simulated climate warming in a southern boreal forest. CREDIT: Peter Reich, Yihang Duan

A meta-analysis of 102 studies finds that climate change is reducing the diversity of bacteria and fungi in soil by an average of 16.0% and 19.7%, respectively, which will reduce the ability of soil to store carbon—which could accelerate warming. In PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

🚨 PhD position in behavioural evolution 🚨

Come do your PhD with me in Linköping, Sweden, using the domestic dog (and some wolves) to answer fun questions on how complex behaviours develop and evolve.

Application deadline September 24 2025 🧪 🌍 🦊 #AcademicSky #ScienceJobs

liu.se/en/work-at-l...

Bees in VR! The kind of science we love to see 😍🐝

Octopuses Fall For The Classic Fake Arm Trick – Just Like We Do Octopuses can be fooled into thinking a fake arm is actually their own.

“Octopuses can be fooled into thinking a fake arm is actually their own.
When scientists in Japan pinched an artificial appendage during experiments, octopuses recoiled in defense – swimming away, suddenly changing their color, or retracting their arms”

www.sciencealert.com/octopuses-fa...
🧪 🐙 🦑

Prey or protection? Access to food alters individual responses to competition in black widow spiders Abstract. Animals influence the phenotype and reproductive success of their conspecifics through competitive interactions. Such effects of competition can

New spider research out in Behavioral Ecology: we show that limited resources can reverse how individuals respond to the presence of competitors and reduce individual differences in competitive phenotypes.

🕷️🕸️📝

academic.oup.com/beheco/advan...

A spindly legged white assassin bug nymph emerges from a brown egg case on a green leaf.

When you’re willing to move slowly through the world, you’ll find amazing things. I call this Birth of an Assassin. #bugsky

Understanding the importance of surprise in antipredator defence Olivier Penacchio, Liisa Hämäläinen, Bibiana Rojas, Kyle Summers, Justin Yeager, Thomas N. Sherratt, Alice Exnerova This is a plain language summary of a Functional Ecology review article which can…

📰Published📰 Understanding the importance of surprise in antipredator defence

https://buff.ly/3EnXbpb

🧪🌍

Black margins are important for size discrimination - female green swordtails prefer larger males but preference is lost when black margins on tail are absent. Seems they can't judge which male is bigger without black margin! shorturl.at/6GKA2
@uniexecec.bsky.social @royalsocietypublishing.org