The original paper can be found in the Journal of Insect Science (link below)

David and I will have further exciting work on this project coming out in the (hopefully somewhat 😂) near future 😊

academic.oup.com/jinsectscien...

Thanks to Entomology Today for highlighting my and David Fisher’s paper on how cockroach movement is affected by RFID (& other) tags.

By using open-source deep neural network trackers, we hope to have demonstrated a time-efficient and cost-effective way to study insect movement behaviour. 🪳💻

The kinematics of amblypygid (Arachnida) pedipalps during predation: extreme elongation in raptorial appendages does not result in a proportionate increase in reach and closing speed Summary: Quantification of prey capture performance in multiple species of whip spider reveals a negative relationship between armament length and both reach and closing speed.

My paper on whip spider prey capture kinematics is out now in Journal of Experimental Biology!

We explain why long pedipalps have limited benefits to prey capture.

Thanks to my co-authors and sorry for taking so long 😂

journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

Lots of cool invertebrate mammals this year! I for one am a fan!
#2024MMM

Digital art of a geometric stylized whip spider

Whip spider! With some more abstract babies.

#InsertanInvert2024

Deploying an RFID PIT tag within a standard bird band on a flammulated owl Photo: Ross Calhoun, Colorado College

I might be the only biologist that prefers Super Bowls to Superb Owls, but here is an owl getting an RFID tag used to track individuals for conservation and behavioural studies.

The same tags are used to track players and produce NFL Next Gen Stats.

(Also, 49ers win, CMC MVP)

Yeah, it's pretty cool! We are using the photos to build social networks. These roaches were kept at various changing humidities. Different conditions will likely change the social networks (we hope 😂😀)

One down... Just 188k roach images to go 🪳