This is Achrioptera manga, a giant phasmid or stick insect native to Madagascar.
The specific epithet, "manga" means blue in Malagasy & it's not hard to see why. Only males are blue.
The tiny back wings ("alae") are an example of brachyptery: they're useless for flight, but have other functions.
Here they are (Zygothrica sp) going at it to defend their mushroom kingdom.
El Refugio, Intag, Ecuador
Today's Headline And then one day, while I read aloud to my husband the news and felt the widening hole in my heart, he raised his hand to quiet me. I followed his gaze out the window to see in the yard a small fluffy thing with black and white eyespots on its head. A northern pygmy owl beside our door, stout body slightly smaller than my fist. It turned its neck a full half circle to look at me with bright yellow eyes. In an instant, I shifted from disgust with the world to awe. Awe for this fierce bespeckled miracle, this wonder of feather and beak and claw, this small being in the grass looking back at me as if to say, Here is also the news. How surprising the world can be. How quickly, when I let it, amazement overwrites my fear and makes of the hole in my heart a home. -Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Early bird registration closes in two days! Don’t forget to join us at Evolution 2026.
www.evolutionmeetings.org/registration...
Watching My Friend Pretend Her Heart Is Not Breaking Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer On Earth, just a teaspoon of neutron star would weigh six billion tons. Six billion tons equals the collective weight of every animal on earth. Including the insects. Times three. Six billion tons sounds impossible until I consider how it is to swallow grief— just a teaspoon and one might as well have consumed a neutron star. How dense it is, how it carries inside it the memory of collapse. How difficult it is to move then. How impossible to believe that anything could lift that weight. There are many reasons to treat each other with great tenderness. One is the sheer miracle that we are here together on a planet surrounded by dying stars. One is that we cannot see what anyone else has swallowed.
“There are many reasons to treat each /other with great tenderness. One is /
the sheer miracle that we are here together / on a planet surrounded by dying stars. / One is that we cannot see what / anyone else has swallowed.”
@s-durkin.bsky.social
GLOW WORMS IN LONG BEACH HOLY SHIT!!!
Pinned specimen of a large and beefy cryptorhynchine weevil, photographed head/on, displaying a pair of enormously dilated protarsi covered in fanciful golden hairs
Enlarged view of a single outrageous weevil foot, it looks like it’s covered in curling golden moustachios
Macromerus crinitarsus: no fancier feets on earth
We didn't deserve this day.
A star scientist showed that better genetics lessons could reduce racism. It was the death knell for his career
The loss of Brian Donovan’s grants and job speak volumes about federal funding priorities — and academia
www.statnews.com/2026/04/07/b...
The variety of German bees before the Industrial Revolution (187, top) vs after the introduction of pesticides (43, bottom), DHM
If you know a graduating undergraduate looking for the chance to spend 1-2 years in a lab before graduate school, we're hiring! Our lab explores morphogenesis, defining how the cell adhesion & cytoskeletal machinery work together to allow cells to change shape & move tarheels.live/peiferlab/ 1/n RT
Text of Amy Ludwig VanDerwater's poem "March 31st."
Happy National Poetry Month Eve! #NationalPoetryMonth #Poetry #Kidlit #Writing
For decades, molecular biology and human genetics have been built around measurements of average gene expression. That was partly conceptual, but also technological: for a long time, the mean was the quantity we could measure most reliably. Our new preprint argues that this framework is incomplete.
This is a poem by Mary Oliver entitle "Don't Hesitate" in which she cautions people against resisting joy for fear of its loss, or for fear that something terrible is happening or is about to happen. If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don't hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that's often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don't be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.
I confess that, at times, I resist joy for fear of its loss, or because something bad is happening or is about to happen. "Don't be afraid of its plenty" calls me in the opposite direction. I'm grateful.
#NationalPoetryMonth
We’ve been talking in our lab meetings about sexual conflict and sexual dimorphism, and have some thoughts. What if animal genomes are far more sex-specific and less cosntrained than we assume? @linley-sherin.bsky.social pulled it all together here www.zoology.ubc.ca/mank-lab/pdf... 1/n
門份 Penn Wharton Budget Model UNIVERSITY of PENNSYLVANIA Q Home Estimates Data v Learning v Blog About v Contact v Table 1: FY 2025 Federal Outlays by Age Group Age Group Amount ($ Billions) Share of Total Outlays Share of Age-Assignable Memo: Per Capita Children & Young Adults (<26) $448.9 6.4% 10.3% $4,300 Working-Age Adults (26-64) $1,220.2 17.4% 27.9% $7,300 Retirees (65+) $2,708.6 38.6% 61.9% $43,700 All Ages Residual $2,632.2 37.5% Total $7,010.0 100.0% 100.0% • Notes, sources & data
I’m so glad somebody directly estimated this. It’s even more extreme on a per capita basis. The average American retiree gets more than 10x more public spending than the average young person.
Journalist essay about the portents of this here: bsky.app/profile/froo...
A green and black caterpillar with a ruffle texture in the top image. Bottom image is a bit of Locke. Attached to a twig and the two images look very much alike
That’s a caterpillar in the top image with the bit of lichen it’s supposed to be at the bottom. See the next post to get a closer look at the caterpillar. Been looking for more of the caterpillars but get faked out by the lichen.
Contrary to the stenographic, credulous accounts from our major newsrooms, the U.S. Forest Service is not being moved. It is being destroyed. morethanjustparks.substack.com/p/breaking-t...
For #NSF and #NIH watchers, Grant Witness now has interactive data on numbers of grants and total funding obligations, broken down by institute and directorate, new awards and non-competitive renewals.
The stranglehold on new awards is still a disaster.
grant-witness.us/funding_curv...
From the same report: 22.7 million renter households in the U.S. are now cost-burdened—a new all-time record.
And of those, 12.1 million are spending more than half their income on housing (up 1.5 million since the start of the pandemic and 4.6 million since 2001).
#Cilia are beautiful!
That's it, that's the tweet.
Oh, and Happy #FluorescenceFriday 🔬
A short video of a global heat map of real time pings to FlyBase website from one of our talented developers (not sped up) @flybase.bsky.social @iubiology.bsky.social
lichen katydids
A recent issue of Natural History magazine has a feature on tropical katydids
Incredible creatures! Hard to decide which were the most amazing, but these lichen katydids are *next level*
Abstracts are due April 15 for current and recent PhD students to be considered for the Hamilton Award Symposium at virtual #Evol2026 on May 20-22! Learn more about how to apply during meeting registration: shorturl.at/qDIP4
Yay Joanna!
Elizabeth Ginexi writes: “In 2024, NIH published 756 funding announcements. In 2025, it published 120. In 2026, as of March 15, it has published 14.”
elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/i-wrote-re...
I had the same experience when using Claude code last summer, and it led to me banning its use in the lab.
bsky.app/profile/wcra...
Trust in science is perhaps our most valuable asset, and we expose ourselves to grave liability by using agentic tools that are deceptive by design.
