Tuomas Aivelo

This art features 100 bees of various colors and shapes. These bees are designed in a cartoonish style, based on real species. The common name or species is written below the animals. Some bees are moving leaves, scraping plant hair, or sticking out their tongues. Some male bees have hairy faces and unusually shaped legs. There are also baby bees that have just hatched from their petal nests. Cute and colorful atmosphere. There are over 20,000 species of bees, so I only depicted a very small fraction of them!

Bees 🐝

Ensin katamme rotille buffetin, sitten myrkytämme – Seurasimme tutkijaa, joka haluaa katkaista ”julman kierteen” Helsingissä on tutkittu kaupunkirottia jo vuosia. Ekologi Santtu Pentikäinen kiertää itähelsinkiläisiä roskakatoksia osana tätä tutkimusta.

Tutkijamme Santtu Pentikäinen vei Apun toimittajan tutustumaan hankkeemme kenttätöihin roskakatoksiin ja takapihoille - ja tästähän tulikin elämän (ja kuoleman)makuinen juttu!

www.apu.fi/artikkelit/r...

This is an interesting article - but it buries FAR too deeply the important idea that new tech can make the field accessible to people who cannot, for various reasons, participate in field work.

It's there - but gosh it's buried deeply!

Tää on samaan aikaan lohdullinen ja kuumottava ajatus: yhteiskuntamme on pystyssä ja kaupunkimme niin isoja, koska tässä (ja kaikissa muissa yhteiselämisen haasteissa) olemme onnistuneet.

I, for one, expect that our rodent overlords are more capable than us in resolving climate change and biodiversity crises.

And before you notice it, the rats are grounding KLM long-haul flights:

Then Faculty newsletter had this guidance:

All signs are there for Great Rodent Uprising of 2026!

First there was this guy (or girl) moving into our kitchen:

Sun is apparently shining in Helsinki as the local newspaper has a live stream on it.

Also, I use this screen capture to show my Dutch colleagues that that's what midday sunshine in Finland means during wintertime.

Pisaroista pienhiukkasiin: Pandemia muutti ymmärryksen infektioiden leviämisestä

"Koronapandemia muutti, miten ajattelemme hengitysteissä esiintyvien taudinaiheuttajien leviävän. Ilman kautta tapahtuvaa altistusta ei nähdä enää harvinaisena, --"

Ensihavaintoja Pandemiakriisin opetukset -hankkeesta ymmärryksemme muutoksesta kriisitilanteessa: tietokayttoon.fi/-/pisaroista...

Käytännössä ainut tapa myydä soiden ennallistaminen suomalaisessa politiikassa: sano, että ne hidastavat venäläisiä tankkeja.

Rotat liikkuvat syksyllä Rotat liikkuvat syksyllä.

Tutkijamme Santtu Pentikäinen kertoi rottien syksystä Viiden jälkeen -ohjelmassa: www.mtvuutiset.fi/videot/video...

RHEV Helsinki strains clustered together with strains from South Korea and Spain, but polytomous phylogenetic trees and large branch lengths suggest lack of sampling. Our genotype RHEV-C1 has been reported to cause mild liver dysfunction with human case reports from Hong Kong, Spain, and France.

Genetic characterization of rat hepatitis E virus (Rocahepevirus ratti) in urban brown rats (Rattus norvegicus) in Helsinki, Finland - Archives of Virology We report complete and partial genome sequences of rat hepatitis E virus (RHEV, Rocahepevirus ratti), from archived brown rats captured in Helsinki, Finland. Phylogenetic analysis confirmed the presence of the pathogenic RHEV genotype C1 in the Helsinki region. Finnish strains clustered together with strains from South Korea and Spain. However, the polytomous topology of phylogenetic trees and the large genetic distances between spatially distinct strains suggest that RHEV has remained inadequately sampled on a global scale. Further surveillance of rocahepeviruses is needed to assess their threat to public health and to understand their diversity and evolutionary patterns.

Just out of press: genetic characterization of rat hepatitis E virus in Helsinki rats in Archives of Virology!

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Earlier we reported that we found RHEV in four of our rat carcasses (prevalence of less than 2%) and now we have complete or partial genomes for these.

The research might be "eclectic disciplinary perspectives", but as Riikka aptly summarizes: "Urban stigmatisation and marginalisation are multispecies processes that emerge with place-making and have consequences for all the multispecies cohabitants of the city."
(5/5)

Waste, humans, rats - junk food, shopping centers, drunk people. "Well, this just happens to be a place where people randomly poop around, business as usual."

Belonging and place-making are multispecies phenomena, and urban is not only human, but more-than-human.
(4/5)

With this invisible rat presence, we examined urban stigmatisation and belonging as examples of societal phenomena which can be rethought as multispecies. They are very territorial in scope, and place-making emerged as a fruitful concept to understand how multispecies urban is formed.
(3/5)

We (as in the ragtag bunch of researchers in CitiRats project) went out to look for rats with lower secondary-school students and we did not see any rats, but we did felt their hidden presence. They were present in stories, stereotypes, memories, and athmospheres.
(2/5)

‘This place cannot be tidied up!’ Stigmatisation, rats, and place-making in a multispecies city This paper presents a multidisciplinary research project which invited young people to critically re-estimate what is environment and nature, and for whom, in the urbanising world. We describe a se...

🚨New paper out today: ‘This place cannot be tidied up!’ Stigmatisation, rats, and place-making in a multispecies city🚨

The paper led by Riikka Hohti out today in Children's Geographies: doi.org/10.1080/1473...

A short thread:
(1/5)

Plaagdieren? Welnee! Ratten zijn onze vrienden, betoogt Finse ecoloog Mensen kunnen vreedzaam samenleven met ratten, betoogt ecoloog Tuomas Aivelo. ‘We geven gemengde signalen af.’

‘Ik ben ecoloog, dus ik probeer ratten niet te zien als een plaagdier.' Ik weet dat dit provocerend klinkt, want ecologen zijn goed in het beoordelen (en doden) van andere dieren.
Mare interviewde mij over ons rattenonderzoek en het samenleven met vervelende dieren: www.mareonline.nl/wetenschap/r...

🚨 Postdoc opportunities! 🚨
We’re looking for postdocs in 🌿 biodiversity science, 🧬 genetic indicator assessment, and 📊 ecological statistics.

Join us in unraveling the drivers & consequences of global change on biodiversity — and be part of a supportive & collaborative environment!
DL 24 September

Breaking News: Read three top CDC officials' resignation emails. The end of an era.

Enough is enough. The health of the country is in danger. Read our resignation letters: insidemedicine.substack.com/p/breaking-n...

Enpäs ole hetkeen hävennyt oman yliopistoni päätöksiä näin paljon.

Things that I learn while doing research: Instagram is just as cut-throat to street plants as to humans.

We had a discussion why pavement plants might be underwhelming in authentic context. Nienke mentioned that it is difficult to take a good photo of pavement plant as you need to pick out the cigarette butts and other trash, figure out the light, find the least scrappy individual and so on.

The finding that I found most intriguing: Those people who did not contribute data and just followed Stoepplantjes on social media perceived pavement plants more positively than those who contributed data.

So, I guess, seeing plants in the wild is less exciting than seeing them in Instagram!

“What's that weed on the street?” Motivation and attitude of contributors and followers in a citizen science project studying pavement plants Plants are essential for life on Earth, yet their importance is often underappreciated. Urban flora are often dismissed as weeds, for example. One sol…

First paper from Nienke Beets on her thesis on Stoepplantjes, a pavement plant citizen science project out in Biological Conservation! Happy to be a coauthor here. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Rethinking journalism’s silence on animal agriculture Journalist Anne Salomäki unpacks the human-centric approach when covering animal farming in the media.

"What does a pig say? In English, a pig says “oink, oink”. In Finnish, “röh, röh”. In Danish, “øf, øf”.
But in the language of journalism a pig is usually silent."

Happy to contribute to Anne Salomäki's project at @reutersinstitute.bsky.social!

reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/rethinking-j...

Anna is doing her PhD on the process of how biodiversity research is translated into public understanding and this is a crucial first piece - next stop is to figure out how journalists do decisions on writing about biodiversity.
(5/5)