Madeleine Fabušová

A group of researchers and participants gather at night in a mountain landscape around a glowing blue light trap used for collecting moths. The scene is illuminated by the bright light, with trees and dark mountain silhouettes in the background. The group is examining specimens and taking notes during fieldwork. Photo credit: Alena Suchackova.

(1/2) Applications are open for the second field workshop of WG 2: Specimen collection for genomic work
📍 Vlahi, Pirin Mountains (Bulgaria)
📅 15–19 June 2026
We’re bringing together Lepidoptera taxonomists, enthusiasts, bioinformaticians, and students for real hands-on learning and exchange.
⬇️ ⬇️

It’s official!

The 'Urban Flora of Newcastle and North Tyneside' will be published on Monday 9 March 🌿 📖

I’m hugely proud of this, and ever so grateful to @nenature.bsky.social and @bsbibotany.bsky.social for their support in making it happen. #botany #urbanflora

Tardigrades are small but mighty- and tell us a lot about the environment! Read more in our newest EntoBite article by Dr. Alfonsina Grabosky. ⬇️

🌙💡 Does light pollution go deeper than we think?

Our new study shows that LED light at night alters thyroid gland histology in Triturus newts, a key endocrine organ. Suggesting ALAN as a subtle endocrine disruptor, beyond known effects on melatonin and corticosterone

📄 www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/16...

Amphibians under artificial light at night: Current knowledge, conservation challenges and future directions Amphibians have evolved under predictable light-dark cycles, with most species relying on darkness for foraging, reproduction, and predator avoidance.…

Artificial light at night is an unlit conservation blind spot for amphibians.
Our review highlights that even small changes to natural night lighting can disrupt amphibian behavior, physiology, reproduction, and species interactions. #lightpollution #amphibians
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Did you want to see the behind the scenes of London's Natural History Museum? Baxter and Lucas wrote a fabulous blog for EntoBites about their current placement 🐝🐜

entobites.blog/2026/02/02/b...

Artificial nighttime lighting is suppressing moth activity Moths move significantly less when exposed to artificial nighttime light, new research shows. Moths’ attraction to artificial light, such as streetlights, is common knowledge and has been much studied...

Moths move significantly less when exposed to artificial nighttime light, new research from the Centre for Ecology and Conservation at the University of Exeter, Cornwall shows.
Read More: news.exeter.ac.uk/faculty-of-e...

@uniexecec.bsky.social #ExeterEcology

I’ve recently decided to get back into digital art starting with my most ambitious project. Depicting some key life history and anatomical elements of one of my favourite animals. The secretary bird.

#BigGardenBirdwatch 🐦🔭

Spending an hour watching the birds in our little sub-urban garden? Yes please! Equipped with binoculars and notebook, 16 birds of 9 species, including Collared Doves, Wood Pigeon, Blue and Great tits, Blackbird, Starlings, Magpies, House Sparrow and Robin @rspb.bsky.social

Great new research shows that light pollution prevents activity in the critical twilight period (just after sunset) in a moth and spider species. 🕷️🦋💡- this calls for mitigations targeting this critical time period. Read more in our dispatch:
www.cell.com/current-biol...

A u shaped structure made out of sticks called a bower, built under a small tree. In front of the bower is a pile of grey, white and green objects that make up the display court. The whole scene is in dappled sunlight and shade created by the tree above.

New bowerbird paper out, we asked whether male great bowerbirds care about the light environment around the bower where they display to females. Short answer: not really. What they do care about is having a display arena with strong visual contrast on the ground. 🐦 tinyurl.com/2v7rycdz

🦋🧬 A milestone for biodiversity genomics.
Project Psyche is building chromosome-level genomes for ~11,000 European butterflies & moths — 1,000 sequenced, 3,000+ collected, across 34 countries.

🔗 Read the publication: bit.ly/ProjectPsyche
@projectpsyche.bsky.social

#BiodiversityGenomics 🧬🌍

A Hoopoe perches on fallen tree trunk showing its orange crest, down-curved bill, and black, white and sandy brown plumage. Image credit bottom right reads Hoopoe by Edmund Fellowes / BTO.

1/🧵 Two bird species bred in the UK in 2023 for the first time since the 1990s!

The latest report by @ukrbbp.bsky.social published in @britishbirds.bsky.social confirmed a pair of Hoopoes raised three young from a nest in Leicestershire and Rutland. #Ornithology

Multiple anthropogenic stressors can negatively impact species but can a single stressor also have multiple, concurrent impacts? Here we show that light pollution creates several simultaneous impacts to the nocturnal movement ecology of a moth and a spider: tinyurl.com/5eku5bff (1/5)

Se me está quedando pequeña la pared 😱

Can Molecular Biology be used to Control Aphid and Whitefly Pests? Aphids and Whiteflies are serious crop pests The Green Peach aphid Myzus persicae along with the sweet potato whitefly Bemisia tabaci are hemipteran sap feeding crop pests. Infestations of both ins…

Ever wondered if molecular biology be used to control aphid and whitefly pests?

You can learn more in our new EntoBites post by Maddie Park below:
entobites.blog/2025/12/05/c...

https://www.instagram.com/p/DSJXsuIDMPu/?igsh=MTJjY2J3ZTdoandiYw==

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/national-geographic-society_natgeoexplorers-activity-7404984609353932800-C7Xs

I am absolutely delighted to see the post by National Geographic Society covering our recent publication on new bush #frogs 🐸 🐸 from northeast #India just in time for #frogfriday 😃

Interns wanted! - Biodiversity Monitoring South Tyrol

Want to work on biodiversity in the Alps? ⛰️

We are offering several internship positions for the upcoming spring and summer in collaboration with the Biodiversity Monitoring South Tyrol 🕷️🦋🦇🐜🌼🦗🪱

biodiversity.eurac.edu/interns-want...

As we approach the end of a tumultuous academic year I’m thankful more than ever to lead an amazing and talented group of researchers who are committed to the best of science @nclneg.bsky.social

Genome sequencing progress for Lepidoptera. Stacked bar charts represent the cumulative number of lepidopteran species with a reference genome per year. The colours represent the different levels of genome assembly quality, ranging from contig to chromosome-level. Numbers in brackets represent the range in numbers of species that have a given assembly level per year. Data derived from GoaT on 05.09.2025.

(1/6) 🦋 We are thrilled to announce the release of the 1,000th reference genome of Lepidoptera species found in Europe!
This goal was reached with the release of Stenoptilia islandicus, also known as the mountain plume moth.
Read the story below!👇🏽

Newcastle's finest ecologists pointing at wild goats up the hill!

Top left to bottom right: Potentially a Crimson Waxcap Parrot waxcap Meadow coral Jelly ears (aka the best fungus) Appreciation for the abundance of rowan berries this year Pretty moss

The Cheviot wild goats!

A day out for our office- a bunch of ecologists looking for wild goats, fungi and birds. Doesn't get much better than that!

First flocks of fieldfares too. Attempt at fungi ID in alt- happy to hear any suggestions!

A white-fronted bee-eater (Merops bullockoides) decides whether to consume a warningly colored white-barred acraea butterfly (Telchinia encedon). Photo (c) Mike Rowe

📢🦋 Our paper ‘Global selection on insect antipredator coloration’ is out and featured on the cover of @science.org

We ran a huge experiment to find out how ecological context favours camouflage and warning colouration as antipredator strategies. 1/6

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Interested in mitigating the impacts of light pollution? Join the Knowledge Network! #ALAN

We're leading work on evidence synthesis across biodiversity, road safety and energy impacts and we need your help!

Read more below and join us: www.ncl.ac.uk/nes/our-rese... 💡

An overview shot of a portion of the collection: a long window box with wooden frames filled with glass models of plants carefully arranged and labeled on white backgrounds, as though part of a 3D herbarium. From this distance, they are indistinguishable from real plants.

Glass model of maple leaves, featuring blended molten glass that mimics the red hues of autumn foliage

A glass model of a Columbine (Aquilegia) with parsley-like leaves and pendulous, faintly red and yellow flowers that look like swans huddled together, necks touching and wings flared out.

Glass model of a Potentilla with almost ferny foliage and simple, open-faced yellow flowers with fuzzy centers.

Recently visited the Glass Flowers at Harvard, a collection of 4,300 extraordinarily realistic glass models of plants crafted by the Blaschkas, a father and son team of sculptors

That’s right, these are all made primarily of GLASS — a fact difficult to accept given how accurate & lifelike they are

BehaveAI is live!

Our biologically inspired video analysis tool sees motion as colour. Track animals or objects, classify their behaviour, and handle complex natural scenes with ease.

Semi-supervised annotation, no GPUs required, user-friendly, free & open source.

Pre-print tinyurl.com/BehaveAI

The cognitive ecology of wild bumblebees

New #PhD ad alert!
Interested in wild #bee #cognition and #brains in different #bumblebees? Want to live in #Newcastle and the beautiful north-east of England?

Check out this project with me, @lenariab.bsky.social and Sarah Scott. Contact me for further information.

iapetus.ac.uk/studentships...

Come join our lab and explore the fascinating bird ecoacoustics 🐦🔊

PhD advert below!

If you can, please consider donating to this appeal, to help us install as many swift boxes in as many churches as we can. www.durhamwt.com/appeals/durh...

Installing the boxes. Credit to: Durham Wildlife Trust (Mary-Anne Rielly)

Completed swift box apartment complex. Credit to: Durham Wildlife Trust (Mary-Anne Rielly)

Swifts, the wonderful summer visitors, screeching through the skies. Also, birds in huge decline. It's been wonderful to be involved in the Durham Swift City project with @durhamwildlife.bsky.social, providing more nesting habitats for swifts! See more here: www.durhamwt.com/blog/mary-an...

Zotero is great and has easy plug-ins, but I've also been very happy with paperpile, which is however paid but has great integration across all devices and software