Piotr Lukasik

Lead author Auke-Florian Hiemstra holds the oldest known caddisfly casing containing microplastic, dating to 1971. Photo: Liselotte Rambonnet.

A caddisfly casing with pieces of blue microplastic, dating 1986. Photo: Auke-Florian Hiemstra

NEW PAPER, JUST OUT! 👀

Insects from the '70s and '80s were already collecting microplastic, decades before the term microplastic even existed. 🤯

A thread on the surprising history of this pollutant and the incredible insect larvae that helped us uncover it. 🐛

Let's dive in! 🧵👇 1/x

New preprint by our team @ioes-ju.bsky.social! Using custom multi-target amplicon sequencing on diverse pathogen-killed dipterans from Greenland, we find multiple #Entomophthora genotypes with notable host specificity, and reconstruct bacterial communities associated with the killed insects.

Maternal symbiont transmission via envenomation in the parasitoid wasp Spalangia cameroni Intracellular symbionts of insects are typically transmitted transovarially. Weiss et al. find that in a nascent symbiosis between a Sodalis bacterium and a parasitoid wasp, Sodalis is injected with w...

A convincing demonstration of a unique transmission strategy of a widespread #insect #endosymbiont
--- check out the recent publication in @currentbiology.bsky.social @kaltenpoth-lab.bsky.social et al. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Thank you, @einsteinberlin.bsky.social, for recognizing the importance of raising concerns about scientific papers. Often, science sleuths face professional, personal, and legal threats.

Awards like these are vital to acknowledging the significance of our work.

Bison in Bialowieza Forest (c) R Broughton

Poland-Belarus border fence, wiki commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Poland_Belarus_border_barrier_2023.jpg

Our new #OpenAccess paper
How can long-term #ecology studies survive & resist political & social change, authoritarianism, war, but also embrace positive change?

The Białowieża Forest as an example of the resilience of long-term studies in a changing world:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 1/

Beautiful work!

Two-thirds of the Earth’s surface experienced record heat in 2024. See where and by how much – visualised In oceans and on land, from the north to the south pole, records were smashed for the monthly average temperature

Recommended read: A @theguardian.com interactive mapped the record heat experienced by two-thirds of the Earth’s surface in 2024.

Dark Taxonomy: From unknown to ready for biomonitoring in 5 steps. By describing 120 species, most species of fungus gnats routinely caught in Malaise traps in Singapore now have names. Bees, butterflies and birds, make room for your new friends. Read here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

From across the Atlantic, it's hard to even imagine what is going on, and the impacts. And utterly impossible to find any logic ot it... Take care, Matt.

It’s not the head, it’s the butt!
Meet a completely unknown organism: a blow fly (Calliphoridae) that evolved social integration in termite nests using a false termite head in the posterior part of the body.
@CurrentBiology www.cell.com/current-biol...

A clam with a spring attached to the shell. The spring has a magnet placed above a sensor.

Hardly new info, but BSky should know:

Warsaw's water quality is monitored by eight clams with magnets attached to their shells. If contamination in the water causes the clams to close, the magnets trigger an alarm and shut off the city's water supply.
Thank you, little guardian molluscs.

🧪🌏🚰

A #gingerbread Christmas #cicada - a sure sign that the much-needed vacation is just around the corner!

https://www.pnas.org/doi/epub/10.1073/pnas.2315735121

How to write a grant?
1. The application is for the reviewer, not you, the applicant.
2. Communicate in stories.
3. Make your story cohesive—leave no puzzling gaps.
4. Make your story resonate to keep the reviewer reading.
5. Accept chance and noise in peer-review.
www.pnas.org/doi/epub/10....

Microscopy image of a piece of the cortex of rhesus macaque. Markers shown are dapi (blue), pyramidal neurons in yellow (smi32), calreticulin (pink), and neun (purple).

A forest of neurons inside your head, happy #FluorescenceFriday! 🔬🧪🧠

Hope I'm the first to post this all time classic on this platform

Faculty of Science is recruiting Assistant Professors in Biodiversity - Stockholm University Faculty of Science is recruiting Assistant Professors in Biodiversity - Stockholm University

Three (!) positions as Assistant Professor in #Biodiversity
We hope to get one to our department #biogeography
A super recruitment within Life sciences. Maximum of 7 since PhD 🌍🧪
#biodiversity #academic #climatechange #lifescience #ecology #StockholmUniversity
Please re-🦋
www.su.se/english/news...

Hoppers of Texas - Alex Wild An incomplete guide to common Texas planthoppers, leafhoppers, treehoppers, spittlebugs, and relatives.

I’m not sure most people appreciate how many different species our planet holds.

Here are just some (maybe 20%?) of the plant- and leaf-hopper bugs, from just one state, Texas.

I'm new to BlueSky - it's fun exploring this new site!
And here is a photo of me at another site that was new to me this year: collecting insects for microbiome research in Ilulissat, #Greenland. It's turned out great.
#microbiome #symbiosis #insects #biodiversity #sequencing