@butterfly-project.bsky.social
#HorizonEU project. We aim to enhance society’s capacity to appraise, foresee, and respond to the threats posed by cascading impacts of pollinator decline. 🌐 https://butterfly-europe.eu/
🧵4/4
Bees achieve decisions with neural hardware that fits on the head of a pin.
Understanding how they do this may help design efficient robotic systems.
🔗Study: elifesciences.org/articles/86176
🔗Pop-science: www.popsci.com/science/bee-...
🧵3/4
The timing tells the story
Confident choices took ~0.6 seconds
Uncertain choices took ~1.4 seconds
The hesitation closely tracked how likely a flower colour had been to provide a reward. A computational model showed that sophisticated decision-making can emerge from simple neural circuitry.
🧵2/4
Researchers trained 20 honey bees to associate flower colours with outcomes:
🔵 Blue = reliably sweet
🟢 Green = reliably bitter
🌈 Other colours = reward only sometimes
When released into an experimental “garden”, the bees revealed how they handle uncertainty.
🧵1/4
🚁➡️🐝 A drone needs a data link and remote computing. A honey bee does not.
With a brain smaller than a sesame seed, a honey bee makes rapid, context-sensitive decisions while flying. Efficient intelligence is not the same thing as more computation and bees are a striking reminder of that.
Happy International Day of Women and Girls in Science!
11.02.2026 14:33 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
🐝 🐝 Hace dos semanas lanzamos un Living Lab apoyado por @butterfly-project.bsky.social y @ProPollSoil para demostrar cómo los polinizadores mejoran la productividad y la sostenibilidad agrícola en almendros.
Ciencia aplicada para una agricultura más resiliente 🌍
www.um.es/web/sala-pre...
⬆️A big thank you to @apids.bsky.social and @au.dk for organising everything so perfectly😁👏!
04.02.2026 10:33 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Thank you all for a very fruitful meeting! That's what pollination is all about😜. We now have a year of challenging yet enjoyable work ahead of us. We'll see you in Milan next year🐛🦋.
04.02.2026 09:57 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 1
📅 Save the Date
Delighted to be supporting EURBEE11 — the 11th European Conference of Apidology 🐝
📍 Bologna, Italy | 🗓 7–10 September
For more details: bit.ly/45JdiIR
www.eurbee2026.com
#Eurbee #Eurbee2026 #bees #Apiculture
The meeting is coming to a close. Huge thanks to everyone for a wonderful time! 😁
@jeroenvandersluijs.bsky.social
Have a look at the brand new website of our sibling project, ProPollSoil!
www.propollsoil.eu
Here we go! The final day of the meeting. 🦋
Next meeting: Milano, last week of February 2027.
Soon... 🙂
29.01.2026 13:03 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Ugo Diniz and Claus Rasmussen standing in front of a large amount of blue vane traps
Ugo Diniz and Claus Rasmussen @apids.bsky.social preparing the distribution of vane traps at our @butterfly-project.bsky.social Consortium Meeting in Aaarhus, for the upcoming field work in Butterfly's network of #pollinator living labs
29.01.2026 11:20 — 👍 7 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Some interesting interviews are taking place...
@jeroenvandersluijs.bsky.social
@noasimondelso.bsky.social
Hi! How are you all today? The second day of the meeting is about to begin. 🐛🦋
29.01.2026 07:44 — 👍 6 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0We've just started!
28.01.2026 09:01 — 👍 3 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Hey, Butterflyiers! Have you arrived in Aarhus yet? Our annual meeting starts tomorrow!🐛🦋
27.01.2026 15:53 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 1
A new UK government report warns that global #biodiversity loss threatens food security, economic stability, and geopolitical order. In my latest blog post I ask whether pollination should now be considered a #nationalsecurity issue:
jeffollerton.co.uk/2026/01/26/p...
@butterfly-project.bsky.social
A big cheer for our sibling project ProPollSoil! The Polish teams have got a press release ready for a good start⬇️
@jagiellonskiuni.bsky.social
Mapping bee diversity with landscape-level models to
inform conservation
#pollinators
#beebiodiversity
How to incorporate bee biodiversity indicators into decision-making? A roadmap:
conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Ha! Great news!
Muchas gracias por hacer posible dos proyectos juntos 🐛🦋🥂
A new note on methodology by Gonzales-Vaquero et al. on "Curation and standardisation of plant–pollinator interaction data under FAIR principles: experience from Pampean agroecosystems" has just been published in JPE:
doi.org/10.26786/192...
Talking about robotic bees, I can recommend these two articles:
1. ecologyisnotadirtyword.com/2017/02/11/a...
2. www.sussex.ac.uk/lifesci/goul...
⬆️cc: @jeffollerton.bsky.social @calacastellanos.bsky.social @kamillastolen.bsky.social @vitenskapsteori.bsky.social 😃
22.01.2026 11:41 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
🧵4/4
🔬 Scientific paper:
royalsocietypublishing.org/rsif/article...
🌍 Popular science:
www.popsci.com/science/butt...
🧵3/4
When pollinators are under pressure, discoveries like this remind us how intricate and astonishing natural systems truly are.
Understanding these hidden mechanisms is scientifically exciting, but also important for developing strategies to protect pollinators and the ecosystems they support.
🧵2/4
Electric charge varies with species, corresponding to habitat, activity patterns and flower-visiting behaviour, suggesting electrostatic charging is an evolutionary trait shaped by natural selection.
This reveals a whole new dimension to the way insects interact with plants.
🧵1/4
⚡🦋 Electrostatic pollination by butterflies and moths
Butterflies and moths accumulate electrostatic charge as they fly, allowing them to pull pollen grains off flowers without even touching them. In other words, they can literally attract pollen through the air.
doi.org/10.1098/rsif...
#EBDPub Pollination networks change over time in ways that are consistently better than random: this rewiring enhances pollinator persistence.
It is not optimal, but it is key for biodiversity to persist in natural systems.
🟢 doi.org/10.1111/ele....