Joseph Williamson

Have had a very exciting and unexpected start to this week, travelling to Salford for an interview with BBC Breakfast talking all things #wasps! Many thanks to @waspwoman.bsky.social for trusting me with this opportunity, and the fantastic #WorldOfWasps at @uclgrantmuseum.bsky.social for the props!

UCL – University College London UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

We are recruiting for a Research Technician to support our lab's experimental evolution work with Drosophila melanogaster at UCL. Do you have recent insect husbandry experience and want to be a key part of an academic research environment? We'd love to hear from you www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

Seeing a lot of racist pinkwashing bullshit about Muslims and homosexuality and it’s a good time to share how I was on the gay marriage beat for a decade and racist gays never believed me when I shared how US Muslims favored equal LGBT rights (52%) over Christian evangelicals (34%)!

🚨 Important paper for understanding limits on range expansions under climate change. 🚨 Wall Brown's shift their life history to expand polewards, but are ultimately limited by winter tolerance. Perhaps physiological tolerances just can't evolve at the same pace as other traits... 🦋❄️

New paper in @pnas.org — and this is my favourite one out of my PhD thesis! Field transplants of wall brown butterflies show life history evolution during climate change-driven range expansion, BUT non-evolving winter tolerance still sets the range limit.🧵1/12. doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Douglas Boyes Fund - Royal Entomological Society The Douglas Boyes Fund has been established in honour of Douglas Boyes (1996-2021), an esteemed entomologist specialising in Lepidoptera. The Fund aims to provide young people aged 14-18 with access…

Do you know a young person with an interest in insects? 🦋

The Douglas Boyes Fund aims to provide people aged 14-18 with access to entomology equipment, fostering their passion for insects and inspiring them to engage and share their interest with other young individuals 🔽

Biology/Geography/Earth Sciences colleagues: can anyone recommend a field centre or similar field course location that works well for students who are wheelchair users? This is a no-fly course so we're trying to find somewhere in the UK or Western Europe

Black panther successfully hunting a dikdik last night. 🐈‍⬛ Definitely the best wildlife sighting of my life. 🥹 Incredibly lucky, and quite the cherry on top of a fantastic UCL undergraduate field course to Kenya! 🇰🇪 Recorded by student Aidan McAvoy.

Systemic territoriality in academia: The Gollum effect’s impact on scientific research and careers Addressing environmental challenges requires scientific collaboration, access to resources, and open knowledge exchange. However, possessive behaviors…

Territorial behaviour in ecology and conservation damages careers and impedes progress in the field. 🌏🧪🌐

Closing tomorrow! Last chance to apply for postdoc to explore the role of animals in savanna ecosystem productivity & nutrient cycling! Link to job: tinyurl.com/53dy4584 #savanna #termites #largemammals

I came here to say this!

Autonomous locomotion simply with tubes as limbs, and no brain? 🎈🤖

Yes, through physical synchronization! Our article is out today in Science (@science.org)

Article: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Authors: @albertocomoretto.bsky.social, H.A.H. Schomaker, J.T.B. Overvelde

More below 🧪 ⚛️
(1/6)

people sitting in a park discussing a paper and eating ice lollies

What do you do when there is heatwave and the meeting room is being refurbed? Take Journal Club to the park of course! Ice lollies provided. 🥵🍦 @uclcber.bsky.social

Today @owenrcorbett.bsky.social was crowned Dr Corbett, Doctor of Wasps!

Congrats Owen! We are all so proud of you!
@uclcber.bsky.social @uclnews.bsky.social @maxreuter.bsky.social

Huge thanks to @jimlabisko.bsky.social @chrisleduck.bsky.social for examining!

🚨🐜!!! Check out our new paper where we investigate the impact of a soil level (SoilTemp) dataset on niche shifts of introduced ant species globally — using soil temperatures often lessens the extent of niche shifts between native and introduced ranges! 🐜 🐜 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🔎👀 TropEco Lab is hiring, please share! 🚨
🌍🌴 Position: Senior Research Associate / Research Associate in Field and Molecular Ecology.
🪲🐝🦋 Task: You will use iDNA & eDNA to build bee-plant and dung beetle-mammal networks in the Brazilian Amazonia, Ghana, & Malaysia.
Further details -> bit.ly/4lurR9z

Last week I defended my thesis "Structure and Function of Insect Communities in Central Congo Peatland Forests" with minor corrections. Thanks to supervisors Jan Axmacher and Simon Lewis for their inspiration and support, and to examiners Tim Newbold (UCL) and Ed Turner (Cambridge). Now, to publish!

Causes and consequences of insect decline in tropical forests Nature Reviews Biodiversity - Insect biodiversity in tropical forests is poorly understood but is probably facing declines, with serious consequences for ecosystem functions and services. This...

For anyone who wants the pdf version - rdcu.be/egjby

Ecological effects of declining insect diversity and abundance. In tropical forests, declining insect populations will have substantial effects on plant community dynamics, resulting in reduced biodiversity, alterations to functional community composition of plants and ultimately reduced nutrient cycling and carbon sequestration. Reductions in the abundance of insects will also have knock-on effects on insectivorous animals such as bats, birds and lizards. In forest-adjacent tropical communities, unequal patterns of decline across the trophic pyramid will result in a predator release effect on pest species, leading to reduced food security and increased outbreaks of insect-vectored disease in both humans and livestock. Increasing temperatures and changing rainfall patterns may affect pollinators, further exacerbating reductions in yields of locally and globally important crops. ‘Acquisitive’ leaf traits are those that maximize growth, such as high specific leaf area and leaf nitrogen content.

Great to see our new review on the causes and consequences of tropical insect declines out in Nature Reviews Biodiversity. 🪰🪲🐜🐛🐝🦋 It was a pleasure working with an international team of amazing tropical entomologists! 🧑‍🔬
www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Super useful video library to liven up your presentations …

Out now in @pnas.org , we study the recovery dynamics of biodiversity across the Cretaceous–Paleogene mass extinction. We quantify how species-area relationships – how diversity scales with geographic area – have changed for dinosaurs, mammals and others: doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

For the first time, the Norwegian government has calculated the value to society of the health benefits of increased walking and cycling.

🚲 ~€2.8 for each additional km of cycling
🚶‍♀️ ~€4.2 for each additional km of walking

We are seeking to appoint a fulltime field assistant to work on the Wytham Tit Project for 4-8 weeks in spring 2025. Duties will include (i) collecting standardised data from nest-box breeding populations of tits, (ii) setting up equipment to monitor foraging behaviour of great tits (e.g. cameras, proximity loggers), (iii) fitting proximity tags and accelerometers to adult great tits (iv) inputting data collected in the field. The start date and duration of this position is flexible, depending on availability of the successful candidate. The post could last up to 8 weeks, starting in mid-April, or c. 4 weeks, starting in early May. All fieldwork will take place in Wytham Woods, near Oxford. The work is variable in intensity and will at times require long days in the field, and working some weekend days, but this will be balanced out by a quieter period at the start and end of the season. Successful candidates must have (or be qualified to obtain) a BTO permit to ring adult great tits, be able to demonstrate skill and enthusiasm for biological research as well as experience of fieldwork under arduous conditions, and both lone work and working as part of a team. Due to the short-term nature of these posts, successful applicants must already have the right to work in the UK. Salary & Accommodation: Field assistants will be paid at grade 5.2 (£17.02/hour) and responsible for finding their own accommodation. It will be possible to hire accommodated at the Wytham Chalet, a research station within Wytham Woods. Alternatively, field assistants can find private accommodation locally and use their own transport to commute to the woods (approx. 30 min by car or bike, depending on location). Please submit an application, consisting of (1) a covering letter explaining relevant experience and motivation, (2) a CV (max 2 pages), and the names of two people who can be contacted as referees, by Tuesday 11th March 2025 to eleanor.cole@biology.ox.ac.uk. Inquiries to same email.

We're hiring a fieldworker to help with some of our projects in Wytham Woods this spring. Wonderful place to work (and live), especially in the spring. Get in touch if you'd like to know more.

Phylogenetic tree of primates (left), functional OR clustering results (middle) and OR quantities of living and ancestral primate species (right). The dotted line represents the quantity (percentage) of functional ORs relative to the primate ancestor. P, Primates; Ha, Haplorrhini; A, Anthropoidea; Ca, Catarrhini; K, Cercopithecidae; H, Hominoidea; Ho, Hominidae; Hy, Hylobatidae; Ce, Cercopithecinae; Co, Colobinae; L, Platyrrhine; Ta, Tarsiidae; S, Strepsirrhini; Le, Lemuroidea; Lo, Lorisoidea. In the heatmap, each row corresponds to a species (or ancestor), while each column represents one of the 3,077 functional clusters, blue bars denote the presence of different OR functional clusters in the species, while grey bars signify absence. b, Ternary plot of the proportion of the three functional groups of OR tuning for ancestral and extant primates. The blue and red triangles refer to the 50 extant species of Haplorrhini and Strepsirrhini in the evolutionary tree of a and the blue and red dots refer to the ancestral nodes of primates, denoted by the 15 circularly labelled abbreviated letters in a. c, Total numbers of differently tuned ORs in early ancestors of anthropoids and strepsirrhines revealing notable differences between ancestors of strepsirrhines and anthropoids.

🚨 New paper 🚨 Primate sensory evolution shows shifts in visual and olfactory systems 🦧👁️👃. Nice to see this is out, really cool combination of genomic, molecular and anatomical data! 🧬🧪🧠 Thanks to Hai Chi, Gang Li and co for having me on board. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

UCL – University College London UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

#science #job Research fellow in Molecular Ecology @ucl-pnl.bsky.social 🧪

Happy to share we have a new postdoc position in "Biogeography of genetic diversity changes or Macrogenetics" at @utu.fi to work on large-scale patterns of genetic diversity using Lepidoptera= moths and butterflies 🦋🦋 Applications are open until March 10!
ats.talentadore.com/apply/tutkij...

Woodlands blew my mind at the start of my PhD!

A research lab from Northwestern, chosen because it's generic and sort of zoomed out. Three scientists are visible in lab coats, and there are benches and shelving, with glass along one wall showing another high-rise building nearby. Overhead fluorescents provide light.

This is a room where we turn very modest salaries and budgets (and lots of coffee) into new knowledge, life-saving innovations, and technology that feeds business growth.

It's literally the loom that spins hay into gold but these numpties are suddenly worried about the cost of hay.

Look at Labour’s acts of environmental vandalism and ask: did I vote for this? | George Monbiot Our rivers, our wildlife, the air we breathe: the government is sacrificing all to the insatiable god of GDP – and mocking our objections, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

In my column today I argue that, unbelievably, Labour are worse on environmental issues than the Conservatives.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

If you missed Prof Ilya Maclean's talk "The art and science of prediction" earlier this week, you can view the full video recording below.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRIN...

#esiChallengeOfTheMonth

@exeter.ac.uk @crpr-exeter.bsky.social @uniexecec.bsky.social @ilyamaclean.bsky.social