Lucas Nell

That previous photo is me taking a video of an adult, winged, female damselfly who is underwater and laying eggs in the stems of the underwater plants. Here is the view. You can watch her curl her abdomen around and insert the two eggs!! 🥚 🌿

Tachinid #parasitoid emerging from #monarch #butterfly chrysalis... The larva was never exposed, but field collected leaves were fed to the caterpillar. Many tachinids lay their eggs on leaves, only to be consumed by caterpillars, later consuming the caterpillars from the inside out

The next stand-alone meeting of the American Society of Naturalists @asn-amnat.bsky.social will be on the East Coast!!! Mark your calendars for January 8-12, 2027 and we'll talk evolution, ecology, behavior, and integrative organismal biology at www.themansionatglencove.com/meeting-venues

Mind blown

I'm going!

Very cool and love the artwork!

A macro photo of two beetles attacking another insect, on a pale, crystalline rock. The beetles have dull dark bluish abdomens and orange head/legs/thorax. Their prey is a similar-sized, orange-brown insect, probably a termite alate (an alate is a winged, reproductive male or female termite or ant that leaves to form a new colony; this one has lost its wings, which they do after their short nuptial flight; in this case, it might also have been due to the beetles' attack).

Two bombardier beetles (Brachinus sp.) attacking a termite. Many insects defend themselves with smelly/irritating chemicals; these beetles go to 11. They mix chemicals in their abdomen, and the resulting reaction reaches near boiling; the noxious mixture is emitted with an audible pop. 🐙🌿 #insects

Real wild wrinkle to the argument that open data will improve the integrity of science.

Final week to apply for this year’s round of the Princeton EEB Fellowship Program, folks! Please repost and help spread the word! We’re going tweetless and need the biggest bluest skies you folks can muster, please!!! ☀️ @eseb.bsky.social
@asn-amnat.bsky.social
@sse-evolution.bsky.social
Thanks!

A figure comparing box plot and showing all data points. Group1: normally distributed data. Group2: bimodal data. Group3: Data with 3 modes.

Friends don't let friends make bad graphs repo has been updated!

Friends don't let friends use boxplot for binomial (bimodal) data. Is your box plot hiding something from you?

#DataVisualization

github.com/cxli233/Frie...

I am looking for a PhD student to start in fall of 2025 at MSU. Potential topics include trait-based approaches to plankton community resilience, temperature effects on communities, harmful algal blooms and many others. Please get in touch if interested. More info: www.kl-lab.group.

Could I be added please?

Saiva bullata is endemic to the mountains of Northern Thailand. Despite its colours, it remains extremely well camouflaged when resting on the tree trunk. Yet another polka-dotty species!

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

Yep, thank you!

@lucasnell.bsky.social

@lucasnell.bsky.social

Bio Art

NIAID releases alternative to BioRender, all illustrations freely available in public domain
bioart.niaid.nih.gov

Alexandra Morton-Hayward is a forensic anthropologist at the University of Oxford studying the way brains preserve in the archaeological record. GRAHAM POULTER

Brains are soft and squishy—but they might preserve better than other soft tissues. That story, a conversation about eco-evo dynamics with @lucasnell.bsky.social, and more of the best in Science and science in today's #ScienceAdviser www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪

Excited to share our new paper out in Science! We combined simulations, experiments, and field data to show how dispersal simultaneously stabilizes species and genetic diversity, which results in persistent eco-evo dynamics. doi.org/10.1126/scie...

Macro photo of a bright yellow caterpillar with blue diagonal stripes and white dorsal spines, clinging to the underside of a spiny twig, against a black background.

The very cool caterpillar of an African death's-head hawkmoth (Acherontia atropos), found at night in Madagascar.

#ento #invertebrate 🌿 🐙

New preprint out: many individual chironomid midge species can live in some wild places (e.g., Himalayan glaciers, hot springs). What shared features allow them to do this? doi.org/10.1101/2023...