Wolfgang Wüster

How genus-splitting #taxonomy works in real life - an analogy.

#systematics #classification #nomenclature 🐍😎

Workshop on #ConservationGenetics at #HWM2026 led by Axel Barlow and @simonmaddock.bsky.social of @bangoruniversity.bsky.social and Newcastle University -assessing participant knowledge and solving scenarios.

Herp Workers Meeting 2026 in Glasgow is on its way #HWM2026

Our new paper! Led by @miaryras.bsky.social with @wolfgangwuster.bsky.social and others 🦎

Sleeping beauty awakened: Experimental winter warming increases activity with signs of potential DNA damage in common wall lizards Winter is warming faster than summer, posing substantial threat to hibernating ectotherms, whose physiology depends directly on environmental conditions. While the effects of active season warming are...

Accepted manuscript now online! The first paper from @miaryras.bsky.social's exciting PhD work on the consequences of warming winters for lizard physiology and behaviour, in collab w/ @wolfgangwuster.bsky.social, @arc-trust.bsky.social, & others:
doi.org/10.1242/jeb....

Ancient origin of an urban underground mosquito Understanding how life is adapting to urban environments represents an important challenge in evolutionary biology. In this work, we investigate a widely cited example of urban adaptation, Culex pipie...

How does life evolve to adapt to modern cities?

Out now in Science, my PhD work with @lindymcbr.bsky.social uncovers the ancient origin of the “London Underground mosquito” – one of the most iconic examples of urban adaptation.

🧵(1/n)
@science.org
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ady4515

Absolute nonsense. The issue re Homoroselaps was resolved back in the 1980s or 1990s IIRC - they did indeed evolve a proteroglyphous dentition independently from the elapids. The remaining elapids are unquestionably monophyletic.

An exciting new study now out in which I played a small part - Wood Frog Testicular Microstructure
Correlates with Plasma Hormone Concentrations
During Late-Stage Spermatogenesis www.herpconbio.org/Volume_20/Is...
Excited to see this out, and to add a new taxonomic group to my pub list!! 🐸❤️

The GRC Venom Evolution, Function and Biomedical Applications is back for 2026! The conference and corresponding ECR seminar will be held in Barcelona in May 🐍🐜🐌🐝🦂🐡🪼🕷️🐞🇪🇸🌞

My kind of homecoming after an evening of roadcruising in Arizona!

In Guinea, the United States helped beat back malaria. Now, the disease is set to soar Foreign aid cuts are expected to cause a rise in malaria cases and deaths across sub-Saharan Africa

I traveled to Guinea to find out what U.S. budget cuts mean for the fight against malaria. Here's my story in @science.org - with powerful photography by Marta Moreiras. www.science.org/content/arti...

reverse heist movie where a single snake has to chase all the priests back into ireland

What Ocean Ramsey does is not shark science or conservation: some brief thoughts on “the Shark Whisperer” documentary Netflix has a new (sarcastic air quotes) “documentary” out about Ocean Ramsey, who longtime readers and followers know is a serial wildlife harasser who also coordinates massive online …

Whenever I (or other shark conservation experts) say "Ocean Ramsey does not raise awareness, she says very wrong things about threats to sharks and their policy solutions," some people feel the need to say "but she taught me something" ...and what they say is always a very wrong thing!

Feeding on crocodile tears… sounds like a staff meeting after the latest round of redundancies is announced…

Many congratulations!

Happy #WorldSnakeDay
Here’s my favourite lifer of the year so far: four-lined snake, Elaphe quatuorlineata, from Krk Island, Croatia, earlier this year. Why not post yours? 🐍 #herp #herpetology #herper

Stuck in the paywall? Go to tinyurl.com/3uxafr42 😉
🤫 don’t tell anyone!

Phylogeny and species delimitation in an iconic snake genus: the African mambas (Serpentes: Elapidae: Dendroaspis) Abstract. The African mambas (Dendroaspis) comprise an iconic genus of four large-bodied, highly venomous elapid snakes: the black mamba (D. polylepis) fro

How many mamba species are there? Find out from our new paper: Phylogeny and species delimitation in an iconic snake genus: the African mambas (Serpentes: Elapidae: Dendroaspis)

academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/a...

Join our @naturambyth.bsky.social #AdderAction team for Celebration of Nature at St Fagans National Museum of History, Cardiff on 12th July. Project Officer Matt will be running an info stall and talking about adder awareness, conservation & attitudes. More info 👇
www.arc-trust.org/Event/celebr...

BHL Transition Update #2 Help us shape the future of the Biodiversity Heritage Library The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is at a turning point. After nearly two decades of calling the Smithsonian Institution home, BH…

Thank you to everyone who has shared & responded to our Call for Support thus far. Our Call proposes a more distributed & sustainable future where BHL is shared across multiple hosts supported by multiple funding sources. Find out more: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2025/06/tran... 🌱 📖 🧪 🌏 #ILoveBHL

Named for the beer or the Argentinian dictator? 😉
Nice work!

Many congratulations to Molly Allum! She studied the crop foraging behaviour of the Zanzibar red colobus here in Jozani last year for her third year dissertation at @bangoruniversity.bsky.social @beps-bangor.bsky.social ! Great dissertation - currently working on making it into a journal article!

A Border Patrol truck will do a more convincing job. You know, for the insurance folks.

Conservationists call for Lake District to lose Unesco world heritage status Campaigners say designation promotes unsustainable sheep farming at expense of nature recovery and local communities

1. It’s good to see this scandal being called out at last. My thanks and congratulations go to Lee Schofield, Karen Lloyd and Ian Convery. But it’s also absolutely infuriating that it has come to this point, as I explain in this thread.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The biology and toxinology of blunt-nosed vipers - npj Biodiversity npj Biodiversity - The biology and toxinology of blunt-nosed vipers

www.nature.com/articles/s44...
New review paper on the large Middle Eastern vipers of the genus Macrovipera, led by Ignazio Avella. For those interested in #nomenclature, check out out little act of rebellion against changes to established names imposed by nomenclatural historians! #ICZN #taxonomy

Thelma and Louise

Nice work!

Over the course of taxonomic history, a small but nefarious band of researchers have taken to publishing taxonomic names that their colleagues have regarded as poorly founded, poorly supported by good data, or unneeded and contradicting existing work... 1/n

YouTube video by Project RattleCam Magpie goes inside rattlesnake den to eat baby snake!

CW: Another baby rattlesnake is taken by a magpie!

This footage is from "after hours" when we do not operate the cam, but live observers watched as a magpie boldly strode right into the den opening and snagged a baby.

youtu.be/c4d2Cu6vkCg