Pieter Vantieghem

Researchers from the University of Exeter have found that moths move 85% less on average under street lighting conditions than in natural nighttime conditions.

‘The plane flew and started spraying’: Israel accused of poisoning Syrian farmland with chemicals Villagers report dying fields, damaged livestock and fears for their livelihoods

The difference is striking: one side green, the other brown. It is the result of what local residents in Quneitra say was the spraying of chemicals by Israeli planes inside Syria in late January, destroying grazing areas and farmland.
@sallyhayd.bsky.social
www.irishtimes.com/world/middle...

Homogenization of Northern Belgian landscapes through centuries of reclamation, agricultural transition, and urbanization Nature Communications - Digitizing land-use from historical maps with GeoAI, this paper exposes the homogenization of landscapes in Northern Belgium 1774-2022, through reclamation of natural areas,...

Flemish landscapes are becoming increasingly similar: a comparison by Luc De Keersmaeker using AI in @natcomms.nature.com of three sets of maps over the years shows us that the unique characteristics of historical landscapes in Flanders are fading and we can speak of homogenisation. rdcu.be/e4U8A

Degradation of fish food webs in the Anthropocene The decrease in body size driven by the selective species turnover is widely altering fish food web topology and function.

New paper out examining fish food web degradation in the Anthropocene. We show the structure of aquatic food webs are changing-- even when species richness doesn’t. These signals are strongly associated with decreases in body size within fish communities. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🌐🐠🐡🦈🐟

It's only February but I think I might be able to call this my top paper of 2026 already.

Number of butterfly species per 5x5km square in Netherlands in 2025. The richest sites are on the Veluwe (centre) and South Limburg (southeast). The open polders in N Holland, Friesland, Groningen and Flevoland have the least number of species.

Recent research on the Phyllocnistis saligna complex in the Netherlands has shown that saligna is not present there!
Most mines are P.asiatica with P triandricola found in almond willow or rarely on purple willow.
We have both asiatica and triandricola in the UK. Barcoding is going on here.

Record 129 press members killed in 2025; Israel responsible for 2/3 of deaths - Committee to Protect Journalists Key findings Introduction At a time when armed conflict has reached historic levels around the world, journalist killings also reached an all-time high primarily due to the actions of one government: ...

"Record 129 press members killed in 2025; Israel responsible for 2/3 of deaths" - CPJ cpj.org/special-repo...

Evolution, genomics and conservation of butterflies and moths - Nature Reviews Biodiversity Butterflies and moths are key indicators of functioning and healthy ecosystems around the world. This Review describes the evolutionary history of the order Lepidoptera and tracks shifts in researcher...

Now online! In this review, we cover four major topics on butterflies and moths: their evolutionary history and diversification dynamics, genomics, global diversity patterns, and conservation 🦋🌏 (1/8) @natrevbiodiv.nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Climatic variability drives greater thermal tolerance breadth and enables larger range size in butterflies Abstract. Although climatic variability has been proposed to shape physiological tolerances, and in turn, species distributions, relatively few studies hav

We found support for the Rapoport effect in butterflies 🦋 species that live in more variable climates have broader thermal tolerances and larger range sizes. A collaboration with Aaron Yilmaz and @sarahdiamond.bsky.social 🔬

academic.oup.com/biolinnean/a...

We hebben een #vacature voor een veldmedewerker vleermuizenonderzoek: je draagt bij aan veldwerk, data-invoer en dataverwerking voor projecten rond vleermuizen - zoals foerageergedrag, verlichting en bomen: bit.ly/4s5EQku
📷Rollin Verlinde (Vildaphoto), Shutterstock

Wat je allemaal weggeeft aan Amerikaanse bedrijven als je je identiteit laat verifiëren door LinkedIn. Een blogger met een hekel aan het verzamelen van data zocht het uit.

thelocalstack.eu/posts/linked...

leestip van @sandradehaan.bsky.social

Gelukkig hebben we in Vlaanderen intelligentsia zoals #Elchardus die ons met de regelmaat van de klok gerust stellen dat het bij het Amerikaans ICE beleid niet om fascisme gaat...

The political effects of X’s feed algorithm - Nature Among users initially on a chronological feed, 7 weeks of exposure to X’s algorithmic feed in 2023 shifted political attitudes and account-following behaviour in a more conservative direction compared...

"These results suggest that initial exposure to X’s algorithm has persistent effects on users’ current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship"
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

An interesting new study on the geometrid moth Earophila badiata shows how a wide distributional gap between two morphologically different populations (SW Archipelago vs. N Karelia) was filled in only ca. 20 years across S Finland: peerj.com/articles/206...

Ja, verschillende nachtvlindersoorten zijn actief doorheen de winter (bv de winteruilen) of in de vroege lente. Voor soorten als kleine voorjaarsspanner of perentak ligt de piek van de vliegperiode in februari.

Achlya flavicornis

Lihophane ornitopus

Conistra rubiginosa

Last night was mild so I set up the first moth trap of the year at my inlaws'. 81 moths of 12 species with highlights Achlya flavicornis (first Belgian of the year as it seems), Lithophane ornitopus, Conistra rubiginosa etc. Dull light so I only took some phone pics. #mothsmatter #teammoth

2025 was another bad year for the Chequered Skipper in NL. The distribution of this butterfly is getting more and more sparse. The species cannot cope very well with the dry years since 2018.

Ping @whatthephoques.bsky.social

The world’s 280 million electric bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars Electric vehicles get all the press – but it’s the smaller unsung two wheelers cutting oil demand the most.

theconversation.com/the-worlds-2...

Moth perched on a streetlamp. Our work suggests that light suppresses activity in moths, so once attracted to a light they are prevented from escape.

Eye-opening findings on how light suppresses moth activity. Light attracts moths, but what if we've been missing a much more pervasive effect where even sky-glow light levels make them freeze?

Paper: doi.org/10.1098/rspb...
@uniexecec.bsky.social @esbriolat.bsky.social @kevinjgaston.bsky.social

Sudan in ‘world’s largest humanitarian crisis’ after two years of civil war NGOs and UN say country is ‘worse off than ever before’ with wide-scale displacement, hunger, famine and attacks on refugee camps

Almost half the 50-million population of Sudan – 24.6 million people – do not have enough food
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

This is becoming a pervasive issue, for example involving the sidelining of actual experts and the heaping of pressure on regulatory bodies to move forward with dubious (re)introductions. A quick ecology 101 for ‘conservation gurus’. Thread 🌍🦗🦋🪶🦬🧪1/

Niet toevallig dat tegenstanders van het eredoctoraat voor Francesca #Albanese zich distantiëren via berichten op X...
Met 1500+ ZAPers aan de UGent is het feit dat 2 proffen - waarvan 1 gastdocent - zich distantiëren overigens ook een non-issue... www.demorgen.be/nieuws/leuve...

New Zealand bug of the year: moth named Avatar after mining threat crowned winner Arctesthes avatar moth, which won nearly half of the votes, was discovered in 2012 and is critically endangered

New Zealand bug of the year: moth named Avatar after mining threat crowned winner

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/f...

Great photos, @frankashwood.bsky.social!

Onbegrijpelijk, dit.

The Guardian view on Merz and Meloni: an emerging Berlin-Rome axis is threatening the EU’s green deal The deregulation agenda being pushed by Germany’s chancellor and Italy’s prime minister is economically and ethically flawed

Current attack on environmental legislation goes much further than stopping the green deal. It tries to reverse 40 years of env lawmaking.

It will kill nature and people, harm most European companies & destroy the EU which is based on a common rules based market.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

An infographic from Our World in Data titled "Global land use for food production" uses a series of stacked horizontal bar charts to visualize the distribution of Earth's surface and the disproportionate land requirements of livestock. The first bar shows Earth's surface is 71% ocean and 29% land (141 million km²); the land surface is then broken down into 76% habitable land, 10% glaciers, and 14% barren land. Of the habitable land, 45% (48 million km²) is used for agriculture, while 38% is forests and 13% is shrubland. The agricultural land bar reveals a major disparity: 80% (38 million km²) is dedicated to livestock (meat, dairy, and textiles) including grazing land and cropland for feed, while only 16% is used for crops for direct human consumption and 4% for non-food crops. Finally, two smaller bars at the bottom contrast this land use with nutritional output, showing that while livestock uses 80% of agricultural land, it only provides 17% of global calories and 38% of global protein, whereas plant-based foods provide 83% of calories and 62% of protein.

80% of agricultural land is used for livestock (and textiles), yet this huge land use provides only 17% of our calories and 38% of our protein.

16% of the land used for crops provides 83% of our calories and 62% of our protein. It's past time we rethink what we eat.

The political effects of X's feed algorithm https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10098-2 Received: 16 December 2024 Accepted: 4 January 2026 Published online: 18 February 2026 Open access • Check for updates Germain Gauthier,5, Roland Hodler?5, Philine Widmer35 & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya3,4,5 m Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects'. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk's platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects. Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. To investigate the mechanism, we analysed users' feed content and behaviour. We found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects. These results suggest that initial exposure to X's algorithm has persistent effects on users' current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship.

A new paper shows that less than 2 months of exposure to Twitter’s algorithmic feed significantly shifts people’s political views to the right.

Moving from chronological feed to the algorithmic feed also increases engagement.

This is one of the most concerning papers I’ve read in awhile.

524 doden in zes weken. Mannen, vrouwen en kinderen.

Europa feliciteert zichzelf met “dalende aankomsten”. Minder mensen die Europa bereiken, betekent niet minder mensen op de vlucht. Wel: meer mensen die verdrinken, worden teruggestuurd of verdwijnen.

Dat is het gevolg van politieke keuzes.