Callum Thomas 🪰🧬 🏳️‍🌈

Two panel comic. Panel 1: a museum display of a megalodon jaw fossil, with some museum goers standing around it. There is a graphic on the information tablet next to the fossil, depicting the approximation of the megalodon’s full size compared to a human. Panel 2: “3.6 million years ago:” we see the true megalodon as it existed, a small shark with ludicrously large, juicy lips.

It only takes a minute -- "hey, my students really loved your book!" hit send -- but it makes all the difference in the world.

two Takahē and their 8 week old chick

Internships We welcome undergraduate students to join us for 11-month internships.

A bunch of great 11-month undergraduate internships now available @pirbrightinst.bsky.social, all supervised by some great people - including two working on Culicoides midges! Strongly recommend to any UK biology undergrads looking for a professional placement. www.pirbright.ac.uk/careers-and-...

Job posting for a "Conservative Politics Expert" remote role, paying $70/hour and requiring a "Political Bias Evaluation" to apply.

Job description, outlining how the position seeks to "Analyze AI model outputs to identify progressive or left-leaning framings and assumptions that obscure or distort conservative reasoning."

Pretty shocked about this job advertisement that was just served to my inbox. 👀 $70/hour to "identify progressive or left-leaning framings" in AI model outputs and "correct" them.

1 Nurse: It’s become a real problem in this area 2 Nurse: We’ve seen the whole community lost to addiction 3 Show a building sign posted: Westminster ‘X’ Addiction Clinic With various Westminster people or looking at their phones outside it Nurse: Ministers, Spads, Researchers… 4 Nurse: Most mornings we’ll get a call about someone acting strangely [Nurse on phone taking a call] Ok - we’ll be right over 5 Nurse: We just have a gentle chat [Nurses approach a minister –Robert Jenrick? - standing in the Palace of Westminster Minister: I understand your concerns… 6 Nurse: Are you OK love? Minister: Yes I’m just hearing legitimate concerns from real voters 7 Nurse: That’s a robot, a Nazi and a poorly-disguised Russian [Show that the people he is talking to are precisely these characters] Nurse 2: Give us your phone, love 8 Nurse: At the clinic we put them in a Grass-Touching Pod, with a real voter to talk to [We see them back at the clinic, holding the minister's head and pushing him into a glass isolation booth with a grass floor. And it is a baffled looking woman, on a chair, ready to talk to him.] 9 Minister: YOU MUST BE WORRIED ABOUT THE COMING CIVIL WAR [woman looks baffled] 10 woman: I just want a bus service Minister: LOOK AT MY FLAG [produces a St George's flag] [ends]

Cool research but I especially love the figure of the Scientific Bird Scaring Apparatuses

ecoevojobs.net 2025-26

UPDATE: The 2025-2026 list of faculty and postdoc positions in ecology and evolutionary biology is out! Be sure to check out this active and helpful community run resources! docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Postgraduate Cambridge University Scholarship | Gates Cambridge A fully funded graduate education for future leaders committed to improving the lives of others.

If you are from the US and interested in applying for a PhD with me (or anyone else @camzoology.bsky.social @cambridgebiosci.bsky.social), your deadline for the gates scholarship is October 15!
(You’ll need to write a research proposal, so contact PIs now) www.gatescambridge.org/programme/th...

screenshot of a 2012 article titled "A taxonomic and ecological overview of cheese fungi" I checked the author affiliations and surprise surprise, they're French

you think the French haven't already inferred the phylogeny of every cheese fungus?? FOOLS

Comic. [Building with large sign in front of it[ SIGN: Welcome to the *Biology Department* It has been [changeable sign: 3] days since we discovered something existentially horrifying about bugs that makes you question your whole reality

Biology Department

xkcd.com/3140/

Research into tiny charismatic peacock spiders makes the news!

BBC Breakfast this morning featured research by PhD candidate Jonah Walker and @joanameier.bsky.social @sangerinstitute.bsky.social

Find out more: bit.ly/3JUL5qF

Insects as Food and Feed (SIG) 2025 - Royal Entomological Society Insects as Food and Feed: delivering sustainable protein to the food system Date: Thursday 9th October 2025 (09:15 – 16:30) Venue: Elm Grove Conference Centre, The University of Roehampton: Home – Roe...

Join @royentsoc.bsky.social for Insects as Food and Feed

📅9th October
📍University of Roehampton

www.royensoc.co.uk/event/iaff25/

Covering insect protein nutrition, formulation and the UK/EU landscape it's shaping up to be a fascinating day following #BSFCon in September🎉

You join us live from Danny Dyer’s birthday drinks.

LOOK AT HIM

Looking for a PhD? I am advertising two industry sponsored PhD projects. One on black soldier fly genetics with #betabugs and another on searching insect biodiversity for novel enzymes #Syngenta. Get in touch if you are interested!! bbsrcdtp.lifesci.cam.ac.uk/available-ic...

The Telegraph Rayner tax scandal - £40k tax dodge - Statement Angela Rayner dodges £40,000 stamp duty Deputy Prime Minister reduces tax bill for Hove flat by declaring it as her main residence [Photo: Angela Rayner pictured at the weekend in Hove, where she has just bought a flat Credit: Dan Charity/The Sun on Sunday] Robert Mendick Chief Reporter. Amy Gibbons Political Correspondent 29 August 2025 8:57am BST

The Telegraph Money > Property > Second homes How to avoid tax on your second home From stamp duty to council tax, shield your wealth from Labour's tightening net [Photo of houses around a bay - Areas such as Cornwall have added a premium to council tax bills for second homes Credit: iStockphoto] Fran Ivens Senior Money Writer 29 August 2025 1:21pm BST

On the same day in the Telegraph:

So jealous that I'm not at #PRC10 (because I haven't yet figured out how to clone myself and be in two places at once) but the programme looks so brilliant. I really hope there's some discussion about how framing peer review as pedagogy may be a useful way forward too
wonkhe.com/blogs/peer-r...

Unsurprised, but disappointed, to see that Newnham College's JRFs are being defined as explicitly trans-exclusionary: newn.cam.ac.uk/research/res...

📢We’re recruiting!

🌳Assistant Professor in Ecology, Evolution & Conservation

A permanent teaching-focused position in our vibrant, welcoming and intellectually stimulating academic community.

Deadline: 7 September.

Apply here: bit.ly/3HKtNeZ

Discovery and description of a novel mode of oviposition in the mosquito genus Culex Scientific Reports - Discovery and description of a novel mode of oviposition in the mosquito genus Culex

I am back with great news. A project by a former undergrad, Liz Wynne, is now out in publication. In it she discovered a mosquito in the genus Culex that lays eggs from the air (like a Toxorhynchites) and exhibits skip oviposition (spreading eggs around). An amazing discovery! 🦟🍾
rdcu.be/eBkFM

Wellcome Connecting Science hybrid conference Understanding Life: Using Large-scale Biodiversity Reference Genomes Conference dates: 27-29 October 2025 Location: Hinxton Hall Conference Centre, Wellcome Genome Campus, UK and online Bursary and abstract deadline: 14 July Registration deadlines In person: 29 September Virtual: 20 October

Present your insights from studies into #eukaryotic genomes at our #Biodiversity25 conference! 📈

🗓️ 27-29 October 2025
Submit by 14 July 📩

We encourage submissions showcasing best practices for applying new methods and resources to analyse #biodiversity genomes at scale 🌳🧬

📎 bit.ly/4j3vAZ9

A diagram showing clearly lovingly hand-drawn in MS Paint images of leafcutter ants. The top four panels show the four major Atta cephalotes castes, the major being the soldier, defense class with extremely large muscled arms holding a sword and a club. The second panel, the media class, is more typical looking ants carrying clippers and leaves. The minor class is even skinnier and smaller and shown with a shovel and is described as the caretaker class. And the smallest, the minim class are shown holding mushooms with the description of fungal care. In the bottom for panels it shows what happens when the Major class is chemically altered; they can be reprogrammed to do leaf harvesting and caretaker caste rolls and it shows the beefy ant holding a leaf and hammer in one panel, and in the other holding a baby bottle and a stroller with a larva in it

God, I love this visual abstract for a paper on leafcutter ants

www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...

Genuinely... quite excited about this. I think I might have to install it just for old skool x new school kicks.

(plus - great for controlled cloud environments!)

Interested in a PhD connecting sensory ecology and evolutionary genetics? Applications are now open for a project on the Speciation Genomics of Eye Size Variation in Heliconius Butterflies in our lab at LMU Munich: www.evol.bio.lmu.de/research/mer... Please repost!

West Nile virus detected in UK mosquitoes for first time A UK Health Safety Agency spokesperson said the risk to the general public is

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I was under the impression bamboo is fine as long as you replace it each year?

A milestone: #kakapo mating calls have been heard on the North Island of NZ for the first time in over a century. At least 2 of the 3 #kakapo males at the fenced sanctuary of Maungatautari have "boomed" this summer. #conservation www.doc.govt.nz/news/media-r... Video: www.scienceagency.co.nz