Victoria Farrar

That's me! Join us on Friday with your own fluid to imbibe (coffee or tea, crop milk NOT recommended 🤢)

Wait I fully assumed that was part of the postdoc job description 😂😭

We are looking for a new postdoc to join our team! Details below. Please reach out if interested. share widely—Thanks!

ISN members, check out my labmate (Usan)'s cool ✨ spatial transcriptomics ✨ work at today's webinar!

A daycare playground behind a fence with a bike path and trees in front

Oh hey ours does! (To be fair though, it’s on a college campus)

It will never cease to amaze me that there is a night river of birds flowing over the Midwest every spring and fall

I am recruiting 1-2 graduate students (M.S. or Ph.D. track) to join my lab at @psychualberta.bsky.social in Fall 2026! Please share widely, and if you are interested in endocrinology, animal behavior, neuroscience, and/or seasonal biology, I would love to chat! 🐟🧠🧬🍂

Those are sooo good! They’re my go-to gift for all my labmates too 🐟

A blurry photo of a large brown wheel bug perched on a small sapling

I saw my first one this weekend too! They’re so big! I got close to ID it, didn’t realize they had gnarly bites… 😬

Congratulations, Mark!

Senate spending panel would rescue NSF and NASA science funding Its support for a flat budget is a sign of congressional resistance to drastic cuts Trump has proposed

The Senate appropriations committee has voiced its intent to ignore the request by President Donald Trump to slash the budgets of the National Science Foundation and NASA science programs. scim.ag/4nW7XWi

You are cordially invited to our Anti-Prime Sale, where every purchase will financially support bookstores, NOT billionaires 🥳

How a Parasitic Bird With No Parents Learns What Species It Is

Cowbird research highlighted in The NY Times! www.nytimes.com/2025/07/03/s... How Parasitic Cowbirds With No Parents Learns What Species They Are - The New York Times

A black and white coelacanth swimming slightly forward and down in a tight C curve. The style is strongly reminiscent of Japanese style koi tattoos.

I wanted to try my hand at the fairly classic koi tattoo but with a personal twist. This one depicts a coelacanth which are lobe-finned fish known as "living fossils". They're relatives of our own fish ancestors prior to our lineage leaving the water. #art #coelacanth #tattoo #tetrapod #paleontology

“World Firefly Day: Celebrate Nature’s Light Show” A time lapse photo, showing all of the countless firefly flashes over 20 minutes, in a forest clearing.

Tonight is #WorldFireflyDay!
🌌Visit a firefly-sighting site & get inspired by the light show!
💡Help your local fireflies by providing pesticide-free habitat & turning off outdoor lights at night!
🔎Join Firefly Atlas & track the species around you! ➡ fireflyatlas.org
Learn more ➡ xerces.org/fireflies

I truly adore the chaotic energy of this graphical abstract. The MS Paint of it all! The tattooed buff ant pushing a buggy! In the era of Biorender/AI everything, this stands out more than ever. Bonus that the science looks cool too 😉

Big beautiful fish!

Image shows a barren landscape with dark, undulating hills under a stormy sky. Overlay text criticizes Sen. Lee's stance on public lands, quoting LaikeN Jordahl from the Center for Biological Diversity. The organization's logo is seen at the bottom left.

The good news: The Senate parliamentarian has ruled against the sell-off, meaning it's been removed from the budget bill.

The bad news: Sen. Mike Lee is vowing to continue his efforts to sell off vast tracts of America’s public lands.

We have to keep the pressure up. ➡️ biodiv.us/handsoffpubl...

Perfectly descriptive name, no notes!

A poster with outline of Illinois and photos of a belted kingfisher, prairie king snake and king rail reading “The only ‘kings’ ‘round here”)

Central IL wildlife represented today #NoKings

Based on some quick math, this alone could fund the NSF Plant Genome Research Program for ~4 years; the NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology, which was totally axed in the NSF budget request, for ~9 years; and ~ half the total NSF GRFP budget

Have so much fun, wish I was still in Davis to be able to go!

Those are both such interesting points! I do think there’s something to online discussions now that make the misunderstandings public and recorded in a way they wouldn’t have been before

Pop culture has a 'bean soup problem' : Pop Culture Happy Hour Online discourse has become a fun part of enjoying and dissecting big pop culture events. But after seeing all the commentary around Ryan Coogler's Sinners, our pal Brittany Luse has one question: are...

Fully aware this makes me sound like the Ivory Tower hater you just mentioned - but I just listened to an NPR episode on this yesterday! www.npr.org/2025/05/29/1...

😱!

🧪 Detailed data viz NYT article, out today, on the extent of funding cuts at the National Science Foundation.

This "broken pie chart" is neat & new to me: Powerfully shows the slowdown in new NSF awards across areas.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Urbana-Champaign, it's time to celebrate science! 🔬🎓 Where curiosity meets innovation—#pint25 is coming on May 19-20-21! 🚀✨
Meet the team making it happen 👉 pintofscience.us/team/Urbana-...

The comment period for this ends in 3 DAYS. Please leave a comment telling them EVERYONE should be able to get covid boosters.
www.regulations.gov/commenton/FD...

As described this 16” x 20” linocut print combines gold text in a central circle reading “OUR FATE” arching upwards, “IS TIED” horizontally across the middle, “TO THAT OF THE INSECTS” arching downwards in two lines with insects. Clockwise from top: two leaf cutter bees (Megachile relativa and M. brevis), the Imperial moth (Eacles imperialis), the Virgin Tiger moth (Apantesis virgo), an Isabella’s Longwings butterfly (Nymphalidae Eueides isabella), a blue orchard mason bee (Osmia lignaria), a firefly (Photinus pyralis), the rusty patched bumblebee (Bombus affinis), a white underwing moth (Catocala relicta), an eastern carpenter bee (Xylocopa virginica), a sweat bee (Agapostemon sericeus), a hummingbird clearwing moth (Hermaris thysbe), the common eastern bumblebee (B. impatiens), a long-horned bee (Melissodes sp.), a monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) and centre: eastern snail-shell nesting bee (O. conjuncta).

May 20 is World Bee Day. There are ~20,000 different bee species in the world. 🧪🧵🐝 Here in Ontario we have at least 400 native bees (none of which are honeybees, which are from Europe). Bees are key to pollination. According to the UN nearly 90% of the world’s wild flowering plant species depend, 🧵

Drawing of a pigeon in their typically lackluster nest with the caption "Happy Mothers day to parents doing their loving best"

Happy Mothers day 🧡❤️🩷🌟