Mia Croft (she/they)

I got one to species! Rugilis rufipes, with a skinny neck and funny little eyes. I love those diesel elytra

Superfamily Aleocharinae, chunky with a mohair waistcoat, adorable

Already amazed by the diverse morphology of these little rove beetles. This one is superfamily Tachyporinae, tribe Tachyporini

First try at staphylinid ID, for dietary metabarcoding. I'm not going to try to get them all to species, or even genus! This one is superfamily Staphylininae, I think

Happy to be back in the lab with my spiders. This is a male Neriene clathrata, I think

Last day of the @nerc-eof.bsky.social course on #Python for #Bioinformatics today, learning how to process #eDNA and other #sequencing data in FASTQ format from #NGS platforms like Illumina, using biopython tools from the module seqIO 🥼🧪🧬💻 #Genomics

Excited to be learning #Python for #Bioinformatics with @nerc-eof.bsky.social today, building my skills for ecological networks analysis once I have all my #metabarcoding data

Thank you this is extremely helpful!

Exciting talk by @maximuminsect.bsky.social today on driver ants, and such an interesting finding that an extra caste in one species may result in niche differentiation to explain two otherwise similar species occupying the same habitat

Drassodes with the trochanter notches and tubular spinnerets, most likely cupreus, I couldn't get a good view on a chelicera to confirm @britishspiders.bsky.social #Arachnids #Spiders

Thanks for the tip

Xysticus juvenile, likely a ground dwelling species @britishspiders.bsky.social #Arachnids #Spiders

Pardosa amenata, however this is a juvenile so I'm less confident

Alopecosa juvenile, I think

Pardosa nigriceps, adult female

My first go at spider ID! Pardosa pullata

Gorgeous metalic blue on this Leistus spinibarbis 💙

A very nice Leistus spinibarbis, I couldn't capture the electric blue sheen

A new carabid for me, Paradromius linearis, with its worried-looking wrinkly face

Lots of Bembidion lampros in my samples, they look like they're made from black glass

A lovely little Trechus obtusus

Identifying carabid beetles in the lab, here's an easy Anchomenus dorsalis

‘Almost unimaginable’: these ants are different species but share a mother Nature - Ant queens of one species clone ants of another to create hybrid workers that do their bidding.

A common type of ant in Europe breaks a fundamental rule in biology: its queens can produce male offspring that are a whole different species

go.nature.com/467N16m

Had such a great time at #EcoNet2025 and met some really amazing researchers from this awesome international community. Bring on EcoNet 2027 in Brazil! 🇧🇷

Having a fantastic time at #EcoNet2025 with so many impressive and inspiring talks

I can't be certain predators aren't feeding in the trap, but I did run a pilot with wet vs dry traps, plus there's some previous studies showing no difference in abundance and diversity between wet vs dry

Adding some LECA (clay granules) to the trap helps everything hide from the predators - most importantly I want the predators not to eat each other! Also sampling for less than 24 hours 🙂

Carabids, rove beetles and spiders 🕷 isolated from a dry pitfall trap for dietary metabarcoding 🧬

Set some dry pitfall traps with a couple handfuls of LECA to catch live predators for dietary metabarcoding 🧬 the LECA provides shelter from predation (including within-trap) 🪲

Funnels are working well to reduce small mammals mortalities in pitfall traps 🐁 just cut the narrow end shorter and you can even drop a sample pot with solution into the cup for easy collection 🪲