Floria Mora-Kepfer Uy

Wasps on BBC Breakfast 🐝
Our expert joined BBC Breakfast to talk all things wasps - why they're essential, misunderstood, and worth celebrating.

Discover the Grant Museum’s fascinating new exhibition on wasp diversity.
🔗 www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-coll...

#UCL #GrantMuseum #BBCBreakfast #Wasps

Electroreception in treehoppers: How extreme morphologies can increase electrical sensitivity | PNAS The link between form and function of an organism’s morphology is usually apparent or intuitive. However, some clades of organisms show remarkable ...

Why do treehoppers look so weird?! Our latest paper, out this week in @pnas.org, suggests a perhaps unexpected reason - static electricity ⚡ We show that treehoppers can detect the electrostatic cues of predators and that their crazy shapes may boost their electrosensitivity! doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Starship giant transposons dominate plastic genomic regions in a fungal plant pathogen and drive virulence evolution Nature Communications - Giant transposons, known as ‘Starships’, mediate horizontal gene transfer between fungal genomes. Here, Sato et al. show that Starships occupy genome regions...

📣 Happy to see the journal publication 📄 of our work on Starships 🚀 in Verticillium fungi: terrific work led by @yukiyosato.bsky.social
rdcu.be/exBSp

Honored to be a plenary speaker for #ABL2025! #wasplove

Not to mention that our people are paid very little to farm cacao

Scientists In Texas Found A New Species Hiding Under Their Noses - Sciencing Scientists at Rice University in Texas discovered a new parasitic wasp species, Chrysonotomyia susbelli, parasitizing the galls of local gall wasps.

Article on #NewSpecies of parasitoid wasp we discovered last year on #RiceUniversity campus! Great work led by @brendanoloughlin.bsky.social in collaboration with Mike Gates, Pedro Brandão, & me.

www.sciencing.com/1905663/texa...

When darkness falls some wasps don't return to a nest to sleep, they simply latch onto some foliage for the night. Here a thread-waisted wasp (Hymenoptera: Sphecidae: Ammophila pictipennis) has settled in on a common ragweed (Asteraceae: Ambrosia artemisiifolia). Blissfield Michigan, 18 Sep 2010.

When darkness falls some wasps don't return to a nest to sleep, they simply latch onto some foliage for the night. Here a thread-waisted wasp (Hymenoptera: Sphecidae: Ammophila pictipennis) has settled in on a common ragweed (Asteraceae: Ambrosia artemisiifolia). Blissfield Michigan, 18 Sep 2010.

Wasp colony with a picture of Alicent Hightower.

Wasp colony with a picture of King Geoffrey

Wasp colony with a picture of Ramsay Bolton

I’m back from a work trip and it’s my turn to do colony check-ins. I asked for which colonies to 👀 for potentially killing brood… and I get this protocol 🤣🤣 #teamwasp #ProudPI

A tiny dark orange wasp with shaded fringed wings on long stalks, head and antennae are to the left of pictures

A beautiful female Mymar pulchellum parasitoid wasp of the Mymaridae found in Brede High Woods. This may be a common species but it is always worth a closer look!

#UKWildlife #wasps #Mymaridae #HighWeald

Team wasp PI holding a Polistes fuscatus

Team wasp in our wasp rearing room with experimental colonies

Team wasps in the field!

Team wasp collecting in the field

After >20 years of working with wasps, I like them even more now!

And a ⭐️ team that’s rocking this season and experimental infections with twisted wing parasites! #wasplove #strepsiptera #fieldseason #ProudPI #teamwasp

Instar 2 larva of Xenos peckii, a parasitic insect from the order Strepsiptera. This larvae infects and manipulates a social wasp, Polistes fuscatus.

Working with parasites blows my mind! As in an alien movie, here is an instar 2 larva of Xenos peckii. Amazing dissection from star student Natasha Vacca, as it’s the size of a spec of dust! It infects and manipulates Polistes fuscatus, the social wasps we study. #Strepsiptera #zombies #wasplove

Congrats to Amanda who truly reflects excellence while being an incredibly kind and giving human being!

Envelope addressed to Mr. And Dr. Uy for the first time! We’re both academics

Well, this is a first! And much appreciated!

It’s usually Dr. and Mrs. Uy, even though we’re both academics 🥴

‘This is bull——”: National Science Foundation employees protest HUD's takeover Dozens of National Science Foundation employees crowded the agency’s headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, Wednesday to protest the news that the Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, w...

Another day testing the limits of resilience.

The Alexandria NSF building was designed for the NSF merit review process (gold standard), complete with a floor devoted to panels.

Now we aren’t allowed to have in person panels.

The loss of US science leadership will haunt this country for decades.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences: Vol 380, No 1929

Selection Shapes Diverse Animal Minds: our special issue of @royalsocietypublishing.org Phil Trans B on the diverse evolutionary processes underlying cognitive evolution is out today. Thanks to all our contributors! royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/202...

Current Biology just published a Q&A with me where I talk about my journey as a scientist and why I enjoy interacting with artists.

OA link:
urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...

Congrats!

Jobs - OU Human Resources

Job alert! Sam Noble Museum (OU) seeks a Collection Manager for the Recent Invertebrates collection (insects, mollusks, arachnids & more). You’ll team up with the incoming Curator (👋 me). Apply via jobs.ou.edu, Job # 251244. DM questions. #museumjobs #arthropods #collections

WASP OR MOTH!? 🐝🤯

One of the most incredible mimics in the world, this Tiger Moth (Orcynia calcarata) looks so much like a wasp I was almost nervous holding it! 😳

There are so many tiger moths mimicking wasps in the Amazon it’s crazy! 😯🌳
How amazing is nature! 💛🖤

‘Half the tree of life’: ecologists’ horror as nature reserves are emptied of insects A new point in history has been reached, entomologists say, as climate-led species’ collapse moves up the food chain even in supposedly protected regions free of pesticides

"‘Half the tree of life’: ecologists’ horror as nature reserves are emptied of insects"

Before long, the word "bug" will be reserved for computer software.

#entomology #ecology #insects 🧪

Announcing myloasm, a new long-read (ONT R10/PacBio) metagenome assembler that I've been working on during my postdoc in the Heng Li lab (@lh3lh3.bsky.social).

myloasm-docs.github.io

A macro photo of caterpillar clinging to the underside of a thin brown plant stem against a pale blue sky. The caterpillar is cryptically colored gray, black and orange-brown. There is a cluster of what look like more than a dozen tiny green grapes, but which are actually parasitoid wasp larvae, attached to the back of the caterpillar near the head.

Here are your Wednesday Wasps. 🐙🌿 What wasps, you ask? They're the tiny green "grapes" on the caterpillar. They're larvae of a Euplectus sp. wasp. The female wasp injects a venom into the caterpillar which stops it from molting ever again, so the wasp's externally-attached babies won't fall off--

a stick with a tiny yellow and black striped bug

the leafhoppers are back (warbler migration for entomologists)

#NewSpecies!
New parasitoid wasp from #costarica just flew in:

Perilampus falcatus

Treatment: treatment.plazi.org/id/03E27E55-...
Publication: doi.org/10.11646/zoo...
#Zootaxa #PerilampusFalcatus

#FAIRdata
#biology #biodiversity #nature #animals #entomology #insects #hymenoptera #wasps #parasite

This!!!

Polistes stigma from the Solomon Islands in their nest

Close-up of a Polistes stigma's yellow face, from the Solomon Islands.

I find myself missing fieldwork in the tropics! Here is some Polistes stigma from the Solomon Islands for much-needed #wasplove

The female with dark eyes has recently emerged, and her eyes will lighten in a few days. Some of the tiniest Polistes I've seen! Images by Al Uy @tropbiolab.bsky.social

#teamwasp celebrates graduating seniors

Graduation party @tropbiolab 2025

🌟 Graduation party for our three undergrad stars from #teamwasp @tropbiolab.bsky.social ! 🌟
Grateful for mentoring an amazing team of rising scholars.
The party included some 🦅🐝🐜 watching... & the most unesthetic piñata, decorated with early figures from our graduates!
#proudPI

Some lilac bushes in bloom at Highland Park in Rochester NY. The bush is between 7 and 8 feet tall with bright green leaves. The bushes are heavy with light purple flowers that give off a delightful fragrance

People enjoying various lilac bushes. Light purple and light blue lilac flowers are represented here.

Me wearing a rainbow hat and smelling a light purple lilac flower

Sugar magnolia tree, slightly past it's prime flowering time. The light pink flower petals cover the tree's extensions and give off a very mild, pleasantly sweet scent.

I think it's kinda cool that one of our city's biggest festivals is "these bushes are cool, go look at flowers and eat fried food" #LilacFestival #bloomscrolling